22nd January 2002 – Avalon

For kidnappers the Unspeakables had been more than polite, providing he and his friends with all the necessary things – food, shelter, polite chit-chat – but that still hadn't made Harry like them. They had kidnapped him, after all.

But what was the point in fighting them, when Voldemort was out there? Dumbledore hadn't been dead five months, and they'd decided to kidnap him and run away?

"You have to let us go. Give us a Portkey, or something—we have to get back to the Order," he tried again.

A new Unspeakable spoke this time. A younger Unspeakable. A woman. She'd given her name as Morningstar.

"You don't understand," she said. "When we told you that we can't let you out, we didn't mean that we do not wish to let you out." She paused. "We mean that we can't let you out. I told you: the island is under a time-locked fortress ward. Nobody is getting out or in until the ward breaks."

"How long is the time-lock?" asked Hermione, far more politely than Harry would have done.

At least Morningstar had the decency to look uncomfortable.

"The ward will break on the 11th of August, 2011."

Harry didn't quite know what to say to that.

"Fuck," he said eventually. Rage. He had to contain it: they were stuck here for near enough to ten years. If he exploded now, what would that do? Dumbledore had trained him to use Occlumency to soothe his emotions, to put aside anger for when it could be vented elsewhere.

He was trying, damn it. Nobody could say he wasn't trying.

"You fucking idiots," he said, failing.

"Is there no way of breaking the ward?" asked Hermione. "Surely, the person who cast the ward can also bring it down, in case of emergency?"

Morningstar looked as if she were about to reply, but Luna interrupted her.

"They cannot break the fortress ward," Luna said, "because doing so would require a threefold sacrifice: the blood of a child, forcibly taken; flesh of a mother, knowingly given; and hair of the sidhe, taken under the light of the moon."

Hermione appeared disgusted. Harry didn't blame her: that sounded like Dark magic to him, even if he wasn't a particular expert in arcane Dark rituals. He'd never even heard of a time-locked fortress ward.

"That sounds like Dark magic," he growled.

Morningstar looked pained.

"I assure you, Potter, the fortress ward is not Dark magic. It is old magic. The protection provided is second to none, and so is the cost of breaking the terms of the ritual pact. It was necessary."

"Would you care to explain," he said icily, willing himself not to explode, "why the fuck it was necessary to imprison me and my friends for a fucking decade?"

He didn't manage it. He was basically shouting.

"We haven't let them explain yet," said Neville, speaking for the first time. Harry glared at him. "Let them talk. We have to live here for the next decade. Let's at least hear why before we decide to get even more pissed off."

"This war can't be won now," said Morningstar. "We know that. We will show you why, if you let us. But believe me when I say, we cannot defeat Voldemort now. If you fight in this war, Harry Potter, you will die. The Dark Lord won't, and then he will have won."

"But he'll win if we're not there to fight him!" protested Harry. He'd heard the prophecy. Dumbledore had shared it with him when rumours of a Dark Lord and Lady began flowing through from eastern Europe. Harry knew the stakes. He knew his role.

What did the Unspeakables know, he wondered? Their Hall of Destiny held many prophecies, many secrets.

"It will be a temporary victory." The Unspeakable behind her – Oately, or something like that – shuffled awkwardly. "We have seen some of what would come to pass if we had not done what we did."

"How?" asked Hermione.

"Ah, it is… it is a device we call the Reality Mirror. It shows us what is happening, what has happened, in realities close to our own. It has allowed us to see worlds where Voldemort came sooner, you fought, and died."

"So you took that to mean that in this reality, in this context, Harry would be killed by Voldemort?" said Hermione, aghast.

"The Dark Lord has an army three times larger than that which he fielded during the First War. The Aurors are barely able to provide enough bodies for regular domestic security. Britain will fall. You cannot fall also. If you are not already aware, Potter, there is a prophecy concerning yourself and the Dark Lord."

"I'm aware, thanks," said Harry. "Which is why I want to be out there. You know, to help fulfil the prophecy."

"The Horcruxes will prevent the Dark Lord's death!" snapped Morningstar. "There is magic at play here which not even we understand properly, you idiot boy!"

