The Doorway
Chapter 5: Revelation
Summary: Eighteen years to the day after Sirius fell through the Veil in the Department of Mysteries, Harry steps in after him. This story was inspired by the beginning of 'A Black Comedy' by nonjon and 'Making Faces' by Thanatos. Complete Cannon excluding the epilogue, AU and OOC … obviously.
Disclaimer: I own nothing; I just wanna play with 'em. I make no monetary gain from this romp through Rowling's World.
A/N: WARNING! VERY DARK CHAPTER. Things will get better soon though.
*~ {PoE} ~*
Even at half speed, the brooms Harry bought would easily outstrip the Express on her best day. So it was that Harry and Sirius arrived at the valley that Hogsmeade Village and Hogwarts Castle were supposed to be in within relatively short order. They landed below the ridge that would overlook the castle, unsure of just what awaited them on the other side of the rocky outcropping. They slowly climbed up and peered over the ridge. Their first shock was the massive crater of charred wood and rubble that was once the heart of the Forbidden Forest, they couldn't fathom what had caused such massive devastation. Their eyes then trailed down the tracks they'd followed by broom for the past hour, and continued on to where Hogsmeade Station was supposed to be, and as they set their gaze upon the village, their hearts dropped.
There below them were the burnt out, abandoned shells of buildings, all that remained of the former bustling village. The Shrieking Shack was completely gone, the small hill it once sat upon now overgrown with weeds and brambles. The rows of shops and houses were like broken teeth in a skeletal mouth. It was with great trepidation that they allowed their eyes to track down the overrun path, past the tumbledown gates buttressed by the familiar winged boars, and to the castle beyond. There, just as she'd always been, was Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
But while the castle still stood, she was a ghost of her former self. The grounds were overgrown; the whomping willow was now massive and very deadly looking, and even from this vantage point they could make out full grown mandrakes prowling through the undergrowth. The castle herself was crumbling in places and half the visible windows were broken, the others dark and empty. There was obviously no one there.
Harry and Sirius slowly made their way down towards the gates. Of course, of all the things Harry had thought to bring along; ear muffs was not one of them. Luckily, it was a simple matter to transfigure some and charm them with a deafening charm. The mandrakes were wild but they were also shy creatures, if they couldn't kill you with their cries they ran away. They made sure to stay well away from the green houses where they could see that at least one was completely filled with a massive Venomous Tentacula.
Reaching the front door they both took a fortifying breath before pushing on the old wood, the doors swung open to reveal a surprising sight. The castle interior was not as bad off as they'd feared. It looked as though it had been kept up, though not to its usual standards. The castle still had an air of neglect about it and the hall was dark, but it was in good repair and not a crumbling ruin as they'd come to expect. Glancing around the hall Harry felt a pang of aching nostalgia as he laid eyes on the four hourglass shaped point counters, each set to zero, waiting for a new school year that never started. Through the doors to the great hall they could tell that the enchantments on the ceiling had stopped, as the hall would normally be brightly lit with the daylight streaming through the rafters. Harry and Sirius both headed to the Headmasters office, not yet willing to separate. While it felt as if no one was here, someone had been caring for the place. It was prudent to stay together, just in case this caretaker was off their trolley.
As they stood, several minutes and a lot of stairs later, before the stone gargoyle that guarded the spiral staircase leading to the Headmasters office, they realized that there was no possible way to give the password. The odds of Dumbledore being the headmaster when the school was abandoned were likely, but they still had no idea if he'd have even left a password before leaving the castle forever. Never mind that the castles lack of magic made it unlikely that the stone creature would move even if they did know the password. Harry solved the problem by casting a severing charm at the base of the statue and levitating it out of the way.
The door at the top of the unmoving stairs proved a minor obstacle and they were swiftly standing in the office, where it looked like nothing had changed. This room, apart from the rest of the castle, was immaculate. Obviously whoever was caring for the castle devoted the majority of their energy to this room. Here they could still feel the tingle of magic in the air. Anointing the walls of the office were still the portraits of the former headmasters, and situated right behind the ornate desk was the portrait of Albus Dumbledore.
*~ {PoE} ~*
Harry and Sirius were sitting in two conjured chairs, the same two chairs they'd conjured at their camp when they'd first come through the Doorway, sipping tea brought by the last surviving Hogwarts house elf, and trying to absorb the history lesson they'd just been given by Dumbledore's portrait. Their two worlds had paralleled each other fairly closely for most of the major historical events up until early 1980. When the Severus Snape of this world informed his Dark Lord of the prophesy Voldemort (a much shrewder man in this world than the man they had known) decided to verify the contents of the prophesy himself. Utilizing information from his man inside the Department of Mysteries, Agustus Rookwood, he was quickly able to obtain the full contents and, with it, the knowledge that he daren't activate it. It was a simple matter for the former Head Boy to discern which two boys the prophesy referred to that fateful day in late July, and he made sure to avoid any sort of personal contact with the tots.
Sending Bellatrix Lestrange along with her husband and brother-in-law after the Potter's when Peter Pettigrew gave up their location under torture (he was never a betrayer in this world) saw the family of three slaughtered in their home less than a month after baby Harry's birth, ending the Potter line. Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, the last of the Marauders, raced to the Potter's rescue after discovering the fate of Wormtail, only to be cut down in the front garden. Padfoot and Moony's one bit of solace as they died, was that they were able to kill that murdering filth Rodolphus Lestrange before they fell themselves.
