Fair warning: Colorful language- rated M for a reason.
Chapter 7
"You utter git!" The blond waif declared angrily.
'…what?' Harry thought dumbly, lifting a hand to his cheek (which was starting to hurt quite badly) and staring at the unexpected apparition in shock. She waited for a moment, hands on her hips and toe tapping the floor impatiently, seeming to want an answer.
'What was that? A slap? Why? Who is she? What's going on?' Harry thought helplessly, staring as his mouth moved wordlessly and he tried to overcome his shock. In some detached corner of his mind, he noted that she was wearing a very fetching white nightgown, and that she didn't have any shoes on.
"What, can't you speak anymore Harry? I thought you had a good thing going with the constant library research and repeating first days before dinner? I never really liked dinner anyway. Why did you feel the need to get yourself killed over and over right at the very beginning of the day? Have you gone as loony as me, 'Mr. Potter'?" Harry could actually hear the sarcastic quotations on the 'Mr. Potter' as she hissed the last statement much like Snape did.
She laughed brittly, her turnip earrings bobbling with the motion.
"Have you any idea how annoying it is to wake up and live nine minutes before being forced to repeat it over and over without any indication that this time wasn't going to be the one with a tenth minute?" She asked irritably. "Wait, don't answer that."
Harry closed his mouth that he had opened to at least try and respond.
"Of course you don't know, you were the one making the loop repeat so you must have had at least SOME indication that the loop was going to restart again! I know you didn't leave the Gryffindor tower since I've been coming up here to try and catch you and ask you to stop for nearly 150 loops, so just what were you doing?!" She growled.
She started yelling.
"Did you find another basilisk or something in the Gryffindor tower and decide that you just had to kill it in true Gryffindor fashion?! Was the dragon at the end of the month not a dangerous enough foe?! Did Hermione start to bore you or refuse to fuck you and did that fact scare you enough to try and escape the loop by sheer persistence? Nothing I know of has a 1/200 chance of success and doesn't require either library research or advice from other people to figure out what is going wrong, so just what did you think you were doing resetting the loop 201 times without even going to breakfast once?! There were pancakes for Gods' sake!"
"And don't give me crap about that number being wrong because I would know! I counted!" She stopped yelling, but her rant was no less intense for it. "Your first two loops were month-long ones that I quite enjoyed since it almost wasn't like being in a loop at all. Then you started doing short, one day loops, exactly 94 of them, which I also quite enjoyed since it's always interesting to follow a different person each loop and see what they do with their day. Have you any idea how many people in this castle have sex each day? Nearly ten a day… on average! Five pairs! And I can't get any of that since I have a reputation as 'Loony' Lovegood at this blasted castle! Most of the people who want me would be assholes like Malfoy and his idiot brusiers who would want to use me like a toy and then Obliviate me afterwards, which would make the whole experience pointless! Not to say that the experience would be worthwhile anyway, since Malfoy's dick is tiny, but that's beside the point!"
"The point is that it's been nearly a year now since I've had a good cock and I'M… FUCKING… HORNY!" She finished with a scream.
"I was planning on going Snorkack hunting in Sweden next summer and they have the most delicious men in their red-light districts…"
She took a breath and let it out slowly, "But I digress. Next, you started on these damn fifteen minute loops, which I wouldn't have minded despite the fact that they're far too short to actually do anything with, but you didn't even let me eat pancakes before you reset the loop! I would know! I tried running down to the great hall and to get pancakes but you reset the damn loop before I could even take one bite! There was whipped cream Harry! WHIPPED! CREAM!"
The blond seemed nearly in tears over this pronouncement.
Harry's back was pressed firmly against the wall from when she had loomed over him during her angry phase and forced him back by sheer strength of her ire (nevermind the seemingly irrelevant fact that she was shorter than him by a full head and would have found it difficult to loom over anyone).
"Er… I'm sorry." Harry said after a moment of regaining his equilibrium from the verbal assault.