"How are you going to get the understanding you need holed up here?" said Hermione crossly. "Honestly!"

"You don't even know where we are," said Morningstar coolly.

"You haven't told us!" barked Hermione.

"Avalon. We're on Avalon," said Luna.

"I—how did you know that?" said Morningstar, peering at Luna.

"The sidhe told me."

The Unspeakables in the room shared a glance.

"You can hear them?"

Morningstar asked the question, but then hastened to explain herself before Luna could answer it.

"There is an artefact of the sidhe here, on Avalon. We have guarded it for centuries. For a more satisfying answer, Avalon is a hidden island in the sea between Ireland and Wales. The Unspeakables, with the help of the local population, hid it from the rest of the world in 1092."

"And we're stuck here for ten years," said Neville.

"Fantastic," Harry said flatly. "While people outside get tortured and die. Bloody fucking brilliant."

24th January 2002 – Avalon

Luna had been the first of her friends to be allowed outside of the fortress itself. She didn't understand why the others were being so stubborn: Harry refused to promise not to test the fortress ward by whatever means necessary, and Neville had agreed.

Some people just didn't understand the old magic. That was okay. It was understandable for most of them. But Luna did. The fortress ward couldn't be broken, except under a very specific scenario, and even if she were willing to take blood from a child and flesh from a mother, she didn't know where one would begin to look for the hair of the sidhe.

So it was moot. They were here now, and not elsewhere. She could be angry about their change in circumstance or she could enjoy the ancient beauty of the island of Avalon. Which had been larger than she'd thought, easily larger than the Isle of Man or Anglesey. It was a testament to the wonder of magic that it had remained hidden and secret for so long, especially as it housed probably the largest and oldest all-wizarding community in Britain.

A remarkably insular community, Luna thought. She didn't recognise any of their names, when she had asked the Unspeakables about them, and then when she had spoken to one of the villagers, he had responded in an archaic form of Welsh.

How enchanting.

It didn't make up for being kidnapped against one's will and forced to sit out the existential war being faced by one's friends, but in this thing Luna was different from her friends. She accepted reality as it was; they would consider every other option but reality until they had run out of alternatives. Which was silly, because unless you were of the sidhe reality was as it was, no ifs ands or buts.

"Hello there," she said. There had been a man watching her – an older man, although not so old as to be considered elderly – for close to an hour now. He was not an Unspeakable but he didn't avoid her like the rest of the villagers did. "My name is Luna Lovegood. I'm a prisoner here."

The man laughed.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Luna Lovegood," said the man, his English heavily accented. "I'm Huw ap Seferus Lleyn."

The Lleyns. She hadn't heard of them, but they were Purebloods – she'd asked Morningstar, who had said everyone on Avalon would be considered a Pureblood elsewhere, but that they didn't consider themselves so. A cultural difference stemming from a consideration of magic, rather than blood purity, as the property of value. A Muggleborn was as magical as a Pureblood. Luna agreed with that basic assumption because she had observed it herself. So then, the people of Avalon defined themselves according to their culture, which was bound up in magical ability, but not related to the purity of their blood per se. Apparently they had all been Muggles at one anyway: the lack of immigration had just meant eventually there were no more Muggles on the island.

She found it an interesting difference from ideology believed by many in Pureblood circles back in England. She didn't ascribe to it of course, because it was plainly absurd, but many people did. Luna though saw the value in culture, and tradition, and history in a much deeper way than she suspected any Death Eater did.

And that was very sad.

"Lovegood," said Huw. "Mm. My family remembers yours, girl. We were here, on this island, before your family came over with the Saxons. There's a song we sing, in Welsh of course." He took in a breath. "Remove the Saxon! String him up! Rend his limbs!" His accent became almost a caricature of itself, and then he burst into a great, big laugh.

Luna decided she liked the man.

"I'm afraid my family doesn't remember yours, or anything about the island of Avalon – save the legends and myths, of course."

Huw looked her right in the eyes.

"The true history of Avalon is much more frightening, girl, as is its present."

"Would you care to tell me of it?"

Luna valued knowledge for its own sake. But she also could use the distraction, and it would be useful to know the history of the place in which they were trapped. Sheltered. This place was her home now, at least until the fortress ward broke.

