Harry potter and the Time of Retirement
Everything related to Harry Potter belongs to JKR
Chapter 11
As the group of five first years progressed through the hallway Harry was thinking over how to dump the others without looking suspicious. He could not just cast Tempus right in front of everyone, but he was reasonably sure midnight was approaching so he had to be fast.
"So, here we are. No troll" said Ernie, stopping at the place where the beast had been killed a couple hours before.
"The smell is still present, though" said Justin, a disgusted expression on his face.
"I doubt they dragged it out of the school. Wonder what spell they used" said Wayne, kicking a small piece of wood that was lying on the ground.
"My parents used Mobiliarbus a lot, at home. I can't cast it, yet" said Zacharias.
"Maybe Wingardium Leviosa could work too, if you cast it and then push. Who cares, anyway? Let's get out of here" said Harry, looking around him.
"...we are going back already?" asked Justin, half annoyed and half hopeful.
"No, you hero. Since we are out, we'll just explore a little" said Zacharias, with disdain.
"Justin, give up. Everyone already knows we are out, might as well enjoy this" said Wayne, from his corner.
"Ow, alright. Where to, anyway?" asked Justin, a little grumpy.
"Am I the only one who wants to see the third floor?" asked Ernie.
"That would be nice" said Wayne.
No. Hell, no. "Isn't that the floor where we would meet an horrible, painful death?" asked Harry, suddenly worried. "Maybe we could go to the astronomy tower."
"And do what? Don't start chickening out now, Harry" said Ernie, while starting to walk towards the stairways.
"Yeah, not after you pushed us all out here" said Justin, following him together with the others. Harry had no choice but to tag along.
At least, along the way, they stepped on the warded slab of stone so Harry knew a faculty member had been warned, but that was small consolation for him as the situation was slipping out of his hands. Sure, for what he could remember that giant three-headed dog from his first year tended to remain over a trapdoor, but he wasn't willing to bet all these boys' lives on that monster not moving around the room occasionally, ready to eat them all the second they entered. No, going near it was not an option. In the worse case he could just knock them all out with Stupefy, but that would bring his own set of unpleasant consequences.
While climbing the stairs to the third floor, luckily, he saw something that could be useful: Peeves, the poltergeist, floating around one of the upper floors. Involving him was not a safe bet, with how unpredictable he behaved, but Harry did not have the extra time to come up with a better option, not this time. Beside, even attracting his attention without being obvious about it would be hard: a fake slip and him loudly asking the other kids for help could work, but – selfish or not – Harry was reluctant to appear like a klutz if he could find something better. Targeting a spell to Peeves itself was not acceptable either, with all the portraits around them watching and ready to report what they were doing. In the end, right before entering the hallway on the third floor, Harry cast a silent Accio to one of the knick knacks near Peeves, trying to keep the movement of his wand as constrained as possible. The effect ended up being what he hoped for: none of the other boys noticed and right before he stepped into the hallway he could see the poltergeist's eyes, drawn by the movement, fixate on him. Now, it was just a matter of time.
"So, third floor. Which corridor aren't we supposed to go to, again?" said Ernie, who was leading their group.
"That on the right side. There" said Wayne, pointing to it. Ernie restarted walking, and everyone kept following him.
"I wonder what we are going to find. The headmaster wasn't exactly generous with details the first night" said Zacharias, looking around himself.
"Neither were the other professors. Must be something secret" said Harry, who had now regained his cold blood.
"As long as we don't get all killed. What if it is a mine or something?" said Justin.
"A mine?" asked Wayne, but immediately after that an happy, cackling voice boomed behind them.
"Wandering around at midnight, Ickle Firsties? Tut, tut, tut. Naughty, naughty, you'll get caughty."
The effect on their group was noticeable: Ernie and Justin appeared scared, Wayne itself was startled, while Zacharias looked angry and confronted it.
"You again, ghost? Still being your usual waste of space, I see."
"Oh ho hooo, is the firstie still angry for when I locked you inside a room? But you seemed so much in a hurry, I only wished for you to relax!" said Peeves, with an evil glint in his eyes.
