Title: What Lies Ahead?
Author: Keiko
Rating: R
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione cameo
Spoilers: Books 1-4
Warnings: Slash
Summary: Harry and Draco get an unexpected glimpse into the future. If I say anything else, it will give away the plot.
Chapter 4As soon as Harry left the storage room, he quickly scanned the long corridor for signs of anyone else nearby. He was in luck that this still seemed to be a fairly remote and unoccupied part of the castle. Harry quickly walked to the end of the hallway, where he remembered seeing a window on his journey to the room with Draco.
Looking out the window, Harry looked at the location of the sun in the sky. He thanked the gods that he had taken Astronomy classes and could get a fairly accurate estimate of the time of day just by looking up to the heavens. After a few seconds of mental calculation, Harry determined that it was approximately 3:30 in the afternoon, which wasn't very far off from the time displayed on his wristwatch, which of course was from his own time in the indeterminate past. Now, he just needed a plan to figure out the date he and Draco had fast-forwarded to.
After a few minutes of staring out at the sky, an idea came to Harry. If he hurried, he knew he could make it to the Great Hall right before the majority of students arrived for supper. Many of the students received the evening edition of the Daily Prophet at the evening meal and most of them left the paper on the table when they were finished eating. If Harry could hide under a table until the end of the meal, he could probably get his hands on a copy of a discarded Prophet. Also, at precisely 7:00, tiny chimes sounded to indicate that all students needed to leave the Great Hall, signaling the end of the meal. This would tell Harry the exact time, so he could synchronize his watch and make his way back to Draco and back to his own time. Now, the only trick would be to remain unseen throughout his entire journey to and from the Great Hall.
As Harry followed the map, it seemed like the staircases were still not cooperating and changed at every chance they had. Luckily, Harry seemed to have an innate sense of direction and did not need to rely on the map as much as Draco had on the way up to the storage room. This did however, slow the journey down and time was one thing, Harry could not afford to waste.
There were numerous near misses where he was almost discovered by students traveling to and fro from classes that made Harry's pulse race. He realized that he had really come to rely too heavily on his invisibility cloak, which had compromised his stealth skills. Harry almost suffered a heart attack as he almost had a head-on collision with a Hufflepuff, while turning a corner to head down the final staircase that led to the Great Hall. Thank Merlin, the young witch was too engrossed in a book to notice the wizard she had just brushed by and Harry breathed a sigh if relief as he finally made it to the Great Hall. He had made it with only three minutes to spare before supper would begin being served at 4:30. Harry quickly glanced around the hall to make sure there were no House Elves about, before finding a place to hide under the Gryffindor table, closest to the door for the fastest exit possible.
Before too long, a trickle of students filed into the hall for their meal; however, Harry knew the majority of students would not arrive until 5:30, as this was the most popular time for supper among the Hogwarts pupils. He tried to find as comfortable a position as possible for crouching under the table and hoped to himself that fate would be kind by passing time quickly and that someone would leave a copy of the Daily Prophet like they usually do.
Unfortunately, fate was extremely cruel as far as the time factor was concerned. The moments crawled by like a leech. On top of that, Harry had been kicked no less than seven times by various students and someone (probably Neville, Harry thought) had spilled both soup and hot tea on the floor, burning Harry and making him scuttle out of the way to remain hidden while a House Elf to quickly magicked the mess away.
At last, at 7:00, Harry heard the tiny chimes and the few remaining students got up to leave the hall and return to their dorms for the evening. Harry synchronized his watch and then scanned the floor for any sets of legs before slowly emerging from his hiding place, his legs asleep and his back aching. He quickly scanned the room for traces of the evening newspaper.
Fate seemed to be having a banner night at Harry's expense as Harry spied the only copy of the Daily Prophet lying on the Slytherin table at the furthest end of the room from the exit door. Wishing that he had his Firebolt to quickly fly over and snatch the paper, Harry hoped for the best that the House Elves would not come out immediately to clean the room and made a mad dash for the Slytherin table. Slipping once on some dropped mashed potatoes, Harry managed to quickly snatch the paper and run as quickly as possible out of the Great Hall.
Getting back to the storage room was a bit easier, since most of the students were now in their proper common rooms completing homework assignments or relaxing rather than bustling to and fro different classes. In addition, the staircases seemed to be behaving themselves as well, seeming to have gone to sleep for the evening. Still, this was the third time, Harry had to endure this long trek and fatigue was taking its toll on his legs. It had been a terribly, long day, Harry thought to himself as he wondered how Draco was doing, being cooped up in the storage room all this time. He hadn't heard any explosions from that direction, but Harry couldn't help but hurry along, lest Draco find another magical artifact to get in trouble with.
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