"Oh that's all right then." She said, suddenly dry-eyed and, to all appearances, perfectly happy as she held out a hand. "I don't believe we've been introduced in a timeline you remember. I'm Luna Lovegood, third year Ravenclaw."
Harry's eyebrows disappeared into his hairline as he took her hand and shook it tentatively.
"Harry Potter, fourth year Gryffindor." He said, mirroring her introduction.
Luna seemed more than a little unstable, but she had said some pretty strange things that made him think she knew about the loops, and if-
"Of course I know about the loops."
Harry froze as icewater surged through his veins. Did she read his mind? But his spell didn't go off and he didn't feel a Legilimency probe or scan! Would she be a threat too? Was she one of Dumbledore's pawns?! What-?
"Stop." Luna said with a serenity and inner peace that instantly demanded (and received) Harry's compliance.
"I haven't read your mind." She said calmly, and Harry instantly believed her despite the clear answer to a question he had voiced only in his thoughts. "I'm a master of psychology, so I just guessed what you were thinking. No doubt you have acquired considerable Occlumency defenses after that first repeat where Dumbledore Obliviated you."
"How did you-?" Harry started.
"-know he Obliviated you?" She finished with a smile, "It wasn't hard to guess, seeing as how you didn't appear to know there was a dragon when you went to face it the second time and you spent all that time in the library studying all the wrong things to face a dragon. Besides, who else would know and control what goes on in a school better than the headmaster?"
That was a good point. A very good point. In fact-
"Did the headmaster know who put my name in the cup?" Harry asked curiously.
Luna looked at him as though he were an idiot.
"Know? Of course he knew." She said with a frown. "He knows right now, actually, that your name will come out of the cup and that it's a plot to resurrect Voldemort. Why do you think he kept Crouch behind in the loop when he Obliviated you? And before you ask: yes, he knew that Quirrel was possessed your first year, yes, he knew it was a basilisk in your second year, yes, he knew that the diary was a piece of dark magic from the instant it crossed the castle wards, and yes, he knew Sirius was innocent from the very beginning. He didn't know about the troll though, there was a loophole in the wards at the time that allowed for that. It actually annoyed Dumbledore something terrible when he realized that he'd made that loophole himself." She giggled.
Harry stood, his mind spinning with revelations as he started to piece together an even bigger picture than he had ever imagined, that was even uglier than he had anticipated.
"Why-?" He started.
"You're no fun since you don't know things." Luna said with a pout. "I'm leaving before you ask more dumb questions." She turned and started walking away.
"Don't bother me again until you're a little less hopeless or you want to shag." She called back, "I know you're hiding a nice big… nevermind. Please do try to keep the loops to an hour or more if you insist on short loops would you? I can get pancakes and whipped cream that way."
She paused at the corner of the hallway.
"Oh, and you might want to restart this loop," She gestured to the sides of the halls, "The portraits and ghosts spy for the headmaster, and even if he somehow doesn't already know about this, it'll be all over the school by the end of breakfast because of them." She jabbed her finger at the crowd of Gryffindors behind Harry who were gaping at her like goldfish.
"The gossip mill here is quite well-oiled. Dumbledore will come down hard on you if he learns what we talked about here. He knows time loopers exist but he's never managed to get ahold of one. They are awfully hard to keep ahold of. I doubt you'll remember your own name this time."
She vanished around the corner.
Harry gawked.
She popped back around the corner.
"And you should also restart it because my throat hurts from all that yelling. I don't really want to wait for it to get better."
She vanished around the corner again.
There was a beat of silence.
"Loony's never acted like that before," someone said from the hushed crowd behind Harry. "That was really weird."
"Yeah," someone else responded, "She was practically scary there at the beginning."
There was a murmur of general agreement before Harry heard running feet echoing down the hallway.
"OUT OF THE WAY!" Harry heard Dumbledore bellow from somewhere beyond the crowd.
"I gave battle in vain, I need to reloop." Harry said quickly.
Everything went black as Harry heard Dumbledore yell and something impacted his chest.
