Living inside Yesterday
Potter47

~ Part Four ~
Living for Tomorrow

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil! —
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted —
On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore —
Is there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the raven "Nevermore."
~ Poe

~ Chapter Seventeen ~
Truth be Told

They arrived, in Dumbledore's office, to find it nearly deserted. Ron, Hermione, Luna and Snape; all were nowhere to be seen. Only Dumbledore was there, sitting at his desk, gazing into the stone basin that was the Pensieve; and Fawkes, who was softly trilling from his perch. So softly, in fact, that Harry nor Ginny were truly sure if it was the phoenix, or an echo from a distant past, lingering within the room.

Dumbledore looked defeated. His face looked as old, if not older, than Harry had ever seen it before. He looked, and Harry had never thought he would, like a weak old man. Not at all like one of the most powerful wizards in the world. His eyes, most definitely not twinkling, appeared lifeless. Overall, he did not look good. It was as if he had built the perfect toy - something he had wished for his entire life - and it was stolen away before he ever got to play with it.

"Please sit down, Harry," he said tonelessly. "I need to talk to you. I should have...a long time ago. Virginia, I would appreciate it if you -"

"Ginny can stay," said Harry, at once, before Dumbledore had a chance to finish.

"No," said Ginny awkwardly, "it's all right. I'll just go-"

"Please," said Harry desperately. He hadn't tried in the least to conceal the feeling in his voice. He didn't know if he should have, or not. But he felt that whatever Dumbledore needed to say - and he was quite sure it was important - he did not want to hear alone. That he shouldn't have to hear it alone. And Ginny, after all that had happened...everything that had changed, in the past few days.... She was only one he would want with him. Regardless of any romantic feelings. She would understand.

Said feeling was not hard to notice by Ginny, and she did not protest further. In fact, she felt the same; he shouldn't have to deal with, whatever it was, alone.

"As you wish," said Dumbledore. He didn't look pleased with himself. Not at all. He looked as if he had just used the last of the tricks he had hidden up his sleeve, and had no idea how to move forward.

Harry and Ginny walked over to the Headmaster's desk, and sat in the two chairs before it. It was hard to believe that they had just sat there not even yesterday, before going to the Riddle House. Everything, since the night in the Ministry, had happened so fast and yet so slow all at the same time.

"I had hoped," said Dumbledore, after a minute or two, "to have good news to tell you, when you returned. And there is good news to tell, I assure you, but that will be for another time. Tomorrow maybe. Soon."

He took a deep breath before continuing.

"Miss Granger...informed me...of your vision, Harry," he said softly. "I have dreaded this for years, you know. That you would find out like this, a cruel reality forced upon you. I had planned on telling you...but I never did. I could have... I should have. But I didn't."

"Tell him what?" asked Ginny, after a few more moments. Dumbledore didn't seem to want to move along quickly.

"Tell him what I ought to have told him five years ago, Virginia," said Dumbledore. "To tell him of the fate that lies before him. To tell him everything."

Harry's heart was racing, and for once it had nothing to do with the redhead beside him. He remembered, in his first year, asking Dumbledore why Voldemort had tried to kill him as a baby. Why he had the scar. Why he lived. And the answer to all that...was this prophecy.

"You remember your Divination examination in your third year, Harry?" asked Dumbledore, who seemed to be trying to find the best way to tell his story. "You told me that Sybill had predicted Voldemort's return-"

"Hang on," said Harry. "Did you know about Trelawney being a Death Eater? When she-Wormtail..."

"I was aware that she was one of the Death Eaters," said Dumbledore. "I had hoped she really was working for us, trying to discover information...but alas, she was not. As you told Professor Snape, months ago, just about everyone who calls Voldemort the 'Dark Lord' is, or was, a Death Eater. They don't seem to notice, that they are the only ones. I have, more than once, thought that perhaps he had charmed them so they must call him by that. It is quite a giveaway, to those who realise it, but no one could ever be convicted."

Harry briefly considered asking how Dumbledore knew he had said that to Snape, but decided not to interrupt once again.

"As I was saying," said Dumbledore, "you told me of her prediction. I said, at the time, that it was her second accurate prophecy. The first...had a great deal more consequence.

"Sixteen years ago," he continued, "in a room above the Hog's Head, Sybill Trelawney gave her first prophecy. I was there, interviewing her for the Divination position. I was about to leave, as she didn't seem to have any of the gift, despite her heritage. But then..."

He took out his wand, and touched the swirling surface of the Pensieve. As soon as the tip of wood came into contact with the substance, Harry's scar seared. His hand jumped to his forehead, as a figure of Sybill Trelawney formed from the depths of the Pensieve. He did not lose consciousness this time, and his eyes remained open despite the pain.