26th January 2002 – Avalon

"You want something useful to do, Potter?" said Morningstar abruptly one morning after breakfast. "I can give you something useful to do."

"What is it?" He dared to look up from his breakfast – porridge – and at the inscrutable woman.

"You aren't the only people we rescued," she said. "We managed to save some of the Muggleborns, the ones on the List, and some of the ones already at Hogwarts. We got their families, too."

"Bully for you," he said, but inside, he was happy.

Morningstar sighed.

"Look, Potter – we get that you're pissed off with us. But do you know what?" She placed both her hands on the table and stood, leaning towards him. "We don't fucking care. You need to deal with it. Those kids we rescued? We want you to help teach them. The locals have teachers, but you have recent combat experience. And the Hogwarts kids know you."

"I'd like to hear what the other prophecies say," Harry decided to say instead. "Then I'll decide."

Morningstar shook her head, although Harry hadn't expected another answer. The stern Unspeakable had steadfastly refused to recite the words of the other prophecies in his hearing.

"Those prophecies don't concern you directly," she said. "Take it up with Granger and Lovegood – I've said the same to Longbottom."

Harry grimaced. Hermione and Luna wouldn't tell him until he agreed to 'stop pouting', and the Unspeakables acted as if it were secret knowledge – which he supposed it was, except now Hermione and Luna knew and he and Neville didn't.

It didn't matter that Hermione and Luna knew because they had accepted that there was no way out of the ward, and had then politely asked to hear the other prophecies. But Harry couldn't believe that there wasn't some other way of breaking the ward.

"Look," he said. "I'm sure you can understand why I am fucking furious at what you've done." He managed to keep a mostly civil tone because honestly, this argument had played out already. Harry could even admit that to himself. He'd lost. He'd look for another way to break the ward, but he wouldn't physically test it – Morningstar had demonstrated exactly what would happen if he tried using a live sheep appropriated from one of the villagers – but he would eventually agree.

It's just that their actions had consequences not just to the war, but to people and lives outside of even the Wizarding world. They had to understand that, and Harry wasn't sure they did yet. Maybe he was just wrong, maybe they had acted properly and carefully. But he was still a kidnapping victim, and that burned. He was stuck here for ten years.

"I think that we understand the situation more properly and accurately than you would care to admit," said Morningstar, "but I have conceded before that you have a right to be angry. Will you teach the children, or would you like some other task?"

"What else is there?" he said, and then, "Yes, I'll do it."

"You'll see what else there is to do soon enough," said Morningstar darkly. "But this is a start. I'll escort you to the school – you're to start building half an hour ago."

Harry had been told that some of the students would recognise him from Hogwarts, and somewhat naively he had assumed that would mean he would recognise them, too – but he didn't. Most of them were still very young, although he thought he could see what looked like a seventh year dotted about. Of course, he didn't know any of them were, but they all knew who he was.

Everyone knew who he was.

He was relieved to find, upon his arrival in the small meadow, that he didn't have to build a school so much as help to expand and renovate the existing structures. The existing school building was nice, although looked far different from Hogwarts. More like a grand sort of village hall than a castle, the building looked fit to house at most a hundred students, with those students being housed with their families on the island.

According to Morningstar, the Unspeakables had managed to secure – kidnap – sixteen of the Muggleborn students already in attendance at Hogwarts. That cohort, along with the nineteen Muggleborns yet to receive a letter, would need housing for the duration of their stay. Their parents – Muggles, all of them – and some of their siblings would need housing elsewhere, but that was being built by the residents of Avalon elsewhere.

To complicate matters a bit more, the locals had decided that if their school was to become a boarding school (a novelty, when you remembered that the entire island housed only a few thousand people at its height and couldn't have been very large at all, although Harry had yet to see an accurate map) then it should have enough space to house all the children of the island.

A reasonable request, but one he was sure would give him a headache. At least he'd been given a book of builder's spells to help muddle through, and there were several older students milling about who could help with the heavy lifting – hopefully they were up to first year charms.

