If Harry had thought it was the end of festivities, he was proved wrong when a few days later a rather jovial Albus Dumbledore reminded him it was now Hogmanay.
Seeing him frowning, Albus explained. "The last day of the year. Have you never heard about it before?"
Tomorrow it would be 1897, Harry numbly realized. And while Harry had only been stuck in the past for four months, he was keenly aware how queer celebrating a new year in the past truly was.
He was leaving 1896 alright. Time was still moving without him doing anything; it just wasn't moving fast enough.
Distantly, Harry could swear a clock was ticking.
"Harry?"
Harry shook his head. "It kinda rings a bell. A teacher must have mentioned it before, maybe. She probably has but I just… I wasn't paying attention, I suppose. It's… It's Scottish right?"
The auburn-haired nodded. "I will try not to bore you and just say that Scots have the habit in that time to sing Auld Lang Syne."
Harry smiled when he remembered catching Professor McGonagall doing just that once.
"Also, the first person to enter a household on New Year should have dark hair. The festivities are undoubtedly going to be wondrous at Hogsmeade but, alas, we are not to leave the castle. Still, it does not mean that we do not celebrate on our side the end of a well-spent year and the beginning of a new one."
Dumbledore had been right Harry couldn't help thinking while he explained how they were handling the festivities. He had been right for it has been months since Harry has been in the past and he now had to celebrate 1897. It had been months and yet Harry still wasn't close to a solution to go back to 1996. And now that 1896 was taking its last bow one terrible thought came to him.
What if it wasn't actually a matter of months, but a matter of years?
"How are your researches going?" Harry suddenly asked before dinner.
While Albus hadn't mentioned anything to the wizard, he supposed it was obvious he was working on something. It was only a pity his work for Transfiguration Today wasn't going as smoothly as he had hoped.
He gave a little sigh and closed his notebook. "Between you and me, I must confess I am feeling quite down. I have no doubt I will succeed eventually but when? That, I confess, I am quite unsure."
Harry winced and looked away.
"What about you?" he asked. "I have seen you are also working on something."
He had to admit he was quite curious about this. Several times he had wanted to read the wizard's notes but it seemed like the other was making a point in always destroying his notes before anybody could get them.
"Any progress on your end?"
Harry heavily sighed. "I'm stuck. I'm stuck and I feel like I'm wasting my time."
"That is not true," Albus protested. "I know it may look like it but I can guarantee you that you are not." Seeing the other was still feeling down, he tried again. "Have you ever had to solve any mystery before?"
Harry snorted. "A few."
"I am taking an educated guess I admit, but I suppose you did not solve them immediately." Seeing Harry nodding he continued, "And yet you have, have you not?"
"That's different," the Gryffindor protested.
"How is it so? From where I'm standing it is quite the same thing."
"W-Well… I-I've always got help. My friend, Hermione, she was the one doing that kind of work. And without her and Ron, I'd have never managed to do it. If they were- If they were here then maybe but-"
He stopped, swallowed and looked away, jaw tense.
Not for the first time Albus wondered if these friends of his were not dead. While it was true it was using the present to refer to them, the melancholic face he had whenever he was thinking about them often gave that impression.
It would also explain why the other wizard had come and who had seen being murdered.
"I do not know them," he slowly tried, "so I may be mistaken but I do believe they would say you are selling yourself short."
"Probably," he mumbled. "Certainly."
"And I have no doubt they would tell you that you can do it."
Harry stilled and turned his head in his direction. For a moment, he didn't say anything and just numbly looked ahead of him, as if he couldn't even see Albus.
He then bitterly chuckled. "They would, wouldn't they? They always thought that kind of things about me." He shook his head. "Sorry, it mustn't have been easy to hang with me these last few days. I don't like 1896 much, honestly."
"In this case, it is a good thing that we are entering into a new year. Let 1897 be a year for new beginning and success in our endeavours."
Harry gave a small smile. "I can toast to that at least."
During dinner, it wasn't without pleasure that Albus refilled his plate with shortbread once more as everybody waited for the countdown. Once the plates had finally vanished, he took a flute of butterbeer that had appeared in front of him and got up and looked at the giant clock that had been put above the doors.
