Small note for fans of After the Battle of Hogwarts: it is being re-written! See Hogwarts Tales: The Great Prophecy!

The Wood Between the Worlds

Harry Potter lay on the small bunk inside his room in the Chamber of Secrets, gazing up at the ceiling, trying once more to formulate a plot to escape. He had climbed out of Salazar's eye every day since being trapped in the Chamber of Secrets, and followed every tunnel, tried every exit, and attempted to break several doors in order to leave the chamber and return to the school above, but thus far he hadn't been successful. Pulling himself out of bed, Harry scratched another line onto his tally that he had been keeping on the limestone walls. Today would mark the end of his sixth week in the Chamber, and the solitude was beginning to aggravate him. How long was he supposed to wait here whilst those creatures in masks were out hunting Ginny? How long until he would finally be free of this hell? Harry longed to be found, or to escape, or even for the strange Headmaster to return, just so that he had someone to talk to.

As it did every morning, a breakfast appeared on a small table in the centre of the room, and despondently, Harry helped himself to a plate of toast and raspberry jam, before washing it down with a steaming mug of tea. Just as he had begun thinking of climbing out of Salazar's eye and down to the Chamber below, he heard a sharp pop behind him that caused him to knock over the last of his tea. He turned to see the man who had rescued him weeks previously, and for a moment Harry had forgotten how to speak as he gazed into those cold and piercing eyes. The Professor was dressed in fine emerald robes, with a matching pointed hat. At his side, he carried an object with which Harry was very familiar; the Pensieve.

"It's about damn time!" Harry hissed as words finally formed in his mouth.

"Yes, I have been rather pre-occupied," the Headmaster replied with the tone of someone who had simply misplaced a library book, "But now it is time for your lessons to begin."

"Lessons?" Harry bellowed, "The only lessons I need are lessons in escaping this place and getting back to Ginny!"

"Ha, young fool!" the man laughed, "Do you truly think that you would be able to get back to her even if I let you out? The whole purpose of taking you out of your current time was to trap you in one place. Now, sit down, and let us move onto matters of greater importance." Reluctantly, Harry sat on the bed as the professor placed the pensieve onto the small table and poured a bottle of silvery liquid into the pensieve. Harry could make out a red sky in the scene below the surface of the water. "I believe you know how this works?" The professor asked. Harry sank his face into the surface of the pensieve, and his stomach lurched as he fell through the sky.

He found himself standing on a muddy path, and in the distance, he could see the ruins of what must have been a once grand castle perched upon a clifftop. Harry continued up the path to toward the ruins of the castle. Weeds and rubble made his path harder, but eventually Harry stood beneath a great arch which must have once been the entrance to the castle. Vines and creeping plants had begun to overtake the stones, and a grand fountain stood empty of water, its décor cracked and scarred. Harry saw large holes in some of the brick that held up what was left of the walls and at once he knew that this castle had been destroyed in a battle of the largest scale. Out behind the castle, the sky glowed an unnatural red, and the clouds looked like great clumps of ash. A forest beneath the hills was barren and dead, the trees reduced to clusters of charred, grey wood, and a lake bed lay dry and dusty. Harry ventured further into the ruins, feeling as though somehow, he knew his way around this castle, though he was sure he had never seen it before. He made his way into a courtyard that was overgrown with weeds, and littered with rubble and pieces of broken glass. On the ground lay pieces of armour, pierced with holes so large that Harry dreaded to think what kind of weapons had caused them. As he continued, Harry found a small wand on the ground, but he could not pick it up. This place had been destroyed by magic.

As Harry reached the end of the courtyard, he came face to face with a statue. The majority of the statue had been blasted to smithereens, and only the base was fully intact. Harry guessed that the statue was of a small boy, although it was hard to tell as half of the statues body had been blasted off. Beside him there was a trunk, and on top of the trunk an owl was perched, its wings spread, ready to take flight. Harry lowered his gaze to the base of the statue. There was an engraving in the base of the statue, but it was worn and cracked too, so Harry bent down closer, and tried to read.

'Hog is my home' - HA J MES POT ER 1 0 – 1999

It only took Harry a moment to work out the missing letters. The statue was of himself, and if the writing on the base was anything to go by, then, although it seemed impossible, unthinkable even, Harry was standing in the ruins of Hogwarts Castle. He looked around him and imagined the castle he knew. The great walls, the towers that pierced the blue sky, the green grass that rolled down to the Black Lake. The Forbidden Forest with its lush evergreens, and Hagrid's Hut with its little chimney releasing puffs of smoke. How could this have happened? He wondered aloud, shedding a small tear.

