It only took moments for the situation on the lawn to devolve into absolute chaos. Pettigrew had transformed back into a rat and was escaping. Nine kids were surrounding the green titan that used to be defense professor Remus Lupin. While the monstrous shapeshifter in question, in hindsight, wasn't really any bigger than Hagrid, looming over a bunch of surprised children on a moonless night, he seemed, well, hulking.
"Green jotun!" Ron yelled, waving the wandlight in the creature's face.
"He don't look jolly!" Seamus added.
"Green sasquatch," Dean corrected. "I think he's the not-spikey one! Maybe he's nice."
"Snape's berserker report!" Hermione squealed. "He has no other enemies to fight. Run!"
"What happened to Pettigrew?" Harry asked, still task-focused even in the face of his professor turning out to not be a werewolf.
Maybe if the children had encountered the Hulk after he'd already gotten to hit something, shown themselves clearly instead of being little more than shrill voices and bright lights in his face, and presented themselves calmly, it would have gone differently. But still enraged after dealing with an old friend turned traitor, finally free of months of calming draught, and unsure of his surroundings other than that there were little bright threats surrounding him…
The Hulk decided to smash.
The kids had three things going for them that kept them from being instantly turned into bloody smears on the grass.
First, Vanir were nowhere near as tough as Aesir, but they were a little more robust than pure humans. Even the Midgardborn among them received subtle benefits to their health from the magic coursing through their bodies. Thus, rapid slaps of the transformed professor's huge green hands cracked bones and flung Dean, Lavender, and Ginny backwards, but didn't immediately leave them concussed or their organs ruptured.
Second, the kids were strangely familiar with this kind of situation, having initially bonded over a fight with a troll. "Spread out! Try to snag his arms!" Ron yelled, taking tactical control of the situation. It would have been good advice for a troll, but this creature seemed dramatically stronger. Two orange whips of energy wrapped around a green arm, but it was barely slowed, still plowing into Ron and causing him to gasp as his almost-healed arrow injury from the previous month tore back open. Seamus and Neville, who'd produced the whips, stumbled into the ground at the unexpected strength. At least they didn't panic.
Third, they were not actually alone on the grounds, and a bunch of spells spotlighting a roaring green monster was something nobody within a couple hundred yards could miss. As it happened, that included both a detachment of Ministry warriors who had been sent by Fudge to finally deal with Buckbeak while the professors were all otherwise engaged, Sirius Black, and, to Harry's surprise, Severus Snape.
In the initial, shockingly-fast assault, Harry and Hermione had managed to escape unscathed: Harry because he'd held back trying to see the rat in the grass, and Hermione because she had followed her own advice to run. Six children were on the ground with injuries ranging from reopened wounds and broken bones to just being knocked over. That left Parvati as the only one standing and in range, even though shouts of surprise in the distance told her help was on the way.
But it was several seconds out, and the beast might stomp her friends as they rolled on the ground if she didn't do something. She knew magic wasn't her strong point, so she ran. But she ran loud.
"Come get me, you big dumb… melon head!"
Flicking a low-powered bolt of energy at him, she then sprinted as fast as she could toward the shouts.
She only made it about half a dozen yards before the ground shook behind her and a meaty hand sent her flying into the turf. But that was half a dozen yards away from her friends, and closer to the warriors.
"I don't remember him being that big!" Sirius was yelling to Snape as they rushed up. "Or green."
"Circumstances have changed," Snape gritted out. "Potter! Granger! Collect your classmates before they're murdered! Black, distract your monster."
"It's Sirius Black!" one of the warriors realized, coming at them from the opposite direction.
Their sergeant bellowed, "Leave Black for now! Jotun tactics!"
Snape cast something at the Hulk that managed to slow him enough that he didn't quite knock over the warriors like a stack of bowling pins, but it was close. Most of them managed to roll with the attack, taking it on their shields, and tried to use their spears to stab him to death. Enchanted and assigned to them to fight unknown marauder threats, they barely seemed to annoy the Hulk. If anything, the more he was being hit by weapons and spells, the stronger he appeared to be getting.
