Foreshadowing the Past

Chapter 28

"The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it." -Alan Saporta

Connor couldn't sleep. He had too many things circling around in his brain. He had spent the evening writing letters to his parents, Lucy, Ian and Adam. His sister and brothers liked him to write to each of them separately, and so it always took twice as long to write home than if he were to just write to them all at once. He had written to his parents that he was holding up fine, and that Lupin, his friends, and the Weasley cousins were all helping to keep the scavengers at bay. He told them about the Quidditch team and asked them for advice on how to go about convincing the other teams to let him play. It was late when he finished his letters and he folded them up together and promised himself he would wake early and visit the Owlery to send them off. Now that he lay in his bed staring at the hangings, though, he thought that a little walk might do him some good.

The other boys were all sleeping soundly, and so he quietly slipped into his dressing gown, gathered up his letters, map and wand, and slipped out the room. The common room was deserted, and the large grandfather clock between the girls and boys staircases told him that it was very late indeed as he slipped out of the portrait hole, lit his wand, and consulted the map before making his way to the Owlery in the west tower. He met no one, not even a ghost, on his walk, and climbed the steps to the cold and breezy Owlery with its many windows and rafters. Owls of every description were flying in and out of the windows, some carrying a meal in sharp beaks and others hooting contentedly to their neighbors. It was a very active space at the moment, the owls being nocturnal birds, and Connor looked up at them all, searching for a school bird to carry his post.

"Um... Is there a Hogwarts owl up there that can deliver a letter?" he called hesitantly to the rafters above. It was much easier to find an appropriate owl when they were all sleeping during the day.

Luckily a handsome tawny owl fluttered down, and landed on a perch beside the door that Connor had just come through, and held out its leg patiently, while he tied the thick packet of folded parchment to it. He carried the bird to the window and gave it its instructions, and then watched it fly out into the night. The moon was bright, and it looked as though it would be full tomorrow night. At least it would be at the weekend, which meant that they would not have to have a substitute teacher for their next Defense Against the Dark Arts class on Tuesday.

With a shiver, Connor turned and made his way out of the Owlery, checking the map for anyone that might cross his path on the trip back to Gryffindor Tower. No one. He walked quickly, hoping that it would help warm him up after being in the cold night air.

"Having trouble sleeping Mr. Potter?"

Connor thought that his heart would explode out of his chest at the sound of a voice coming from behind him. Frigid water seemed to drop in an icy cascade to his stomach as he spun around to see who had caught him.

"Professor Dumbledore?" he asked in surprise.

The old wizard was wearing a traveling cloak and was supported by a long walking staff, but he looked much the same as he had the last time Connor had seen him three or four years ago. His hair and beard were still very long and almost blindingly white, and there was still a twinkle in his eyes that spoke volumes about the man before he ever spoke. Though he knew that Professor Dumbledore was somewhere in the region of a hundred and seventy years old, his voice was strong and his movements sure. He remembered hearing his mother ask his father once if his prolonged life had anything to do with his work with Nicholas Flamel in his youth, but his father hadn't known the answer to that.

"I haven't been a professor for quite a number of years," Dumbledore said with a smile. "Yet people will insist on giving me the title."

"It's what my father calls you, sir," Connor said respectfully, wondering if he was in trouble or not. The old wizard did not seem to be the least bit surprised to have found a student wandering the halls at close to two in the morning. "I suppose that it just seems right to call you the same."

Dumbledore smiled and said kindly, "I've had a letter recently from your father."

Connor groaned inwardly. "He thinks very highly of you, sir."

"And of you," Dumbledore said, gesturing for Connor to continue walking and falling into step beside him. "He told me of your recent dilemma and of the dreams you have been having since the start of the first term."

His walking staff made a faint echoing along the hall as it softly hit the stone floor, and Connor found it to be a comforting noise. "I think he worries too much," Connor said quietly.

Dumbledore chuckled and said, "All parents do. Aside from your recent troubles, Connor, how are you enjoying Hogwarts?"

Connor was surprised that the former headmaster didn't just get straight to the point and tell him that his parents had called him in to interrogate their son to make sure he wasn't turning into an even bigger oddity than he already was. Still, there was something about the old man that encouraged confidence, and Connor found himself answering questions about his classes and schoolwork. He told him about his boredom with History of Magic, and laughed when Dumbledore confessed that he had suggested to Binns several times that he might like to retire from the teaching position, but that Binns had firmly declined. Connor shared the fact that he seemed to have a pronounced aptitude for potions, though it didn't seem to endear him to the potions master very much.