When the students began chanting the countdown, Albus noticed Harry's voice was trembling.
"You can do it, Harry," Hermione's voice whispered in the back of his mind as he turned the page of yet another book on divination. "I know you can."
He sighed. "I hope you are right," he couldn't help whispering. "I really do." Because, on his end, he wasn't quite believing it.
The more he was working on it, the more Harry could see divination's problems and his had many similarities. For example, foreseeing a few minutes ahead was rather easy but going further could be troublesome for too many parameters got in play and the slightest change could snowball until the future foreseen became irrelevant. Sadly, he had yet to find something truly ground-breaking for his problem.
Harry had hoped Albus would have better luck on his side, but he should have known that had been highly optimistic of him to assume he could do it with his eyes closed. Albus Dumbledore was many things: a genius, a powerful and great wizard but even somebody like him couldn't just fix the mess Harry had put himself in as if it was nothing.
No, if Harry wanted a fighting chance to go home as quickly as possible, he'd have to put his weight on it and work his arse off too. Only that or a miracle would do. After all, it wasn't as if they had any expert on time travel on hand.
Caution is key when it comes to dealing with the future, the author warned. For Time is a well-known trickster and we must all bow to her. Often those who have tried to cheat her discovered to their greatest horror they were nothing but her puppets to play and discard once their purposes has be fulfilled. The fact we have been granted a vision of what tomorrow might look like does not mean it will necessarily come to pass, nor does it mean we truly understood what it meant the first time.
Never assume anything, do not make the folly of believing the future is set or that you know which events will result in the future you seek. Do not underestimate even the seemingly most trivial thing; the devil, after all, is in the details.
The devil…
"Let's be honest, you need me if you want to survive here. Or even find a way home."
Harry abruptly closed the book and violently shook his head to chase the image of Voldemort his mind had just conjured, horrified at what he had just considered.
He didn't need his help, he tried to convince himself. He didn't need his help and Albus was right about what his friends would say to him. He could do it, he was going to do it.
Why would the dark wizard -or whatever that vision of him had been- even help him anyway?
But, Harry couldn't help thinking as he was putting the book back on its shelf, if Voldemort was as clever as Professor Dumbledore claimed him to be, then he certainly knew how time travel worked. He had to know more than them at least.
If he could just find out what he knew…
Harry abruptly stilled and shook his head again, forcing himself not to go there.
This was pure madness. This was making a deal with the devil with no guarantee it would actually change anything. No matter how dire the situation may look like in the future, Harry could never allow himself to go there.
It was because he had trusted his visions he got in this mess; what would happen if he made that mistake again?
When the winter holidays were finally over and everybody was back to school, it seemed like the entire year had woken up and horrifyingly realized they were going to sit their OWLs in a few months. As a result, it wasn't rare for Albus to find himself comforting a housemate who got a bad mark and feared for his future.
"Professor Prince always marks severely," Albus consoled Elphias after class. "A Dreadful from him is as good as an Exceeded Expectations from another professor. Same with Professor O'Connor, really. I have no doubt you will do splendidly for the big day. What truly matters is not to never fail, it is to always try again until you succeed."
Elphias wetly snorted. "Have you ever failed at something, Albus?"
Albus lowly chuckled. "As a matter of fact, I have. Or have you forgotten my duel against Harry?"
No matter how much he wanted to have another duel with the Gryffindor, it seemed like the other wizard didn't share this sentiment. In fact, it often seemed like Harry was doing everything not to have to face him again. Now that he had defeated the best student in class and told everybody Albus wasn't 'that good', it seemed like he had lost any interest in the whole thing.
The one duel he wanted to have in Defence Against the Dark Arts, and he still hadn't got it.
Elphias seemed to read his mind. "I'm sure you'll have get your duel, eventually. That day, you will win."
Albus smiled. "I hope you are right. "
"Professor Merrythought is teaching you duelling privately, isn't she?" he added and Albus couldn't help blinking. "I am sure you are far better now."
