A/N: Another chapter! Yeah...that's it really. Read and Review!
Chapter 6: Back to Before Then
The miles just keep rollin'
As the people leave their way to say hello
I've heard this life is overrated
But I hope that it gets better as we go
-3 Doors Down
Harry reached his hotel seconds later. He didn't know how he felt about Dumbledore learning more than he should. Normally he would have been furious, but that night, he didn't feel completely normal.
Frowning, Harry summoned one of the three books he had bought at Flourish and Blotts and sat down to read.
He found a reference to what he wanted quickly.
Traveling through time is risky and dangerous business. It is generally well known that a person only has the ability to travel back in time. What is less well known is that this is a lie. There are but a few spells that have the ability to complete such a task and each spell requires powerful and dangerous magic. This is in no way to be attempted by beginners.
Harry skipped through the precautions.
Spells alone will not be enough to complete this spell. It will require the Avenir Potion listed below and the creating of a portal. Be warned, once the portal is formed, you still may not have the ability to go through it. To go into the future you must first have gone into the past. Time is constantly trying to correct itself. If it feels you are in the wrong time, it will be more lenient on accepting you. There is no sure way to predict the portal's decision. There can also be great consequences to your actions and you may inadvertently alter history. Several things could happen if this is done. 1) Nothing. 2) You could alter the future such that you would never exist. 3) Global destruction. Take all available precautions-
Harry skipped down further to the potion. He frowned. Some of the ingredients would be difficult to come by. A small smile slipped over his face. Perhaps it was time to visit an old friend.
* * *
Harry sighed. Apparently it was Snape's turn to keep watch on him for the Order. He kept glancing up the paper he was grading. Plus he seemed very eager to discipline him. It just wasn't fair to have three days detention for knocking his sealed jar of armadillo bile off his desk.
Harry shifted his position slightly. His legs had quickly become cramped from the awkward position. Snape had assigned Harry one of his infamously gruesome detentions. Being forced to clean the jars of live leaches didn't come at the very top of Harry's top-ten list of favorite things to do.
A noise like something dropping came from Snape's office. Snape's head snapped up. Glaring suspiciously at Harry, who had no idea what had happened, he arose from his desk and walked over to his door. Well, no so much 'walk' as 'scuttle' thought Harry dully. Like a spider.
Snape disappeared into his office. Seconds later he yelled "Potter!"
Surprised, Harry got to his feet and poked his head into Snape's office. "Yes, Professor?"
"What is this?" Snape demanded. On the desk lay three empty jars.
"I don't know," Harry said truthfully. "Empty jars?"
"Don't give me cheek!" Snape hissed. "What do you mean by this?" He held out what looked like a Muggle sticky note. Reading it, Harry was dumbfounded.
Thanks! From Harry J. Potter.
* * *
Harry smirked and drew back further into the shadows. Snape looked livid. Rearranging the molecules of the wall beside him, he slipped unseen into the other room. He shook his head when he saw what Snape was forcing his younger self to do. Waving his hand, the leaches once again swum in clean jars. Hearing the conversation from the other room coming to an end, he waved his hand and disappeared only to appear seconds later in his hotel room.
Dropping the ingredient he had acquired from Snape's office onto the dresser, he waved his hand to make the minute cauldron in which he kept his half-brewed potion enlarge. Crunching up some lacewings in between his fingers, he slowly sprinkled them into the still simmering cauldron. The potion hissed and turned from brown to red. Rereading the instruction, Harry then slowly placed the Augurey feather so that it floated on top of the potion for a split second before it gave the appearance of melting and disappeared completely.
After waiting for 10 minutes, as instructed, the potion turned a bizarre shade of green and began to hiss. Harry carefully placed three hairs of a Lethifold into the potion and sat back to watch. The potions gave off a mushroom shaped cloud, rather like a Muggle's nuclear bomb. It began hissing and spitting. Seconds later the liquid began to evaporate, leaving what looked like strangely colored sand. Harry took three tablespoons of this and put it into a small, charmed bag and sealed it shut. The rest he sealed in a small box and, shrinking it down, put it in a pocket in case he needed it later.