Harry opened his eyes and blinked several times as his drowsiness vanished. He stared up uncomprehendingly at the ceiling of his four-poster canopy for a moment, then he sat up suddenly.
'That was WAAAYYY too close.' Harry thought as he raised a hand to his chest uncertainly. 'I need a shorter activation phrase, that one nearly got me captured! And what was with that response time? Dumbledore came so fast! He can't possibly be spying all the time can he?'
'And what about Luna?' Harry wondered with utter confusion, 'Who is she? WHAT is she? Is she responsible for the loops?'
No, Luna clearly wasn't responsible for them or she wouldn't be complaining so bitterly about how he was using his. Maybe she was just part of his? She mentioned that she'd been… without… for nearly a year because she was stuck in the castle, which wouldn't add up unless he included the original seven months between the goblet and Voldemort's resurrection that marked his first time through the loop. That meant…meant…
Harry wasn't sure what that meant.
She had practically spewed information at him, and he hadn't had a chance to evaluate it yet.
Harry got up and moved to the common room to think.
She had mentioned that she "woke up and lived nine minutes" before the loop restarted, which only made sense if she woke up at about 8:05, since Harry had gotten the Hermione-aided suicide tests down to a fine science and usually managed to die between 8:13 and 8:14, depending on how much he had to instruct her in casting a spell or reassure her. It was actually pretty amazing what you could do once you learned how someone else learned and thought. You could teach them even highly difficult spells in minutes!
After that she had complained for a bit about how he had died repeatedly in those tests, and then she had mentioned his previous loops, 2 month-longs, 94 day-longs, and 201 suicide tests.
'Jesus, was it really that many?' Harry thought, a bit shocked, 'I was just trying to find the spells' limits, it wasn't like I intended to do THAT much testing.'
'Focus.' Harry growled to himself, shaking his head.
Then she had complained about not getting enough… enough…
Harry blushed furiously.
A-after that she had commented that what made those short loops so unbearable was the fact that she couldn't get pancakes and whipped cream before they ended. Harry could understand that, since he enjoyed pancakes and whipped cream too, and they only had them once or twice a week. Hermione always complained about getting cavities, but Harry was pretty sure that she enjoyed them as well.
And then she had dropped a bunch of bombshells.
The headmaster apparently knew that his name was going to come out of the cup beforehand and didn't bother to tell him! It was somebody related to Crouch, obviously not the man himself since he got murdered in the first loop, but the man obviously knew SOMETHING that somebody didn't want to get out.
But wait, that didn't add up with the passive Legilimency on Harry after his name came out of the cup. Why did the headmaster passively Legilimize him if he already knew that he didn't put his name in the cup?
Harry shook his head in confusion.
That question was one of the many that he'd have to pose to the old man once he finally went through with his veritaserum plan. He knew where Snape kept his restricted potions after a few careful questions and a short series of break-ins spread out over several of the day-loops, now he just needed to steal the key. He was actually planning to try stealing the key and Obliviating Snape this loop if he managed to get past Dumbledore's interrogation.
The Quirrelmort matter wasn't that much of a surprise, since Harry had long since figured that the traps were to capture the man rather than protect the stone… it wouldn't make sense otherwise since the traps had been easy enough to overcome by a trio of first-years. But now that Harry thought about it a bit more, that didn't make sense either, since if Dumbledore had known that Quirrel was possessed he could have just set up a trap any time once the man was in the castle. He didn't have to risk the stone at all either, just send out the rumor that it was in the castle. Or he could have even put a fake one at the end of the traps.
But the man HAD risked (and then destroyed) the stone for some reason. The obituaries of the Flamels that were in the paper during his third year gave proof to loss of the stone. Why did Dumbledore do that? Wouldn't the risk of the stone falling into Voldemort's hands be too great to even think about using it as bait like that? Why did he destroy it instead of sending it back to the Flamels after Voldmort had been defeated?
Harry had a lot of questions about that one too.
