Hey, everybody! Life has been crazy lately, but this fic is almost done! I estimate that there will be about three chapters left or less, and I'm not giving up on it now. Shout out to gingerflame17 for the great encouragement as we are so close to the end!
Chapter 14: Harry Potter's Greatest Strength
The eight of them stared at the entrance desperately as it shut.
"What's her plan?" Younger Ginny asked, "What's she going to do with us?"
"Well," Older Ron surmised, "She likes to be low-key, but she also wants to kill us now. However, she said that we would be here a while, so I'm going to take a wild guess and say that she wants us to die of thirst."
"Unless we're able to find a way out before then," Older Ginny answered.
Younger Ron frowned, "Then she'll just ask if we're thirsty and offer us poisoned water or something."
Older Harry analyzed the inner walls of the room. "There must be an alternate exit here somewhere. Everyone look around, see if you can find anything useful."
The eight of them traipsed the sides of the room, looking through papers and boxes every now and then.
Older Hermione gasped as she searched through an old trunk. "I think- I think I've found Allison Thistle's belongings." She pulled a woman's purse from the trunk, along with a set of Unspeakables robes with the name 'Thistle' embroidered on the front. "We can use these as evidence when we get out."
"If we get out," Younger Ron corrected dubiously.
"Can't we apparate?" Younger Ginny asked.
Younger Harry spun in place, "I'm trying. I think the room is charmed."
Younger Harry gave it up as a bad job and decided to examine the room further, running his hand along the walls like Dumbledore had done when they were searching for Slytherin's locket, not quite sure what he was looking for. After rubbing his hand over the same ridge in the wall for the fifth time, the room was suddenly aglow with a shining silver light.
A silver light in the shape of a housecat with bespectacled markings.
Older Ginny hurried towards the patronus. "McGonagall."
"Potter, Weasley," the cat said in Minerva McGonagall's voice, "There's been an emergency up at the school regarding your children. As this is not a secure floo line, I shall give you details when you arrive at Hogwarts. Please meet with me immediately."
Before any of them could so much as talk to the cat, it had disappeared.
"That bitch!" Older Hermione's snarl was soft, but the other seven jumped in surprise nonetheless. "It's Delia. She's using our children as pawns for her little mind games. McGonagall probably realized they were missing from their beds."
Older Ron put a hand on his wife's shoulder. "Hermione, we need to-"
"I WILL NOT CALM DOWN, RON, IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT! I'M NOT PLAYING HER GAME ANYMORE!" Sparks flew from her wand as she clutched it in her fist.
Younger Harry's brain spun desperately for a rescue plan. What was scarier than an angry Hermione was an angry, twice-as-smart, Minister Hermione who sought retribution for her precious children. And he had a feeling that the longer they stayed, the more explosive the four parents would become.
"Maybe we can cast a patronus?" Younger Ron murmured, eying Older Hermione warily, "Since McGonagall's was able to get in?"
Older Harry pointed his wand in front of him.
"Expecto Patronum!" His wand emitted a small puff of silver smoke.
"Yet another thing that doesn't work in this room!" Older Ginny grumbled. "Fine then. We'll do it my way."
"By summoning our brooms?" Older Harry asked.
"By blowing a giant hole through the place." She raised her wand at the closed entrance. "My reducto is still as good as ever. Hold on to something-"
Her husband grabbed her wrist. "The whole cellar might cave in, and we could die!"
"Says the man who has jumped on dragons, run through hoards of giants, and dived through fiendfyre! I would normally wait for Delia to come back to jump her, but as you can see, Love, I really don't have the time for that."
Older Harry locked his jaw and slowly released his wife's arm. He looked back at everyone else warningly. "Hold on to something."
The time travellers took cover. Younger Ron and Hermione took shelter behind Delia's old trunk, while Younger Harry and Ginny knocked Delia's desk onto its side, scattering files everywhere, to create a giant shield. Their older counterparts, apparently past caring, did not move a muscle.
Older Ginny raised her wand at the wall and took a deep, steadying breath. "Red-"
The wall gave an abrupt click as the bricks pulled back, column by column. The eight of them raised their wands, prepared to fight.
The wall finally gave way to the open cellar, revealing a small group of people.
"See, I knew there was a passage here!" It was Rose, clad in a pair of old sweatpants. Her eyes widened as she came face to face with Older Ginny, her wand arm still frozen and aiming at the passageway. "Bloody hell, Aunt Ginny! Did that hooded woman trap you in here?"
"How did you kids get here?" Older Ginny's eyebrows had retreated to her hairline.