He grabbed his book and, with another wave of his hand, appeared in the exact spot that he had appeared in this time days earlier.
Flipping open again to the appropriate page, Harry set about making preparations to the portal summoning.
Midnight had already crept up on him by the time the portal became ready to summon. Harry exhaustion kept him from performing the spell immediately and he knew that he could not summon a portal of any kind unless he was prepared in both body and mind. Lying upon the hard ground, he tried again to get some sleep.
"He is proving difficult indeed," Harry hissed. "And because of this, my Death Eaters are failing in their duties! Why isn't that family of red haired brats dead yet?"
The Death Eater before him cowered on the floor. "Forgive us, master! They had gone to collect the family when they spotted the target and attempted to apprehend him! He overpowered them! They almost died!"
"Then they should have died! It is no more than I will do to them when I am forced yet again to make a jail break!"
"Forgive us! We have failed you!"
"Forgiveness from Lord Voldemort is not idly given," Harry hissed. "From now on this new obstacle will my business and mine alone! You will complete the tasks I set for you! Do you understand?"
"Yes, master! Please master! I understand!"
"Now go. I have no use for sniveling worms such as you. Go!"
The man fled. Harry leaned back in his chair, his red eyes glowing angrily. "Fool," he muttered. "He must know that I will get him in the end."
Everything changed. Harry walked with Ron and Hermione down Main Street in Hogsmeade.
They ran into Neville Longbottom.
"Ron, you've got a letter at the post office."
Ron looked surprised. "Oh, okay. Thanks, Neville."
They looked at each other. Usually they only got mail at meal times.
So they set their footsteps toward the post office. Harry let Ron collect his letter while he waited for him on the bench, eating chocolate. Ron joined his a minute later with Hermione and both Harry and Hermione looked over his shoulder while he tore open the letter.
It wasn't a letter at all but a picture. It showed Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Bill, Charlie, Fred, George, and Percy in the living room of their house. Either they had been knocked unconscious or... dead. Not a one moved and Harry found himself unsure whether it belonged to a muggle camera or a wizard one. Ron turned it over with shaking hands. Only two words had been written on the back-Two down.
Harry sat bolt upright, breathing heavily. Cursing, Harry blinked for a moment and then recognized his surroundings. The portal. The sky still sparkled with stars, but Harry knew he would have no chance of sleeping now. He had already altered history. The Weasleys had not died and if he and his younger self had shared dreams again, then Dumbledore would know soon enough.
Harry scrambled to his feet. He had unintentionally changed history. This couldn't be allowed to happen. He had to get out of that time and fast.
He double checked the portal symbols and grabbed his bag of herbs. He took a moment to clear his mind. This should only take one try. He raised his arms to the sky and shouted,
"All the time in the world shall be mine! Let me pass through the barriers of the mortal realm and walk once again upon soil that is my own! The skies shall not tremble and the earth beneath my very feet will be the earth that belongs there! Let me return to the present and let time be healed!"
The energy coursed through him. Thrusting his hands outward, white hot energy shot to a spot designated by the runes on the ground. It crackled in the night and where the energy collected a portal formed. Beyond it Harry could see nothing-a barrier that he had to overcome.
Holding the Avenir Potion in front of him, he took a step toward the portal. It felt as if the sky itself pressed down on him. He took another step forward. He yelled, "Laisser entrer!" over and over again, the words to the spell. He took another step forward.
He stood directly in front of the portal now. The pressure pushing down on him almost made him collapse, but he took another step, into the portal.
The force that flung him backward probably could have killed him, but, thinking fast, he stopped himself in midair and fell 5 feet to the unyielding ground. His back hurt horribly, but once again he tuned it out. He stood up, enraged.
"I am worthy! Let me pass into my own time!" Throwing the bag of potion aside in anger, he ran at the portal again, the pressure that had been there before had disappeared. He ran straight at the portal, and then straight through it.
Realizing he would need the potion to get anywhere, he grabbed it again. The pressure returned. Abandoning all pretense, he ran at the portal, pushing away the weight on top of him. The portal again refused him entrance. Again he was brutally thrown backward. Realizing the uselessness of continuing, Harry took his foot and smudged away some of the carefully prepared symbol. The portal flickered. Raising his hands above his head, he said softly and deliberately, "Your purpose here has been fulfilled. Take your leave and be gone from the plane of mortals."