"Terrible, isn't it?" A voice said behind him. Harry turned to see the Headmaster standing a few feet away, gazing out over the grounds. He too, looked sad, showing the first emotions since Harry had met him. "This is Hogwarts in the year two-thousand and twenty-five."

"But that's impossible!" Harry said, "That's over twenty years from now!"

"Have I not already proven my ability to travel through time?" The professor countered, "What you are seeing is my memory from the future. This is the future of Hogwarts if we fail to upset the Great Prophecy."

"Why are you showing me this?" Harry asked angrily.

"I would've thought that obvious. What place, more than anywhere else in the whole world, matters the most to you? Where was it that you learned who you are, Harry Potter? What place have you always sworn to protect and cherish?" Harry nodded his understanding, and waited to hear the rest of the Professor's tale. "Right now, great evil looms over the entire world, but the majority don't even sense that it's there. This so-called Wizards United Liberation Front is just the beginning. This," he gestured around him, "is what our future currently looks like if we stand by and do nothing. So, before we go any further, will you swear to do all you can to overturn the Great Prophecy? Will you do all you can to protect the world from further harm? Will you do what you must, Harry Potter?"

"You say you plan to upset the Great Prophecy. How do you plan to do it?" As he finished his question, Harry felt the world around him go dark, and his feet rushed upwards from the ground. A moment later he was back on the bunk in the Chamber of Secrets, the Professor looming over him.

"I'm so glad you asked," The professor responded. "The prophecy refers to an ancient sorceress who would bring chaos and destruction across the world. Each time she has been defeated by the Knights, she was locked away in an artefact known as the Grimhold. This Grimhold can contain her power for a great many years, but eventually she will break free and regain her strength. My plan is to trap her so deeply in the Grimhold that she may never, ever return."

"You plan to kill her."

"It's a little more complicated than that," the professor replied in monotone. Then, the headmaster began telling every detail of his plan as Harry listened on in wonder, and thought of the seemingly impossible tasks that lay ahead. Once Harry had heard the details of the Professors plan, he asked him how he had come to learn the ability to apparate through time. "You have heard, I presume from your History of Magic classes about the Wood Between the Worlds?" Harry racked his brains, wishing for once that he had actually paid attention in Professor Binns' class. The Wood Between the Worlds connects our world with all others, the Professor explained, we are not alone in the universe. There are whole other worlds, where lions can talk, gods of thunder can summon lighting by swinging their hammers, and men in capes fly across the sky. It is here where one can achieve the ability to travel through time.

"Is it possible to learn how to apparate to the Wood?" Harry asked.

"Of course, how do you think you came to be in this chamber?"

"Will you teach me?"

"Perhaps one day I will teach you how," the Professor replied, "but first, you must learn to control your magic without the use of a wand. It is essential to my plan. If, you master this, then, and only then, I will teach you to apparate into the wood. Agree?" Harry sighed deeply, and nodded a reluctant agreement. If, somehow, he could master wandless magic, then he would be able to return to the very moment that he was attacked, and this time he would put everything right.

"So, can we get started?"

"Oh yes," the Headmaster replied, "but not here. You see, I am much too busy to train you myself. No, I can think of only one man with both the skills and the free time to train you. Together, we must journey to nineteen sixty-five." Harry was going to protest, but something stopped him. He wasn't sure if it was desperation for company, or curiosity about the Professor, but he stopped nonetheless, and took the professors arm. Once again, he found himself flying through a rainbow tunnel, viewing images and scenes of different places as he went. A few minutes later, Harry's feet fell softly onto lush green grass. He felt incredibly warm and sleepy all of a sudden, and his face felt into a sort of slack grin. Around him, trees towered as high as skyscrapers, completely blocking out the sky with their perfectly green leaves. On the forest floor, there were what appeared to be a hundred shallow pools filled with a clear water, but as Harry looked closer, he could see that the pools weren't shallow at all, but rather deep, and each one showed images of a different place. Some pools looked down at vast cities with towering buildings, and thousands of cars, whilst others showed rolling sand dunes, or small islands surrounded by turquoise waters. Somehow, looking into the pools was very similar to staring into the bottom of the pensieve.