"Well, see," Albus hesitated, rubbing his face with his T-shirt, "Mum, you can't get mad at us…"
"We broke out of school, Mum," James admitted. He was holding the plastic water bottle in his hand. "We wanted to help you get back the metronome."
Older Hermione gritted her teeth. "So, this whole time, I thought McGonagall was going to say you had been kidnapped by that woman, and I was fearing for my children's lives, when you actually broke out of school?" she was eying Rose fiercely."We will discuss this later." Rose backed up several steps in response.
Lily kept looking back over her shoulder. "We should go, before we get caught."
The eight of them hurried to join Lily, but Older Hermione hung back at the passageway. She pointed her wand at the wine cabinet and cast a nonverbal spell.
"It's a spell to keep it open," she explained in response to their inquiring expressions, "So that Delia can't lock her secrets up forever."
Younger Harry looked up the stairs, just as Lily had done. When would Delia come back?
"We need to go," he announced.
James frowned. "We can't. We split up and sent Hugo to find the metronome."
"You did what?" Older Hermione asked.
"He said he would meet us in the cellar when he was ready." James checked a watch on his wrist. It was the same kind that the Weasley children received for their seventeenth birthdays, only newer. "If Hugo doesn't come back in five minutes, we should go looking for him."
"How did you all get here?" Older Ron asked. "I thought McGonagall was keeping an eye on you?"
"She was keeping on eye on us," James answered, "But we knew that if she kept watching over us personally, we'd never get out."
"So we convinced McGonagall to let someone else take over her watch," Rose continued, "Someone we knew was less…implacable." She eyed her mother cautiously.
"And who was that?" Older Ginny asked.
Albus cringed. "Um…Hagrid."
The four parents face palmed. Older Ginny groaned. Older Hermione let out a frustrated grunt. Younger Ron tried to stifle his laughter.
"So how did you find us?" Younger Ginny asked.
"After we took the floo to the Field and found that nobody was home, we found some files on this Beckett woman strewn across the coffee table in the living room," Albus answered, "Somebody had circled her address in red ink, so it was easy to put two and two together."
Older Ron shifted sheepishly under his wife's gaze.
The door to the cellar creaked open, and a figure appeared at the top of the stairs.
"I have the metronome," Hugo said. "Come."
James took the stairs two at a time while the others followed. They found Hugo in the kitchen, empty-handed.
"Where is it, Hugo?" Lily asked.
"Come," he repeated. He wasted no time, and strode into one of the adjoining rooms.
The group followed him curiously. It was a sitting room. Every piece of furniture, so neatly placed around the edges of the room, was thrown into relief from the moonlight spilling through the curtains.
"Is it here, Hugo?" Rose asked, "Is this where you found it?" James and Lily began checking the sofa cushions, while the others surveyed the room.
Hugo beckoned to them, leading them to the far right corner where an old trunk stood next to an armchair. As he backed up, his face was bathed in moonlight.
James hurried to meet him, but Older Hermione gasped. Younger Harry knew why.
"JAMES, STOP!"
"STUPEFY!"
James dropped to the floor with a bang while Hugo continued to point his wand at him.
"Hugo!" Rose cried. Older Ron grabbed her arm.
"DON'T MOVE! He's been imperiused!"
For a split second Younger Harry saw something flit out of the corner of his eye, then more bangs as spells whizzed through the air. Everything was a blur as Delia's colleagues suddenly rained curses upon them, and everyone scattered. Younger Harry threw shield charm after shield charm as one of them ran towards him. A curse whizzed past his ear and shattered a vase. Older Harry ran to James' unconscious body, while Older Hermione ran in Hugo's direction, dodging jets of red light from her son's own wand in his Imperius-induced craze.
It was just like the War. The world had tuned out, become fuzzy as he faced his assailant. People ran around him, fell around him, screamed, but his brain could only process the figure in front of him. Younger Harry aimed a stunning jinx at him, but missed.
The man took advantage of the blunder. "Tarantellegra!" he shouted.
Younger Harry fell as his legs thrashed about uncontrollably. With all of the strength he could muster he dragged himself on his elbows into the hallway, out of the man's direct line of sight.
He could see that the fight had moved into the hallway and stairwell. Lily and Older Harry were at the top of the stairs, where they were facing two of the goons. One of them had lost her hood to reveal a graying scalp with a flyaway braid. The woman began to rush up the stairs, closing in on Lily.
"Cruc-"
"Deprimo!"
Lily's spell blasted the wooden stairs where the woman stood, sending her careening into the massive hole in the staircase.
"Just like Mum taught you!" Older Harry shouted proudly.
Younger Harry's heart leapt with admiration for his future daughter, but his musing was cut short as his legs continued to thrash and the man he was fighting barreled through the doorway to face him.