"All right," he said. "I'm Harry Potter, I'm sure you've heard of me before. This isn't the time for that. We're here to build new dormitories for the school you'll be studying at for the duration of your stay here." 'Duration of your stay'. He supposed it was fair, since a lot of them had actually been given the choice of coming – although some of those who hadn't been informed of the magical world had simply been kidnapped.

"Isn't anyone going to help us?" said one of the Muggleborns, one of the older ones – a girl wearing a Hufflepuff scarf. "Only, I don't think it's fair that we have to do all the work."

"You could say it's the most fair thing really," suggested a tall, thin boy. "Since we're the ones causing upheaval." He paused, and then pulled the zipper up on his Muggle hoodie. "Where are they even?"

Harry shrugged.

"I know about as much as you do," he said. "How about we get started?"

He picked up the book of spells again. He'd only flicked through it the first time and he'd never been like Hermione, able to just look at a spell once and be able to cast it perfectly, without fail, the first time she tried.

23rd January 2002 – Avalon Chamber of Fate

"You accepted your new circumstances far more easily than we had expected, Miss Granger," said Mornginstar with a note of surprise.

Hermione didn't have the slightest clue why, because she was an eminently reasonable woman – presented with enough of the right evidence, Hermione would change her mind based on the information she had been given. The problem with most wizards and witches is that they just jumped right past the most important bit – the bit with the evidence – to the conclusion. An interesting hypothesis does not an explanation make, thank you very much.

But the Unspeakables had outlined their reasoning. She had been informed of the existence of several prophecies pertaining to Voldemort, the war period, and to his Dark Lady, Valmira. One prophecy related directly to her – or so the Unspeakables thought. Hermione had never put much stock in Divination, but Dumbledore had believed in the power of prophecy.

The Unspeakables appeared to believe in the power of prophecy. The Wizarding world at large did, too. That didn't mean they were necessarily right – it was wrong-headed to assume that just because everyone thought the same thing that that thing was actually true.

But Hermione did have to admit that prophecy seemed to have a real power, even if it was a power she didn't understand yet. Divination was mostly useless – Dumbledore had admitted that. But Divination and prophecy weren't the same thing, although they had been conflated in the past. It was understandable.

"I think Luna said it best when she said that she accepted the reality of the situation," Hermione said eventually. Talking with the Unspeakables was actually more of a pleasant experience for Hermione than she expected, since they didn't mind when she spoke quickly about esoteric pieces of magical lore nor when she fell into silence to think something over.

In another time, in different circumstances, perhaps Hermione could have joined a different group of Unspeakables. One in a universe where Voldemort didn't exist, where other concerns were not so pressing, so life-changing.

"I want to hear what this prophecy says about me. Luna seemed more convinced that you believed what you were doing is the only way of success after hearing the other prophecy."

"That is why we have brought you here, to the Chamber of Fate. The locals believe that once, the sidhe consorted with the primal force of Destiny here."

Hermione could believe that. The chamber was an oddity, secreted deep beneath the Unspeakable fortress and constructed of what appeared to be lithified trees grown into formation. It appeared at once natural and organic, but magical and artificial. A jarring experience. The entire place reeked of magic in a way that Hogwarts had, although magic of a much different and wilder nature.

An ancient table comprised of local stone had been set in the chamber centuries ago and apparently had never been moved again, and it was there that Hermione had been sat since her entrance to the room. Thankfully on a more modern chair.

"We shall spare you a reading. The contents of the prophecy are written on this parchment. I'm only sorry that it still won't be very clear after you're done."

Morningstar pushed the parchment towards her, and Hermione gazed down at it, committing its words to memory before she attempted to understand them.

The Mother of Monsters will birth thrice.

Three great labours

Three great evils.

She will be rewarded once,

And once,

And once again.

No man shall conquer her

For she is the Mother of Evil

And his Wife.

She will not be slain

It is written in the stars

In the fabric of all that is.

She has done this.

The old one has been wound,

Coiled, woven, and knotted.

But what is tied can be untied,

And what cannot,

Can be cut.

Morningstar pushed another piece of parchment across the table.

"The first prophecy was for context; it's the only prophecy directly concerning Dark Lady Valmira. We believe several other contextual factors render this prophecy important. The emphasis reflects a change in the tone of the delivery of the prophecy. This next one we believe references you directly, although there are—other candidates."

