Foreshadowing the Past

Chapter 30

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." - Carl Sagan

The rest of the week was a blur of Quidditch practice, classes, homework, and more Quidditch practice. After class on Thursday, Professor Lupin pulled Connor aside. He told him that his contract had been approved by Professor McGonagall, and was ready to be signed so he could rejoin the team.

On Friday afternoon, Connor found himself in the Headmistress's office surrounded by all of the team captains and their head of houses. Professor McGonagall read the three-page contract to all of them and made it understood that all possible contingencies had been addressed, and that once Connor signed the contract, he would be magically bound to it. There was no way he could use his precognition to his own team's advantage without it becoming evident to anyone who saw him. Though not happy about this particular development, the other captains agreed that Connor should be allowed to rejoin his team once the document had been signed and witnessed.

Once Connor had signed and left the office, Mariah had hugged him and grinned. Neither of them had mentioned to the other teams that Connor would not be playing in tomorrow's game, hoping to throw Hufflepuff off balance a bit. Connor was still a little upset that he was going to have to sit on the sidelines, but knew that it needed to be done to prove their point.

"We are so going to kick Hufflepuff's butt tomorrow!" Mariah said cheerfully, leading the way down to the pitch for their last practice before the game.

Rain fell heavily during the night, and the next morning arrived with the unwelcome sight of puddles and mud as far as the eye could see. The Great Hall was noisy as the entire school discussed Connor's return to the Gryffindor team, and the Hufflepuff team could be seen huddled together at the end of their table, presumably plotting strategy. All eyes were on Connor and the other team members as they made their way to Gryffindor table, and Connor made sure to sit beside Carolyn, to encourage her and to go coax her into eating something before the match, completely ignoring his own meal. Quentin looked a little green, but managed to eat a few bites of toast before Mariah signaled the team to the follow her out the to the changing room. All players, first team and reserve dressed and kitted up, then gathered around for the pre-game pep talk.

"Okay Lions!' Mariah said loudly, a fierce look on her face. "The other teams have tried to wrong-foot us by trying to block Connor from playing. They've spent the past week trying to trip all of us up or hexing us in the corridors, and they've made insulting remarks. We all know why they've been doing this; they're scared. They are terrified of us because we've got the best team in the school right now. Connor is allowed to play on the team now, but he's going to sit this one out because we all want to prove that our win against Slytherin was legitimate, and that we didn't need anything but our Quidditch skills to whip those snakes like we're going to do to the badgers today." The rest of the team gave an appreciative cheer. "Carolyn has been training hard with Connor and I know that she's ready to help us win!"

The team cheered once more, and then Mariah spent the next thirty minutes going over strategy while the stands outside filled up with students eager to see which team would emerge victorious at the end of the match. When they filed out onto the field, and Connor turned and took his place with the reserve team, the Hufflepuff captain looked panicked for a moment and called his players into a quick huddle, no doubt trying to figure out what the rival team was trying to pull. Connor kept his face impassive as Carolyn marched out onto the field with Quentin and Amanda and mounted her broom. It was strange to be watching from the sidelines now that he knew what it felt like to be a part of a real game, and he felt a pang when Madam O'Leary blew her whistle and signaled for the players to kick off from the ground.

Fourteen pairs of feet kicked off of the wet ground with a squelching sound as fourteen broomsticks rose up into the air. Connor sat at the edge of his seat as he watched the bludgers and the snitch being released, clenching his teeth in his tension as the Quaffle was tossed high into the air, and the chasers from both sides made lightning fast grabs for it. He was on his feet cheering at the top of his voice, Ivy right beside him as Carolyn expertly snagged the big red ball and deftly maneuvered her broom out of the cluster of players who had been trying to gain first possession. He completely ignored the commentary as he watched the Gryffindor chasers dominate the game, passing the Quaffle smoothly from one player to another, and retrieve the ball when the Hufflepuff chasers managed to get possession. Connor winced and cheered loudly when Quentin and Amanda worked together to confuse the Hufflepuff keeper enough to make him fly headlong into one of his own hoops. Wh! ile the opposing keeper was still slightly dazed, Carolyn rushed in to score.

The game was turning particularly vicious by the time they had been in the air for an hour, with fouls being committed left and right by both sides. The snitch appeared twice during the first hour, but quickly disappeared before being caught. When a time out was called, Ivy leaned over to Connor and said gleefully, "We've got this in the bag! Even if Hufflepuff gets the snitch, they'll never catch us up on points!"

