Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Chapter 2: Come and Go
Previously on The Honour of Peverell…
Hearing manic laughter in the background, he turned around to see Bellatrix Lestrange, the murderer of his beloved godfather, crackling at him. With his face contorting in rage, he launched at spell that he had promised himself he would never use:
"Crucio!"
Power. Rage. Cold. That was what Harry felt as he released the Crucio from his holly and phoenix feather wand. There was real power behind the curse. Power that one can quickly find themselves succumbing in temptation too. Thus was the pitfalls of dark magic. It was wildly addictive and had claimed the minds of even the most steadfast individuals in the history of the magical world.
"Never again," thought Harry, thinking of his usage of an Unforgivable Curse.
Alas, the fiery rush of power was quickly engulfed by the searing cold that permeated from Harry's ruined hand which helped him shake of the cobwebs that come from exposure to serious dark magic. But it was rage that distracted Harry from the withering of his left hand. Rage at the villainous witch that erred the wrong side of Harry Potter. The side that harbored the darkness within that stemmed from years of abuse, and frustration at those that neglected him and used him as their metaphorical sword. It was this side of Harry that was about to unleash destruction upon Bellatrix Lestrange.
With a surprised look on her face, Bellatrix quickly dived out of the way of the angry red Torture Curse. Harry, in return, yelled in rage at her sending waves of painful and destructive magic that contorted the air in its wake. Bellatrix, perhaps wisely, turn and ran. Harry gave chase, continually sending curses after her, with pain and destruction as their intent.
Bellatrix dashed out of the Death Chamber and into the rotating doors room with escape on her mind. A trickle of sweat fell down her brow which she nervously wiped away. This was not the ickle baby Potter that she was accustomed to hearing about. This was a man intent on destroying her, utterly and completely. Not that she hadn't faced people intent on killing her, of that she was certain, but someone who wields such untamed and, frankly, wild power… there was only one other person who had such powerful magic, a certain Lord Voldemort. It was that thought that drove her feet faster in hopes of finding a battleground in order to go on the offensive and defeat Potter in service of her cunning master.
As the room finished spinning and a door open for her, Bellatrix found herself blinded by beautiful, dancing, diamond-sparkling light. As her eyes became accustomed to the glaring light, she saw clocks gleaming from every surface, large and small, grandfather and carriage, hanging in spaces between the bookcases or standing on desks ranging the length of the room, so that a busy, relentless ticking filled the place like thousands of minuscule, marching footsteps. The source of the dancing, diamond-bright light was a towering crystal bell jar that stood at the far end of the room. As she gazed upon the bell jar, she noticed a small hummingbird fluttering its diminutive wings. It began to descend from the top of the jar and abruptly started changing into a fledging bird and then back into the egg at the bottom of the jar, which reformed around it. After a still second, the egg cracked open, and, once again, a fledging emerged and started to mature into a full-grown hummingbird. And thus the cycle repeated itself.
"It is time. How fascinating," she mused with an amused look.
Abruptly her face grew dark and she threw that jar across the room, shattering it. It was then when she felt a tremor in the ground as if an explosion had just rocked the Department of Mysteries. Perhaps it was her master coming to deliver painful deaths to the upstart Order of the Phoenix.
Unknown to and unfortunately for Bellatrix, this was not the case.
As Bellatrix ran into the room of revolving doors, Harry screamed in anger. He did not want her to get away. He wanted to make her pay for murdering Sirius, his only family that he, previously, had remaining. As his thoughts drifted, he was reminded of riding on the back of Buckbeak while helping Sirius escape from the lunacy that was the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge. As memories of Sirius and his carefree smile surfaced in Harry's head, a tear fell from his eye. The memory of Bellatrix spelling Sirius through the Veil came the forefront of Harry's mind and he angrily wiped away the tear. With great strength and rage, he intoned,
"Confringo!" The Blasting Curse hit the doors and a great gong sound echoed throughout the Death Chamber. The revolving doors lit up an electric blue as ward runes surfaced and swirled around the doors. Alas, the wards held strong.