The portal vanished. Harry stared hard at the place it had been. What had he done wrong? The only thing he could possibly imagine could not be. If anyone did not belong in a place, he did not belong here.
"It would appear that you have failed," said a soft voice behind him. Harry recognized that voice and for the first time in many years, he felt again the cold terror that had threatened to consume him so many years ago.
He pushed it away. "Fancy seeing you here, Voldemort."
"Not as strange as it is to see you." Harry did not turn around but he could tell from the power that suddenly radiated throughout the clearing, that Voldemort had left his hiding place.
"What do you want with me?" Harry asked, his voice showing no emotion. "Surely you should know by now that I am no longer the one predicted to be your equal."
"The boy is a minor annoyance," said Voldemort coldly. "You interest me far greater."
"Then it's truly a shame that I'll have nothing to do with you," Harry said, no hatred in his voice. He had simply stated a fact.
"Is that so?" Voldemort asked softly. "I beg to differ."
"Do you now?" Harry asked, allowing some amusement to creep into his voice. He finally turned around to face the person that had haunted his dreams for so long. Red eyes stared back. Harry again had to master his fear.
"I do indeed," Voldemort said. "It would seem that you are not the child I have long come to hate. You could be of use to me."
Harry smirked. "Is that so? Well, then I suppose you could be of some use to me."
"Perhaps we could help each other," Voldemort said.
"Sounds good," Harry said seriously. "What I want you to do for me is to go away, and then rot in hell."
Voldemort smirked. "I expect to meet you there."
"When the time comes it will come," Harry said. "But for now, I have something more important in which to attend. You are wasting my time, like your pathetic excuse for followers before you."
"My followers are fools. They do only what I command."
"Then it's a pity you have such control over them. Someone smarter than you would probably make better decisions."
Voldemort's anger showed plainly on his face. "You dare to speak to me like that when your own stupidity has led me to you this night?"
"My own stupidity should not effect this time," Harry said coldly. "You fail to realize that I'm taking the first portal out of here."
"Your portals are defective. You cannot return to your own time. I have seen your pathetic attempt."
"My attempts could not have been pathetic," Harry said, smirking. "If they had been, the great collection of power that led you to me in the first place wouldn't have been enough to catch your attention."
Voldemort frowned at the logic behind this. "I have not come to anger you," he said. "I have come to strike a deal with you."
"Then tell me the deal and stop the fouling of the air around me," Harry said coldly.
"You have become braver, I can see that plainly," Voldemort said.
"Good," Harry said sarcastically. "You have eyes."
Voldemort's red eyes flashed. "The deal is this, you stay out of my way, and I don't kill you where you stand."
"Empty threat," Harry said. "You can't kill me where I stand."
"Is that so?" Voldemort said. "If you truly believe you are more powerful than I, perhaps you could explain why it is you have not yet defeated me in the future."
Harry was struck dumb. What was Voldemort talking about?
"I know you," Voldemort said. "I know you as you are now. Your tiny world revolves around others. Everything else takes its proper place behind that. It could not be that you defeated me so long ago and it still haunts you. You must live with it in the present. You are so desperate to get back so that you can continue on with your pointless attempts to defeat me. I know more than you think I do."
Harry said nothing. Voldemort seemed to be much more confident than he remembered. He couldn't see that he was so far off track that might have been sad-had he not been a mass murderer trying to destroy the world.
"Then perhaps our discussion here is done," Harry said shortly. "I have more important matters that require my attention." He pulled out his wand to Apparate, but Voldemort waved his wand. The air grew heavy with the anti- apparition spell that had been put into place.
"I'm not done quite yet," he said with a smirk.
"I am," Harry said coolly. He waved his hand and vanished.
A/N: Wow, he bested Voldemort. Basically, I wrote myself into a trap and I needed Harry out of there. I mean, obviously Voldemort would feel the power surges and come running, thinking it to be a trick of Dumbledore's against him. Besides, Voldemort's presence because of Harry could affect things unexpectedly...
