A/N: Wow, did manage to get another chapter out on time! I'm amazed.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed! The plot takes a somewhat different turn in this one, which I hope is still believable. It'll also change some future plot ideas I had, so I may have to do a bit of thinking before I write the next chapter.
And Greyhound Master: Good catch on who Harry'll talk to.
The Best of All Possible Worlds
Chapter Five: Crazy Talk
"I am very pleased to begin the new term with you," Hagrid said, in a voice devoid of the accent Harry was used to. It sounded as though he had learned how to talk from a book, or perhaps from Hermione. "I assure you that I will attempt to maintain the same standards in the school that Professor Dumbledore held up."
"That wouldn't be hard," muttered someone from the Slytherin table. Someone else giggled. Harry kept his eyes on Hagrid, hoping desperately that he would learn something about what had happened to Professor Dumbledore from the half-giant's speech.
"Alas for our loss," said Hagrid, and bowed his head. Numb, Harry just stared. "Professor Dumbledore was a good and brave man, but he had too great a fondness for magical sweets. I am sure that he and Mrs. Norris will both be missed."
There were more giggles from the Slytherin table, but Harry ignored them, as well as the rest of Hagrid's speech. He put his head in his hands instead.
Something to do with magical sweets. I should have known. He swallowed. And because he had to play around with them, I may never get home!
An entirely different sort of anger at Dumbledore began to grow in Harry. That he didn't know whether he was really angry at this world's version of Dumbledore or his own just made him more upset.
"But we cannot linger forever in the sadness of the past," Hagrid was saying when Harry looked up again. "We must sometimes look to the future. And I am sure that the future of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry will yet be bright with hope. When I walked these beloved halls as a student, never one day did I imagine that I might be standing in this place." He bowed his head. "Nor did I imagine what would have had to happen to grant me this place. But it has happened, and we have had a summer to mourn and settle our hearts. May we go on into the future, a united school, just as Professor Dumbledore would have wanted us to!"
Food at last appeared on the plates, and there were cheers and yells and clapping as Hagrid sat down. Harry thought it might have had more to do with the food than with the speech itself, though.
He drifted towards the Slytherin table, not hungry, but knowing he should steal something. He thought he should at least steal from the most deserving.
Malfoy was holding forth again by the time that Harry arrived behind him. "My father had something to say about that prat assuming the duties of Headmaster," he said darkly, gesturing so emphatically with his cup that he nearly spilled pumpkin juice on Pansy. "He was voted down, of course. They all wanted someone safe to fill Dumbledore's place." He sneered and bit into his bread. "But just you see. There'll be something done about this yet—"
"Shut up, Draco," said Pansy Parkinson. She only picked at her food, and seemed more bored than anything else as she watched the rest of the Slytherins eat. Harry carefully liberated some of her sausages, and she didn't even seem to notice. "You're always saying the same thing, and we're tired of hearing about it."
"The mudbloods will pay," said Malfoy, eating viciously enough to almost choke himself.
"That's not new, either," said Pansy, and appeared to give up on her food, leaning back instead. Harry maneuvered around her and snatched some food from Crabbe's plate.
Crabbe didn't appear to notice. He was talking to Goyle about something, low and intense. Harry would have tried to listen, but he was on edge and concerned he would hex someone for sure if he had to stay around and listen to Malfoy sneer about mudbloods. He eased himself back.
"I'll tell you something new, Pansy," said Malfoy just then, nearly as intensely as before. "Come to the Charms classroom at midnight and I'll tell you everything."
Pansy looked at him carefully. "Really?" she asked at last.
"Really," Malfoy confirmed, and turned back to his food.
Harry raised his eyebrows, then shook his head. No, I'm not getting involved. I'm going to eat, and then talk to the one person who might help me.
He glanced over at the Gryffindor table, which he had consciously avoided doing. The other Harry and the other Ron were gesturing with their forks and talking with their mouths full. Hermione sat with her nose in a book, ignoring them as well as she could. Harry doubted the book had anything to do with other worlds, but he would go talk to Hermione anyway. She had to know something.
Harry tried his best not to notice how pathetic that idea sounded.
He nibbled on the food, watching carefully just in case, and scrambled after Hermione when she stood up from the Gryffindor table. It helped that she wasn't going fast, just wandering along with her nose jammed in the pages and muttering something about grasshoppers' legs.
Harry glanced around. No one else was in sight. He took a deep breath, and pulled the Invisibility Cloak off.
"Hermione?" he asked.