Both Ginny and Dumbledore were looking worriedly at him, wondering what he saw. His mouth opened, and an odd voice came from his mouth, at the same time as the figure in the Pensieve. "The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...."

His eyes looked glazed as he continued, still in sync with Trelawney.

"Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies.... and the Dark Lord will mark him as an equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not.... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives.... The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies."

"Merlin's beard!" muttered Ginny, still looking anxiously at Harry, now that he had finished, his eyes coming back into focus.

Harry looked to be struggling to form a coherent thought. When he finally managed to put a sentence together, it was, "So I guess that's the prophecy, then?"

"Yes..." said Dumbledore quietly, his eyes wide as they looked upon the harshly breathing young man in front of him. "Yes, that was the prophecy."

"He...he wasn't happy about it," said Harry, his breathing returning to normal. "He was cursing everyone near him. Malfoy. Wormtail. It..." He stopped, and remembered the words of the old lady. "It didn't live up to his expectations. It only told him what he already knew."

Harry knew it would sound crazy, but he thought that the blind woman may have been a seer.

Dumbledore looked greatly relieved by this. A bit of his usual self seemed to seep back into his body. Ginny looked shocked, she too remembering Dot.

"I had hoped," said Dumbledore, his lips quirked in the smallest of smiles. "I had hoped that this would happen. Over the years, contemplating that prophecy, I had wished that he would not learn what he needed, if he was ever to find it. I thought it was wishful thinking..."

"So did I," said Harry. Dumbledore looked oddly at him when he said it, but he did not comment.

"But," said Ginny. "What does it mean?"

"It means," said the Headmaster, "that Harry is the only one who can defeat Voldemort. He was, as you know, born at the end of July. His parents escaped from Voldemort three times. Voldemort marked him, when he was a year old."

"It said...it said that 'either must die, at the hand of the other,'" said Ginny. "Does that mean..."

Dumbledore was about to reply, but Harry beat him to it. "Yeah," he said, looking Dumbledore in the eye. "I either have to kill, or be killed."

As soon as the words had formed in Harry's mind, he had known them to be true. He didn't know how he knew, but he did know.

Ginny looked to Dumbledore, as if hoping he would contradict Harry. Tell him he was mistaken. But the Headmaster merely nodded.

"Neither of us can live how we really want to, until the other is dead," said Harry. It was odd, to be saying these things. It was as if the thoughts had been implanted within his brain. And he knew they were true.

"I am sorry," said Dumbledore, "that you had to find out like this. It was wrong. I should have told you sooner."

"Yeah," said Harry, "you should have."

"On the bright side," said Ginny, clearly thinking that the conversation was in desperate need of one, "Voldemort doesn't have any answers. It didn't help him."

Voldemort, thought Harry. She said the name. He didn't know, if she'd always said it. If she'd said it to him even. But this was the first time he noticed. It didn't, however, seem to be the first time she said it. She didn't stutter, like Hermione. And, Harry realised, she hasn't flinched once. We've said it a number of times, and she didn't flinch.

For what seemed like the twelfth time, in the past few days, Harry saw Ginny in a whole new light.

She looked over at him, and he realised he'd been staring once again. She touched her hair self-consciously, as if she thought he saw a bug in it, and was just...staring. Actually, that didn't seem too good of an explanation. Harry didn't know why she touched her hair.

She smiled at him oddly. Dumbledore seemed to watch the exchange with interest.

"What?" she asked curiously.

* * *

Luna, Ron, Hermione and Snape were all waiting downstairs, just outside the entrance to Dumbledore's office. If anyone was to wander upon them, it would be quite a sight.

Luna and Ron were sitting next to each other on the floor, opposite the gargoyle, waiting for Harry, Ginny and Dumbledore to finish talking about whatever it was they were talking about. Actually, that was what Ron was doing. Luna seemed to be counting the stones that made up the walls of the corridor. She had a calculating expression on her face, eyes narrowed, and every few moments her gaze would move a bit farther along the wall.

Snape and Hermione, on the other hand, were both pacing the corridor; every once in a while, they would check their watches, and turn to glance at the gargoyle. Ron noted that they often seemed to do so at the same time, but neither gave the impression that they noticed.

"Luna," Ron said, after another five or so minutes of waiting, "why do you have that knife?"

"My Harpy?" she asked, as if she had dozens of knives, and Ron had not been nearly specific enough. She was still counting stones.

"If that's what you call it, yeah, your harpy."

"Oh, Dad thought I should have some Muggle means to protect myself; he's Muggle-born. I thought that a knife would be more useful than pepper spray."

