When the world stopped spinning, Harry looked around at what appeared to be an alley with a frown. It was empty except for a red telephone box. "This isn't the portkey terminal."
"No, it's not," Callen replied easily. "We're at the visitor's entrance to the Ministry of Magic."
"A telephone box?" Harry shook his head. The British magical world could be frustratingly stupid or stupidly frustrating sometimes. Then a question occurred to him. "Why are we at the entrance to the Ministry of Magic?"
"Because we're going to the Department of Mysteries." Callen blew out a breath. "Dumbledore told me a prophecy just before we left for the States. It concerns you."
Harry's mind seemed to stop as he turned Callen's words over in his head. Finally, he found his voice to ask, "Why are you telling me now?"
"Because when I talked to Dumbledore before, I argued that it was already fulfilled - that it had played out the night your parents died."
Unexpected tears stung Harry's eyes, and his voice was rough when he said, "My parents died because of some stupid prophecy?"
"No, Harry." Callen rested his hands on Harry's shoulders. "Your parents died because Voldemort chose to kill them. He may have chosen because of the prophecy, but it was still his choice. Remember that."
His choice. Voldemort's choice. Harry swallowed hard and nodded. He'd at least try to remember that. He cleared his throat.
"So why do you think differently about it now?"
"I don't, necessarily," Callen said. "But someone's after you, for some reason. I want to rule Voldemort out."
"But - first year. Quirrell?"
Callen gave his shoulders a squeeze and let his hands fall. "I don't know. But I do know it would be foolish not to check whether the prophecy's still active or not."
"Okay." Harry nodded once and took a breath. "So now what - we step into the phone box and turn into Superman?"
"Not exactly. We do have to step into the phone booth, though." Callen opened the door and gestured for Harry to precede him.
Callen stepped into the box behind him, slid the door closed, and punched a number into the phone. When a businesslike but pleasant voice asked for their names and the purpose of their visit, Callen gestured to Harry to answer first.
"Harry Potter, here to see the Department of Mysteries about a prophecy."
"G Callen, Harry's guardian accompanying him."
A moment later, the phone spat out two visitor badges. Harry checked them, finding one that read, Harry Potter - Son of Fate and the other, G Callen - Fate's Guardian.
"Well, those aren't ominous." Harry handed over Callen's badge as the box started to descend.
"Whoever did the magic on it had a perverse sense of humor," Callen said. "I'll show you my collection sometime."
Harry stared at his guardian. "That sounds like a really bad pickup line."
"Fortunately for you, not only are you my ward, but I'm already taken." Callen grinned at him.
Before Harry could find a counter-taunt, the box came to a stop and the doors slid open, revealing the single busiest magical place Harry had seen in England. People came and went through fireplaces, and across the lobby, Harry saw a bank of lifts that led, presumably, to offices elsewhere in the building.
"Where do we go?" he asked.
"Security desk first." Callen nodded toward a desk stationed between them and the lifts.
They joined the short queue of people waiting to be cleared for entry, and soon enough the middle-aged security guard looked up, his expression clearly indicating his boredom with his job. "Wand, please."
Harry handed his wand over and watched the man place it on a device. A moment later, the device printed a slip of parchment. The man looked at the parchment. "Eleven and a half inches, redwood with a coatl scale core."
He put the parchment in a file with others like it and waved Harry toward the lifts before focusing on Callen.
"Wand?"
"I don't use one," Callen said.
"Uh -" The guard sounded so shocked, Harry turned back to watch the exchange. "What?"
Callen's face showed a patience Harry wasn't certain he could have mustered. "I'm Romani - I don't use a wand."
The guard's expression twisted into dislike. "Gypsy."
"Romani," Callen repeated, and Harry winced in unexpected sympathy as Callen's expression hardened. "Unless you meant to insult me?"
"I'm sure he didn't."
Harry turned to face the newcomer, a woman whose stern expression was only made more intimidating by the monocle she wore.
"Because if he did," she continued, "that would be cause for a written warning, which I would be happy to provide."
"Amelia," Callen said by way of greeting, and the name wasn't familiar to Harry.
The name was familiar to the guard, though, judging by how pale he'd gone. "Madam Bones. I didn't see you there."
"Which makes me wonder if a second warning is necessary," Amelia Bones said. "You're the first line of protection for the Ministry, and you just admitted your situational awareness … well …"
"Sucks?" Harry offered.
The woman's lip twitched, but she said only, "Could use some extra training. You'll be notified."
With that, she turned away from the guard and to Callen. "Are you going to make my life as difficult as you did the last time I saw you?"
"I hope not," Callen replied and fell into step with her as they made their way toward the lifts. Harry followed. "Today's just a visit to the Department of Mysteries. Harry's never seen it before."
Bones glanced over her shoulder at Harry, who smiled uncertainly. "It's not exactly a tourist destination."
"Harry's not exactly a tourist." They'd reached the lifts and while they waited for one, Callen lowered his voice. "I'll let you know if it's something you need to know about."