"Get Parvati," Harry told Hermione, while he went to check on the rest of their classmates that had been downed in the original assault. It was difficult to see as the battle moved away from them with just the fallen and guttering magical torch for light, and he had to relight his wand to see everyone groaning on the ground. Neville and Seamus had just managed to stand back up from where they'd been toppled, and the four that had actually been hit were groaning in pain. "Everyone alive?"
"Can't move my arm," Dean realized.
"I think I broke some ribs," Lavender wheezed.
"I think I may have torn something," Ginny checked herself as she sat up, wincing as she put pressure on her abdomen. "But I can walk."
"Parvati's out, but she's breathing!" Hermione called, from where her roommate had fallen.
"I think I'm bleeding again," Ron said, the pain of it managing to wipe the usual satisfaction of battle from his face.
"Put pressure on the wound," Harry instructed Ron, wadding up the boy's shirt to make it easier to staunch. His first aid training hadn't had much to say about reopened sucking chest wounds with massive blunt trauma, and he was honestly on the verge of freaking out. He was used to being out fighting things, not having his friends bleeding. "We need to get Ron and Parvati to the infirmary, fast. Probably Dean, Ginny, and Lavender, too."
Far too close to their attempts at triage, a surprisingly one-sided battle was going on. Snape was doing everything in his power to weaken the Hulk with magic, only his fierce mental control allowing him to clamp down on the fear from the "incident" when he was a student. Sirius was doing what he could without a wand to throw up shields to deflect massive blows away from the furiously dodging warriors. At this point, even the staunch fighters were reduced to merely trying to ward off attacks.
The Hulk seemed to be trending from anger to having a good time trying to swat his attackers. In hindsight, he could have very easily killed any of them if he'd focused, but almost seemed to be playing a game of changing targets and forcing them to scramble.
And then the mystical despair began to set in, as dozens of red lights began to appear across the grounds.
Harry noticed that the transformed professor began to paw at his head, as if the pall of despair was even affecting him. "Sirius!" he yelled. "Mindless Ones! You have to get out of here."
Sirius nodded at Harry and shouted, "Remus!" He flung an unfocused bolt of orange magic to get his friend's attention. "Come chase me into the forest! Like we used to do."
The Hulk grunted and spotted his old friend, still trying to shake off the mystical malaise as he gave one last swat to a nearby warrior and then bounded off after Sirius, who was already transforming into a dog to outpace him into the forest. Each of the red lights began to turn and swarm in their direction. "You fools!" Snape yelled after them.
Harry couldn't help but agree. There were more Mindless Ones than they'd seen before, and they were spreading out. This time they might actually catch him, especially distracted by the berserk Lupin. "Everyone that can walk, can you help carry Ron and Parvati?" Harry asked his friends. "Anyone else need help moving?"
"I'll make it," Dean grunted. "Sounds like you aren't coming."
"May need to help them with the Mindless Ones," he nodded, letting the invisibility cloak fall over him and finally snatching the map back up where Lupin had dropped it on the ground in his transformation.
"Be careful," his friend nodded, as he began to organize the march.
Meanwhile, Snape was so busy stabilizing the wounded warriors, he didn't notice his least-favorite student wander off. Wouldn't, in fact, notice he was missing until the triage caravan had made it back into the castle.
Following the red lights and feeling of despair was all too easy for Harry, his meditation techniques managing to keep the wail of his dying mother at the edge of his consciousness as he charged after them. He didn't know whether he'd be able to summon up a breakthrough with astral projection in this crisis, but he knew neither of the grown men could manage it. He might have actually asked Snape for help—the professor could definitely astral project—but Harry was convinced the man would have figured out how to justify not helping, and keep him from helping as well.
As the woods loomed up, he quickly dropped his "waypoint" spell down on the ground. He was getting a lot more proficient with it, and was sure he was on the verge of being able to make it mobile soon.