The Lioness will be

Three in her Glories

And three in her Sorrows,

Forged in the fires

Of a half-forgotten dream.

She will walk through the

Land of Always Winter

And be tempered

At the Altar of Queens

Or she will die.

She will be loved,

But alone.

She will endure

Threefold trials of worth

And be judged worthy.

She will love,

And love,

And love again.

You will know her well

Because a lioness does not speak

She roars.

"And that's it?" said Hermione, rather dumb-founded. "The best you could come up with, given your unique knowledge, was to assume that I am the Lioness and that my 'three glories' are somehow related to the 'three labours' of the Mother of Evil, who you have linked with Voldemort?"

"We are dealing with an unprecedented level of clarity," said one of the older Unspeakables, an ancient woman by the name of Stonefoot. "There has not been another time with so many active prophecies in centuries, and never in Europe – nine prophecies once descended upon China, but thankfully we are not there yet."

Hermione regarded the other woman carefully. Stonefoot had never spoken in Hermione's presence before, which wasn't especially unusual since most of the Unspeakables remained silent. It made them difficult to gauge.

"I think I might need to understand more about what you know of prophecy before we continue," she said.

Stonefoot looked pained.

"That's very difficult," she said. "But I can tell you what you need to know. The future is not written in the stars, as the prophecy would have you believe. That is metaphorical. The future is mapped by the choices we make today, and by the choices people have made in the past. It is by and large unpredictable because it is impossible to know the totality of the component parts. We believe prophecies are the method which Fate, or Destiny, or whichever force produces prophecy, intervenes to erode the effects of choice upon her vision for the course of history, or to prevent the choices of powerful people from exerting too great an effect."

Hermione didn't really know what to say to that. Not because she couldn't think of anything to say (she could think of many very intelligent things to say), but because she didn't know where exactly to begin.

"Why do you say we have an unprecedented level of clarity with this current situation?"

Hermione hadn't really had time to sit down and think the contents of the prophecies out. Before she could begin to understand why the Unspeakables had acted the way they'd acted she would need to understand how they thought about the problem. Before considering the nature of prophecy she should like to know why this situation was more clear than other, similar, situations.

Stonefoot shifted in her seat.

"There was the prophecy concerning Mr Potter," she said. "We didn't know the contents of that one for a very long time – too long," she said, though it sounded like an old complaint. "The only people who knew it, well… Dumbledore and the Potters. But we gained access to the first of the prophecies you have seen today almost as soon as it was made, in 1993. The prophecy we discussed with Miss Lovegood came to us because I uttered it. A mad Muggle uttered another, and we uncovered it in 1998. The prophecies concern important choices which must be made, and clearly form part of a larger pattern of prophecies connected to a specific time period. There may yet be more prophecies. The second prophecy you saw today, the one we believe to concern you, was inscribed upon the wall of this chamber two thousand years ago."

It was almost too much to process all at once, really, but Hermione had never been scared of a challenge.

22nd January 2002 – Caer Tawel Chamber of Fate

Luna could feel the ancient and wild magic deep in her bones. Old places – like Avalon, or Hogwarts – never failed to make her feel so utterly small and insignificant next to them. She revelled in the feeling, in the knowledge that she was a speck of sand against the untold generations who had lived and enjoyed magic in those places.

There was magic in that, magic in the connection built between people and places and magic. House-elves understood that better than any wizard Luna had ever met, and understood it so well that people thought they were bound to families and service – but that wasn't true. House-elves had bound themselves to their home, which was why it was such a great dishonour for them to be asked to leave that home.

Someone had loved this place more than anything else, once.

"A prophecy concerning me?" she said, finally thinking about the thing the Unspeakables actually wanted her to think about. She didn't mind that they were impatient: they didn't have the distractions Luna did, not with the echoes of memories she could feel in the tingle of the magic all around her.

Luna had heard the prophecy about Harry and the Dark Lord. It could have also meant Neville, but the Dark Lord had unequivocally chosen Harry. The prophecy was also clear, and did not include her. But then, neither did it include a Dark and beautiful queen to rule at the Dark Lord's side.