"The way Severus Snape has treated Gryffindors, Potters in particular, has been going on for so long, I think that it's a kind of ingrained tradition by now," Dumbledore confided with a chuckle. "But in his letters, he has mentioned that you seem to be... what were his words? Ah yes, 'less of a dunderhead' than your father. I believe that was it."

Connor wasn't sure what to think or feel about that. They walked on in silence for a bit, with Dumbledore occasionally pointing out something of interest in the portraits that were illuminated in the light of Connor's wand as they passed. Several of the subjects in the portraits greeted the former headmaster respectfully and made kind comments as they walked by.

"Sir," Connor asked, coming to a halt as they neared the portrait hole that led to the Gryffindor Common Room. "Why do you think my parents and everyone is so worried about my dreams?"

"Dreams are mysterious things, Connor," Dumbledore replied. His gaze seemed to penetrate into Connor's very thoughts. "And yours are a bit more mysterious than most. I believe that you have worked out by now that the dreams you have been experiencing are remarkably similar to actual events that took place some twenty years ago?"

"Yes sir," Connor answered. "My father told me that I was dreaming about a battle that took place at the Ministry of Magic the night that Sirius Black was killed. He didn't say much more about it, except that he had led his friends into danger and they had to be rescued."

"As terrible as that night was," Dumbledore nodded, coming to halt with Connor before the portrait of a snoozing Fat Lady. "I think that it is understandable that your parents feel worried about what you may be seeing while you are asleep. They love you and want to protect you from seeing the horrible things that they went through and witnessed on that night."

"But so far I haven't seen anything terrible in my dreams," Connor said. "And why would I be dreaming about a woman that my father never even saw while he was there? And what's with all the clocks? Is there really a place in the Ministry full of clocks and hourglasses and things?"

"I'm afraid I can't answered those questions, Connor," Dumbledore said. "But after speaking with your parents, and Madam MacTaggart and now with you, I can safely say that I don't believe that what you are dreaming of is the past as they fear; at least, not entirely."

"Then what is it that I'm seeing?" Connor asked quizzically. "The future?"

"A possible future, perhaps." Dumbledore appeared to be deep in thought, and so Connor waited for his to expound on his last comment. It wasn't until Connor cleared his throat a full minute later that the ole wizard came back to himself. "Though I can't imagine what could possibly lead up to the things you are seeing. I do want to warn you, though, Connor. Just because you dream something that you believe to be the future, doesn't necessarily mean that you are seeing the path you're meant to take."

"Sir?"

"What I mean to say," Dumbledore said kindly, leaning a bit heavily on his staff and looking him in the eye. "Your dreams may be a warning to you about possible danger in your path; giving you a chance to avoid peril. Indeed, it seems that many of your day-to-day premonitions seem to deal with imminent danger in one form or another. On the other hand, you may be seeing valuable and important things that require further consideration."

"So how do I know whether I'm seeing something that should happen or something that shouldn't?" Connor asked.

"That, I think," Dumbledore said simply, "is something you must discover for yourself. You must ultimately make your own choices, and listen to what your heart has to say about it. Getting advice from those you love and trust would not be amiss, either."

"I understand, sir," Connor said quietly. "Thank you."

"How extraordinarily like your father you are, my boy," Dumbledore smiled, his voice full of pride. "Now I think that it's best you get off to bed."

They bid each other goodnight, and Dumbledore waved a hand in front of the sleeping Fat Lady, and without uttering a word, opened the portrait hole for Connor to climb through. When Connor climbed back into bed a few minutes later, he thought he would never be able to get back to sleep now. He wished he had thought to ask the previous headmaster for advice on his problem with the Quidditch team, and cursed himself as he activated the map and searched it for Albus Dumbledore, only to find him gone. He must have been on his way out of the castle when he's come across Connor. More ideas and thoughts were swirling in his head than ever before, and he didn't see how he'd be able to rest for thinking about them all, but he was wrong. As soon as he pulled the warm covers over his body and drew the hangings on his bed, his eyelids suddenly felt weighted and sleep washed over him like a wave.