Bones nodded once and she and Callen made small talk until a lift to level nine arrived. Minutes later, the lift doors opened into a corridor with black tile walls that were bare except for torches casting a blue-white light along the corridor. At the far end, a plain black door offered the only other exit.
"Could they be any more dramatic?" Harry wondered.
"Probably," Callen said. "But I'd rather not find out how. C'mon."
Behind the black door was a circular room with twelve doors, all without handles or knobs, set in its walls. As soon as the door closed behind them, the walls started to rotate.
"Hall of Prophecy," Callen said, and a moment later, the walls stopped rotating and the door across from them opened.
The Hall of Prophecy was vast in ways Harry couldn't even begin to describe. Numbered shelves full of small, dusty, glass orbs extended away from the door in either direction and stretched toward a ceiling he could barely see, and each one of those globes contained a prophecy.
Some of the orbs were dark - maybe a quarter of them, if the shelves Harry could see were any indication. The others glowed with a faint inner light indicating, presumably, that they were still active.
The sheer number of prophecies was mind-boggling, and for a wild improbable moment Harry imagined knocking the shelves over like dominoes. He quelled the urge - yes, that many prophecies might seem obscene, but he didn't know how many of them actually mattered to more than one or two people, how many might impact the world.
His stomach roiled unpleasantly so he shoved that thought away. Clearly, he didn't have the mindset to work with such things.
A wizard - or maybe witch? Harry couldn't tell - in gray robes that hid both his body and his face apparently did, though, as he - she? - approached them. "May I help you?"
Even the voice was asexual and somewhat distorted, but Callen didn't seem to flinch when he said, "We're looking for a prophecy. Made in the summer of 2000 to Albus Dumbledore, concerning Voldemort and Harry Potter."
The shapeless blob summoned a book and paged through it. After a moment, he - she? - no, Harry suddenly remembered an odd old word Hetty had used once to indicate a person of unknown gender - thon, singular of they.
Thon closed the book and sent it back where it had come from. "This way."
Harry followed the other two past shelves numbered in the fifties, sixties, and eventually the nineties to row 97. Partway down that row, the cloaked figure stopped and pointed to an orb on a shelf just above Harry's head.
The orb had a label that read, "S.P.T. to A.P.W.B.D. - Dark Lord and (?) Harry Potter," and Harry's stomach clenched tight when he saw that it wasn't completely dark. A pinprick of light gleamed at its center.
"Most unusual." Despite whatever spell distorted their guide's voice, thon sounded surprised.
"What is?" Harry asked at the same time Callen did.
"If it were fulfilled or otherwise inactive, the orb would be dark. If it were still active, it would be glowing," thon explained. "It's doing neither of those things."
"What does that mean?" Harry hated how fragile, how young he sounded.
"Truthfully? I've no idea."
"What?" Harry almost shouted. "How can you not know?"
"Harry." Callen's hand came to rest on his shoulder.
"What do you think it might mean?" Callen asked, and the weight of his hand on Harry's shoulder was more comforting than Harry wanted to admit.
Harry had the sense that the figure shrugged. "If I had to speculate," thon said, "I'd think that the prophecy was mostly fulfilled. Or that it was fulfilled and something reactivated it."
"Schrodinger's prophecy," Callen muttered, and Harry laughed a little.
"Sir?" their guide asked.
"It would take too long to explain it," Callen said. Then he turned Harry gently so they were face to face. "Do you want to hear it?"
Harry gave him a puzzled look. "Dumbledore told you what it says."
"Maybe," Callen said. "Maybe not. As President Reagan said, trust but verify."
Harry laughed again. "He borrowed it from the Russians." Then he blew out a breath and turned to their guide. "All right, then. How do I listen to it?"
"Tap it with your wand," thon replied.
Harry glanced at Callen for reassurance, and Callen squeezed his shoulder again. Harry drew his wand and tapped the prophecy orb.
A woman's voice, hollow and echoing, emerged from the orb.
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..."
"That's what Dumbledore told me," Callen said softly. He took a breath. "And I think I know why the orb's the way it is."
"Why?" Harry and their guide asked in chorus. Harry thought the guide's question smacked of desperation.
"The prophecy was made in July," Callen said. "And Voldemort attacked your family in October. Assuming the prophecy is about Voldemort and not some other dark lord, I think it was fulfilled that Halloween."
"But the orb would be completely dark if that had happened," the guide protested.
"Fast forward eleven years," Callen said. "Harry's at Hogwarts and finds out that one of his professors was possessed by the spirit of Voldemort. Voldemort, or some part of him, survived. And still does, because the prophecy is still somewhat active."
"You mean I cast Voldemort out of his own body?" Harry asked. "When I was a baby?"
"Yes. Or something was done to you that caused it to happen. In either case, you were the instrument of the action, if not the player of the instrument."
"That … makes sense," their guide said, sounding as though thon was working something out as thon spoke. "Casting him out of his body would certainly count as vanquishing him, but until the spirit is finally destroyed, the prophecy remains semi-active."
Harry swallowed, hard. "So - how do I vanquish a spirit?"
"We'll talk about that," Callen said, "at home."