CHILLS

Now what?

Ron was off in cuckoo-land by his feet, Sirius Black had turned into a giant dog and chased Professor Lupin off into the forest, and Snape was still hanging – unconscious – in the air over by the still frozen Whomping Willow.

Exchanging a look with the slightly dirty and ruffled Hermione, Harry saw the same question in her eyes. They were alone, confused, and neither of them knew what to do next.

And then they heard it.

Head snapping around, Harry stared off into the forest nervously, the sound of a dog yelping in pain sending shivers down his spine. Sirius would be fine fighting a werewolf right? He was a fully grown wizard, and that dog animagus form of his looked down-right vicious, he should be able to hold his own shouldn't he?

Turning to Hermione as another yelp echoed, he took one look at the ready expression on her face before he was moving, breaking into a run towards Black's location, near what sounded like the lake. Cresting the top of a hill with Hermione mere steps behind him, Harry froze as he watched Sirius slowly transforming back into a human, with Moony standing over him snarling.

A spell flying from the tip of his wand before Harry knew what he was doing, he swallowed nervously as it splashed uselessly against the werewolf's chest, serving only to draw the beast's attention to himself. "Come on," he murmured to himself, watching fearfully as the former Professor Lupin looked between Harry and the weakly stirring Sirius, the werewolf finally making its mind up and turning to face Harry completely. "Good boy," he said simply, before freezing as he realised that he didn't exactly know any spells that could slow a werewolf down let alone defeat one.

But it seemed like he didn't need them, as Moony's head snapped around harshly, Harry's breath coming out as a fine mist as the werewolf gave a full body shudder and fled – sprinting right past Harry and Hermione without a backwards glance. Feeling the cold without fully comprehending what it meant, the two of them exchanged looks before darting towards the prone form of Sirius who was trembling and moaning quietly.

"Nooo… nooo…" the prisoner groaned as Harry tried to roll him over, "Run… run".

"Harry".

Looking up at Hermione's whisper, Harry felt the cold stabbing into his stomach as he saw them. Dementors, at least a hundred of them, spiralling around the Black Lake that they were on the shore of. They were being surrounded, the familiar icy cold penetrating his insides as Hermione whimpered beside him.

"Think… think of something happy," he ordered as he raised his wand, struggling to clear his mind and focus on a happy thought strong enough to fuel a Patronus.

'I'm leaving the Dursleys. I'm going to go live with Sirius, with family who loves him'.

"Expecto Patronum! Expecto Patronum!"

Chanting the incantation desperately, Harry forced himself to think of Sirius and only of Sirius. Trying to pretend not to notice the way his godfather shuddered and rolled onto his back with a dog-like whine, he kept up the chant. "Her- Hermione help me! Expecto Patronum! Expecto Patronum! Hermione!" he cried, risking a glance over at his friend just in time to see the weakly casting girl collapse forward against his side in a dead faint.

He couldn't fail, he couldn't give up. If he failed here then he'd be failing not only himself, but also Sirius and Hermione, both who would be at danger from the dementors that were approaching in a thick heavy wall around them.

"EXPECTO PATRONUM! EXPECTO PATRONUM!" Harry screamed, raising his voice intentionally to try block out the sound of his mother's screaming and Voldemort's high-pitched voice casting the Killing Curse. A wisp of silvery mist erupted from the tip of his wand suddenly, the dementor before him freezing, unable to pass through the feeble light of his formless Patronus.

Barely illuminated by the light cast by his Patronus, Harry watched as a dead slimy hand stretched out from beneath the dementor's cloak, reaching for the silver wisp as if to just push it aside. He could feel hundreds of eyes drilling into him, their rattling breathing only muted by the screaming in his ears as the dementor in front of him instead reaching up to pull its hood down to reveal its face – or what should have been a face. Instead there were empty eye sockets with scabbed skin stretched across them, a wide gaping circular hole where the mouth should have been.

