The Time Travel Crew
Chapter 20: Unpleasant Times for Justin, Draco and Luna
How exactly the day's events led to this, Justin had no idea, but it shook him terribly. It was simply a minute long occurance, but its effects were terrible.
They had just finished finding their clues that led them to the most important places the first years would need to know while they stayed at Hogwarts and now after a stroke of brilliance from Theodore, they were headed to the Astronomy Tower to find and collect the mystery artifact.
But they were stopped on the way by Quirrel who looked nothing less than wild, a maniacal grin on his face.
"Potter!" he said gleefully, without a stutter. "What a nice surprise!"
"P-Professor?" Harry stuttered in earnest, probably taken aback.
"Not now, you fool!" a high pitched voice snapped at the same time. "Obliviate them!" it hissed.
Quirrel ignored them both.
"Avada Kedavra!" he yelled pointing his wand at Harry who was quick enough the move out of range of the green light.
Justin came to his senses in an instant. He turned to the other two boys and said, "Quick, get a Professor!"
He turned onto the seen to see Quirrel disarmed and Harry's hands on the man's wand arm. The sickening smell of an open wound found its way to Justin's nose as Quirrel screamed in agony.
"You fool!" the same high voice yelled and Justin felt shivers moving down his spine.
As Quirrel's left hand moved to Harry's throat, a quick wandless spell from Justin made the turban unravel and fall to the floor, revealing the disgusting, yelling face of Voldemort. And during all this, Quirrel's arms were greviously blistered and his screaming overpowered almost every other sound...and Harry's eyes were just slits, the rest of his face was that of pain.
With one last jump, Harry reached out his hands and grasped Quirrel's face and neck and then, just as quickly as it started, it was over and both, Quirrel and Harry were on the floor. The screaming transparent form of Voldemort rose from Quirrel's head and fled from the scene... Quirrel was dead, but Harry looked like he was on the verge of death.
It was a scary one moment, for Justin wasn't sure if Harry would make it and he, Justin was finding it hard to breathe.
Then a moment later, Anthony and Theodore hurried into the room followed by Dumbledore and the four Heads of House, who were all, apparently just climbing up the stairs that would lead to the corridor.
Immediately, Snape cast some spell on Harry, and said, "He's stable, but very weak."
The relief Justin felt was something he had never experienced before.
"Will he be alright?" Anthony said and Justin felt for the boy, for over the four months, they had become very close and they could only hope they wouldn't be separated in the coming years.
No one said anything, but a creak from the door, drew Justin's attention to the stairs that lead to the Astronomy Tower and he caught a very pale Draco and Neville, who appeared a little away from fainting amid the members of the winning group.
Justin had been so into the events of the last minute that he had probably missed Sinatra's announcement.
"H-Harry?" Draco grasped and everyone's heads turned to the four boys.
Dumbledore seemed to come out of his reverie and turned to Anthony and Theodore and said, "Don't worry boys, Harry will be fine after some rest. Mr. Finch-Fletchley, I would like to know what happened."
As Justin relived the action packed minute, McGonagall conjured a stretcher for Harry and a white sheet that she let flutter down on Quirrel, hiding his grotesque form from further view.
Justin cleverly put the falling off of the turban during the time he turned to Anthony and Theodore and told them to get the Professors and to his good luck, Dumbledore believed him. And to make himself more believable, he concluded with the screaming transparent thing that floated out of Quirrel's body.
"Was it his soul?" He asked in the end.
"No Mr. Finch-Fletchley." Dumbledore said gravely. "That was Lord Voldemort."
Justin gasped and so did the other conscious boys, but Dumbledore ignored them.
"Professor McGonagall," he said instead with a heavy sigh, "please take Mr. Potter to the hospital wing and send a letter to his mother, explaining to her what happened. Tell her she and her daughter are welcome to stay at the infirmary if they wish until Mr. Potter is up and about. Send her my sincere apologies for not taking better notice of what was happening and my deepest regrets."
"Yes Headmaster." McGonagall said solemnly as she took levitated the stretcher and briskly walked away from the rest.
"Professor Sprout," Dumbledore said, "Please take these boys to the Great Hall for lunch."
"And should I tell them to keep mum, Headmaster?" Sprout said.
"No." Dumbledore said firmly. "May this be a reminder for me...I need to take more care of my students than I usually do."
"But, Headmaster, it wasn't your -"
"Please take the boys to the feast, Professor." Dumbledore said that held no room for argument and Pomona obeyed and as they left Snape, Flitwick and Dumbledore with the task of disposing off the remains of Quirrel, Justin could only wonder if Dumbledore's decision of not letting the boys stay silent over the matter was a big mistake.