"Just a minute, Harry," she said, and apparently finished reading until the end of the page. Harry contained his impatience by imagining that she might be reading about something that could help him. Then she turned around, looked at him, and openly stared. "What is the matter with you?" she asked. "Did you manage to trip over something on your way out of the Hall?"
"No," Harry said, and hesitated a long moment. But it wasn't as though Hermione would accuse him of being evil when she saw the lightning bolt scar, so he lifted his hair and let her see it.
Hermione blinked twice, then fixed him with the same patient stare she had been giving the other Harry. "I don't know what you used to draw that scar on, Harry, but it didn't work. It doesn't look like a bleeding wound. You should send it back to the twins and tell them to improve their product." She was already opening the book and turning around again.
"No, you don't understand," said Harry, stepping up to her and yanking the book out of her hands. Something about Potions, he saw, which wasn't really a surprise; nothing had helped him since he got here. Hermione gave an indignant squeak and tried to take the book back, but Harry held it out of her reach. "I'm not the Harry you know. I come from another world, and I really need your help."
Hermione made a disgusted noise. "Really, Harry! You usually come up with better stories." She snatched the book as he stared at her, and shook her head when he tried to take it back. "I'm not buying this one. I had my fill of mysterious prophecies and you supposedly being stalked by evil wizards last year. Prophecies are serious business, you know, and you shouldn't joke about them."
"I know!" Harry yelled, his throat seizing. "I'm under one!"
Hermione blew out her breath and assumed a patient stance. "You can't be under one, Harry. What would you be under one to do? To get Ron to do his homework?" She made a noise somewhere between a giggle and a cough. "Not that it wouldn't be useful, of course, but—"
"Hermione? Who's that?"
Harry looked over Hermione's shoulder, and winced. Ron stood there, staring at him in a way that seemed to see straight past his fringe to the lightning bolt scar underneath. And next to him was the other Harry, his eyes just starting to widen and his mouth starting to open.
Hermione turned around, saw the other Harry, and whipped back, her face already pale. "Who are you?" she asked sharply.
Harry pulled the Cloak over his head, and vanished. All three of them jumped back with a yell. Harry was glad to see that they didn't immediately start reaching around with patting hands; maybe this other Harry didn't have his father's Invisibility Cloak. Harry slipped off to the side and ran down the hall, keeping as quiet as he could.
So much for that plan. Frustration and anger made him want to yell, but he kept it quiet as he headed for the kitchens again. I suppose I should have waited until Hermione was alone and then asked her, but I didn't know the other Harry joked about things like that.
Bitterness overwhelmed him for a moment. I wish I could joke about that. I wish his life was mine.
~*~
"You did come back. I wondered."
Harry dumped the pile of meat on the Chamber floor and then went back for the next armful. He'd thrown everything down the entrance in the second-floor bathroom and then carried it in one pile at a time. "I told you I would," he said to the basilisk, which was just slithering out of the statue of Salazar Slytherin. "Don't doubt me again."
"I will not." The basilisk slithered over, with a rustle and scrape of scales on stone. "Thisss isss an absssurdly sssmall amount."
"You've gone hungry for centuries and not died," Harry suggested as he dragged in the next armful. "Put up with it."
"I will." The basilisk dropped its head. Harry turned hastily aside so the yellow eyes couldn't catch him, and the snake's hissing took on a gleeful tone. "Can it be that I frighten you ssstill?"
Harry didn't choose to answer, bringing in the third armful and then retreating to the doors. The basilisk fed half-turned away from him, and Harry was just as glad. He wanted to stand there and watch it finish, then shut the doors so he could be sure it wouldn't get out.
And yet, he also wanted to stay and talk. The basilisk was the only person he could talk to since he'd come here—
Calm down, Harry. He shook his head. He's a snake, not a person.
The basilisk finished the last armful, and then slithered back towards the statue. "I find I do not dissslike your company," it added over the sound of its slithering. "You may return, and ssspeak with me if you desssire."
"You'll just try to convince me to let you out," said Harry, as he stepped back and hissed the command for the doors to close.
"Isss that so wrong?" the basilisk asked innocently before the doors slammed shut.
Harry took a deep breath and shut his eyes. He would solve this, somehow. He certainly didn't need to come down into the Chamber of Secrets and speak to a basilisk for company, even if the basilisk was the only one who appeared willing to listen to him.
He turned around, and froze. There was a gleam of light far down the tunnel, and a voice asking, "Do you think there are spiders around here?"