"Confringo!" Again, the wards remained unbroken. Strengthening his resolve, Harry raged,
"Bombarda Maxima!"
The door that Bellatrix had recently entered exploded outwards toward her. Casting a strong shielding charm, she protected herself from the shrapnel from the explosion.
"My Lord?" she asked to the dust cloud that permeated into the room.
No voice answered her. Just a pair of glowing green eyes. Eyes that startled and, dear she admit it, scared her.
"Bellatrix Lestrange. You shall cast your last curse. Prepare to be defeated," announced Harry Potter as he walked through the cloud of dust. Raising his wand in preparation for battle, he fired the first spell.
"Reducto!"
Bellatrix quickly cast a shielding charm and responded in kind,
"Avada Kedavra!"
The Killing Curse zipped over Harry's head as he prepared to return with a curse of his own. But, before he could do so, his eyes widened as he noticed a shelf of trinkets banished at him. As he spelled a shield of his own into existence, the shelf hit the shield, destroying it, as the trinkets shattered about him. Looking around him, he noticed glass and sand all on and around him.
"Incendio!" Harry yelled with a bellow.
Bellatrix summoned a water shield to protect herself from the blazing hot fire. As his wand started to heat up due to the duration at which Harry kept up the Fire-Making Spell, he ended the spell. Wincing, Harry gingerly rolled the wand in his hand to alleviate the burning sensation associated with touching the blistering stick of wood. Ironically, Harry almost preferred the pain in his right hand compared to the mind-numbing cold in his useless left hand.
As he drew breath to deliver a curse at Bellatrix, the sand erupted all around him, courtesy of the dark witch opposite of him. With a choke, Harry inhaled much of the sand. As he tried to rid his mouth and throat of the sand, he noticed a nasty sickly-yellow curse flying with a high velocity toward his head. Raising his wand to cast a shield, he barely managed to get a painfully weak one out before the curse hit it. Unfortunately, the shield wasn't enough to stop the curse in its tracks. The curse shattered his shield and hit his beloved holly and phoenix feather wand, erupted into tiny little pieces.
Unable to protect himself for the shrapnel, the fiery hot pieces of wood gorged themselves into Harry's torso throwing him backwards.
"Ickle baby Potter!" Bellatrix mocked, "do you really believe that you were powerful enough to beat me? Me, Bellatrix Lestrange? A practitioner of death and destruction feared by countless witches and wizards across the continent? You almost made me laugh!"
"I will destroy you, you insane witch!" responded Harry with a cough.
"Let's how good you are at 'destroying me' when you are locked in cell, continuously tortured by my great and powerful master."
And with that response, Bellatrix walked over and grabbed Harry by the shirt and apparated away to Little Hangleton, where the Dark Lord would be waiting eagerly to torture and maim the Boy-Who-Lived.
As Bellatrix apparated away, an explosion rocked the Department of Mysteries once again. Fearing for the worst, Albus Dumbledore, with Harry's faithful friends, having dispatched most of the Death Eaters that had attacked the Harry and his friends, had been scouring the Department of Mysteries attempting to find the wayward Potter in hopes of helping him defeat the fearsome witch. As the explosion trembled throughout the Department, they ran to investigate the source of the noise. They came upon the Time Room and immediately noticed the blackened walls and general destruction littered about the chamber.
"Stop!" ordered Dumbledore as he held out an arm to stop the teenagers from entering the room, "there are mysterious magics at work in this room. It is dangerous for all except the most skilled of wizards to enter this room. Time is very fickle friend."
"But Professor, where is Harry?" asked a worried Hermione.
"The question is not where, but when," answered the Headmaster as he stared nervously at the sand strewn across the Time Room.
Author's Note: A very finite amount of text in this chapter was taken from the Harry Potter Wiki article on the Time Room.
Author's Note II: Forgive me for the rather brief chapters. I find that setting a background for a story tedious and as this is a very avant-garde exploration of FanFiction for me, I would much rather harness my focus on the narrative we will embark on in the future installments of The Honour of Peverell, in which canon will be a fleeting figure of memories past.