Then it was back into the dark forest. He was becoming all too familiar with running through it at night. Without the moon, it was especially forbidding, but he expected that any beast in the forest that might harm him would have fled the Mindless Ones. Only an idiot like him would go charging after them. He lit his wand just enough to highlight the ground before him, allowing the cloak to roll back up now that he was away from the adults. It probably wouldn't do him any good against the Mindless Ones, and might make it so nobody could find him if he passed out.
He wandered in the dark for quite a few minutes, following the occasional flash of red light and growing feeling of unease. Eventually he heard a warning bark ahead and broke into a sprint as the noise grew increasingly distressed. He exited the treeline into a clearing with a large pond, visible in the reflected starlight. Red lights surrounded the clearing on most sides, and as he increased his wandlight he made out Sirius, in his dog form, barking furiously to try to wake Lupin. The defense professor was swiftly shrinking into the tatters of his robes, passed out on the bank of the lake.
Harry wasn't sure whether Sirius was afraid to leave him to the Mindless Ones, or just figured that he was trapped anyway. "Sirius!" Harry yelled.
The animagus swiftly shifted back to human form, and gasped, "Harry? No! You can't be caught here, too!"
Turning back into human form seemed to fix the targeting of the dark dimension creatures, or maybe they were just waiting for a dramatically-appropriate moment, but the lights began to slowly move closer to the pond, their aura of dread becoming nearly palpable as the water hissed and bubbled with cold vapor.
"I can astrally project!" Harry assured him. "I think!" As he charged up to the two older men, he tossed Sirius his wand and slid into the lotus position next to Lupin. "Do what you can to give me a minute!"
"Mad as your father," Sirius said, half in respect, half disturbed. He set about doing what transfiguration he could manage to try to raise the terrain into obstacles—earthen berms and spikes of ice. Harry already thought Sirius seemed to be flagging under the malaise even as he tried to find his meditative center…
In his trance, Harry only had scraps of what happened next…
"I found 'em!" Hagrid's booming yell roused him from where he'd slumped and almost rolled into the pond. He pried his eyes open to see the big man holding his lantern high. Lupin's unconscious body was still sprawled next to him, but Sirius was nowhere to be seen. His wand was also gone, hopefully still with his godfather. "Yeh alright, Harry?"
"Where's Sirius?" he asked, managed to sit up without rolling the rest of the way into the water.
"If he were with yeh, I reckon them Mindless Ones took 'im back ter Azkaban. Sorry, Harry," Hagrid said. "We ain't seen sign o' him or them in the forest."
"I don't…" Harry tried to put his disjointed memory back together as Fang charged up and began giving him friendly licks to his face. "I think… I think my father's ghost might have saved him? That doesn't make any sense, though, right?"
"I hear those things do bad things ter yer brain," Hagrid shrugged. "Important thing is they didn't take yeh and Remus, too. Can yeh walk while I carry him? He seems well out."
"He's the Hulk," Harry remembered what the news had been calling him the previous summer. "Guess he can only keep that up for so long, and then crashes out."
"Well, he tol' us his condition were worse, 'cause o' somethin' he did ter himself on accident," Hagrid admitted, picking up Lupin and trying to preserve his decency while Harry pulled himself up with some help from Fang. "Back when he were a student, t'was just battle frenzy. He'd get a bit bigger and weird lookin', but nothin' like some o' them were sayin' happened earlier."
They began heading back through the woods and Harry explained, "My aunt thinks it has something to do with government experiments. He fought another one kind of like him last summer, back on Earth. She thinks our country was trying to make super soldiers."
"No folly greater than kingdoms trying to win a war," McGonagall said, primly, after smoothly transforming from a cat to a human as she emerged from the shadows. "Save, perhaps, children trying to protect those that should be protecting them. I expect that the points lost for charging off without an adult will balance those from saving a professor, Potter." She informed Hagrid, "The rest of the search party is heading back in separately."
"Sorry, ma'am," he told her. Harry was never totally sure how mad McGonagall actually was at foolish bravery. She was his head-of-house, after all. "I thought I could astrally project and fend them off. But I guess I didn't have enough time."
"It's a wonder you thought you could accomplish it at all," she agreed. "Especially to add to your other achievements of the evening."