"Come, we haven't much time," the Professor said. Harry followed behind the professor, who, by contrast to Harry, wore a strained expression on his face. His skin had turned incredibly pale too, and Harry wondered for a moment whether or not he was getting sick. The professor led Harry quickly through the woods, past what seemed like a hundred more pools, each big enough for only a few people to stand in, and all the way to a clearing in the forest. At the far edge of the clearing stood an enormous tower made from grey stone. The tower seemed to have clocks hung all around the outside, giving it a rather strange appearance. At the foot of the tower were three pools, much larger than the rest. Each pool seemed to be fed by a river that came from the tower itself, one gold, one red, and one a glittering green.

"What are those?" Harry asked pointing to the three pools.

"You have, I presume, realised that we are in the Wood Between the Worlds?" Harry nodded. "Each pool will take you to a different world if you jump into its waters. The three pools in front of us transport you to the three original worlds that appeared the moment the multi-verse was created; Elysium, Valhalla, and Eden. The tower that stands above them is known as the Tower Between the Times, and it is here we must go in order to return to nineteen sixty-five." The Professor's tone told Harry that he shouldn't ask any more questions, and so they walked past the pools in silence to the foot of the tower. Harry risked a glance into the green pool, and saw things that were so wonderful they couldn't even be put into words, but he also had a niggling feeling that if you jumped into any of the three pools beneath the tower, you would never be able to return. Inside the tower, which seemed to be filled with such a variety of ticking clocks that it was uncomfortable and noisy, they met a small man who Harry would guess to be at least ten thousand years old. The wrinkles in his face were so deep that they seemed like Grand Canyon's stretching across his cheeks, but his eyes seemed to hold oceans, or even entire galaxies. Harry presumed that he was some kind of gatekeeper, and he had probably seen things Harry had never dreamed of.

"Sir," the professor addressed the gatekeeper, "our world faces great peril. By your grace, this man must travel to the year of our world, nineteen sixty-five, in order to learn that which might save us. Please, grant us the ability to send him back." The gatekeeper never spoke, but made a sort of disgruntled sigh, and then stood up on his tiny legs and toddled over to an old grandfather clock. He opened the back of the clock, and turned some dials to wind the clock back. Then, he slumped back into his chair and fell asleep.

"Come," the professor said, and Harry followed him outside. Where there was once a grassy clearing, there now sat two extra pools of water. One showed Hogwarts under a bright blue sky, and the other showed a dark tower in the middle of a thunderstorm. "That pool," the professor said, pointing at the pool with the dark tower and confirming Harry's worst suspicions, "will take you where you need to go. He waits for you in the highest room, at the top of the tower." Without another word, the professor stepped into the pool that showed a picture of Hogwarts, and vanished. Harry stood for a long moment, gazing at Hogwarts under a bright blue sky, and imagined jumping into the pool and running from the strange professor into the Forest and escaping, but again, something held him back. Gritting his teeth, Harry stepped into the other pool. The water felt ice cold, but he had barely waded in up to his shins before he was suddenly sucked under the water. Once again, Harry was flying through a rainbow coloured tube. It seemed as though time was slowing down, and then suddenly, Harry found himself sprawled out onto hard gravel. Rain soaked his back and blurred his glasses. He gazed up to the sky to see a tower made of jet-black rock jutting out from a terrifyingly high cliff face. At the entrance to the door, an inscription was carved right into the tower; Für das höhere Wohl. Harry didn't need to be fluent in German to make the translation. For the Greater Good.

Author's Notes

Hi everyone,

I'm back with another chapter, and I should have another one for you in a few days.

I was a little disappointed by the response to my last chapter, and it put me off writing for a while. I realise that not everyone has time to read or write a review etc... and I also totally understand that people may not enjoy every chapter, but I felt like a crucial chapter of the story was just kinda ignored. I will keep writing regardless, but if you have the time, writing a little note at the end of the chapter like 'Good chapter!' or 'Maybe you could have done this differently...' would be very much appreciated.

In any case, I hope you enjoyed this chapter! I know that it has a lot of info to cram into a very short space, but hopefully I didn't lose anybody! As ever, I have a couple questions for you!

1) Where is Harry now, and who will be his teacher? (Special shoutout in next chapter to everyone who gets this right!)

2) Who do you think Professor Breckenridge is speaking of when he mentions Talking Lions, Gods of Thunder, and Men in Capes? Do you think he's met them?

3) Any theories as to who Professor Breckenridge really is?

Thanks again for reading, I'll see you in the next chapter!

IronManRidingaNimbus