Foreshadowing the Past

Chapter 33

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly." -Buddah

Connor stood frozen inside the grate for a few moments before swearing quite badly and stepping out. "Now what do we do?" He asked of no one in particular.

"Why isn't it working?" Ivy said in a frightened voice. "You saw in your dream that we..."

"I saw that we were planning on using Lupin's Floo. I never actually saw us using it." Connor said uncomfortably

"Well you dreamed that we were there, Connor, so there has to be a way." Rachel said calmly, trying to keep cool. "Where else has a Floo?"

"McGonagall's office."

They all turned to look at Zack, who had been the one to make the suggestion.

"McGonagall?" Quentin asked incredulously. "Are you insane?"

"No," Zack said seriously. "Listen. McGonagall isn't in the castle; she's gone to Edinburgh for the rest of the week. No one will be there."

All eyes turned back to Connor, who set his jaw and nodded. "Let's go."

They pulled out the Marauder's Map and set off through the DADA classroom and out into the corridor. In their haste, none of the kids noticed a familiar Gryffindor beater sneaking out of the painting of a busy Hogsmeade street where he had been hiding.

The trek to the Headmistress's office was a harrowing one. They only just avoided Peeves by ducking into the abandoned House Elf corridor, and had to duck into a deserted classroom to avoid a patrolling prefect on the way. They were sweaty and out of breath as they finally approached the gargoyle that protected Professor McGonagall's office, and Connor panted, "Animagus!"

Nothing.

"Animagus!" He stated more forcefully.

Nothing.

"Damn!" He swore, kicking the plinth on which the gargoyle perched. "She's changed it, and I don't know the..."

"Veritaserum," Zack said helpfully.

To their amazement, the gargoyle leapt aside and lent them access to the staircase that was now spiraling upward.

"How did you know that?" Connor asked, astounded.

"While you, Ivy and Quint were all at Quidditch, I came this way to leave a note for McGonagall to tell her how to get rid of the yellow coloring before she had to leave," he shrugged. "I felt a bit guilty because she said she was going to Edinburgh, and couldn't show up there that way, so I was going to let her know, since she was still yellow at lunch-time. I heard her telling the new password to Professor Snape, in case he needed to get in while she was gone."

"I could kiss you!" Connor said. "You're brilliant!"

"Let's just skip that part and get going," Zack said. "It's already a quarter to one."

"Right," Connor agreed. They all scurried up the steps, which had already reached the top, and stopped revolving. The large door with the griffin knocker wasn't even locked, and they breathed a collective sigh of relief when it swung open easily when pushed.

The headmistress's office was dark, with the only light being a bluish glow from the waxing moon washing in through the windows. The dozens of portraits hanging around the room were mostly in shadow, though they came into better focus as their eyes adjusted to the dim light. The subjects of the paintings were all sleeping; their heads lolling to the side, their eyes closed. These were mostly portraits of the previous headmasters of Hogwarts, though there were a few others scattered about in the mix. There was an extremely odd one of a man standing at a tall counter with a lunascope in front of him. Beside him was another sleeping man, a Quidditch player, leaning against a broomstick and snoring slightly, apparently too tired to return to his own painting for the night. They tip toed through the room, though Ivy got a bit of a fright when she walked into an empty owl perch. The atmosphere in the room seemed almost oppressive, but they all thought that it probably had something to do with the fact that they were seriously out of bounds by being here, and scared of being caught.

"Okay," Connor whispered. "This has got to work, or I'm out of ideas. You know the plan. I'm going to go through and start the diversion. I'll back in a minute. If I'm not, get yourselves back to Gryffindor Tower, and un-jinx Victoria and tell her you were helping me 'save' one of the house elves or something. Then pretend like you don't know anything about where I went."

They all swallowed hard and nodded, and Rachel held out the jar of Floo powder to him once more, plus a tiny envelope, which he pocketed. Connor stepped into the cold grate and took a pinch, and threw it down, calling out as quietly as he could, "Ministry of Magic, Atrium!"