"All I did was get the rest of the group hurt," he demurred. "We thought we could help catch Pettigrew, but Professor Lupin transformed, and the rat got away."
"Perhaps," she said. "But you seemed instrumental in Professor Snape helping, as well as Black, which may have prevented many casualties. And I understand you must have freed a certain unjustly-doomed hippogriff, as well."
"Somebody freed Buckbeak?" Harry's mood brightened. "Did Hermione manage to do it?"
She frowned, "No, Ms. Granger went straight to the infirmary with the others. Perhaps you did it on the way into the forest or in the time you can't remember? We should have Poppy check you over thoroughly."
"Yes, ma'am," he agreed, still confused.
He'd at least made a pretty straight path into the forest, since they hit a game trail leading from the pond almost directly towards his waypoint marker, emptying out in a spot he thought he could find again with Hagrid's hut lit up on his right and one of the castle's back gates dead ahead.
He followed the professors in a bit of a daze into the school and up to the infirmary, where most of his friends and several of the Ministry warriors were taking up beds. "Everyone okay?" he asked, as Hermione rushed up and gave him a hug.
"Thanks to your quick thinking with Mr. Weasley's wound, yes," Madam Pomfrey nodded, "everyone should be fine. Now let me see to you." She effortlessly peeled Hermione off of him and began waving her wands doing scans. "You seem perfectly fine, which is surprising after the night you had."
"I really just ran off and knocked myself out meditating," he assured her, still confused why everyone was acting like he'd done more.
"But you freed Buckbeak!" Hermione insisted. She led him over to the section of the room where his friends were camped out. Padma had shown up to sit with Parvati, who seemed to be conscious but looked slightly concussed. "I thought you were just going to get Sirius?"
Harry glanced back at where Hagrid, McGonagall, and Pomfrey were distracted laying Lupin out in a bed and admitted, "Wait, you think I did that, too? I literally just ran after Sirius and passed out trying to astrally project to save him."
"But you've been gone for nearly three hours," Dean explained. "It's after midnight already. We assumed you were out doing other stuff. We thought you might have managed to catch Pettigrew, too."
Harry shrugged, "I guess I was just passed out for that long. Oh! I don't remember much but I think I saw my dad's ghost? It sounds stupid every time I say it, but maybe he saved Sirius, and they ran off and did all that stuff?"
"Never been a ghost back from Valhalla," Neville said, quietly. "But I guess weirder stuff has happened to you."
Hermione had been frowning since Dean's comment, and said, "I guess if it's after Midnight, it's Monday. So that makes it your turn to date Padma."
"Everybody switch places!" Harry rolled his eyes, still not picking up what she was sad about at him being missing for the end of their dating window.
"Well," Dumbledore announced, entering the infirmary in eye-watering lime green robes with a lemon yellow pattern of suns, "it seems we must leave a few more staff to mind the school during the equinox rites, going forward." He twinkled and said, "Or perhaps not."
They were surprised to see the Ancient One enter the room not far behind the headmaster. "I hardly feel that a Dark Dimension breach of this magnitude is a laughing matter, Albus." She waved off the Midgardborn trying to bow to her, half of them from their beds. To their unspoken question she admitted, "The route through the Chamber of Secrets was faster, but not immediate enough for me to be of active help."
"I think they must have taken Sirius back with them," Harry told her and Dumbledore. "He wasn't around when I woke up."
"Then I shall have to have your Mr. Hagrid show me the site where he found you," she nodded. "Perhaps I can confirm whether they returned to the Dark Dimension there and took him back with them."
"But we can surely go catch Pettigrew, now that we're sure he's still here," Hermione argued. "Won't they swap him for the rat?"
The headmaster admitted, "They may be… overzealous with a recaptured prisoner, especially one that has eluded them for such a long time. But! I don't believe you should worry about this. It's late, and there will be time for troubles in the morning. And perhaps Ms. Granger is right and Peter's capture will put things right. Now. I must go speak with a very sleepy Minister, upset about his warriors that he'd instructed to sneak onto the school grounds while I was unavailable to greet them." He winked and left.