And that was it. With the dementor's true face staring him down, Harry felt the sheer and utter terror it invoked him in overpowering the weak happiness he felt. His Patronus dying and leaving him defenceless, a fine white mist began to cloud over his vision as rotting hands latched onto his chin. As his face was turned upwards towards the only thing he could truly see – the dementor – Harry felt the terror in his chest fading away and leaving behind an aching numbness.

His own hands raising, Harry grasped the dementor's wrists and just pushed at the numbness, following some strange instinct. Ice cracked around him, and for a moment Harry's vision cleared enough to reveal a sculpture made of shining crystal, a statue that resembled a dementor too much to be coincidental. Before he had the time to try comprehend the dementor ice sculpture he was still holding by the wrists, more hands were grabbing onto him and pulling him away, a second dementor appearing in his line of sight and pulling him down.

Just as the dementor's 'lips' brushed against his face, there was a light. A soft white-blue, the light grew brighter and brighter until even the dementor attempting to Kiss him stopped to look. Feeling himself falling into oblivion, Harry barely noticed that the dementor had released him and that they were all turning to flee, only for an almost intangible wave of the blue-white light to roll over Harry and freeze them all in place.

What happened next, Harry didn't know, as his head fell back and his body went limp. A single figure visible standing in front of the source of the light wavered as his vision blurred and his eyes rolled up into the back of his head.

"Harry… there's something I don't understand," Hermione was saying, "Why didn't the dementors get Sirius? I remember them coming, and then I think I passed out… there were so many of them".

Sagging back to collapse against a tree, watching the full moon beginning to rise in the distance, Harry could only shrug. "I don't know," he confessed, "I remember the dementor almost Kissing me, and then there was ice… everything froze".

"Froze!" Hermione echoed, startling Harry who blinked at her in confusion. "The Minister was talking about 'dark magic'," she explained with a roll of her eyes and air quotes, "He said something had frozen the dementors and Dumbledore had to show him the echoes in our wands to prove that we hadn't used dark magic on them. I thought he meant some kind of petrification spell, but he actually meant they were frozen in ice!"

"That's not all," Harry interrupted nervously, "I did it".

"You what?" Hermione asked, staring at him in confusion.

"I did it. I froze the dementors!" Harry blurted, "Well at least I froze one of them. I grabbed its wrists and I panicked, then it just turned into a statue made of ice".

"But the others?"

"They weren't me," Harry denied, "There was this huge wave of blue magic from across the lake that froze the rest of them".

"But who did it? Who cast it? And what kind of magic was that?" Hermione questioned curiously, biting her lip as she clearly struggled to find an answer.

"I uh… I think I saw them," Harry admitted slowly. He had seen someone there, he knew that. But what he didn't know, was how he had seen them. It was impossible wasn't it? No magic could bring back the dead, as Dumbledore had told him back in first year, so how was it possible that he of all people could have saved them?

"You did? What did they look like? Was it a teacher? Was it Snape?" Hermione pressed.

"I might have imagined it," he defended quickly, "I passed out almost instantly afterwards, and I could barely see in the first place. I might have mistaken them for someone else".

"Harry?"

I think… I think it was my Dad," he blurted, staring down at the ground between his feet as he felt Hermione's eyes burning into him. "I know it sounds mad," Harry added quickly when he looked up, flinching at the look of alarm and pity in Hermione's eyes, "But I know what I saw. Well… I know what I think I saw. And I saw me standing there with my arms outstretched, and since I was passing out at the time it can't have been me!"

"Was he a ghost?"

"Maybe?" Harry answered with a simple shrug, "He looked solid, but I dunno".

And truly he didn't. Something deep inside him was telling him that he was wrong, that it wasn't his father. But at the same time he couldn't deny what he'd seen. He'd seen himself standing there, but he'd had brilliant blue eyes that matched the magic he'd hurled at the dementors to save their lives. And Harry's eyes weren't blue, they were green, and he'd never seen that kind of… ice magic… before tonight so there was no way it'd been him.

