I had to retool some of where this story is going but I think I have a handle on it. Hopefully expect the next chapter to be up soon. This is unbetaed so let me know of any errors or misspelled words.
Chapter 13:
For a long moment Harry, Hermione and Snape simply stared at each other. It was as if the rest of the world faded away.
"Potter…?" Snape seemed almost confused, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
Snape's eyes seemed to budge as they swept over everything. His gaze leapt from each of the students to the destroyed property before it finally pinned to Harry and the wand that was still in his hand.
His face began to purple to a degree that Harry had never seen on anyone beyond his Aunt Marge when she was deep in her brandy. He opened his mouth…
Only to be cut off by Malfoy's screams. He bellowed as if he had lost a limb which, Harry supposed, he still might. The rest of the world flooded back.
Snape swept over to Malfoy and conjured a swath of bandages along with a splint. In between his rapid casts, he flicked his wand over his shoulder. A ball of light burst out of his wand and resolved itself into a four-legged animal that was moving too fast for Harry to determine what it was. The mystery animal took off down the corridor in a dead sprint.
Unsure of what to do, Harry weakly walked over to the wall on legs that suddenly felt as they had run ten miles. Hermione simply collapsed to the floor with a far off look on her face. Suddenly his limbs snapped to his sides.
Snape's voice sneered out. "Not so fast Potter. No slinking back to your dormitory for you." He spat the word Potter as it left his lips, as if it burned him to say it. He floated the petrified Harry and leaned him against a nearby wall in the shadow on the other suit of armor. He flicked his wand, and it felt like Snape had cracked a raw egg on his head. "I'll still see you get what you deserve before this day is out."
And there he stayed. Nobody seemed to notice him when Madam Pomfrey came down the corridor at a run before conjuring a stretcher for Malfoy and shooed a still shell-shocked looking Hermione in the direction of the hospital wing. Snape didn't even glance in his direction as he levitated Crabbe and Goyle and stalked after Madam Pomfrey.
He was once again ignored when Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall came to try to get lizard Ron down from the ceiling where he was seemed to have perched. After several minutes spent in hushed conversation about the best way to get him down without hurting him, Dumbledore simply stunned him while McGonagall caught him in midair.
As they turned to leave, the elderly wizard's gaze swept over Harry. Harry tried to call out to him, to let him know he was there but it was to no avail. With a deliberate motion, the headmaster turned and walked away.
So there he sat, watching the shadows move across the corridor. Every once in a while, the class change brought hordes of people out in the corridors. The story in the Prophet seemed to be the number one topic of gossip on everyone's lips judging by the number of times he had heard his own name mentioned. No one every seemed to notice him, no matter how hard he tried, and after a while he stopped trying.
Lunch passed, and so did dinner, and still Snape did not come back. The corridor grew dark, and the torches flicked one as one.
Quite possibly the only good thing about not being able to move any part of his body was that it gave Harry a lot of time to think and reflect.
He thought about his friends, hoping that Pomfrey was going to be able to help them. He worried about what borderline cruel punishment that Snape was probably thinking of right now. Around lunch and dinner he thought longingly about food. The small amount of toast he had eaten at breakfast seemed like eons ago.
But mostly, he thought about the Time Stone.
During the skirmish earlier, it has just appeared in his hand. Harry knew for a fact that it had been in the pouch earlier, but when he had needed it had been there. It has given him its power, let him save Hermione. it And then when he had been petrified, he had felt the stone vanish and reappear back around his neck.
It has known exactly what he needed. Almost like it was… alive.
But that was ridiculous, right? He had been with the Time Stone 24/7 a day for the past week. It had never shown anything like it had done today. It couldn't be alive.
With a chill, Harry remembered the diary from last year. It had appeared to lay dormant for months at a time, patiently waiting until it could overwhelm poor Ginny.
What did he really know about this stone? Only what he had read in Slytherin's book, and even Harry could recognize that the man had not been entirely sane at the end.
That gave him pause, and his thoughts were quiet for a while. It was in that quiet that he heard a faint whispering. Harry frantically began to struggle, trying to communicate with whoever was out there but no one appeared at the end of the corridor.
Wait that wasn't right. The whispering wasn't coming from the end of the corridor, it was coming from him!
He listened harder. Wait, it wasn't coming from him but from the pouch around his neck. And he wasn't hearing it with his ears but hearing it in his mind. It was too low for him to make out any specific words, but the voice felt…familiar.