The Ancient One didn't follow him. She narrowed her eyes at the children and asked, "Did anything you cannot explain happen tonight?"
They all thought about it, and it was Ron who realized, "Where did Snape and Black come from? They were there right away."
Harry nodded, "Snape was supposed to be going to the equinox ritual. And Sirius shouldn't have known to hang out just waiting for something to happen. And I didn't free Buckbeak."
She nodded slowly, as if coming to a decision, finally admitting, "I thought I felt the brush of looped time when I arrived. I was hoping I was wrong, for what could compel the risk?" She fixed Harry with her gaze and explained, "This must have gone badly wrong the first time. Who can say how many times we tried again, until a stable loop formed?"
At her significant pause, all eyes of the study group turned to Hermione to translate the Sorcerer Supreme's cryptic statements about time. She said, "So… the things that don't make sense must have been someone going back in time to change things. And maybe if they didn't… Harry, Sirius, and Professor Lupin all got taken by the Mindless Ones. And maybe the Hulk killed people. And Buckbeak got executed." She worked it out and said, "So you went back and fixed it. But now you're basically obligated to, because you already did."
Parvati, slightly drunkenly—either from the concussion or the potions to fix it—argued, "But you can't! It would be like true prophecy! If you knew that it went wrong, you couldn't fix it, because then you wouldn't know to fix it."
The Ancient One nodded, "Usually true. But time is more… pliable, with sufficient power." She pulled out an oblong amulet that had been hanging beneath her robes. Several of them recognized the Eye of Agamotto. "I had thought I only brought this in case I needed its power against the hosts of the Dark Dimension. But it seems it has another use."
Harry thought he'd gotten it and asked, "So it was you that saved us from the Mindless Ones? You just have done it yet."
She gave them as sad smile and said, "Well, Ms. Granger is mostly right. For many reasons, it cannot be me. This world's manifestations of time would not appreciate me traveling back to a previous day where I notably was not on the planet. And that is without the extra scrutiny I would personally receive moving temporally through a juncture with the Dark Dimension."
"One of us has to do it," Hermione nodded like she got it. Internally, she was amassing about half a dozen research topics to try to actually understand what she'd just heard.
"I think, perhaps, because you are young and, well, small, two might be able to travel," the Ancient One smirked.
"Not it," Padma said, quickly.
"Broken arm," Dean gestured with his working hand.
"Punctured lung, or I'd really be interested," Ron sadly demurred.
"Why are we even arguing about this?" Ginny asked, pointing at Harry and Hermione.
Harry wasn't sure, "If it's just about people who were already here, you could send one of the professors. Even Dumbledore. They're fully trained."
The Ancient One chided, "Do not fool yourself that I would let that man lay his hands on my amulet. And none of the others have training at Kamar-Taj. The two of you have been practicing your basic mudras, yes?" Both of them nodded, as did Dean, Parvati, and Padma. Harry thought of them more as somatic components, but the Masters were traditional about terms. "Let's do this before I convince myself it's a terrible idea, or the Norns catch on. Do not give this to anyone but me."
She had Harry and Hermione stand extremely close to each other and placed the cord of the amulet around their necks, allowing it to hang between them. Harry tried, "I don't even have my wand. Shouldn't we bring more stuff? Shouldn't we have a plan?"
She smirked again, "Mr. Potts. I understand that you never have any of that in your adventures on Earth. Why should this be any different? Now," and she began to demonstrate the gestures, "I believe Ms. Granger should lead, and Mr. Potts should hold on unless his precision has eclipsed hers in the last few months? No? Very well, we go from the joined gesture of the three, into a rightfold crossing to open the Eye."
Hermione followed along with her own gestures, and the metal of the amulet suddenly snapped open, revealing a green stone within, emitting light. Harry felt something very familiar in a sound it was making, just outside of hearing, and the scar on his forehead prickled slightly. Hermione asked, "What if I go back too far?"
Dean piped up, "Whatever you do, don't blink!"
"I regret my father talking you into watching new Who," she sniped back.