She glanced down at the parchment. The Unspeakables hadn't recited any of the prophecies, merely offered them for her to read. She had read Harry's again, and then another concerning the Dark Lady, and another referring to a Lioness.

One was chosen,

One was not.

One will be forged,

And one always was.

One will never love,

And another's love will be misplaced.

But not every role has been ordained,

And nor shall they be.

Choices matter most when made

in light of lessons long forgotten.

Choices made cannot usually be unmade.

Except when they can.

Luna considered it. This prophecy seemed of a different kind to the others, something more akin to a general comment on the larger set of prophecies she had read. This prophecy linked the others – she could see the connections between the prophecies easily, although she supposed it wouldn't be too difficult to do so.

It was all there in the text, after all.

"That's very interesting," she said, because it was. "This prophecy suggests that the conflict is larger than that indicated from reading the other prophecies. I am the one who always was, aren't I?"

Luna wondered what that meant, exactly. Harry had been chosen by the Dark Lord. Neville hadn't been. The Lioness would be forged as the text of the prophecy indicated, which left the one who always was. She knew that the Unspeakables didn't consider her to be the Lioness because she hadn't been given that prophecy to read last. The one who always was had been mentioned only in this last prophecy.

"There are more roles, more parts," said Stonefoot, the Unspeakable Luna had met only minutes before. "Which suggests that the conflict will not be so simple as a duel between Mr Potter and the Dark Lord. His choice to take a Lady to his side is novel. We have seen a similar thing before in the Reality Mirror, but in a reality so far from our own we had not considered it relevant. From what we are able to ascertain, our reality has experienced the gravest threat from the Dark Lord, and there is the matter of prophecy, of course."

The Unspeakables had more information than anyone could know what to do with, as far as Luna was concerned. To mine through alternate realities for information relevant to their own reality would generate an absurd amount of data, data which perhaps had meaningful insights if only one could understand why it was important. To see alternate versions of your own world, to know things about events which have occurred there… the magic involved must be ancient, and complex, and wonderful. But it would also make the Unspeakables act in peculiar ways, at least from the perspective of someone who didn't have information gleaned from other worlds.

Luna hadn't been confident that alternate realities, universes where history had played out differently, actually existed. As a theoretical construct it was useful – there had been many debates in the Ravenclaw common room about the subject, but nobody had ever valued her contributions there – but there had never been any real evidence for it either. It was considered an unsolvable problem, because how did one act outside of the boundaries of existence?

Someone had apparently solved it, if the Reality Mirror was any indication.

"I understand why you decided to bring us here, now," said Luna. "Only, I don't think you got everyone you wanted to get, did you?"

"No, we didn't," agreed Morningstar. "We had wanted to safeguard Ronald and Ginevra Weasley, and neutralise any future threat from Severus Snape, who is a wildcard in this conflict."

Luna was sure then that most of what the Unspeakables knew had been gleaned from their experiments with the Reality Mirror, although nobody had said or explicitly suggested such a thing. Except bits and pieces of their story didn't entirely match what she would have expected – Severus Snape, as far as she knew, worked for the Order of the Phoenix as a spy. Perhaps the Unspeakables didn't know this or – and Luna had to consider it – they had seen realities in which Snape had betrayed the Order or never joined it at all.

"You're planning on actively fulfilling the prophecies, I suppose?" she asked, although she didn't really need an answer. Of course the Unspeakables were attempting to fulfil the prophecies: the kidnapping was certainly just one element of that plan.

Morningstar smiled, and Luna thought it was a genuine smile – she hadn't seen any genuine smiles from her before now, but she had seen many forced smiles, and this was not that.

"We have already started," she said. "We will take you through it, Miss Lovegood. Intelligence had indicated you would be open to co-operation. I'm glad to see it borne out."

Luna smiled then too, because this was something quite like progress.

1st February 2002 – Caer Tawel Hall of Mirrors

Because every one of them had finally relented and agreed to at least stop resisting, Harry and the others had been taken into the Hall of Mirrors to view the Reality Mirror, the object which the Unspeakables claimed allowed them to see into other realities.

They had a whole room dedicated to mirrors, but most of them were circular and horizontal, and occupied set intervals in the room. One of the mirrors was larger than the others, and took pride of place in the centre of the room.