Harry began to focus his attention on the stone. The world began to fade away. The whispering got louder and louder. Slowly, Harry began to understand. It did not speak words in any language that Harry could understand but, slowly he began to understand all the same.
The Time Stone, for now it was certain that the voice came from the stone, spoke of things that Harry had little reference for but entranced him all the same. It spoke of power, of the six stones that could elevate from a mortal to something more. He learned of the vastness of infinity, and his own tiny role within it.
The stone tried to teach him the mysteries of time, how it ebbed and flowed in patterns that he could learn to control if he so wished. He could become the master of time, bend it to his whim so it could never touch him or his loved ones again.
Harry never noticed the petrification spell shattering around him, nor did he notice the glowing green lines of energy that flowed upon his skin and into his eyes. He was too focused on the brightly glowing green stone in his open palm. Slowly his feet began to lift…
Footsteps echoed down the corridor, breaking Harry out of his trance. The glow cut off suddenly as if a switch had been flipped, the lines slowly fading from his skin. Harry staggered as if he had been struck.
He raised his head only to see Snape rounding the corner. He did a double take upon seeing the alcove empty, before focusing on Harry standing in the middle of the corridor.
The look on Snape's face worried Harry. He had seen the man be angry, sullen, even close to tears when he had to grade Neville's potion during his last detention. But he had never seen him be…gleeful? Snape looked as though he had come downstairs on Christmas morning and was looking at a sea of presents with his name on them.
"Come with me Potter. It is time to get you what you deserve."
The pair didn't speak as they entered the Great Hall. With every step, the pit of nerves in Harry's stomach grew like a lead weight. He felt like a man walking towards his execution. By contrast, Snape seemed about to skip down the lane between the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables.
They entered the trophy room where they were met by an odd group. Dumbledore and McGonagall were there as expected, but they were joined by Lucious Malfoy and two burly looking men in dark blue cloaks. Facing the fire, was a squat witch that vividly reminded Harry of some kind of toad. She was dressed in bright, lurid pink from head to toe including her shoes and the bow on top of her head.
Upon seeing Harry, McGonagall's expression broke out into something dangerously close to a smile. "Mr. Potter" she said with relief, moving towards him "where have you been, we looked all afternoon…"
"Hem Hem." The squat witch turned and the idea of a frog was only reinforced in Harry's mind. Her beady eyes flicked back and forth, and he half expected her to flick a long tongue out her mouth.
McGonagall's face became stony, and she took a deep calming breath. She grabbed Harry in what appeared to be an embrace, but she quickly began to whisper in his ear. "Whatever, happens Potter you must not fight back. It will be worse if you do. You can meet me at the edge of the parking lot at King's Cross, and I will shelter you. I won't allow you to go back to those… relatives of yours… "
"HEM HEM" another louder, but equally fake, cough came from the frog witch.
McGonagall whirled. "Would you like a couch drop Delores. Fly in your throat?"
Delores colored and smiled but it didn't reach her eyes. "No thank you Minerva, this won't take long."
She turned to Harry. "Mister Potter, my name is Delores Umbridge, and I am the Senior Undersecretary to the Minster of Magic, his excellency Cornelius Fudge." As she said this, she gave Harry a look like he was expected to let out a little gasp or bend a knee or something. When he stayed still, she frowned and went on.
"However in this case, I am here representing the Department of Magical Law Enforcement" She spoke slowly, as if talking to a particularly small child. "It is my regret to inform you that as of 42 minutes ago, you have been expelled from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please surrender your wand and prepare to come with us." She held out a grubby hand for his wand.
Harry, who to this point had been feeling mild bemusement, suddenly felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped on his head. "Expelled" he gasped, "for what?" He took a step back only to collide with the two wizards in dark cloaks who had moved behind him.
Umbridge's smile deepened but it was Lucius Malfoy who spoke softly. "For assaulting my son and his friends."
"Assaulting them?! They attacked me first!" Harry protested.
"Oh no, Mr. Potter. It doesn't do to lie. You'll learn that lesson, I'll make sure of it." Her smile changed to something predatory. "At 9:06 this morning, we have witness testimony that you viciously attacked three upstanding members of Slytherin house. This attack left all three in a state such that they required intensive medical care. One of them had to be sent to St. Mungo's."
"What about Ron and Hermione? They were there, they can tell you!" He looked pleadingly at Professor McGonagall who simply shook her head.
"You mean Ron Weasley? Madam Pomfrey was unable to determine exactly what curse you attacked him with, so he was also sent to St. Mungo's. As to Ms. Granger, why the testimony of such a young girl can hardly stand up to intense scrutiny can it? Who knows what she saw? Certainly not her."
