When he finally awoke, he had the feeling that days had passed. Willing himself to move, he then transformed again. He stretched, wincing slightly at his not fully healed wounds.
They were healed to the point though, that they wouldn't be hard to take care of. He took out his wand, and minutes later, he was fine.
'Yay, more scars.'
He looked around him and remembered what had happened. He groaned, and pushed himself off the ground.
"Damn."
'Stop cursing, what would Hermione have thought?'
'She might agree with me at this point.'
He had little doubt that he was now in the past, but had had to confirm it. And found out when he was.
Then he would decide what to do. What an accident, but, not necessarily a bad one.
He concentrated for a moment, and soon he had brown hair and blue eyes. Another useful piece of wandless magic that had taken much practice. Definitely came in handy though, to be able to do that without a mirror. He already did have an awful lot of practice disguising himself.
He disapperated.
************************************************************************
Harry checked his watch and realized that his mind had wandered off. He would come and sit atop the Gryffindor tower occasionally –no one knew about this particular hiding place, not even Ron or Hermione. And now he had to leave, well, now.
He grabbed his Firebolt and jumped on.
About a half hour later he walked met up with Brian outside Dumbledore's office. They walked up together and went in without bothering to knock.
Dumbledore looked up from his desk. "Hello boys –tell them I'll be there in a minute. Harry nodded and they walked through a secret door, and down a hall leading into another room.
The room was large and filled with various chairs. People were already inside, some already having taken seats, others standing around chatting.
Harry grasped Sirius' shoulder briefly with a smile before he took his customary chair. He'd claimed it as his own once he discovered how comfortable it was. "Hey, Remus, Bill, Mr. Weasley," he said with a smile of greeting.
"Dumbledore said he'd be a minute."
Ron and Hermione walked in and sat down by Harry. They all talked quietly until Dumbledore entered and everyone took a seat. Dumbledore sat in front of a small table, a mini-map of the world that could expand into any given country.
They listened to the various updates of Voldemort's movements, discussing, and updating the map. For example, when Fletcher reported that one of Voldemort's hideouts had been abandoned, the red spot turned black.
Soon it was Arthur's turn to report. "There's been a large push in the ministry to get the Unforgivables authorized."
And thus began a debate. Moody, for example, for all for it; McGonagall was dead set against.
"So we should become what we are fighting? Where's the sense in that?"
"We have to fight back."
"Not with the Unforgivables."
"We should give as good as we get."
"Yes."
"But they are wrong!"
"There is a reason we used them last time –we had to."
"No, there is no justification for using those abominations."
"Oh? How about 'they deserve it.'"
At this point Dumbledore broke in, "Calm down."
"Sorry, but we are in a war here. We don't have time for the faint of heart."
Harry had been listening, and had his own idea. "The killing curse. Just authorize the killing curse and not the others."
"I think he's right."
"That's the worst of the three!"
"No it sure as Hell isn't –the Cruciatus is the worst."
"At least you're not *dead* afterwards."
"But you wish you were."
"How can you decide who lives or dies?"
Harry spoke up again, "Muggle police face that decision all the time. If a criminal has got a gun and intends to shoot someone in a few seconds, you've got to shoot him."
"They don't have the opportunity to just stun them like we do."
"And when he wakes up and you are not around? You going to watch them all the time? If he catches you unawares, your history."
"Constant Vigilance!"
"That's the ministry's job."
"Now there is an idiotic statement."
"What do you think Azkaban is for?" Sirius winced at this.
"In case you've forgotten, the Dementors left Azkaban nearly useless."
"So we should just kill them because we don't want to deal with them."
Ron was turning red, and spoke up for the first time in this particular debate. "Well, they fully intend to kill us or worse!"
"I think we all have put in enough input for now." Dumbledore easily cut through the rising tension in the room. "Now, several weeks ago something involving a great deal of magical energy occurred in Africa."
"What?"
"That, is why I sent a team to investigate. Someone managed to travel through time without a time turner –I am at a loss to explain how." He glanced at Moody.
"Only one or two people came through, and one of them was injured."
Confused frowns could be found on several faces. Why would the traveler be injured?
"Do you know how far in time?"
"Ah, an old friend of mine, Natalia, felt that it was not too great distance. I agree –it could not have been much more than more than a century, or it would have been impossible to accomplish. She also surmised that it was more than two decades."
Several faces wore grim looks. Whatever reasons the traveler had for going that far back in time were not likely to be good. It was actually kind of strange –the general reasons for going back in time would be to stop someone from being killed or to change the outcome of an event.
But going back a century made that unlikely… Historically, people trying to get a hold of time turners wanted to go back into their recent history to try and prevent a tragedy; It just wasn't practical to go much farther than that.
"I don't suppose we have any idea where the traveler went?"
"No idea."
They mulled it over in their heads, and turned to other matters.