The others all sighed in relief when the flames rose around him, and he spun out of sight.

Connor tucked his elbows in tightly and held his breath as he traveled. His eyes were screwed shut, and he didn't open them until he felt himself beginning to slow down. When he came to a stop, he threw his weight backwards as much as possible, and yanked the Weasley's Wildfire Whiz Bangs from one pocket, while drawing his wand with the other. He muttered, "Aquula!" and doused the wet-start fireworks with a stream from his wand, then pitched them out toward the Peacock-blue ceiling of the Ministry Atrium. The commotion began at once, sending colored lights whirling a whizzing around in the air, and traveling all over the Atrium with whirs and bangs and wheeeees.

Connor quickly withdrew the tiny envelope from his robes and dumped the contents (more Floo powder) at his feet, calling out, "Hogwarts, headmistress's office!"

The flames rose up to engulf him, and then died down again. Nothing had happened. This was not turning out to be his lucky night.

Connor began to panic, but forced himself to think, and to remember the contingency plan. He quickly whipped the Chameleon Cloak from his pocket and shook it open. He draped it over himself and stood as still as he possibly could while the sound of running footsteps and shouting grew closer.

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It had been five minutes since Connor had disappeared from sight, and Rachel, Ivy, Quentin and Zack were in a state of panic.

"Why hasn't he come back?" Ivy moaned desperately.

"I don't know," Rachel fretted. "Maybe he got caught. Should we go back to the common room and wait?"

"I'm not going back without Connor," Quentin said firmly. "The rest of you can stay here, but I'm going ahead with the plan. If we can get Samantha Tillman, then we can try to use that to our advantage somehow, and say that Connor was the one who figured out that she was sneaking in, and maybe..."

"I'm going to go too," Zack said with resolve.

"Then let's go," Ivy agreed, her voice perhaps not as strong as the boys' but no less determined.

"Right then," Rachel said. "I'll come through last. You know what to do when you get there. Let's just hope that Connor had time to set up the distraction."

"Hey you there!" A booming voice sounded from somewhere inside the shadowy office. "What are you lot doing here?"

All of them jumped with fright and whirled around, looking for the source of the voice. At first, they had believed that someone had noticed that the gargoyle protecting the office was down, and had come to investigate, but that was not the case. Their eyes scanned the portraits through the darkness and discovered that the one who had shouted was a venerable looking wizard in robes of Ravenclaw colors. Apparently they had made enough noise to awaken the portrait. "I asked you a question!" He said in a commanding voice, hand on hips and eyeing them beadily.

All around them, the subjects of the painting were becoming alert and expressing their surprise or disapproval at the intruders. The noise was becoming deafening, and Rachel finally mastered herself enough to shout, "Go! Go! Zack, you first!"

Zack didn't need to be told twice; with the racket going on around them, there was no way a prefect, teacher or ghost wouldn't hear it and come to investigate. He stepped forward and grabbed a pinch of Floo powder and shouted quickly above the din, "Ministry of Magic, Department of Magical Games and Sports!"

No sooner had he spun out of sight, than Ivy stepped into the fireplace and repeated the location that Zack had just given.

"You students aren't allowed to leave school grounds at this time of night!" shouted a witch from a portrait close to the door.

"Strictly forbidden!" Another witch shrieked.

Quentin grabbed some Floo powder and told Rachel, "Don't wait. Come straight away."

She nodded, and watched him go. Carefully, she took a pinch of the powder herself, and the replaced the lid of the jar one-handed and slipped it into her pocket. She didn't notice the Quidditch player that had been following them slip out of the picture in which he was standing as she threw down the powder and spun out of sight.

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Connor was trying desperately to get his breathing under control as Wizards in robes as blue as the ceiling rushed past his hiding place without sparing him a glance. They were trying in vain to get rid of the fireworks, which now filled the atrium, but everything they tried simply made matters worse by causing the bright lights to multiply or else combine together into even larger spectacles of color and sound. Connor noted that some wizards and witches in other colored robes had joined an attempt to help, and sighed in satisfaction. Their appearance meant that any late night workers had abandoned their offices to come to the atrium.