"Is that the Reality Mirror?" asked Hermione, clearly talking about the biggest mirror in the room.

"It is," confirmed Morningstar. "At first we had a lot of difficulty locating an appropriate reality to study. We kept getting realities related to the person casting the modified scrying spell, and not what we wanted to find. Eventually we wound what we wanted, but we believe it will be easier to locate a world with you here, Potter."

"We're going to look through it now?" said Hermione, sounding exactly as she'd sounded when they'd been at Hogwarts together.

"We are," said Morningstar. "But first, an explanation of the Reality Mirror, and what we are able to do with it. We have been working on this magic for decades, and we finally managed to complete it in 1998. It is a modified scrying pool, and we are now able to view past events which have occurred in alternate realities. At first, we could only view the present, but because of our experience with time and the magic of time we have been able to surpass those limitations."

"This is innovative magic," said Hermione. "This is—it's just decades ahead of even the Luxembourgish."

"Thank you very much," said Unspeakable Thomas, the elderly Unspeakable who had, Harry admitted, been very kind to him. "It was literally the greatest achievement I have ever made."

"How do you focus the connection to another reality, and not just somewhere in this reality?" asked Luna, peering intently at the mirror.

"It would take me almost as long as the timer on the fortress ward to explain, but I think we have the time if you are interested," said Thomas, his tone suggesting to Harry that he wasn't joking.

"I'd like that," said Luna, and then Harry had to suppose that she probably would.

"Thomas, if you could tune the Mirror to when we discussed?" suggested Morningstar, and at once Thomas moved to the great circular mirror and began to chant.

He placed his hands at the mirror's rim, and began to move slowly around the circle, all the while chanting. The surface of the mirror began to distort and ripple, and it wasn't a mirror anymore but a pool – a pool of swirling silver magic not unlike the memories in a Pensieve.

"The reality we attune to," said Morningstar, her voice raised over the din created by Thomas's chanting, "is the closest reality to our own. It is the only reality in which there is a variant of Lady Valmira, although she is not as important there as in this. In that reality, as in this one, Voldemort arrived with a vast army. He came in 1999, in time for us to document his entire rise."

Harry became distracted from what Morningstar said because Whithall, the other elderly Unspeakable never seen without Thomas, joined in the chant, although he moved about in a circle counterclockwise around the mirror, waving his wand instead of running his hands over the mirror.

Slowly, the surface of the pool began to calm, and Harry thought he could faintly see an image.

Morningstar continued, unfazed by the workings of the mirror or the distraction of her audience.

"In 1999 Harry Potter was kidnapped by Valmira and a group of European Death Eaters and used in a ritual to restore Voldemort to his corporeal form. With this magic he obtained protection against the sacrificial magic invoked by Lily Potter nearly twenty years ago. You did not die in that conflict due to Priori Incantatem, an obscure consequence of wandlore, but you were killed shortly after the duel with the Dark Lord by Valmira." She paused for what Harry could only assume was dramatic effect and then continued. "We attune to the Battle for Hogwarts, the last battle against Voldemort in this world, and the day Albus Dumbledore of that reality died. Actually, it was the day you all died, except for Harry, whose death we covered already."

Harry grimaced. Being shown a very similar reality where things had gone badly was obviously designed to get them to accept whatever the Unspeakables suggested, but he wasn't entirely sure they weren't just making it all up. Or, he was sure that wasn't the case, but he didn't think he was ready to be sure.

After he'd seen it, maybe.

He looked into the pool again, which now showed scenes of battle although no sound came from the pool. Thomas and Whitehall had stopped chanting, although each moved his wand in a series of elegant and arcane movements Harry had never seen combined before.

"No sound?" said Neville.

"We don't want sound for this," said Morningstar. "We just need to watch and see what happens."

So Harry watched, and what he saw made him feel sick. Hermione slain by Bellatrix Lestrange, more than half-mad after decades locked away in Azkaban. Luna torn into pieces by a rampaging centaur, of all creatures. Voldemort killed Neville himself, sticking him through with the Sword of Gryffindor which Neville had wielded in an attempt to kill him.