The Longbottoms, regrettably, were not as lucky as the Potters. Bella and Rabastan, fuelled by terrible rage at the death of Rodolphus, spent hours torturing the family of four, before killing them one by one. Starting with poor baby Neville then ending the Longbottom line forever with the brutal murder of the Dowager Augusta Longbottom. Voldemort then took great pleasure in banishing the infant corpses of the 'children of prophesy' over the gates of Hogwarts in a personal message to Dumbledore. All hope was lost.
Just a few short weeks after the deaths of two of the oldest wizarding families, on September first, Voldemort and a cadre of death eaters apparated directly onto platform 9 ¾ and began firing killing curses into the crowd of parents and students. Seventy-three people were killed that day, forty-eight of them children. Voldemort and his minions had dispersed by the time the Aurors had arrived, leaving the shocked and stunned keepers of the peace to burry the bodies of friends, family, and loved ones. Not satisfied with the chaos he had wreaked, before he left Voldemort took form the corpse of the Hogwarts Express conductor, the key to the train. Ensuring it would never again ferry children to their beloved school.
It was the Dark Lord's curiosity, in the end, that was his ultimate undoing. His dominion over wizarding Britain was complete and total. His eye was fixed on global domination, and yet, something kept drawing his attention away from his goals. A wavering apparition at the periphery of his senses. So it was that in the summer of 1990, ten years after the fall of wizarding Britain, he decided to unravel just what was beneath the stones of the Department of Mysteries. In tampering with things that even the Unspeakables knew to just let lie, Voldemort unleashed an explosion that, in killing him and destroying his Horcruxes, also decimated the Ministry of Magic and a full square mile of muggle London above it. As well as eradicating a third of the remaining magical population in Britain.
The preliminary devastation, however, was just the beginning. What ever Pandora's Box he'd opened, released a pestilence like none other on the muggle population of Great Britain. Men, women, and children all succumbed to the Wizard's Plague, as they called it. There was no suffering, no symptoms; they all simply died where they stood. There were those that were immune, muggle relations of magicals, and they swiftly left the country, unknowingly taking the Plague with them to the rest of the world. The rest of the world soon fought back. The muggle government began an eradication of magic from their shores that was swift and absolute. Anything; human, creature, plant, mineral was destroyed. Magic herself was killed. In an attempt to destroy Hogwarts the muggles dropped a bomb onto the Forbidden Forest, obliterating the wood, fracturing the ancient lay lines, and draining the castle of her inherent magic.
Those few witches and wizards left in Britain fled to the castle. Diagon Alley was abandoned, the goblins blocking the entrance underground and burrowing away forever. Vengeful death eaters, driven mad by the death of their master and lead by Bellatrix Lestrange, burned both Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade Village to the ground.
There was no more magic in the world. Dumbledore and the few remaining magicals that had taken refuge in Hogwarts now found themselves to sole survivors on the planet, the last of a dying race. However, the muggles too, faired little better. The Wizard's Plague had been thorough and unstoppable. Barely three million human beings were left on the planet, and their numbers were steadily dwindling. For their fear of magic was so great that any child that expressed magical abilities was immediately killed. Humanity was slowly exterminating itself.
*~ {PoE} ~*
Harry and Sirius bid a melancholy farewell to the portrait of Dumbledore and the poor lone house elf, neither of them wanted to spend the night in the ghost of the castle. They did leave some provisions for the elf; Wispy had been foraging in overgrown fields and gardens for food. A months worth of the rations Harry had packed would last the little guy years. The vast majority of the house elves that had lived and worked in Hogwarts had died trying to defend the village below from the death eaters. Wispy had been the lone survivor, blasted through a wall and coming to land fortuitously, in a mass of charred fabric in Twillfit and Tattings.
The two men flew out over the crater that was once the Forbidden Forest. The Black Lake to the side was still there, being fed from the ocean it would never go dry, but the once beautiful lake was now stagnant, no life sparkled within her depths any longer. As they made their way back to what remained of London, they wished peace on this ravaged world, knew that there was nothing here for them, and no reason to stay. A world populated by two men, even two friends, was still a very lonely world. Maybe going back through the Doorway would take them home, at least it wound take them away from here.
They reached the depression housing the Doorway just as the sun was setting. As Harry pitched camp and started on supper for the two of them, Sirius set about resizing the five Blanks and, leaving them in stasis, sending them into the Doorway. The two slept fitfully and, early the next morning, stepped through the Doorway themselves.
Harry and Sirius dropped to the ground, the brightness of their travel once again temporarily blinding their eyes to their surroundings, however this time the darkness did not dissipate. Lighting their wands as they stood and brushed the dust from their trousers, they gazed at a room that seemed hewn from the very stone of the earth. The room, if one could call it that, was like a hollow globe, completely rounded from the central point of the Doorway. There was no way out, save for the way they had entered, and they were left with the option of either boring their way through the rock, or stepping back into the Doorway, and trying again.
*~ {PoE} ~*
A/N: Whew, what a horrid place I'd dreamed up, huh? Well, now that they've left that place, should they try out this one or just step back through? Also, I have to be really careful with how I do future chapters as I don't want to steal anything from A Black Comedy. Hope you've enjoyed what I have to offer so far and please review!