"Something probably ate them," said Hermione primly, ignoring Ron's whimper of fear. "Come on. What do you think is up ahead? I can see carvings of snakes—"
They must have found the entrance in the bathroom, Harry realized as he ducked against the wall. Hermione was in there. She probably saw the stag come bounding in and connected it to me somehow. He subdued a groan and slid carefully to the side as the three of them came around the corner, Hermione in the lead with her wand lit. The other Harry and Ron were just behind her, glancing around uneasily. Harry rolled his eyes. Why does my other self have to be such a coward?
Hermione gasped as she looked up at the doors, but it was a gasp of wonder. Harry was just glad he had closed them before she found the way here. She would probably have tried to enter and name the species of the basilisk if he hadn't.
"Do you know what this is?" she demanded, turning to face the other Harry and Ron. "The Chamber of Secrets! It must be! Salazar Slytherin built it, and it could only be opened by someone who speaks Parseltongue!"
"Like the invisible anaconda in the garden!" said the other Harry.
"What?" Hermione asked. Harry winced.
"Something invisible grabbed me this morning and hissed in my face," said the other Harry. "And then you saw me—well, I saw him too—and then we come in here and find this. It's been a strange day." He looked at the doors, such a frightened expression on his face that Harry now wished he had left the doors open. The basilisk would teach him what fear was really like.
"I think it must have been him," said Hermione, obviously thinking fast. "I've read about this before. There are theories about some magical mirrors—reflections, you know—and the reflections reduplicating the self in such terms that they become what that self would never be."
"Talk English, Hermione!" said Ron, glancing uneasily at the rat skulls.
"I think this creature is Harry's reflection," said Hermione, her face triumphant. "It escaped from its mirror somehow. It's everything Harry's not, even though it looks like him. It has a scar he doesn't, and it's evil, and it can speak Parseltongue. It even claimed to be under a prophecy." She looked severely at the other Harry. "I think the stories you were telling last year were true in some other place, and so they're true of your reflection. He knew me. Maybe he even knows a Hermione in his own world."
Harry closed his eyes. Of course, she would come up with something that makes so much sense, and is still completely wrong. That's my life lately.
"What do we do with him, then?" Ron asked. Harry opened his eyes and saw his friend's—or the copy of his friend's—face assume a familiar stubborn expression.
"We have to put him back into his mirror," said Hermione. "But he'll be scared of us, and if he's evil, then he won't cooperate. I think we should find him first, and then we can make sure that he understands we just want to help." She held her wand high. Harry tried to edge to the side without stepping on a rat skull.
"But I thought you said he was evil," the other Harry complained, a bit of a whine in his voice.
"Then we'll just spell him," said Hermione, and held the wand out towards the wall. "I think he's using an Invisibility Cloak. Revelo!"
Harry jumped as a blue shine suddenly surrounded the Invisibility Cloak, making it obvious. He dodged to the side, but the glow followed, and the next instant three wands were trained on him.
"We have you," said Hermione calmly. "You might as well come out of the Cloak, you know. Then we'll know that you want to cooperate."
Slowly, Harry pulled the Cloak off, and watched their eyes widen as they looked at him. "A perfect copy," Ron breathed. "I don't believe it."
"I'm not just a copy," said Harry, snapping the words out so that he wouldn't yell and lunge at them. "And I didn't come through a mirror. I really did come from another world, one where I'm under a prophecy and an evil wizard named Voldemort is after me—"
"I've never heard of a wizard called Voldemort," Hermione interrupted. "Who is he?"
"An evil wizard in my world," said Harry. "Look, can you find a way to get me back or not?"
"Was it you in the garden this morning?" the other Harry demanded, leaning close to him. "Speaking Parseltongue?"
"Yes—"
"Petrificus Totalus!"
"Ron!" Hermione cried, but the Full Body-Bind had already hit Harry and dropped him to the ground. He hit his head sharply enough on something that blackness was already creeping around the edges of his vision, and dropped his wand. He saw Ron run forward and snatch it up.
"Why did you do that?" Hermione was asking, her voice dangerous.
"You said he could be evil," Ron replied, sulking. "I was just helping—"
"Without even giving him a chance to speak—" Hermione stopped with an exasperated sigh. "It doesn't matter. Let's go see the Headmaster."
She gestured at Harry with her wand, said, "Mobilicorpus," and floated him towards the entrance from the pipe. Ron and the other Harry walked beside him, occasionally staring into his face and discussing him as though he wasn't there.
Harry floated along in resignation. Hagrid can help… I hope. And at least someone knows I'm here now. That has to be good. Right?