"What's pepper-" Ron began, but was cut off by Hermione.

"Why did you choose a Harpy, anyway?" she asked, as if the question had been killing her ever since she saw the knife.

"Oh," said Luna once again. She turned away from the wall for a moment, to face Hermione. "I read about it in a book. Well, that, and I like the little spider on it. It's Spyderco that makes it, you know."

"Spider!" Ron jumped away from Luna, who had been opening and closing her knife, without appearing to realise she was doing so. She was counting again.

He nearly fell over, tripping over his large feet, but he managed to stand up.

"Oh, relax, Weasley," said Snape, who Ron had only missed knocking over by a few centimetres. "It's a little picture. No one would put a real spider on a knife." Snape shook his head, muttering something about incompetent Gryffindors, once again.

But Hermione seemed to have ignored the whole exchange.

"You read about it in a book?" asked Hermione sceptically, as if no one would read about anything in a book. It was unheard of.

"Yes," said Luna. "I did."

"Looks like you two have something in common," said Ron, still hiding behind the Potions Master.

"Yeah," said Luna, looking at Ron out of the corner of her eye. "Something."

* * *

"Professor," said Harry, looking away from Ginny. "What about the rest?"

"Rest?" asked the Headmaster.

"Yes. The rest of the prophecy. What does it mean?"

"You do not know?" Dumbledore inquired. "You seemed to understand the former quite well on your own." He stopped for a moment, taking a deep breath. "I'll answer as best as I can. What do you wish to know?"

"Well, the beginning. 'Born to those who have thrice defied him.' How did my parents defy Voldemort three times?"

"Ah," said Dumbledore, looking slightly surprised. "I had not foreseen that question."

"Well?" asked Ginny. "How did they?" She seemed to want to know just as much as Harry.

"The first time," said Dumbledore, thinking back, "was in...nineteen seventy-eight, actually. Shortly after you two appeared. School was about to close for summer, and your parents were finishing their seventh year. But, just days before term ended, Voldemort struck.

"It was a kidnapping. Your parents, Sirius, Remus, and Wormtail were taken captive by the Death Eaters. And, as they informed me afterward, were each approached, and taken to speak with Voldemort. He...offered them power. He wanted them to join him, just as Voldemort asked you at the end of your first year."

Once again, Harry wondered how Dumbledore knew that. Harry knew that the Headmaster had been watching him, but it was as if he had put a little camera on him and had been viewing him on a television screen.

"He tried to make them believe," continued Dumbledore, "that there aren't such things, as good and evil. That there is only power and those too weak to seek it. We had all thought, afterward, that the plan failed. But...we had not known about Wormtail."

"How did they escape?" asked Ginny curiously.

Dumbledore opened his mouth, perhaps to explain how it was that Harry's parents, and the rest of the Marauders, got away from Voldemort...but then closed it again, as if thinking better of it.

"Not today," he said, shaking his head slightly. "There were others involved, and I'm not quite sure that they wish for you to be told. I will...ask them. Perhaps they will say it's all right. But for now, that is where the story ends."

"What about the others?" asked Harry. "Thrice defied him, so there's two more."

"Yes," said Dumbledore. "Two more. The second was soon after the first. After James and Lily finished school, they joined the Order, as you know. Alastor told me he showed you a photograph."

"Yes," said Harry, remembering the picture Mad-Eye had shown him at Grimmauld Place, at Ron and Hermione's party. He would have rather forgotten, actually.

"They were cornered by Voldemort, only weeks after joining. He once again tried to tempt them to join him, but they refused. They escaped because of, as your father liked to call it, 'bloody good luck.'" The headmaster chuckled softly, and the two students smiled.

"And the final time...was when you were born."

"What?" asked Harry. "How did they defy Voldemort when I was born?"

"Wait a moment," said Dumbledore, raising a hand. "I need to explain further the preceding events." He cleared his throat. "Sybill's prophecy was given almost one year before you were born, on a wet August night. You can imagine the frustration, knowing that a saviour was in the works, but having to wait a whole year, for him to be born. In fact," Dumbledore said. "For nearly a week, everyone was confident that someone else was 'the one.' A boy that was born on the twenty-fifth of July. Do you have any idea who that is?"

Harry thought hard, trying to remember anyone born only a week before him. They would have to be in his year, of course. But who? Ron was born in March...Neville was born in...when was Neville born?"

Apparently, Ginny knew. "Neville," she said. "That's Neville's birthday, he told me so at the Yule Ball."

"Precisely," said Dumbledore. "The Order was convinced it was Neville Longbottom, who had the power to vanquish Voldemort. It seemed plausible, considering his heritage. By the thirtieth, there was not a doubter among us. Some had suspected the possibility of James and Lily's child, as they knew you'd be born soon. But they had only defied Voldemort twice.