"Didn't think I'd forget about you, did you?" he cackled, "Never mind. Delia is fine with us finishing the job she started. Avada-"
The man hit the floor, dead.
"I missed!" One of the other figures cried as he failed to hit Rose in the next room, noticing the damage he had done.
As the curse was lifted and Younger Harry gained control of his legs, he could see a flash of blonde hair down the hall. He sprinted across the carpet, jumped over someone's bleeding body, and darted into the kitchen.
Younger Ron and Albus sat on the kitchen floor next to a man they had frozen with Petrificus Totalus. Albus nursed a black eye and a swollen lip.
He looked at Younger Harry and pointed weakly to the back door. "She went that way."
Harry darted out the door and entered an empty yard with pristine hedges and freshly mown grass. He thought she had escaped until he heard the sound of soft sniffles in the shadows.
"A thing that I thought you understood, Harry Potter of the Past," she said, sounding close to tears, "is the terrible destruction of the mind that occurs when someone close to us is ripped away." He couldn't tell where the voice was coming from.
"My parents had been dead for a long time at the hands of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named before my brother perished as no more than a Ministry guinea pig. I had nobody, nobody but him. When He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named created his horcruxes, he bent the laws of nature, when the Department of Mysteries decided to treat the natural order like a game, people suffered, and years later, when I thought I had put a stop to one of the Department's worst games, here you are. But you must learn, just as I did, that this manipulation has its consequences."
She emerged from the shadows dragging what looked like a stupefied body. Ginny. Not future Ginny, but his Ginny, with her long flaming hair that cascaded down her shoulders and her face that still held such youth. Harry could feel his heart in his throat.
"I thought that for you to truly see the damage you have done, I needed to ensure that your future was destroyed. At first I thought this meant ensuring that you would never return home to the normal fabric of time, but I have since realized that the solution was simpler.
"You will see, Harry Potter, that society will start assuming your greatest desires. For a while, they will assume that your greatest desire is to climb to the highest ranks of the DMLE, others will assume that you crave riches to match your pureblood heritage, and still others will assume that after being thrown into a cupboard for eleven years that recognition and fame might be among your top ambitions. But someday, when you look back on your life, you will realize that the greatest yearning you ever had was to have a future, a future with this darling girl who will bear the family you never had." She eyed Ginny, limp in her arms. "So the conclusion is rather easy: to kill your future, I must kill her."
If Delia hadn't been distracted, she would've noticed Ginny's eyelids flutter open.
And she winked at Harry.
"I do understand how you feel, Delia. I feel like I've lost everyone I care about." Harry wondered how long he could stall. "But see, there's a big problem here."
He could see Ginny's hand slowly closing around something in Delia's robes, something metallic.
The metronome!
"I didn't even know what the metronome did," Harry said, "We used it by accident."
Delia's eyes narrowed. She had stopped crying now. "Accidents do not excuse meddling in what ought to be left alone! One does not go free after accidentally causing destruction-"
"GINNY, NOW!"
With an almighty thrust, Ginny sank the sharp edge of the metronome into Delia's leg. With a shriek, Delia keeled over, screaming as the blood dripped down her calf. She raised her wand in anguish and aimed at Ginny once again.
"Expelliarmus!"
Delia looked in the direction of her disarmer. Older Harry stood, pointing his wand at her. Older Ron and Hermione charged through the back door and into the yard as Delia lunged for her fallen wand in the grass, apparating with a pop.
Now free of Delia's grasp, Younger Ginny retrieved her own fallen wand from the grass. The adrenaline somehow fell in on itself, imploded. Even the air felt heavier, more exhausting. For the first time in hours, Younger Harry could really hear the sounds of the night: the chirping of crickets, the rustling of leaves in the wind. The older trio looked on dejectedly, staring at the place their escaped suspect had been but a second ago.
Older Ginny limped into the yard, supported by her two sons. Her left side was glistening with blood. Lily and Rose followed, and then Younger Ron and Hermione appeared, accompanied by Hugo, who no longer seemed cursed.
"I've spent the last few minutes in a bloody heap on the ground," Older Ginny said, "What did I miss?"
"She escaped," Older Ron sighed, "Guess she knew she was outnumbered."
Albus turned to the time travellers. "So she left with the metronome? You can't leave?"
"Not quite." Younger Ginny grinned, holding up the metronome. The others gasped, marveling at it. She caught Younger Harry's eye. "We can go home."
"But not just yet," Older Harry said, "There's someone you need to see."
"Who?" Younger Ron asked.
A small smile turned on Older Harry's face. "An old friend of mine. She's expecting you."