He had thought nobody knew. "Professor Merrythought is an excellent duellist, and I like to believe I've progressed," he acknowledged. "However, I am well aware I still have a long way to go."
Professor Merrythought said what he lacked the most was experience. But sometimes he could spot a little sigh when Albus was casting a certain spell, or when he would ask her to teach him a few.
"Less is more," she usually said. "I know you know many curses and counter-jinxes. You certainly know more than I do, in fact. You do not need to learn more, Mister Dumbledore. What you need to do now is to go back to the basics and master them, completely."
So now he had to try to win a duel against Merrythought with only five basic spells. And if he often doubted that was possible, Merrythought seemed to believe it was.
Albus lightly shook his head. "But enough about me, why don't you show me what you did not understand?"
Elphias sighed and opened his satchel. "You must have enough of everybody crying on you," he murmured as he handed him his copy. "I don't know how you do it really."
"I do not mind, really. I rather enjoy it, to be honest. And you are a dear friend so of course I will help you to get these Exceeded Expectations in Potions and Transfiguration."
There were of course other reasons for his willingness to help Elphias and Harry, even Horace, but he supposed they didn't really need to know that.
He read Elphias' copy and hummed. "It looks like you misunderstood Galenus on the matter of a potion's dynameis. Now, if you consider…"
"Expelliarmus!"
The wand left Aberforth's hand and flew in Harry's direction.
"Is 'Expelliarmus' the only charm you know?" Aberforth grumbled as Harry gave him his wand back.
As promised, Harry was teaching Aberforth a couple of curses for his help with occlumency and was even helping him with his Defence homework. Sometimes however, the younger Dumbledore wasn't satisfied with just leaning spells and the two would head to the Room of Requirement and duel in the room that would one day house the D.A.
"What's so amazing with it anyway? It's only a disarming charm. Not very useful really. What if your life is actually on the line and you're facing something much more powerful than you?"
Harry hesitated. "It actually saved my life," he quietly replied.
Aberforth didn't have anything to say after that. And he didn't make any protest when Harry corrected his wand movement for the impedimenta jinx.
It was quite a relief, to be honest.
The Third Year wasn't stupid at all, Harry even believed he was smarter than him. Aberforth Dumbledore unfortunately was as stubborn as a goat and often refused to listen when others were telling him he was wrong. As a result, it wasn't really surprising that he had problems with class and everybody believed him to be stupid.
When Harry had remarked this flaw to his brother, Albus had sighed and wistfully smiled. "There are very few people Aberforth readily listen to. It happens I am not one of them. He seems to make a point in doing the complete opposite of what I ask him to, in fact."
If Albus Dumbledore himself didn't quite know how to handle his brother, Harry barely stood a chance to convince Aberforth to do as he said. So anything was welcome to make him do it.
"You're a fast learner," he remarked once the Third Year successfully cursed the dummy. "The others took longer to learn that one."
"The D.A., right?" Seeing Harry blinking, he snorted. "Weasley said you told him you were part of a defence group. He thinks the people teaching you were excellent duellists but you were the teacher there, weren't you?"
Harry dazedly blinked. "Y-Yes but how-"
The Third Year shrugged. "It's obvious I'm not the first you teach. Now, the real question is this: what does D.A. stand for?"
When he turned to the older wizard, it was to see the older boy horrifyingly looking at him. Aberforth raised his eyebrows.
"Dumb- Defence Association."
"That took too long to be true." A grin slowly formed on the younger Dumbledore's face. "It's something embarrassing, isn't it? Now what could it be? The Daft Association? The Dark Army?"
Harry spluttered and Aberforth snickered. "Speaking of embarrassing, I should tell you that your butterfly has officially be named Eilir."
Harry spluttered. "Wh-What kind of name is that?"
"Welsh, apparently." Aberforth paused. "It's still alive, isn't it?"
Harry shrugged. "Doesn't fly much these days, but yeah. Still there."
Harry would have thought the butterfly would have kicked the bucket but it was still alive. It rarely left the dormitories these days, probably because it was among the warmest place in Gryffindor tower, but it seemed to survive winter just fine.