"You miserable..." hissed Zacharias, drawing his wand out. Peeves' reaction was immediate:
"STUDENTS OUT OF BED!" he bellowed, "STUDENTS OUT OF BED DOWN THE THIRD FLOOR CORRIDOR!"
At once Justin and Ernie started running back towards the stairways, followed shortly by Wayne, Harry and finally Zacharias. In the distance, they could hear Filch running towards their floor and asking loudly what was happening. Their group started moving down another hallway and Harry, remembering the presence of a secret passageway in front of them, decided that this was the best moment to leave – and so he did, first by remaining behind the other kids, and finally entering the shortcut by pressing a specific brick. The others would escape, or be caught – it was meaningless, there would be no serious repercussions anyway, and he had something to complete.
Once safe, he spent a couple seconds internally debating if he should use some spells to cover his tracks or not, but in the end he decided against it: he could easily deal with being 'caught', and even with having to give up on this night's plans, but he really did not want to deal with harder to answer questions. All he cast were a couple of supersensory charms on his ears, just to avoid crashing straight onto some professor, but bar that he exited the passageway and headed straight to the seventh floor with no other special precautions. He doubted there would be that much interest in where he went after he split from his small group of rules breakers, anyway.
The trip to the entrance of the Room of Requirement was luckily uneventful, so – after a moment of mental focusing – Harry completed the needed passages in front of the portrait of Barnabas the Barmy and stepped inside, making sure that his desire to have the perfect environment for casting his diagnostic spell was clear in his mind.
'This was surprisingly easy' thought Harry stepping out into the hallway, while shrugging his shoulders. And, indeed, for all the needed preparations, book-stealing and rules breaking the actual casting of the spell had been almost an afterthought. The Room of Requirement, quite kindly, provided an empty looking room except for Helena Ravenclaw's diadem right in the center of it. Suppressing a sudden desire to wear it – and a furious desire to burn it to cinders, once he suspected it was the horcrux trying to possess him – Harry sat down on the ground, focused and cast the spell exactly as the book instructed, in every small detail.
Out of worry he could mess up future results he had not cast it on himself before that moment, but he had practiced on objects and once on his (sleeping) dorm mates getting always the expected results – a light which color depended on the number of souls present inside the target. The casting itself felt way more natural than those other times though – hopefully a consequence of his choices of timing and placement – which also made Harry more trusting in the result he got for himself, a white light that supposedly showed only one soul was inside his body.
'So... my scar has no Riddles to hide?' thought Harry ironically, while slowly walking away from the entrance of the Room, with no specific destination in mind. No matter all his efforts, he had only moderate confidence in that diagnostic spell as his situation was quite unique; and yet, lacking any hints to suggest otherwise – like headaches in Defense against the Dark Art's classroom, when Quirrell was near him – he would accept for the time being that yes, he was scar-parasites free. That generated several interesting questions on his own, to be honest: was this a consequence of his older, Riddle-free soul traveling to the past? Or, did whatever happened to him crush a more delicate soul fragment? If it was his soul that moved, had there been a younger Harry's soul that got destroyed too? This last idea was particularly unpleasant.
'Talk about bad luck... I awakened in King's Cross, so my counterpart would have been killed right before joining his long desired new home and friends' thought Harry, while still walking.
'Of course, my mind could just be making all this up' he continued internally, going back to his explanation of just being inside a very long, detailed and believable hallucination created by his dying mind. Not that he was fond of such an option, but it still seemed as logical as random quirks of fate, magic itself, gods or whatever could have shifted him into the past. If all this was just a delusion, anyway, it was certainly accurate.
'Never mind that... i wonder if I still have that weird sacrificial protection in my blood, since it was linked to my body' considered Harry, trying to remain practical. That was quite an important detail after all, as it granted huge boons when confronting Riddle: exactly the kind that could give him survival or victory, if well exploited. He was not ready to bet his existence on that though, so his still-not-planned encounter with Quirrell would not be based around the mere chance that if things went awry he could just hug him and burn him alive.