He watched, helplessly, as Ron was taken down by Valmira in a flurry of lethal Dark curses. It seemed as if everyone he knew – although some people had been notably absent, such as Ginny and Fred, Remus and Hagrid – was fated to die in this battle.

He'd died already, and this Voldemort – disfigured and snakelike, unlike what everyone had said about their Voldemort – seemed more powerful for it. No spell touched the monster of a man as he stalked the battlefield, sometimes flying and sometimes walking, never running.

Even Dumbledore fell in the end, and his death hadn't come quickly with the light of the Killing Curse. Voldemort had drawn it out, made it last long. Harry didn't doubt that Dumbledore had experienced a never before seen level of pain and torment after what Voldemort had done.

He turned away.

"Look, you've made your point. That was the worst case scenario, surely?"

Harry knew that he was attempting to cling to the world that had been, not the world that existed now.

"We believe our situation is if anything worse, Potter," said Morningstar sharply. "The Dark Lord used some unknown magic in this reality to bring himself back to life," she said, "and that is not including the matter of the Horcruxes. We do not know where they are, what they number, or how to extract them. There are terms of prophecies left unfilled, and we are no closer to their fulfilment than we were upon hearing them. We need to take careful and considered steps."

"And let the world fall to shit all around us?" said Neville, still watching the pool with what Harry thought was a morbid fascination. Harry glanced at it.

The vista had changed now, and showed a different reality.

"This reality does not have a comparable figure to Valmira," said Morningstar, "but it is illustrative all the same. In this reality, the Dark Lord conquered Wizarding Britain – which includes Ireland in this reality – in 1996, after killing its Harry Potter during the Triwizard Tournament. Everything we have seen tells us this one thing, Potter: if you die nothing else matters."

The scenes of devastation Harry had been promised played out in the pool, so Harry didn't doubt her sincerity. He knew that she was right. Everyone had always been right about this kind of thing – the whispers had followed him forever.

In his first year it had been because he was Harry Potter and nobody had seen him in a decade. When Nicholas Flamel had come to the school to teach the students the rudiments of alchemy – something which hadn't been taught in centuries due to lack of anyone alive who knew even the basics and was willing to teach others – they decided it was only obvious that Harry and his friends should have been involved when someone had attempted to steal Flamel's notes on the Philospher's Stone (which he never travelled without, trusting nobody but himself to guard that secret).

In his second year when the Hogwarts Basilisk had escaped its chamber beneath the school and he had been outed as a Parselmouth, people had said 'of course he's a Parselmouth, Harry Potter attracts that sort of thing'. Then when he and Ron had killed it with help from a phoenix and a magic sword word had spread all over.

And when Sirius Black had escaped Azkaban in third year, Harry hadn't really been surprised to find that even the newspapers declared that he attracted this sort of attention. They'd painted him as a latent Dark wizard this time though, and not the hero of near-mythic proportions he was usually portrayed as.

Then in his fourth year when the Court of Fools arrived at Hogwarts to challenge the young wizards and witches of Britain Harry had actually been the first to joke about how he always attracted the strangest things. They hadn't left until the end of fifth year, and the less said about that the better, Harry had always thought.

Even in his sixth year he'd been at the centre of a scandal, since Sirius Black had managed to find Peter Pettigrew – who had been posing as Ron's rat for over a decade – and had been acquitted by Wizengamot.

Then there had been the Triwizard Tournament in seventh year, and Harry had actually won it – that had been great even if some people suggested it was only because he was 'Harry Potter' that he'd won.

Then of course he found out that actually, he was important. Not just to his parents or Wizarding Britain for whatever reasons, but important in the grand scheme of things. Dumbledore had told him of the prophecy when he'd graduated from Hogwarts, and fairly soon after that reports of the Dark Lord's activities came streaming in.

Instead of saying everything he'd thought about, though, Harry continued to watch the myriad events unfold within the Reality Mirror.

If he was actually going to step up and be the one marked the Dark Lord's equal he needed to know what the Dark Lord, what any of the Dark Lords, were truly capable of doing in his absence. He wanted to see realities where he'd won too, because surely those existed.

He had rather a lot of things to get through.