Thankfully Hermione didn't bring it up again, instead changing the subject to begin talking more about the time turner. She'd explained more about how she'd used it to get to all of her classes. Harry hadn't been listening, not entirely, just enough that he could respond appropriately when it was time. Afterwards he'd only blink at her blankly and shrug when she asked his opinion about a question she'd asked him, everything she'd said having gone in one ear and out the other.

And then it was time.

They watched as their past selves had clambered out of the Whomping Willow, Snape floating between them and Pettigrew tied up. They watched as the moon came out from behind some clouds and Professor Lupin transformed. They watched as Pettigrew escaped again, Hermione putting her hand on Harry's arm and shaking her head when he made to go after the rat.

"Come on," Hermione whispered finally, "We need to get ready. We need to go save Sirius".

Nodding weakly, trying to fight back the urge to vomit at the way they were just sitting there and watching, Harry followed his best friend down to the lake's shore and ducked into a bush with her. "It happens there," he mumbled, eyes locking onto a place near the shoreline just before, "That's where He appears. My Dad".

"Oh Merlin," Hermione choked, pulling Harry attention back across the lake to themselves, to where he could see his own pitiful attempts at a Patronus. "This looks horrible, I don't thi- I don't think I can watch," she rasped out as her past self fainted.

"You have too! You'll see!" Harry insisted, pulling her hands away from her eyes and making her watch. "Look! There I go!" he added nervously as he watched himself latching onto a dementor, turning into an ice sculpture in a flash of white-blue light. "He looks like me," he murmured as he caught sight of the brief blue sheen to his past self's eyes.

Harry's eyes were blue… they were green. But James Potter's eyes were brown.

It hadn't been his father.

It had been him.

Shoving Hermione off him as she tried to stop him, Harry launched himself out of the bushes and shot down to the shore of the lake, instinctively putting one foot in the water as he reached deep inside himself. Mustering up every feeling he'd ever felt, every ounce of magic he possessed, Harry forced the cold ache in the middle of his chest to stir – grabbing onto it with both metaphorical hands as he hunched in on himself before flinging his arms wide with a roar.

And there was light. Blue-white power radiating from his body in a wave, glistening ice rolling across the lake like an avalanche. He could feel the energy leaving him rapidly, pouring out from his heart and forcing the dementors to either flee or turn to ice. When his power hit his past self, Harry watched blindly as a shimmering dome appeared around him that covered both Sirius and Hermione, that single act wiping his past self out to the point that he joined his best friend and godfather in unconsciousness. Lowering his arms as the power stopped flowing through him, Harry glanced down at his feet to see the entire lake had frozen solid and more, the ice climbing back up onto the bank and spreading behind him.

Hermione was safe, at least, Harry mused as he watched his friend hanging awkwardly from a low-hanging branch – icicles hanging from her damp hair and a faint blue colouration spread across her checks as she stuttered out warming charm after warming charm.

"It wasn't my Dad," he blurted dumbly, "It was me".

The look Hermione sent him screamed 'You think?' as he ducked back behind the trees with her, watching as Snape staggered into the clearing and started conjuring stretchers for them. "How… how did you do that?" she asked slowly as Snape levitated the three of them from the clearing, ducking and waving between the frozen dementor statues.

"I don't know," Harry admitted, his attention being drawn to where his hand was resting on the trunk of the tree they were hiding behind, watching the ice slowly crawling across its surface. "I really don't know". Ignoring the looks Hermione was sending him, Harry shook his head and began backing away from the tree, "Come on," he instructed, "We have a criminal to bust out of prison".

CHILLS

Based off my own "Cool as Ice" challenge, found on my forum (Link in my profile page). It took me a while to find the place in the story I wanted to, and then it took me even longer to decide whether to base this off my "Cool as Ice" challenge or my "Fire Solves Everything" challenge - fire vs ice being quite the difficult choice for me to make. Either way, I decided, and I think I'm kind of proud with what I got.