Seeing the Past, Present, and Future

Realization

Harry felt sick to his stomach. Thirty. Thirty people murdered in cold-blood. He wanted to read the article but his eyes seemed unable to focus on the words. He wouldn't have been surprised if they slid off the page, the day seemed so surreal.

"Did you look at the sheet I gave you last night?"

Harry continued starting at, or rather through, the newspaper before he realized he was being addressed. He slowly glanced in the direction from where the voice had come from. She was standing there. Everything seems so surreal, Harry thought. Like I'm in a dream…

"The newspaper," Harry feebly stated, waving it in the small, brown-haired girl's direction. She walked towards him and gently pushed the newspaper away from her without glancing at it.

"I know. I told you. Last night. Did you look at the sheet?" she asked again.

"No," Harry stated, but his mind was working. That was right. She had told him to look at the newspaper today. How had she known?

"Let's look at the sheet now," the first-year spoke.

Harry took a deep breath. He had to get a hold of himself. "Yeah, sure. I'm not hungry anymore," he told the girl. "Do you have it?" he added.

She nodded and patted her pocket, which made a crinkly noise. "Where can we go so we can talk privately?"

"An empty classroom's probably fine," Harry said. He wasn't too worried about people trying to eavesdrop on their conversation. Vaguely, he wondered where Ron and Hermione were. "We can talk here," he said, coming upon a classroom that looked like it had not been used recently.

"Alright," the young girl spoke, taking a seat and emptying her jacket's pockets. There was the piece of paper from before, in addition to an old newspaper clipping. "Tell me what you've figured out so far," she said unfolding the sheet that Harry recognized as the one they had stolen from Sullivan's office.

Harry looked at it and tried to recall what he had found out. "In the third column A stands for address. In the first column D stands for Date and in the second column T stands for time. The O's could stand for of or or."

She nodded. "No ideas on the fourth column?"

"None."

"Okay. I think there's a pattern, but I want to see if you can find it on your own. I brought the newspaper clipping from—from the other attack." She pushed forward a folded square of gray paper. "Compare the two articles to the chart and tell me what you think."

Harry frowned slightly as he took the newspaper clip. Why did she seem to know so much? He couldn't help but feel as if he was a marionette, being dragged along by some unknown force. Slowly he laid out the two newspapers article on either side of the sheet of paper. But what was he supposed to do? Compare them. How? Why did he feel like he was being used? He hated that feeling, as if he was simply someone else's pawn. And he didn't like Lupin's niece watching him so eagerly either.

5 October 1996—

Yesterday night, at approximately 10:30 PM, two much respected members of the magical community were murdered in their own home, which currently lies in ruins. They were Mr. and Mrs. Clovis, an elderly couple who lived quietly in their house on Painsthorpe Road. Carmine Clovis, an expert on defending oneself against dark creatures, has written several books on that subject and also taught at Hogwarts as a substitute professor.…

Harry looked at the article. He felt as if he was taking a test. "What exactly am I supposed to look for?" he irritably asked the young girl nearby him, who was currently swinging her feet.

The girl shrugged. "When it happened."

"It happened October fifth. Fourth," he corrected himself.

"Now look at the sheet," the first-year lead him.

Harry gave her a sideways look before glancing down at the sheet. It held four columns.

DOA---TOA----------A-------------------------NOEP

4-10---22:30---45193 Painsthorpe Road----2

31-10--23:30---6840 Aconite Avenue-----? (4)

11-11--10:45(VOID)--904 Milokai Boulevard---3

The sheet was full of numbers such as these but Harry only looked at the first three rows. "The first date is October fourth," he stated. "And it could be their address because they lived on Painsthorpe Road."

"What else?" she prodded.

"The time is the time mentioned in the article," Harry said slowly, not entirely sure what she was getting at.

"How many were there, in the first article?"

"Two…"

"It all fits, doesn't it?"

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

"All of the numbers," the girl looked towards him sadly, "they match perfectly. The statistics of their death, right there. On that sheet."

Harry looked at the piece of paper and realized she was right. "But how was everything written down before it happened?"

She looked at him sadly. "Check the second article with the second row; those numbers match too, don't they? Except the victims were having a Halloween dinner so it wasn't known how many people were going to be there. Thirty were there. No survivors. There never are."

Harry looked at her. She seemed rather resigned to the idea. "How…how do you know this?" he asked.

"I looked at the sheet for a long, long, time. All that's left is to figure out what the acronyms stand for. But I think you have an inkling of an idea on most of them. I'll give you a hint, the O's stand for 'of' in all of them."

"Date of…time of…address…and something else," the Boy-Who-Lived spoke.

"What's in the last column?"

"The number of people who died."

"So if N is for number and P is for people…"

"Number of something People."

"Let's say the attacks hadn't happened yet. Then they wouldn't be dead yet, and it wouldn't be known for sure how many people were going to be there, just a guess, an estimate."

Harry glanced at the girl. "Number of estimated people?"

"Expected, actually, but you were close."

"How do you know this?" the messy-haired boy asked. He was becoming suspicious.

"I looked at the sheet for a long time," she lightly replied. "So what does the A stand for?"

"Address," Harry promptly answered.

"The other A's."

"Oh. I don't know."

"What happened at those numbers?"

Harry felt rather irritable about being led like this but at the same time he knew he wouldn't get it by himself. "It's when they were murdered. Killed."

"Attacked."

"Yeah, attacked."

"So what does it stand for?"

"Date of…Attack. Time of Attack."

"And this was in Sullivan's briefcase."

"Yeah, I know."

"So what does that say about him?"

"I don't know. Maybe he didn't know what it was, picked up somewhere."

"He knows what everything stands for, Harry."

"How do you know he knows?"

"I just do."

"Fine let's say he does know. I still don't understand what you're trying to show me."

"I'm trying to show you he's a Death Eater, Harry."

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or his world.

A/N: The chart was a lot neater on word, but the format became a bit messier here, sorry.

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