Chapter 6: Back to Before Then
The miles just keep rollin'
As the people leave their way to say hello
I've heard this life is overrated
But I hope that it gets better as we go
-3 Doors Down
Harry reached his hotel seconds later. He didn't know how he felt about Dumbledore learning more than he should. Normally he would have been furious, but that night, he didn't feel completely normal.
Frowning, Harry summoned one of the three books he had bought at Flourish and Blotts and sat down to read.
He found a reference to what he wanted quickly.
Traveling through time is risky and dangerous business. It is generally well known that a person only has the ability to travel back in time. What is less well known is that this is a lie. There are but a few spells that have the ability to complete such a task and each spell requires powerful and dangerous magic. This is in no way to be attempted by beginners.
Harry skipped through the precautions.
Spells alone will not be enough to complete this spell. It will require the Avenir Potion listed below and the creating of a portal. Be warned, once the portal is formed, you still may not have the ability to go through it. To go into the future you must first have gone into the past. Time is constantly trying to correct itself. If it feels you are in the wrong time, it will be more lenient on accepting you. There is no sure way to predict the portal's decision. There can also be great consequences to your actions and you may inadvertently alter history. Several things could happen if this is done. 1) Nothing. 2) You could alter the future such that you would never exist. 3) Global destruction. Take all available precautions-
Harry skipped down further to the potion. He frowned. Some of the ingredients would be difficult to come by. A small smile slipped over his face. Perhaps it was time to visit an old friend.
* * *
Harry sighed. Apparently it was Snape's turn to keep watch on him for the Order. He kept glancing up the paper he was grading. Plus he seemed very eager to discipline him. It just wasn't fair to have three days detention for knocking his sealed jar of armadillo bile off his desk.
Harry shifted his position slightly. His legs had quickly become cramped from the awkward position. Snape had assigned Harry one of his infamously gruesome detentions. Being forced to clean the jars of live leaches didn't come at the very top of Harry's top-ten list of favorite things to do.
A noise like something dropping came from Snape's office. Snape's head snapped up. Glaring suspiciously at Harry, who had no idea what had happened, he arose from his desk and walked over to his door. Well, no so much 'walk' as 'scuttle' thought Harry dully. Like a spider.
Snape disappeared into his office. Seconds later he yelled "Potter!"
Surprised, Harry got to his feet and poked his head into Snape's office. "Yes, Professor?"
"What is this?" Snape demanded. On the desk lay three empty jars.
"I don't know," Harry said truthfully. "Empty jars?"
"Don't give me cheek!" Snape hissed. "What do you mean by this?" He held out what looked like a Muggle sticky note. Reading it, Harry was dumbfounded.
Thanks! From Harry J. Potter.
* * *
Harry smirked and drew back further into the shadows. Snape looked livid. Rearranging the molecules of the wall beside him, he slipped unseen into the other room. He shook his head when he saw what Snape was forcing his younger self to do. Waving his hand, the leaches once again swum in clean jars. Hearing the conversation from the other room coming to an end, he waved his hand and disappeared only to appear seconds later in his hotel room.
Dropping the ingredient he had acquired from Snape's office onto the dresser, he waved his hand to make the minute cauldron in which he kept his half-brewed potion enlarge. Crunching up some lacewings in between his fingers, he slowly sprinkled them into the still simmering cauldron. The potion hissed and turned from brown to red. Rereading the instruction, Harry then slowly placed the Augurey feather so that it floated on top of the potion for a split second before it gave the appearance of melting and disappeared completely.
After waiting for 10 minutes, as instructed, the potion turned a bizarre shade of green and began to hiss. Harry carefully placed three hairs of a Lethifold into the potion and sat back to watch. The potions gave off a mushroom shaped cloud, rather like a Muggle's nuclear bomb. It began hissing and spitting. Seconds later the liquid began to evaporate, leaving what looked like strangely colored sand. Harry took three tablespoons of this and put it into a small, charmed bag and sealed it shut. The rest he sealed in a small box and, shrinking it down, put it in a pocket in case he needed it later.
He grabbed his book and, with another wave of his hand, appeared in the exact spot that he had appeared in this time days earlier.