The basilisk Harry might believe that Dumbledore didn't know about in spite of Luna's declaration, since the library spells were so limited in what they could find and the paintings couldn't notice a creature that used pipes in the walls to move about. Petrification wasn't a basilisk's MO, so each time somebody came back petrified it would throw off the searchers a little more.
The diary Harry did wonder about though.
Why had Dumbledore allowed an extremely powerful dark artifact into the castle in the first place? Why wasn't he suspicious of the artifact when people started being attacked? Was there more than one dark artifact vying for his attention and if there were, why did he allow those into the castle in the first place?
The matter of Sirius' imprisonment was more than a little odd, given that Dumbledore was the head of the court system and legally obligated to ensure that the law was followed by the courts. The way Sirius was locked up without even a trial was extremely suspicious to Harry, especially if Luna was right about Dumbledore '"knowing from the very beginning". That implied that Sirius was sent to Azkaban for some reason other than the murder of Pettigrew, and that the Pettigrew incident just happened to be a convenient excuse to lock him up.
The troll comment brought even more questions.
How could the castle wards, which apparently alerted Dumbledore to the presence of a dark artifact entering school property, miss a twelve-foot mountain troll? Quirrel had admitted to bringing it in, but that wouldn't have shut down the wards. Luna had said that there was a loophole that Dumbledore had created himself but what-?
The traps! The traps on the stone! It made perfect sense!
Dumbledore gave Quirrelmort permission to bring a troll into the castle to make his 'trap' and the castle wards didn't recognize the second troll as being a threat! No wonder Dumbledore was pissed! He nearly screwed himself! If even one child had died, the school board would have been all over him asking for his resignation! They nearly got him just for a bunch of petrifications, let alone an actual student death!
Harry leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two feet.
It was poetic in a way, the move and countermove dance of Dumbledore and Voldemort over the course of that first year.
Voldmort planned to get the stone and Dumbledore had removed it from Gringotts before he could steal it.
Voldemort heard it was at Hogwarts and Dumbledore offered him a way in in the form of a job.
Voldemort cursed Harry's broom and Dumbledores' pawn counter-cursed it.
Dumbledore set the traps and Voldemort used the setting to cause chaos and get an attempt at the stone.
Dumbledore's first trap had stopped Voldemort and Voldemort had traded Hagrid an illegal dragon egg for advice, which would have caused even more chaos when it was discovered if Harry and Ron hadn't helped smuggle Norbert out of the castle quietly.
It was eerie, the way they seemed to preempt each other so perfectly… it seemed almost choreographed when Harry observed it from the outside.
'Yes,' Harry pondered as he climbed back into bed and started to drift to sleep, 'I think I need to try to execute the whole veritaserum plan this loop. I have many more questions for Dumbledore now...'
"Harry Potter."
Harry stood, outwardly calm, and made his way to the back room with the other champions. Inwardly though, he was trembling with fear.
Would he be able to fool Dumbledore? Would the spell activate correctly if he didn't?
After that last near-capture, Harry had changed the pass phrase to 'Reloop now'. He certainly hoped that the phrase would be short enough to say quickly and odd enough to not be said accidently.
Harry watched Dumbledore sweep into the room flanked by his entourage.
He watched as Dumbledore approached outwardly calm and inwardly vibrating with tension.
"Did you put your name in the Goblet of Fire, Harry?"
"No." Harry said carefully, "I didn't ask anyone else to put it in either."
Dumbledore looked at him for a long moment.
Harry felt the sudden mental poke of Dumbledores' passive Legilimency and stopped himself from swatting it away. He waited, watching Dumbledore for any sign that he felt something.
Dumbledore turned away and Harry nearly sank through the floor with relief.
'First hurdle passed.' Harry giggled inwardly in a slightly hysterical manner from the release of his tension. 'Now I have to get to Snape.'
"Who is- Potter." Snape hissed as he unlocked and opened the door to the stockroom. After a moment his eyes narrowed and he suddenly tried to shut the door in Harry's face. Harry promptly stuck a foot in the door.
"I need to talk to you for a moment." Harry said with an innocent smile.
Snape opened the door a bit more.