Her prediction turned out to be truth. In the next half hour, Gryffindor was so far ahead, that Hufflepuff would have had to score seventeen times to even the odds. When the snitch appeared again, practically right in front of Whitney Glendale's face, the Gryffindor seeker simply lifted her hand and plucked it out of the air, effectively ending the game with Gryffindor leading 410 points to Hufflepuff's dismal 80. Connor leapt over the railing separating the reserve line up from the field and dropped onto his broom in one smooth move, letting himself hear the commentator's voice ring out over the screaming crowd, "And Gryffindor proves once and for all that their team is the strongest their team has had in a decade! Any doubts as to whether or not they have what it takes, with or without Connor Potter have been completely wiped out in today's awesome display of Quidditch skill!"

Of course, the commentator was a Gryffindor, so his announcement may have been slightly biased, but Connor was overjoyed at how well his team had played. He flew over to the members of his team and began what was to turn out to be a very long and happy victory celebration.

By the end of the night, Connor had consumed enough Butterbeers to feel slightly foggy brained, and sat contentedly by the fire long after most of his housemates had retired for the night. His eyelids were heavy, and he couldn't muster up enough energy to drag himself up the staircase to his dormitory room. Before he knew it, his eyes were closed and he was walking down a long corridor, clutching a piece of parchment in his hands that he recognized as the map he had drawn of the round room at the Department of Mysteries, with rooms leading off of it.

"Are we going the right way?" Ivy asked him nervously. She was very close to his left shoulder, and they were walking quickly.

"I think so," Connor answered her. "That round room should be right up ahead, just past that door."

"This is it, then," Rachel said to his right, looking anxiously over her shoulder. "Everything should be over soon."

"Let's get it done, then," Connor said, and pushed the door open, striding inside.

The first sign that something had gone terribly wrong was the klaxon type wailing of an alarm. The next definite sign that things were not as they should be was the fact that the ground beneath his feet was shifting, and he was falling backward into empty space.

"Oof!" was the only noise he could make as he landed flat on his back with the strangest feeling of sliding backward, head first. "What the...?"

Opening his eyes, Connor tried to puzzle out what was happening to him, but was kept from clear thought by the appearance of several students in their pajamas emerging and staring at him with expressions ranging from scandalized to knowing smirks.

"Connor!" his cousin Victoria was sliding down the girls' dormitory staircase looking cross.

Sliding down the staircase? Connor wondered how hard he had hit his head. "What happened?" he asked blearily as the wailing died away.

"What on earth were you doing trying to get up the girl's stairs for?" his cousin demanded.

Several other girls giggles, and there was some derisive laughter from a group of sixth and seventh year boys who had rushed out to see what all of the commotion was about.

"I wasn't!" Connor denied, feeling the heat flood his cheeks at the implication that he had been trying to sneak into the girl's dorms. "I...I must have been sleepwalking!"

"Nice cover story, Potter!" one of the boys called out. Connor noticed Zack and Quentin standing a few steps up the boy's staircase, looking down at him curiously.

By now two of the Gryffindor Prefects were standing over him, helping him to his feet and wondering what they should do. Connor was still protesting that he must have been sleepwalking when the portrait hole opened, and a disheveled looking Professor Lupin appeared in his dressing gown, slightly out of breath. He took in the scene, including the girl's staircase having been turned into a slide, and everyone standing around in their pajamas looking confused.

"Which of you boys tried to sneak into the girl's dorms?' he asked with a smirk.

"This one, Sir," one of the prefects answered, nudging Connor in the back, making him take an involuntary step forward.

"Connor?" Professor Lupin's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Is there something you'd like to tell me?"

Connor felt his face flush an even darker shade of red and exclaimed, "No!"

The professor smiled and chuckled, and then pointed his wand at the staircase, making the steps reappear. "The rest of you get back to bed," he said with some amusement. "I'll sort this out with Connor." He waited patiently for all of the students to go back to their beds, and then gestured for Connor to take a seat before the dying fire, sitting across from him.

Connor's face was still burning as he faced Professor Lupin and said, "I wasn't trying to sneak into the girl's rooms."

"Thank Merlin for that!" Lupin said with feeling. "I didn't want to have to write to your father and ask him to come to the school to give you 'the talk'."

"Uncle Remus!" Connor croaked, embarrassed beyond words. He was surprised that his cheeks weren't glowing in the dim light by now. "Dad already... I mean I know... It isn't like that!"