Flipping open again to the appropriate page, Harry set about making preparations to the portal summoning.
Midnight had already crept up on him by the time the portal became ready to summon. Harry exhaustion kept him from performing the spell immediately and he knew that he could not summon a portal of any kind unless he was prepared in both body and mind. Lying upon the hard ground, he tried again to get some sleep.
"He is proving difficult indeed," Harry hissed. "And because of this, my Death Eaters are failing in their duties! Why isn't that family of red haired brats dead yet?"
The Death Eater before him cowered on the floor. "Forgive us, master! They had gone to collect the family when they spotted the target and attempted to apprehend him! He overpowered them! They almost died!"
"Then they should have died! It is no more than I will do to them when I am forced yet again to make a jail break!"
"Forgive us! We have failed you!"
"Forgiveness from Lord Voldemort is not idly given," Harry hissed. "From now on this new obstacle will my business and mine alone! You will complete the tasks I set for you! Do you understand?"
"Yes, master! Please master! I understand!"
"Now go. I have no use for sniveling worms such as you. Go!"
The man fled. Harry leaned back in his chair, his red eyes glowing angrily. "Fool," he muttered. "He must know that I will get him in the end."
Everything changed. Harry walked with Ron and Hermione down Main Street in Hogsmeade.
They ran into Neville Longbottom.
"Ron, you've got a letter at the post office."
Ron looked surprised. "Oh, okay. Thanks, Neville."
They looked at each other. Usually they only got mail at meal times.
So they set their footsteps toward the post office. Harry let Ron collect his letter while he waited for him on the bench, eating chocolate. Ron joined his a minute later with Hermione and both Harry and Hermione looked over his shoulder while he tore open the letter.
It wasn't a letter at all but a picture. It showed Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Bill, Charlie, Fred, George, and Percy in the living room of their house. Either they had been knocked unconscious or... dead. Not a one moved and Harry found himself unsure whether it belonged to a muggle camera or a wizard one. Ron turned it over with shaking hands. Only two words had been written on the back-Two down.
Harry sat bolt upright, breathing heavily. Cursing, Harry blinked for a moment and then recognized his surroundings. The portal. The sky still sparkled with stars, but Harry knew he would have no chance of sleeping now. He had already altered history. The Weasleys had not died and if he and his younger self had shared dreams again, then Dumbledore would know soon enough.
Harry scrambled to his feet. He had unintentionally changed history. This couldn't be allowed to happen. He had to get out of that time and fast.
He double checked the portal symbols and grabbed his bag of herbs. He took a moment to clear his mind. This should only take one try. He raised his arms to the sky and shouted,
"All the time in the world shall be mine! Let me pass through the barriers of the mortal realm and walk once again upon soil that is my own! The skies shall not tremble and the earth beneath my very feet will be the earth that belongs there! Let me return to the present and let time be healed!"
The energy coursed through him. Thrusting his hands outward, white hot energy shot to a spot designated by the runes on the ground. It crackled in the night and where the energy collected a portal formed. Beyond it Harry could see nothing-a barrier that he had to overcome.
Holding the Avenir Potion in front of him, he took a step toward the portal. It felt as if the sky itself pressed down on him. He took another step forward. He yelled, "Laisser entrer!" over and over again, the words to the spell. He took another step forward.
He stood directly in front of the portal now. The pressure pushing down on him almost made him collapse, but he took another step, into the portal.
The force that flung him backward probably could have killed him, but, thinking fast, he stopped himself in midair and fell 5 feet to the unyielding ground. His back hurt horribly, but once again he tuned it out. He stood up, enraged.
"I am worthy! Let me pass into my own time!" Throwing the bag of potion aside in anger, he ran at the portal again, the pressure that had been there before had disappeared. He ran straight at the portal, and then straight through it.
Realizing he would need the potion to get anywhere, he grabbed it again. The pressure returned. Abandoning all pretense, he ran at the portal, pushing away the weight on top of him. The portal again refused him entrance. Again he was brutally thrown backward. Realizing the uselessness of continuing, Harry took his foot and smudged away some of the carefully prepared symbol. The portal flickered. Raising his hands above his head, he said softly and deliberately, "Your purpose here has been fulfilled. Take your leave and be gone from the plane of mortals."