Would this be a reason for Pettigrew to escape Azkaban earlier than planned? Only time would tell.
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Unknown to him until a week later, Draco had suddenly earned most students approval... He refused to leave his unconscious friend's bedside except on the insistence of Mrs. Potter who didn't want him to miss his classes.
So, Morning, lunch break and night for the next three days after Quirrel's demise, Draco made himself at home in the hospital wing, sometimes accompanied by Justin and Neville and Anthony Goldstein and Theodore Nott.
At the end of the third day, not including Sunday, Harry awoke and was almost smothered by his emotional mother. It surely must have been a terrible ordeal for her, and that was proved when Dumbledore entered the infirmary asking for Harry to reveal his encounter with Voldemort. It was at this moment that Lily Potter flew into a rage, Draco never expected her to have and literally chase the old man out of the hospital wing.
A few days after Harry awoke, he left the hospital wing and fortunately for both him and Draco, the school left them alone. Percy and Ron Weasley also seemed to pass by the two and not pay them any attention...the lack of superior looks and reddening ears was something of a relief for Draco who would never admit to anyone that he was such a sensitive soul.
It was a week after that that the news and gossip about the unexpected event died down and Hogwarts was a haven of peace again, taught DADA by none other than the handsome Sirius Black., who was probably the most fun-loving teacher Hogwarts ever had... And the girls not stop sighing every time he passed by them.
But the damage of the gossip had already been done for now even the Daily Prophet had an article of the event, not condemning Dumbledore in anyway, but Quirrel for his change of loyalties.
That probably had been enough, for Draco who had been watching Pettigrew and Crouch at midnight found them rather agitated for the first time since the charm had been placed on them. This set the crew on the alert and Luna would spend minimal hours asleep, making Sprout visit her and give her a bit of a reminder on how brave she was the last time when she faced not only Pettigrew at the Malfoy Manor, but a whole lot of Death Eaters.
And as the crew watched, they would notice Pettigrew turn into a rat at odd times and let out loud squeaking noises which could only be muffled by silencing Flitwick's quarters in order not to let the rest of Hogwarts get suspicious.
This went on for two more months, in which Snape and Sprout finalised the poison Harry requested and gave it to him in two vials. It would take exactly five seconds to work it's way on any living being regardless of it's size or composition. Harry had even instructed them all to carry the poison around, and they obeyed... One couldn't be too careful.
This was within these two months that Harry offered to keep his invisibility cloak in Flitwick's office an arms distance away from the person watching the mirrors and every member of the crew had a portkey in the form of their wristwatches.
But nothing happened until the beginning of May. According to an agitated Justin, Barty Crouch had, without the knowledge of his father and elf, jumped on the roof of his house, invisible, that Sunday evening and yelled - "Now!"
"A moment later," a wide-eyed Justin told the crew after dinner once he summoned them for the immergency meeting, "Pettigrew smiled and he took out a vial from his pocket and he drank it and he became small...like he shrunk or something! Then he turned into a rat and simply strutted out of the holes of his cage! He's free! Pettigrew escaped! He -"
"Calm down, Justin!" Snape interrupted. "Where is he now?"
Justin turned to the mirror and said, "There, in the sea, he's floating across on a piece of wood."
Snape sighed.
"The potion he used was a shrinking potion. There was an article about it the day after Crouch Junior visited Luna... There were two expensive recently invented potions that had been stolen from another Potions Master... One to shrink any kind of living being and the other to grow it back to it's normal size.
"And if we assume that Crouch stole those potions, either he or Pettigrew have the growing potion in their possession."
"Those two potions," Harry said alarmed. "Had they been invented the last time?"
"Yes." Snape said, "and they had been collectively banned by the Ministry because of their maker's arrogance... I won't go into details," Snape sounded uncharacteristically gleeful, "but I can safely say it served him right."
Draco decided to bring them back on track. "What exactly are we going to do about the rat?"
"Nothing." Harry said simply. "That's the very purpose of it, letting the rat go, but keeping a keen eye on him. But now we absolutely need to stay alert... Frank Bryce, Crouch senior and his elf Winky need to be saved... A strong confundus should be enough, I think, but, we need to create that hologram. And I found a spell that could create that."
"What's the spell?" Draco said as excited as Harry even though he had no idea what a hollow gram was.
"I'll bring the book here tomorrow." Harry said, sounding quite happy that someone had actually liked his idea. Snape had been quite reluctant about it and he and Justin and surprisingly McGonagall said it was too tedious and they most probably wouldn't have enough of time.