Connor woke feeling refreshed, and the late night meeting with Dumbledore seemed almost like a dream as he showered and dressed for the day. It was a Saturday, and was one of the last of the Gryffindors awake, apparently. By the time he got down to the Common Room, he found that his friends had already had breakfast and were trying to decide what they would do with the rest of their day. The other students in the room seemed to look away from Connor as he looked around, and raising his eyebrows, he looked to Rachel.

"It was the meeting last night," she said in answer to his silent question. "Lupin made it clear to everyone that anyone in the school who got caught approaching you in regard to your precognitive ability would lose their house fifty points and earn a month of detentions."

"Great," Connor sighed, flinging himself down into an armchair. "Now not only are people going to be afraid to talk to me at all, those that want to talk to me because of the precognition are going to make sure that there are no possible witnesses while they try to pound the information they want out of me."

No one really had any comforting words to offer, and so remained silent.

"So where is everyone?" Connor asked, noticing that the Common Room was pretty deserted for a Saturday.

"Hogsmeade weekend," Rachel said. "And it's a relatively nice day out, so almost everyone who has permission is going."

"What are we going to do?" Zack asked.

"I need to spend some more time in the library," Connor said.

"It's Saturday!" Ivy said. "Plus you were there all night last night."

"I know," Connor said. "I just want to go through my dream journal and make some notes. I ran into Professor Dumbledore last night on my way back from the Owlery, and he gave me some stuff you think about."

"Professor Dumbledore?" Zack said in confusion. "The Professor Dumbledore? The wizard who was Headmaster before Professor McGonagall?"

Connor nodded.

"When did you go to the Owlery last night?" Quentin asked.

"I couldn't sleep, so I went up to the Owlery to mail some letters to my family," Connor said. "On the way back, I ran into Professor Dumbledore and had a talk with him about my dreams and stuff. I guess my dad wrote him a letter about it."

"He came all the way to Hogwarts just to talk to you because your father asked?" Zack asked in wonder, thinking about everything he had heard about possibly the greatest (and oldest) wizards of the age.

"I doubt it," Connor said. "He probably has other business around here and so he came here too. He looked like he was just about to leave, in fact, and just happened to find me in the hallway."

"Well what did he have to say?" Rachel asked. She sincerely doubted that Professor Dumbledore 'just happened' to run into anyone, but kept her own council.

Connor described their conversation and then said, "So now that I know that Dumbledore thinks I'm seeing the possible future, I want to have a look at everything I've written down about my dreams and see if it all adds up to anything. Maybe he's right and my dreams are trying to warn me about something."

"Do you want some help?" Rachel asked. She was curious to see what Connor had written, but hadn't wanted to pry; journals were very personal items, after all, and one didn't just go and ask to read another person's.

"I don't really think that there's anything to help with at this point," Connor said. "You guys go and have some fun, and I'll see you later."

He went up to his room and retrieved his journal and school bag before heading for the library. The library was relatively empty since the upper classes were all in Hogsmeade, and the weather was nice enough to permit outdoor activities. The only other students there looked away from him when they saw who he was, and Connor was pretty sure that he wouldn't be bothered as he worked. He pulled out his favorite quill and some ink and parchment, and then opened his dream journal. He had begun to try and put his dreams in 'order' before, trying to arrange them into a time line so that they would make more sense, but hadn't really analyzed them. Nor had he added his newest dream to the mix. He sat down, and for the next hour made notes as he looked over his journal entries.

"Let's see what we've got," he said to himself.

His most recent dream was the one he had had the night after Cicely Green had fallen from the Astronomy Tower. He had been half asleep when he had written down the details of that particular dream, as evidenced by the sloppy scrawl and droplets of ink over the surface of the page. If he was going to go by the assumption that he was seeing future events in his sleep, then he had learned two things from this most recent vision. The first was that whatever was supposedly going to happen was going to happen on April first, and the second was that they were apparently going to plan to use the fire in Professor Lupin's office to travel to the ministry.

This was already sounding complicated, not to mention dangerous, and this was only the first in the sequence he had arranged his notes into. Connor wrote down the most important points of the dream onto a separate piece of parchment, and then moved on to the next most logical entry to follow. The second dream turned out to be the dream that he had had at Christmastime when his father had caught him sleepwalking, and provided a few more crucial details. From what he had written in the journal, he and his friends were planning to leave around 11:30 at night, and needed to be at their final destination by 2:58 in the morning. He also observed that they were apparently going to use the Marauder's Map to monitor Lupin's office so that they would know when his fire would be free. The third and most critical point he learned from this dream was that they were apparently going to encounter Andrew as they attempted to sneak out of the common room. Unfortunately, the dream had ended before he had gotten a chance to find out how they would solve that problem.