To his credit, Remus Lupin didn't laugh outright at Connor's discomfort, but it was a close thing. "So what made you try to climb those stairs?" he asked. "A bet? Dare?"

"No," Connor said, keeping his eyes on the floor. "I was just sleepwalking."

"Sleepwalking?" All traces of humor fled from his voice and he asked with concern, "Did you have another dream?"

"Sort of," Connor shrugged uncomfortably. "Really just the same dream as before. I was just walking down a long hallway, and then suddenly all these sirens are going off and I'm flat on my back at the bottom of the girls' staircase with Victoria shouting at me."

"Have you been sleepwalking a lot?' he asked quietly, studying the young man in front of him, searching for clues in his body language as to what he was thinking.

"No," Connor answered truthfully. "I did it once at home at Christmastime, but this is the first time I've ever done it at school. I fell asleep in that chair, and then suddenly I was on the floor over there."

"Okay," Lupin said after a moment of studying Connor's expression and thinking about his words. "Well you should go on up to bed then, and try to stay there this time."

Connor nodded and stood, bidding the professor good-night, and feeling slightly guilty that his uncle had obviously been at home at the shrieking shack when he'd tripped the girl's dormitory alarm. He must have come through the Floo and practically run at top speed to the seventh floor from his office on the second floor to find out what the problem was. As he watched the older man climb back out through the portrait hole, he wondered absently how he had known that there had been trouble. With a shrug, he turned and climbed the staircase, thinking he should write down the details of him dream in his journal before retiring for the night.

Connor wasn't surprised to find that Quentin, Zack and Andrew were all awake and waiting to find out what had happened to him. They seemed a bit disappointed to learn that he really had only been sleepwalking, and not really trying to sneak up on the girls; imagining that he had been attempting some sort of prank. Once everyone settled back down and drew the hangings on their beds, Connor pulled out his journal and recorded the dream, though it had been very brief and seemed to give him very little information.

He put his journal away, and lay back with a huge yawn, thinking to himself that even if the dream hadn't given him anything new about the Department of Mysteries, he had learned that Professor Lupin apparently had some way of knowing when there was trouble at hand. It hadn't taken him long to arrive once that alarm had gone off, and now that he thought about it, he had appeared rather quickly right after Cicely Green fell from the Astronomy Tower. He needed to figure out how Lupin had known he was needed, all the way from the Shrieking Shack, so that they didn't get caught when they caused a little trouble of their own on April first.

Even though the next day was Sunday, Connor found himself wide-awake at seven o'clock, and unable to fall back to sleep. Dressing in jeans and the jumper that his mother had made for him for Christmas, he left his friends sleeping and made his way down to the Great Hall for an early breakfast. He was just finishing some eggs and toast, and putting a couple of apples into his pocket for later, when a familiar owl flew in through a high window and landed in front of him.

"Hello, Thor," Connor greeted the large barn owl. It was one of several owls that his father kept for delivering things for Dog Star Brooms, and he was carrying a small box with a letter attached to his legs. Connor fed Thor some bacon rinds and let him drink from his goblet while he untied that package, and then the bird took flight again with a thankful hoot.

"What have you got there, Con?" Rachel asked. She had just come down the row of tables to sit beside him, as always a relatively early riser like her mother.

"Don't know," he answered. "It's from my folks, though. Here, you open this." He passed the small box to his cousin as he broke the seal on the letter and opened it up. His parents had written to tell him how happy they were about his reinstatement to the Quidditch team, and how proud they were of him for his perseverance with all of recent troubles. There was a mention of Madam MacTaggart in the letter, and Connor realized that he had never read the letter that Professor Lupin had given him almost a week ago. He had pocketed it, and promptly forgotten all about it. He resolved to search his robes after breakfast to see what she had to say.

Connor finished his letter and looked over to see that the small box had bee full of photographs. Rachel as slowly going through a stack of them, smiling at the subjects and giggling here an there as they did something funny. Most of the pictures had been taken over the Christmas holidays, and Connor grinned when he saw that one of them was of Zack, Quentin and himself on their broomsticks outside of Potter Headquarters. He knew as soon as he saw it that he was going to have to frame it for his bedside table, and wondered what Zack's parents would think if they could see their son flying through the air on an item they might have used to sweep their floors. The rest of the pictures would go into his photo album, which he kept in the cabinet beside his bed.