While walking back to the ground floor, a set of voices draw his attention; and yet, they seemed so distant, he could barely distinguish them.
"Oh, right" murmured Harry, recalling his supersensory charms on his ears. So, he was not about to bump into someone. But who was around the school at this hour?
Focusing on the voices, he could understand parts of them... and what he got did not please him. It was Filch and Snape commenting on how he, Potter, was the only one unaccounted for; apparently the rest of his 'team' had been caught already. Harry was way too tired to play hide and seek, but there was something personally unpleasant in allowing either of those two to fill him with sarcastic remarks and scolding for his rule breaking.
Shaking his head, he turned and rose to the next available floor, the fifth. Not that he had any doubt he would not be able to stay on the run for long, not with the professors aware of his outing and the eyes of the portraits now actively following him, a clear sign there was a search on the go; and yet, he could at least stall enough to be 'captured' by a more pleasant member of the faculty. So he kept wandering, lazily watching around himself for anything worth of interest. He did not expect to find anything of note and yet at one point a door on his left called his attention. It was remarkably uninteresting, only one among many other doors, but there was a memory calling for him; that door, this whole section of the hallway, appeared suddenly familiar. Had anything of significance ever happened here? Harry could not remember.
Still it was not like he had anything better to do so, without hesitation, he step inside closing the door behind him. It looked like an unused classroom; dark shapes of desks and chairs were piled against the walls, and there was an upturned wastepaper basket. Only, propped against the wall facing him, Harry noticed something that didn't look as if it belonged there, something that looked as if someone had just put it away to keep it out of the students. Something that he recognized immediately.
"The mirror of desires" murmured Harry. He recalled it, quite well: his terrible first meeting with Voldemort, the stone, the fear of dying. Not one of his favorite memories: in a way, that night signaled the start of the whole Riddle madness. 'Damn psychopath' thought Harry.
And yet, the mirror itself was not evil or hostile: only a tool, a precious magical artifacts. With an adult hindsight, Harry could only wonder which spells were involved in its creation. Some form of mind reading would not be enough, not to glimpse at those desires that one person may not even be aware of having; and what about it displaying a different image to each viewer? Were the glass and the metals enchanted as well? Who had been the master artisan that created it?
Enthralled, Harry took a few steps towards the mirror. Regardless of his body, he had long since ceased desiring his parents' company so what would the mirror shows him? Was he even interested in knowing? He had not forgotten Dumbledore's warning from so many years ago, of people going mad trying to catch their hidden dream as shown by the mirror and, while he feared not to fall in such a fate, he was not eager to take the risk either. There was nothing he could imagine as being so important to him, anyway: what he desired, he already experienced. Shrugging, Harry half turned towards the door.
Still, it was truly a waste to leave without trying it. Not everything would repeat as in his past, he was well aware of that, so this could be his only chance to see what was hidden inside his 'heart'. Maybe just watching, without over thinking the results, would be the right choice.
Still deep in thoughts, Harry's attention was suddenly drawn by an exceedingly small noise coming from the door, something impossible to notice without his supersensory charm. It sounded almost like it had just been closed, but he had closed it after entering, he was sure of that. Was someone else in the room? The most likely candidates were Dumbledore and Quirrell. Without turning his head, or appearing alarmed, he started focusing on his surrounding trying to identify any sign of someone's presence but he could not find nothing, and casting detecting spell was a last resort option. It could also have been just a gust of air against the door, sure, but he had not excelled in his job as an auror by being so blindly optimistic. He could afford to sacrifice some minutes to the altar of caution anyway, so he kept watching the still inactive mirror trying to appear as if he was watching what it displayed. After a while, a voice started speaking behind him:
"So – is this where you ran to, Harry?"
'It beats the alternative' thought Harry, slowly turning around. Behind him, sitting on one of the desks by the wall, was Dumbledore.