When Harry had pointed that out, Albus had hummed and told him it wasn't a particularly normal reaction and he would have expected it to hibernate. And that was in his best case scenario.
"Your brother said I have overpowered my healing spell," he explained. "Given him too much magic. As a result, it is possible that it expanded its life span and changed its biological clock."
When he had heard these words, Harry hadn't helped ticking.
But Aberforth only shrugged. "It's a good thing we picked a name then. If it's there to stay."
"Yeah… Yeah, I suppose you're right." Harry glanced at the dummy on the floor and went to make it stand again. "Now, curse it again."
He didn't have to tell him twice.
"Alright then, does anybody has any question?" Professor Mesmer asked as he had finished handing the class their last test.
It wasn't without some satisfaction that Harry realized he got a good mark.
Black raised his hand. "You wrote I had 100%," he began once the teacher allowed him to talk, "and yet you wrote I had an A in the margin."
"That I did," he confirmed.
"Why did you give me an Acceptable and not an Outstanding then?"
"Your copy wasn't standing out. The same way, I expected you to answer my questions correctly so you didn't exceed my expectations, did you?"
Black blankly looked at him and Mesmer shrugged.
"In June you will be asked to predict the future of one examiner. And as you know there is no written portion in Divination. Meaning, and it is better for you to understand this now, that pure profanes will judge your skills in fifteen minutes and it will be extremely subjective. It's not as if your skill can be seen, or that your examiner will have concrete proof of your talent. Why, I had to lie for what used to be your Ordinary Wizarding Level to get a passing mark. A little advice: if somebody asks you if he will have a long life, the answer is never 'no'."
He paused for a moment as if considering something and shook his head.
"If you want an Exceed expectations for the big day, your copy is the strict minimum. If you want an Outstanding, you will need to bring more to the table. Something truly special that will set you apart from the rest. You didn't so I couldn't give you an O."
Black looked at his copy and sighed. "Understood, sir."
"It's all about perception, Mister Black," Mesmer sympathetically told him. "Everything is a matter of perception in this world. You can be the best in the room, if the others do not see it they will believe you average. You have foreseen something? Only you can see what you see. How will you read what your tea leaves show when you may potentially have dozen interpretations on hand? And when you've made your choice, how will you present it to the person asking you what his future is going to be like?" He snapped his fingers. "It's these little things that makes one truly great in divination, the Sight can only bring you so far. So if you want your Outstanding and to continue your journey in the troubled waters that is divination, I'm afraid you will have to work on this, Mister Black."
The Slytherin sighed and nodded.
"Now, any more question? No? Then we're back to our lessons and we will begin studying pallomancy, the art of divining by using a pendulum."
Excited whispers began to fill the room and Professor Mesmer's lips curled.
"The pendulum has many uses as I've showed you several times: you can use one for locating magical places and calculate quite accurately its magical resonance, find somebody who went missing, hypnosis… In this class, we will only focus on its use to the art of divination. The pendulums are in the box on the shelf; pick the one that draws you the most and when you have come back to your place."
Harry couldn't help wincing when as he waited for his turn a few students began waving their pendulums in front of a classmate's face and pretending to put them in trance. He stubbornly looked at the back of the one in front of him. When it was his turn he didn't even glance at the content of the box and took the first one he felt.
"Look like somebody is traumatized," Mesmer remarked when he came to his table and saw him pointedly looking at his hands, the pendulum as far from him as possible. "This is not my fault, I hope."
Harry didn't answer.
Professor Mesmer seemed to consider something and slowly shook his head. "It takes skills to use hypnosis on an unsuspecting subject. At your level, none of you can do this. Besides you can break the trance now, can you?"
Harry frowned and suddenly realized why the man had said that. "I haven't given your book back," he horrifyingly realized.
"That you have not," he confirmed. "It's quite fortunate I gave you one of mine and not one from the library or our dear librarian would have been very displeased with me."
"I'll give it back," he promised. "I haven't got it on me right now but..."