And it was in the event of that that Justin rolled his eyes, but said nothing.
After a few moments of silence, Flitwick got up and said, "I'm going to inform Luna."
"I will come with you." McGonagall said also getting off her seat and together, they left after making themselves invisible to prying, unwanted and potentially dangerous eyes.
The rest of the crew sat up until an hour later and watched, in silence, as the criminal rat struggled to make his way back to the mainland.
He set foot on the mainland a little before McGonagall and Flitwick returned. And once the rat shook off as much of sea water from his skin and ugly, thin fur, he hurried to get to a secluded spot, where he transformed and took out a vial from his pocket and drank it's contents.
He grew to his normal size, the size Draco remembered him to be in the previous time, and laughed out loud, transformed into a rat and scurried away to a butcher's shop and feasted on some raw meat.
It was gruesome to watch, but Draco almost wretched when Pettigrew transformed into a man, lifted the butcher's knife and chopped off the index finger of his left hand, screamed out loud as he did so and cleaned the knife, before replacing it on the table.
Then, still sobbing in pain, he transformed into a rat and carry away his finger to the shop's backyard and burry his finger in a appreciatively deep hole, that he dug with the remaining claws he had. Then, he went back to the shop, transformed into the pathetic man that he was and cleaned away with his torn, filthy robes, the trail of blood his finger and paw made when they moved across the floor.
Transforming back into a rat as filthy as the man he was, he squeezed out of the shop and disappeared into the night, finding an appropriate place to sleep before he headed off to meet Luna.
He practically snored, something that Draco wouldn't even achieve that night after all he witnessed and that was why he offered to stay and watch the traitor until morning.
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Luna wasn't afraid anymore (she had had enough of time to accept everything that had been thrown at her), but, she felt sick and disgusted, for, being one of the reasons that would bring Voldemort back to life wasn't one of her enjoyable tasks... and the sooner it was over, the better.
Luna's wish came true sooner than she had expected but she adjusted herself to the new development with such good grace that it surprised her.
It was the night after Professors Flitwick and McGonagall came up with the news that the Wizarding World was shaken with the shock. But before that, Professor Snape came up with another development that now prepared her to recognize Pettigrew with one less digit because he cut off his finger!
"Some things can never be changed."
That was what Snape said and Luna agreed with him wholeheartedly...but...the disquieting fact was that none of the members of the crew were in a position to notify anyone in any manner, except maybe unnoticeably drag the aurors to that backyard.
But Harry was against telling anyone. According to him, to the eyes of anyone else it wasn't really any of the crew's business and it wasn't worth the risk of being the answer to an auror who loved to ask the question, 'why' or worse, 'how'. So while the rest of the world remained in a frenzy the crew members played their part and expressed their concerns - in their own way and as much as they dared - for the rest of the week.
Just a week... That was all it took for a puny rat to reach her amid the vary eyes of the Wizarding World and as Professors Snape and McGonagall remained invisible in her room, watching over her.
Luna pretended to be asleep. She felt the rat climb up her bed and nibble on her toes... after a few moments - afraid that he would bite off her toe if she didn't respond - she groaned and protested. Luna opened her eyes and sat up and seeing the rat, she let her face show fear for a mere moment and then her face fell slack.
Flitwick had performed this experiment on an unfortunate first year, using a little message that needed to be delivered to a certain cat animagus and Luna followed the exact description of such an imperiused Ronald Weasley. Then she spoke in a flat voice, making sure her eyes were unfocused.
"Barty Crouch Junior is waiting for you in the captivity of his father... He will help you bring back your Lord... He imperiused me when he got the chance to escape his father and will explain everything to you when you meet him... And he told him to never remember to mention this to anyone except you..."
Then Luna shut her eyes and shook her head and opened them with a soft scream, but Pettigrew was gone. Luna's mission was accomplished, but it in no way made her feel better.
Professor McGonagall, still invisible - just in case Pettigrew was watching - came foward and squeezed her shoulder. "From tonight on," she said, "you, your family, neighbours and friends will be well protected from any sort of danger. Filius and Pomona have already begun putting up the protections and now Severus and I will be joining them."
"Thank you, Minerva, Severus."
"That's no problem, Luna." McGonagall said. "Go to sleep now... You did well."
With a small smile, Luna lay down and listened as the two Professors left her room, guilt and worry and fear - for Harry and Neville and Draco and even Justin and their families as well as hers - rising up her chest
Things had taken an unpleasant turn, but Luna knew it would be over soon and everything would be back to normal. They had the upper hand... They simply needed to play their cards well, at the right time without any impulsiveness.
To be continued...