"It isn't class time Potter, so we have nothing to discuss." He growled, "And even if we did, inconveniencing you would be well worth the effort to get rid of you."
"I really do need to talk to you, and I won't go away until you speak with me." Harry declared stubbornly.
Snape looked him in the eye for a moment, then nodded grudgingly.
"Let's get this over with." He murmured as he opened the door to allow Harry in. "I cannot help you with the tournament. I will not violate the rules for you."
"So what did you-" Snape started, locking the door and turning, then trying to leap away only to receive a silent stunner to the side of his chest rather than the center.
'That was impressive' Harry thought appreciatively as Snape crumpled bonelessly to the floor. 'He nearly avoided it even with that little warning.'
Harry deftly reached into the fallen man's left pocket and retrieved a keyring with four keys. Then he selected the correct one, walked over to a cupboard half-hidden in the gloom of one of the corners and unlocked it, drawing forth a single vial of perfectly clear veritaserum and a single milky vial of veritaserum antidote.
He relocked the cupboard, walked back to Snape and put the keys back in his pocket, sat the man in an open chair, then cast a quick Expelliarmus to relieve him of his wand. Two wands instead of one came flying out, much to Harry's surprise, and then Harry bound the man to his chair with an Incarcerous.
Three drops and a quick throat massage to get them down Snape's unconscious throat later and Harry was ready for the first interrogation.
"Rennervate." Harry cast.
Snapes' eyes sprang open. Harry could almost feel the hate in them crystallize as Snape realized his situation and the feeling of veritaserum.
"What is your name?" Harry started.
"Severus Tobias Snape." Snape said in a flat voice that was at odds to the rage in his eyes.
"Are you a Death Eater?"
"Yes, unfortunately." Harry paused at this odd statement.
"Why unfortunately?" He asked, curious.
"I hate being a Death Eater. I took the mark before I realized what it would cost. It was the worst mistake of my life. I lost the only person I ever loved to the Dark Lord."
Harry's eyebrows rose. Snape didn't like being a Death Eater? He sure expressed it in a funny way.
"Why do you act like you are one then?"
"Primarily because I enjoy tormenting dunderheads, but I also act like a Death Eater so I do not ruin my cover. I'm to spy for Dumbledore if the Dark Lord returns and a lack of loyalty will not be viewed kindly. I was originally a spy for the Dark Lord inside Dumbledore's organization but I became a double agent for Dumbledore when the person I loved was threatened. After the Dark Lord vanished Dumbledore kept me in the castle so that he could control me."
"Does he control you?"
"No, but I let him think he does. I'm a powerful Occlumens so he can't read my mind without a full assault, and as a Potions master I always notice and neutralize the Compulsion potions he laces my food with. I let him think he controls me and I really am on his side, even if he doesn't trust me and I hate him."
"Why are you on his side if you hate him?"
"I hate the Dark Lord more."
'Well that's a little disturbing.' Harry thought with a frown, 'The 'light' sides' main spy is a hate-filled crusader who thinks tormenting first years is fun and is only on their side because he hates the opposition more than he hates them.'
"Did you put my name in the Goblet of fire?"
"Of course not. I may hate you because you look like your father but I don't want you dead." Snape looked very put out making that confession.
"Do you know who did?"
"No."
"Will anybody know I stole one vial of veritaserum and antidote from your cupboard if I obliviate you of that knowledge?"
"Yes, you." Snape said, the sarcasm leaking through the flat quality of the serum.
"Anyone else?" Harry asked with a sigh.
"No, but I would figure it out at the end of the next week when I took inventory. That's what I was doing before you interrupted me."
"So Dumbledore wouldn't find out?"
"No, not for a week, unless there was some reason to call for veritaserum before that."
Harry stunned Snape again, then dropped some antidote down his throat and untied him. Harry grabbed him and lay him on the floor, taking a cup and pouring some water from the sink on his shoe and the floor.
Harry took a breath.
'First time's the charm' Harry thought hopefully.
"Obliviate."