It wasn't until that moment, that Connor realized that he was thinking about all of these future events as though he had already made up his mind about undertaking this... whatever it was. What if these dreams really were a device in his own mind to keep him out of trouble?

'Isn't that what Professor Dumbledore was warning me about?' Connor asked himself. 'Leading my friends into unknown dangers and unnecessary adventures? Am I really considering breaking into a teacher's office and taking the Floo network to the Ministry of Magic in the middle of the night? Putting it that way, it does sound daft. Still... '

Connor shook himself and decided that he would finish his analysis to see if his dreams, once put in chronological order, gave him a clearer idea of why his future self was so set upon breaking into the Ministry of Magic after hours and sneaking into the Department of Mysteries. He wasn't committing to anything by just looking at all of his information, was he?

The next dream was actually the first dream he remembered ever having about all of this. He had actually had this dream many times; more than all of the others put together, and he remembered it vividly, even without his notes. He and his friends were in the dark round room with the spinning walls and many doors. This particular dream seemed to be the most confusing of all of the ones he had experienced, and didn't seem to have a lot of information to offer. He moved on to the next dream in line, which he had also had repeatedly. He and his friends were in the round room again, and they were trying to decide which door to try. Connor noted the fact there were an even dozen doors leading from the round room, and searched through his notes on this dream for anything else that was useful, but found nothing. He moved on.

The next dream in the sequence also took place in the round room, but where the other dreams had ended before any of the doors could be opened, this one gave him a glimpse of what was hidden behind one of them. Connor had seen Zack open the door to a kind of amphitheater that was sunken down into the ground with a small stage and an arch with a curtain, and he shivered as he sat in the school library remembering the atmosphere of the dream. That room had given off a distinctly creepy air, and had made him extremely uneasy. After telling Zack that this was definitely not the room they were looking for, he had gotten an overwhelming feeling that they were running out of time before he had woken abruptly.

The final dream in the sequence was the most puzzling of all. Connor's previous notes told him that they needed to be at their final destination by 2:58, and yet the last dream in the sequence was the room full of clocks that all read 2:54. Rachel told them all that the woman would appear in under two minutes, but that would be two minutes before Connor's other notes said they needed to be there. This wasn't good. Had something happened between the times that he had had these two dreams to change the future time she would appear, or had he simply made a mistake? Connor's head was beginning to ache from thinking about it all. He had only had this particular dream a couple of times, and now he was second guessing whether he had been paying close enough attention to the details of it all. He racked his brain to see what he actually remembered about it without consulting his journal.

They had been inside a large room, and the walls and every available surface had been covered in various time-keeping devices, but most were clocks and hourglasses. He closed his eyes and recalled the eerie ticking of all of the clocks as they counted off the seconds passing. He remembered Rachel telling him that they had made it with less than two minutes to spare, and also Quentin telling him urgently that someone was coming. He searched his memory and brought the picture of the dream up behind his eyes. When Quint had warned him, he had turned around to see the door to the round room closing by itself, and then hearing the rumbling of the room as it spun from within. It had been at that point that Ivy had called out to him and he had turned to see the woman appearing out of thin air, holding something in her hand. He had woken up before he could get a better look.

Connor opened his eyes to see that a second year Hufflepuff girl at another table was looking at him with wide eyes, but she quickly averted her gaze when he looked over at her. With a sigh, Connor wondered how long it would take people to quit treating him as either a fortuneteller to be exploited, or a freak to be avoided at all costs. He sighed as he tried to focus again on his notes.

'Assuming that the woman I saw was Samantha Tillman,' he thought. 'What was she doing there? She was holding something I couldn't see in her hand, but what had it been, and was it even important?'

A sudden thought occurred to Connor at that moment, and he sat stunned for a moment before silently berating himself for not realizing it before. The woman in his dream had definitely not been a ghost. She had seemed solid and had been wearing blue robes and had brown hair; ghosts had no color at all, but were a transparent sort of pearly-white. His uncle Percy had told him at Christmastime that her ghost had been spotted in the Ministry, and that Andrew's father had gone there and attempted to get her to appear.