Harry's mind scrambled, looking for anything at all to help him. "Don't I get due process? Some kind of way to tell my side of the story?"
Umbridge simpered, "You did dear boy, but you rudely choose not to appear to testify. Mr. Malfoy, upon hearing of the violent attack upon his son and his friends, called an emergency session of the school board this afternoon. You were called to testify, and a member of the board was sent to fetch you from class, but you were unable to be found."
Suddenly with dawning horror, Harry realized exactly why he had been frozen in that corridor all afternoon. Snape hadn't forgotten him, they just needed him out of the way. He turned to give a hard glare to Snape but was only met with a look of glee.
With nothing left in his back pocket, Harry played his last, most desperate card: the truth. "Madam Umbridge, I was frozen in the corridor all afternoon. Snape froze me and left me…" he trailed off, realizing how ridiculous he sounded.
She gave a high girlish laugh. "I think we have heard quite enough from you Mr. Potter. Slandering an upstanding citizen like Mr. Snape here. Shame on you. Let's not delay any longer."
She nodded to the wizards behind Harry who clamped their hands around his arms with an iron grip. One of them reached into his pocket and pulled out his wand. He tossed it to Umbridge.
"Shouldn't you at least check his wand, to see if he actually did what he did." McGonagall protested, a tone of desperation in her voice.
Instead of responding, Umbridge simply locked eyes with Harry, and snapped his wand in two. Harry felt the crack of the wood in his bones like he had broken his own arm. She cast the pieces in the fire behind her. Harry sagged in the grip of the aurors.
"Now that that nasty business is taken care of, onto the next. Mr. Potter, you are hereby under arrest."
"WHAT?" McGonagall roared. Snape looked as if he was going to wet himself in pleasure. Dumbledore, who to this point hadn't said anything, simply frowned.
"What for?" Harry asked weakly, still reeling from the events of the past ten minutes.
"Haven't we already covered this? Assault of three scions of upstanding pureblood, noble houses? Assault of another pure, but not noble house? Ring any bells."
"Show me the law!" McGonagall raged "Where is the law that allows you to arrest him?"
"The Bloodline Defense Act of 1991, clearly states that 'any cowardly attack of pureblood and noble heirs' carries with the maximum penalty under the law. Now come Mr. Potter you have waisted everyone's time enough." Umbridge conjured a pair of handcuffs and began to advance on Harry.
"I will not let you take him for a crime he did not commit Delores." Professor McGonagall moved to put herself between Harry and Umbridge. "Then you will be arrested alongside him as an accomplice. Make your choice."
The room was in a standoff for a second and then two. Then absolute chaos erupted. Somehow, he knew what was going to happen a second before it did.
McGonagall fired a curse from her wand at Umbridge who collapsed. The two aurors dropped Harry and began firing back at her. Dumbledore rushed to Umbridge's side along with Snape.
"RUN POTTER. MY OFFICE HAS A FLOO." She began transfiguring the trophies around her into a pack of lions who then charged the Aurors. They blasted them away and began firing upon her directly. She raised a shield.] and fired back.
A nearby coat rack came to life, wrapped around the closest auror and began pummeling every inch of skin it could reach. The auror howled and fell taking him out of the fight.
Harry stood paralyzed watching the carnage unfold when the whispering began again. He looked down and was unsurprised to see the Time Stone already in his hand, glowing brightly. He suddenly realized that this didn't have to happen. He could fix this.
"POTTER, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? RUN!" McGonagall screamed before she was suddenly wrapped in chains fired from behind her. Umbridge climbed to her feet and conjured a gag. She fired a purple curse at her which caused her to scream. "That's enough out of you prisoner."
She looked at the two aurors. "Well, ARREST THEM."
"No" Harry said suddenly, surprising everyone including himself.
She spun in his direction. "What did you say, you mudblood spawn?" She looked down, at the glow in his hand. "What's that in his hand?"
"I. Said. NOOO." Harry roared. Umbridge, the aurors and Snape all raised their wands. And then there was a green flash, and everything went black.
The first thing that Harry was aware of was Malfoy's screams. Next the smell of blood. And then everything hit all at once.
The corridor. Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle all in various states of incapacitation. Ron a lizard. Harry and Hermione covered in blood.
Standing in front of them, Snape had just rounded the corner and was taking in everything around him with wide eyes.
"Oh fuck me." Harry snapped.