"Why don't you hand it to me after class?" he proposed. "After dinner for example. In the meantime, try using the pendulum, or at least study it. It is quite a useful artefact and it would be a pity to ignore it because of a bad first impression."
Harry waited for the man to leave and see the Slytherin side of the class and finally turned his attention on the little pendulum innocently lying on his desk.
At first glance, it seemed to be just a metallic disc at the end of a string and Harry didn't know how different it could be from a muggle one. After a moment of hesitation, he took it in his hand and looked more closely.
The string was silver-like and so thin it seemed to vanish once you let the pendulum swing. As for the metallic disc on its end, one side was filled with very little symbols while the other one seemed to have a spiral engraved.
The spiral moved and Harry startled. Hurriedly, he posed the artefact on the table and shakily breathed, heart racing.
For a moment, Harry could have sworn what he had seen had been a snake.
After throwing the pendulum back to the box after class, Harry pretended none of this had happened for the rest of the day. So it was with some annoyance that he remembered he was supposed to go back to the Divination classroom, if only to hand Professor Mesmer his book back.
After dinner, he entered the classroom once again and handed the wizard his book, thanking him for letting him borrow it.
Professor Mesmer put it on the table behind him. "You made a valid point. When you know the future, you must protect your knowledge. Mind you, occlumency can only get you so far. Do not make the mistake of getting complacent because you've learned some mind art."
Harry couldn't help frowning at that and Mesmer slowly smirked. "People rarely attempt using legimency, Mister Potter. When they want to know something, they always begin by watching you. Like that muggle character, they start analysing every word you say, trying to induce why you acted such way in a peculiar situation. Take Professor Binns for example," he started explaining. "Seeing his ghost coming to teach, everybody should have been shocked. So why was this Potter boy so unfazed?"
Harry blinked as the wizard pretended to think.
"Maybe he's that unaffected, some will say," he mused. "He barely knew him after all. Maybe that's just the way he is, others will try to explain. But when people believe you to be a seer? He must have foreseen it!" He snapped his fingers. "There we go. If we closely watch for his reactions -or lack of it in this instance- we will succeed in getting a glimpse of what he knows. Let's watch his every move and we will know the future."
Harry tensed.
"And then there are those who are actually good at this. Those who know how the Sight work. Hearing your lack of reaction, they will tick for entirely different reasons. After all, Cuthbert Binns is a creature of habit. Any deviation in his routine is unheard of. Meaning that if you were to See his ghost in his classroom you would be utterly unable to tell anybody when your vision took place. Meaning that even in the best cases you should have paused." He shook his head and ignored Harry's white face. "No, close but not quite. From this point there are only two possibilities left."
"One," Mesmer said as he raised a finger, "you killed poor Binns."
"What?"
"Not as unlikely as you probably think," he remarked. "An overeager wizard who wants to prove he is a seer predicts the future and then insures his 'vision' gets fulfilled as to not been discovered a fraud? It happens. It happens quite often, in fact."
"I didn't kill Binns!" Harry shouted in horror.
"But you didn't save him either, did you? When a student comes to tell you he is a seer and has seen a teacher's death, one of the first things he ask you is: can we prevent this? He is not so flippant about using that knowledge to prove you he is the real deal."
Harry helplessly shook his head. "I didn't- How can you-"
"Oh I know you didn't kill him," Mesmer replied. "Do you think I would have let you leave my classroom had I thought you would do it? But you need to understand why these sorts of predictions are very dangerous to make. You cannot say these sort of things without considering how they may be interpreted. Because divination may be popular these days, do you actually believe the Wizengamot will not seriously consider what I've just said?"
"Option two," Mesmer began as he raised another finger, his electric blue eyes intently looking at a very still Harry, "is that you did not react to Professor Binns' ghost because you were following a routine yourself. One where seeing him in unicolour is not only unsurprising but very boring. And that you added he will keep teaching because you personally know this to be true. You did not even consider to save Binns from this fate because it didn't even cross your mind this man could be anything but very dead. So you see, Mister Potter, even if I hadn't known from the beginning you were a 'time-traveller', I would have managed just fine to start considering you are from the future."