Harry had thought over several times how his first meeting with Dumbledore would go, but his preplanning usually involved being in his office and talking about money, school works and maybe his family life with the Dursley. Being caught violating curfew, next to a priceless artifact, was not something for which he was prepared; and yet, Harry decided not to over dramatize his situation. Dumbledore was mostly well intentioned, and the situation itself appeared trivial to an adult's eyes: an eleven years old violating curfew was hardly noteworthy. Just being polite and reasonably contrite should avoid any real trouble with the friendly looking, but dangerously cunning and powerful wizard in front of him.
"Good evening, Headmaster."
"It's hardly evening anymore, Harry. Shouldn't you be in your bed, at this hour?"
"I should, sir, and I hope I am not too much in trouble. I just wanted to have some fun tonight" said Harry, with a nod of his head. Dumbledore stood up, and slowly walked near him."Your head of house will deal with that, Harry, but Pomona is a kind woman so try not to lose even more of your remaining sleep over this."
With Dumbledore now silent and next to him, Harry turned towards the mirror.
"Sir, if I may ask, how does this mirror works?"
"Ah, the mirror of Erised. Before answering, may I ask you what you saw in it?"
"I see... people, sir, lots of them. It may be silly, but I hoped this mirror can show you your family" half-lied Harry.
At these words Dumbledore smiled, and his voice took a distinctly kinder tone. Harry itself couldn't deny that his words sounded pretty pathetic, but he also noted how his voice had trembled a little while speaking and that was not him forcing it. Was it possible that his parents were still a sore spot, at his age, or was it all fault of his younger, immature body and brain? It seemed impossible, to him, and yet...
"This mirror shows what you most desperately desire in your heart, Harry. In that respect, yes, those you saw are your parents. And yet, it is only an image – an illusion. They are not really there, and I must urge you not to fall for the charm of this mirror. Hundreds have lost themselves into it, and I would not want for you to be one of them."
"It's easy to understand how it could happen..." said Harry, taking one step towards the mirror. Shapes started forming on its surface, he was now almost close enough to activate it.
"The Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Harry, and I ask you not to go looking for it again. If you ever do run across it, you will now be prepared. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that. And now, it is really time for you to go back to bed" said Dumbledore, still smiling but gesturing towards the door.
"Please give me one last second, sir" said Harry, taking a sudden decision and moving one more step forward. The shapes became people, faces he could recognize. All his children and grandchildren, moving inside his old family house in Hogsmeade, talking and smiling. Was this his most heartfelt desire? A sense of warmth spread inside him – yes, he could recognize this desire as his. 'I hope you are all well' he prayed.
"I am sure they are thinking of you, Harry" said Dumbledore, when Harry finally turned back and moved towards the door.
"I would hope so, sir, but it would be better if I could talk with them, even only one time".
With a flick of his wand, Dumbledore locked the door and started walking towards the stairway, with Harry right behind him. Once he reached it, he wished Harry good night but he still had something to say.
"Sir, if I may... I have something I really should ask you before leaving."
"Do you? Well, than you should really ask it now, Harry."
"I hope it doesn't appear rude after you have been so forgiving tonight, but... did Hagrid told you of my request?"
"Ah, yes... I should have replied to you sooner, I know. I fear I'll disappoint you but I strongly believe your young hands, or those of your uncle and aunt that, Hagrid said, are not well disposed to magic are not the best place to leave the key to all of the material possessions left to you by your parents. They are untouched and waiting for your coming of age, of course, and Hagrid will always be ready to take you to Gringott whenever you need something of importance. Can I ask you to just trust my opinion?" said Dumbledore, calmly but also with clear authority.
"I do trust your opinion, sir, but I have good reasons for why I think the key would be useful now. Could you listen to them, before deciding?" said Harry, trying to appear non confrontational.
"Of course I can – but not now. I'll tell Pomona to send you to me once you are done with your punishment, whatever that will be. Is that agreeable for you, Harry?"
"Yes, sir, and thank you for listening. I guess it is time for me to go, then."
"It certainly is. Good night Harry" said Dumbledore, smiling and walking up the stairway.
"Good night" said Harry, walking down towards his common room. He was tired, but overall satisfied on how everything turned out. Maybe Halloweens at Hogwarts did not always have to be terrible, after all.