The portal vanished. Harry stared hard at the place it had been. What had he done wrong? The only thing he could possibly imagine could not be. If anyone did not belong in a place, he did not belong here.
"It would appear that you have failed," said a soft voice behind him. Harry recognized that voice and for the first time in many years, he felt again the cold terror that had threatened to consume him so many years ago.
He pushed it away. "Fancy seeing you here, Voldemort."
"Not as strange as it is to see you." Harry did not turn around but he could tell from the power that suddenly radiated throughout the clearing, that Voldemort had left his hiding place.
"What do you want with me?" Harry asked, his voice showing no emotion. "Surely you should know by now that I am no longer the one predicted to be your equal."
"The boy is a minor annoyance," said Voldemort coldly. "You interest me far greater."
"Then it's truly a shame that I'll have nothing to do with you," Harry said, no hatred in his voice. He had simply stated a fact.
"Is that so?" Voldemort asked softly. "I beg to differ."
"Do you now?" Harry asked, allowing some amusement to creep into his voice. He finally turned around to face the person that had haunted his dreams for so long. Red eyes stared back. Harry again had to master his fear.
"I do indeed," Voldemort said. "It would seem that you are not the child I have long come to hate. You could be of use to me."
Harry smirked. "Is that so? Well, then I suppose you could be of some use to me."
"Perhaps we could help each other," Voldemort said.
"Sounds good," Harry said seriously. "What I want you to do for me is to go away, and then rot in hell."
Voldemort smirked. "I expect to meet you there."
"When the time comes it will come," Harry said. "But for now, I have something more important in which to attend. You are wasting my time, like your pathetic excuse for followers before you."
"My followers are fools. They do only what I command."
"Then it's a pity you have such control over them. Someone smarter than you would probably make better decisions."
Voldemort's anger showed plainly on his face. "You dare to speak to me like that when your own stupidity has led me to you this night?"
"My own stupidity should not effect this time," Harry said coldly. "You fail to realize that I'm taking the first portal out of here."
"Your portals are defective. You cannot return to your own time. I have seen your pathetic attempt."
"My attempts could not have been pathetic," Harry said, smirking. "If they had been, the great collection of power that led you to me in the first place wouldn't have been enough to catch your attention."
Voldemort frowned at the logic behind this. "I have not come to anger you," he said. "I have come to strike a deal with you."
"Then tell me the deal and stop the fouling of the air around me," Harry said coldly.
"You have become braver, I can see that plainly," Voldemort said.
"Good," Harry said sarcastically. "You have eyes."
Voldemort's red eyes flashed. "The deal is this, you stay out of my way, and I don't kill you where you stand."
"Empty threat," Harry said. "You can't kill me where I stand."
"Is that so?" Voldemort said. "If you truly believe you are more powerful than I, perhaps you could explain why it is you have not yet defeated me in the future."
Harry was struck dumb. What was Voldemort talking about?
"I know you," Voldemort said. "I know you as you are now. Your tiny world revolves around others. Everything else takes its proper place behind that. It could not be that you defeated me so long ago and it still haunts you. You must live with it in the present. You are so desperate to get back so that you can continue on with your pointless attempts to defeat me. I know more than you think I do."
Harry said nothing. Voldemort seemed to be much more confident than he remembered. He couldn't see that he was so far off track that might have been sad-had he not been a mass murderer trying to destroy the world.
"Then perhaps our discussion here is done," Harry said shortly. "I have more important matters that require my attention." He pulled out his wand to Apparate, but Voldemort waved his wand. The air grew heavy with the anti- apparition spell that had been put into place.
"I'm not done quite yet," he said with a smirk.
"I am," Harry said coolly. He waved his hand and vanished.
A/N: Wow, he bested Voldemort. Basically, I wrote myself into a trap and I needed Harry out of there. I mean, obviously Voldemort would feel the power surges and come running, thinking it to be a trick of Dumbledore's against him. Besides, Voldemort's presence because of Harry could affect things unexpectedly...