"Focus, Ms. Granger," the Ancient One chastised with a smile. "The only reason I think you'll even be able to go back as far as you have to, is because you probably already have. Merely give it your all. Now, a forward double reach, turning deosil, to summon the bands." Hermione copied her, circles of glowing green sigils appearing along her forearm. "This is the most difficult part. Turn the palm toward yourself and rotate your other hand widdershins, concentrating on going back in time. Good luck, the both of you."
With enormous effort, Hermione turned her hand as if she was hanging onto a colossal gyroscope until her palm was facing herself and Harry, green light shining in their faces, and used her left arm to begin to trace counterclockwise loops around it, the geometry of the light spinning in time, faster and faster. She made it about three and a half rotations before she couldn't maintain it anymore and had to drop her arm, exhausted, to her side, the Eye snapping shut.
"Um. I think it worked," Harry held onto her as she almost fainted. "Everyone's gone." Indeed, they were now in the empty infirmary, presumably hours earlier.
"I wish she'd given us time to make a plan," Hermione said, rather enjoying Harry hanging onto her, and suddenly realizing that she hadn't missed the end of her dating time with him after all. "What if we run into ourselves? What if we get hurt back here? What if we accidentally change something we're not meant to change?"
Now that he'd committed to the crazy scheme, Harry was back in what was unfortunately his element: flying into danger by the seat of his pants. Quickly answering her questions he said, "Invisibility cloak, and we try to stay where we know we aren't. Stay away from the things we know are dangerous. And if we mess it up, either we always messed it up or the time loop's not as stable as she thinks it is."
"Right," she nodded, feeling a little energy coming back so she was able to stand on her own. "I guess you hang onto this," she slipped the amulet off her neck, leaving it around Harry's, "since she said it was also for fighting the Mindless Ones, and we know you do that."
"What do you mean? I was my… it was an astral projection of me, not my dad… right," he figured it out.
"People do say you look a lot like him," she agreed. "Let's get out of here before Madam Pomfrey has questions we can't answer."
Of course, they'd only stepped about two yards out of the infirmary before they nearly collided with Trelawney. The gothed-up seer was probably on her way to the equinox ritual, but took time to say, "Ah. Harry Potter. Hermione Granger. And I see that you've acquired a new piece of jewelry, which… it cannot be!" she said, unfortunately immediately recognizing the most powerful artifact of time in the Nine Realms.
By reflex, her hand reached out to touch it, and Harry didn't think to stop her. At her caress, green light flared around the amulet, with perhaps some sympathetic orange light leaking from Harry's scar, and her eyes rolled back in her head.
She began to speak, her voice taking on a strange tone, "It will happen tonight." Harry realized that he recognized the reverb: it was very similar to the voices of the Norns that he heard when he had worn the Helm of Sorting. He could almost even see ghostly images of three other women flickering over the professor's face as she continued. "The Dark Lord's great wound is almost healed, and his work can begin again. His treasure was cast to the void, where it was drawn to another. Tonight, before midnight. The betraying brother will be called to him. With this servant's aid, the Dark Lord will reach out his hand to grasp the the heart of the Realms. Tonight… before midnight… the servant… will be called… to attend the Dark Lord."
"But we need to catch Pettigrew!" Hermione said, upset by the implication that Peter, who betrayed his brothers, would be summoned to whoever was pretending to be Voldemort. "That's part of why we're here."
"Looks like one of those things the Ancient One was warning us about," Harry nodded. "We're not just up against the rat and the Mindless Ones anymore. I bet the Norns aren't happy with us messing with time." He said, face resolved, "Looks like we have to beat them all."
"No pressure, or anything," Hermione rolled her eyes.
Meanwhile Trelawney had come back to herself, and no longer seemed to even notice the amulet or remember what she had said. "I say, I'll be late for the rituals! Good luck with whatever you're attempting, you two. Mindful of curfew. Ta."
As she walked off, Harry and Hermione nodded at each other, and headed off toward the grounds as true Gryffindors: willing to fight time itself, if they had to.