"And then..."

"Harry was born," said Ginny.

"Yes," said Dumbledore. "Voldemort, who had heard some of the prophecy, also suspected Harry as 'the one,' and therefore, showing impatience worthy of record books, set out to kill you before you were even born. He kidnapped your mother. No one knew how, at the time, but once again, we did not know of Wormtail.

"Ironically, if he had not tried to kill you, you would not have survived. Your Muggle grandparents were going to visit your parents that day, and, sadly, they were followed. It was a group of Muggles actually. Murderers. They followed your grandparents to your house...and killed them."

Harry blinked. He didn't see a connection.

"What does that have to do with-"

"You see, Harry," said Dumbledore. "If your mother had not been kidnapped, she and your father would have been at the house when the Muggles came. They likely would have been killed as well, and you never would have been born.

"This was the thirtieth of July, remember. The day before you were born. Again, Lily escaped, with the help of...the same person who helped the first time. The next day, she gave birth to you.

"The rest you know; a little over a year later, your parents went into hiding, using the Fidelius Charm, and Voldemort attacked soon after."

Dumbledore, having finished his story, took another deep breath.

"Is there anything else?" he asked.

Yes! thought Harry, dozens of questions forming in his mind. What were my grandparents like? Did you know them? Were they anything like my aunt? Please say no...

But Ginny asked a question, one he hadn't even thought of, before any response could fully formulate in his mind.

"What is the power the Dark Lord knows not?" she asked.

Harry realised he should have thought of this, as it was probably important. Leave it to Ginny...

"Yeah," said Harry. "I can barely run the DA, how am I supposed to defeat Voldemort?"

That was not how he intended to phrase the question. He meant to say something like, What power do I have that Voldemort doesn't? or, I don't have any power! He had not meant to mention Dumbledore's Army in front of Dumbledore himself.

"What are you talking about, Harry?" asked the old man. "I thought you did a splendid job running the Defence Association..." He winked.

"The power?" he asked, as if to confirm the question. He looked from Harry, to Ginny again. "You can't guess?"

Harry shook his head, and Ginny said, "No."

The Headmaster smiled. "I think you'll be able to figure it out on your own, Harry. It's rather obvious, really."

He looked knowingly between the two, and ushered them out of the office.

Standing behind Ginny, on the stairs, Harry had no idea what power he was supposed to have. But, as he was standing behind Ginny, he didn't much care.

~ Author's Note ~

I would like to take this opportunity to announce the Yesterday Sequence Yahoo! Group. What is this italicized Yesterday Sequence, you ask? Well, this here fic you're reading, "Living inside Yesterday," is the first of a planned four (4) story series. I called it a "sequence" because I think it sounds better, and when I looked at "series" in my computer's thesaurus, the top synonym was "sequence."

Now, you may already know of this Group, if you happened to be one of the thirteen people I sent invitations to. Or, if you are there right now, reading this, and wondering why the hell I'm informing you of your current location. A couple group members, (there were eight the last time I checked,) seemed to just pop out of nowhere, as I have know clue how they found the group.

On this group there will be, obviously, the story. New chapters will be posted there, (or here, depending if you are reading this on the group or not,) one day prior to their posting on any other sites. Any images made for the story (including the wallpaper that was sent to winners of the chapter contest [minus Ari, as she doesn't seem to have an email address.]), will be posted on the group when I get the chance (the aforementioned wallpaper will not go up until LiY is completed, so as to give the aforementioned winners of the aforementioned chapter contest some sort of advantage).

Oh, a note from the last chapter: there were no entrants from HPFF.com. None at all.

Oh, one last note: the title of the fic, "Living inside Yesterday," is from Lifehouse's song, "Am I Ever Gonna Find Out?" thusly:

In between this
Am I gonna find a way
To defeat this
Living inside yesterday
I'm alive I think it's time to live
Like I am

Thanks to dementorchic for finally getting that right. She'll be getting the (aforementioned) wallpaper, before all you lazy other people that didn't even try. (I'm still amazed at how well that title worked. I'm listening to the song, trying to think of a title and...boom! Perfect!)

Also, I received a complaint about this chapter's quote. Apparently, someone was sick of Edgar Allan Poe, and hadn't wanted to have to look at another of his poems. Well, hopefully, the next quote is more to your liking.

~ Next Chapter ~
Over the Rainbow

"Who knows how long we've got; a week, a month, a year, a life time? We have to make the most
of whatever time we've got, otherwise we'll only regret the things we could have done, but didn't."
~ Imogen

~ Coming Soon ~