He let Rachel finish looking at them, and then went back to his room, leaving her to finish her breakfast with some of the other first year students. By the time he got back to his room, Andrew had disappeared somewhere, and Zack and Quentin were still sound asleep. He pulled out his photo album and began sorting his new pictures and placing them onto the blank pages at the back with a temporary sticking charm. He was just finishing, leaving out a couple of pictures that he wanted to frame, when Quentin rolled out of bed and stumbled from the room in the direction of the loo. Shaking his head with a chuckle, Connor glanced over to Zack's bed, but there were no signs of consciousness from him. Andrew's bed was deserted, and Connor wondered if he was just an early riser or if dreams about his father's 'illness' kept him from sleeping well.

While pondering about Andrew, Connor's eyes fell on his bedside table, to an album similar to the one that he had in his own lap. Curiosity made Connor set his own book aside and walk stealthily to Andrew's bedside table and pick up the other boy's book.

"What are you doing?" Quentin asked, startling Connor. Quentin was standing in his sleep rumpled pajamas, still looking tired.

"This is Andrew's," Connor said. "I was just wondering if maybe he has a picture of his grandmother in it."

"You mean a picture of Samantha Tillman?" Quentin asked, moving over to have a look for himself.

"Yeah," Connor nodded, feeling a little guilty about invading Andrew's privacy this way. "I just wanted to see if it really is her that I'm dreaming about. Should I look?"

"Go on," Quentin urged. "I don't see what it could hurt. Andrew's gone down to breakfast, I think, so he won't know."

Connor nodded and carefully opened the cover of the book. Many of the pictures were obviously Andrew and his parents; it appeared that Andrew was an only child. Connor didn't linger on any of the photographs, but quickly scanned each page until he found what he was looking for near the very back. "There she is," he breathed. It was almost bizarre for Connor to see this moving likeness of the woman in her dreams. She was even wearing the same color of blue robes, and smiled prettily up at him with a wink as she waved in a friendly manner. She didn't look as though she could ever have harmed a fly, much less supported the most evil wizard who had ever lived.

"Doesn't look evil," Quentin observed, mirroring Connor's thoughts.

Connor took one last long look at Samantha Tillman before closing the book. The sound of footsteps approaching made Connor hastily replace the book on the table and step over to his own bed, seeing that Quentin had retreated to his trunk to retrieve some clothes for the day.

"My folks sent me some pictures from Christmastime," Connor told Quentin. "There's a really good one of you, me and Zack on out brooms from that day you came over."

No sooner had he uttered these words, than Andrew came into the room and went straight to his trunk to look for something.

"Good morning," he greeted them as he passed.

"Morning," they both answered, trying not to look guilty.

Andrew found the book he was looking for in his trunk, and turned to leave when he stopped and looked over at his photo album. He looked from it over to his roommates, with a speculative expression, and then picked it up and locked it in his trunk without comment before leaving the room. Both boys heaved a sigh of relief and felt a little prickle of shame at sneaking a look at the other boy's private possession.

"So what are we all going to do today?" Quentin asked, looking for an excuse to get past the awkward moment.

"I'm going to the library," Connor said. "If I'm going to be going to the Ministry of Magic in three weeks, I want to know as much as possible about it before I get there."

"I think you mean if we are going to go to the Ministry," Quentin corrected firmly. "Let me just get my shoes on, and I'll come with you."

"Don't you want some breakfast first?" Connor asked, not sure he should be encouraging his friends to aid and abet the planning of a crime.

"Nah," Quentin said, sensing that Connor was trying to subtly cut his friends out of his plans. "I'll make up for it at lunch."

"Make up for what?" Zack asked sleepily from his bed.

"Missing breakfast to go to the library to plan our little adventure on April Fool's Day," Quentin answered. He thought it best to have the others involved as well, so that Connor would be outnumbered when he tried to convince them that they should stay behind.

"I'm in," Zack answered. "I'll meet you in the library once I get dressed and stuff." Ivy had told him last night about Connor's plan to leave them behind and go to the Ministry by himself, and he agreed with them that it was their duty as Connor's friend to make sure that didn't happen. He intended to find Ivy and Rachel as soon as the other two boys left, and drag them along as well.

Connor sighed and nodded, admitting defeat as he grabbed his school bag and made sure that he had plenty of quills, ink and parchment. His friends must really want to help him if they were willing to spend yet another Sunday in the library with the vulture-like Madam Pince glaring at them all suspiciously. This could prove to be a very long day.