'If I'm seeing the future,' Connor reasoned. 'Then Samantha Tillman is alive, or at least not ghost. Why would she have been in hiding all this time? Why would she be returning to the Department of Mysteries, and how is she managing to get past the anti-apparition wards that protect all but very specific parts of the Ministry building?'

"Connor!"

Connor looked up to see his friends standing around his table, pink-cheeked and all wearing cloaks.

"It's lunchtime," Zack said, wincing as Madam Pince glared at them threateningly. "You coming?"

Connor realized that he had missed breakfast and that he actually was very hungry. He nodded and packed everything into his bag, following his friends out to the Great Hall.

The Great Hall was only about a third full, since the older students were mostly still in Hogsmeade, and Connor was happy to sit down to a meal without having to endure any comments about him. It wasn't until he was almost finished eating that a sixth year boy who had already returned from the village ruined his mood.

"Hey Potter," the other boy said. "Could you pass the marmalade, or would that be exploiting your talents?"

Connor simply ignored him, but inside he was considering making a 'prediction' for the boy that would have him looking over his shoulder for the rest of the day. He pictured the look on his face if he told the other boy that someone was planning on turning him into flobber worm sometime during the day.

"What are you grinning at?" Rachel asked him, a knowing smirk on her face.

"Nothing," Connor answered with a smile as he spooned up the last of his stew. "Nothing at all."

"So did you learn anything in the library?" Quentin asked.

"A bit," Connor said, thinking about Samantha Tillman. He looked up suddenly and asked them all in general, "How would a person get into a place that has anti-apparition wards?"

"Floo?" Ivy suggested, wondering what this had to do with anything.

"Besides that," Connor said.

"Well one could usually just walk in, of course," Rachel said seriously. "Or use a port key."

"A port key!" Connor said excitedly. "That would make sense!"

"Make sense of what?" Rachel asked.

"We can't talk about it here," Connor said. "Let's go back to the common room."

All of them picked up their discarded cloaks, and while Connor wasn't looking, Zack made a rude hand gesture to the boy who had taunted him earlier. Connor grabbed his bag, and they headed up to Gryffindor Tower, finding that there were some good seats by the fire because everyone was still at lunch and there were no upper classmen to hog them all.

"So what's all this about a port key?" Rachel asked as soon as they were all settled.

"Well you know that I went to the library to work out what all of my dreams were about and put it all in order and stuff, right?" Connor said. When they all nodded, he said, "Well I was thinking of the one dream where I saw that lady in the room with the clocks, and how Professor Lupin thought that it was Andrew's grandmother that I was seeing. I don't know why I didn't realize it before, but the lady I was seeing wasn't a ghost, she was solid; and if I'm dreaming about the future, then that means she must be alive, right?"

"I see what you're saying," Ivy said. "But then why would she be showing up at the Department of Mysteries now?"

"I don't know," Connor admitted. "But in my dream she was holding something in her hand that I couldn't see, and the fact that she just appeared out of thin air tells me that it must have been a port key!"

"But...why?" Quentin asked as he tried to puzzle it out, his brow furrowed. "What could she possibly be doing there in the middle of the night?"

"Well if other people have seen her there on more than one occasion," Zack reasoned. "And she was mistaken as a ghost, then she must be making visits back there from time to time for some reason."

"Do you think that she's stealing information? Like a spy?" Ivy asked, careful to keep her voice low, even though there didn't appear to be anyone but them around. "I mean, who knows what goes on in the Department of Mysteries?"

"Samantha Tillman does," Connor answered. "She used to work there, so she would probably know exactly what she was doing. Who would she being stealing information for, though? Voldemort is long gone, and the Death Eaters were all caught or they ran away when Voldemort was killed."

"Just because Voldemort and his followers aren't around anymore, doesn't mean there are no dark wizards or witches around." Rachel pointed out. "Didn't you say that your dad was recently offered another job in the Auror division? Why would they want him back there if there weren't some sort of threat out there?

"Yeah," Connor said, "But if he thought it was that important, my Dad would have taken the job. I don't think there's a huge threat right now. Maybe the reason I'm having these dreams is to find out what she's up to," Connor said, more to himself than to the others. "Maybe she needs to be stopped."

"How do we do that?" Zack asked.

"By going there and catching her," Connor said

"How are we going to do that?" Ivy asked incredulously.

"Actually," Connor said, thinking about his notes and all of the information he had gleaned from them. "We already have a plan worked out. Mostly."