Praying that the others had realized his predicament and returned to Gryffindor Tower to avoid trouble, he carefully and slowly used the chaos to his advantage, and moved out of the grate, keeping his back to the wall as he crept slowly to the far end of the Atrium. He froze any time a witch or wizard got anywhere near him, painfully aware that he was not really invisible if someone were to spot movement in his direction. Still, they were too busy with evanasco and stupefy and any other spell that might possibly help, including doing such things as waving their hats at the offending sparks, or trying to smother them with their cloaks. It was an agonizing ten minutes of slow moving before he managed to get to the door he needed without being spotted or detected in any way. Making sure that everyone's attention was diverted elsewhere, he slipped through the door that had been on the map of the Ministry that he had been studying for the past two weeks. He let out a shaky laugh when he found he was in the stairwell that he had seen and memorized from the Ministry map, and only had to think for a moment before he began to climb the stairs up to the seventh floor, which was the home of the Department of Magical Games and Sports. The original plan had been to exit the Floo there, and then to wait for five to ten minutes to make sure that everything was clear before proceeding. He intended to stick with the plan, even if he was doing this solo now.

He and the others had chosen the Department of Magical Games and Sports office to Floo into because it was the floor closest to the Atrium, and was most likely to empty at this time of the night. They would have made any further moves from there, depending on what they found when they arrived. A glance at his watch told him that it was a quarter past one. The plan would have had them in the stairwell just below the ninth floor by now, waiting for an opportunity to slip past the guard and into the Department of Mysteries. He wondered if he should just turn and go there, so that he'd be on the time schedule they'd worked out, when he heard a noise up ahead. He stopped and backed slowly against the wall, when he distinctly heard voices coming in his direction, though he didn't see anyone approaching. There was movement in the darkness all around him from the posters depicting various Quidditch teams hung about the walls, but no sign of real life at all.

"I'm telling you, it's this way!" came a disembodied, whispering voice from just ahead.

He knew that voice. Rachel. It was unbelievable! And if she was whispering out directions, it meant that the others were here as well. Connor's heart gave a jolt as he realized that his friends had completely disregarded his order to return to Gryffindor tower if he did not return in good time. He whipped his chameleon cloak from around his face and hissed, "What are you all doing here?"

Ivy gave a quickly muffled scream, and Connor winced.

"Connor!" Quentin whipped his cloak down as well. "What happened? Why didn't you come back?"

Rachel, Zack and Ivy's heads were soon revealed as well, and Connor thought that anyone happening in at the moment would get the fright of their lives, seeing five heads seeming to float in mid-air.

"Apparently you can't Floo from the Atrium into the Headmistress's office," Connor said, feeling foolish that they had all overlooked the fact that the Hogwarts Floo was very picky about who could Floo into it. "I didn't have any Floo powder to try for Lupin's office, but I doubt it would have worked anyway." He didn't point out that this meant that they were in much worse trouble than they thought, seeing as how they wouldn't be able to get back to Hogwarts via the Floo, according to plan. The best they might hope for at this point would be to Floo into the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade, or possibly the Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes location there. Either way, they were sure to be noticed, questions would be asked.

"Did you get the distraction started?" Rachel asked anxiously.

"Yes," Connor said. "They should be busy for a while."

He explained how he had escaped the Atrium, and they told him about how they had planned to find Mrs. Tillman without him. Finally they all decided to press the advantage of having the distraction still going, and head for the stairwell so that they could get to the steps that led to level ten, before the distraction was taken care of and it occurred to anyone that the perpetrators involved might still be about. From there, they would be able to survey the situation on the ninth floor and still have a relatively safe hiding place.

They re-covered themselves with the cloaks, and kept close to the walls until they managed to slip into the stairwell. They paused on the landing to listen for any signs of life, and luckily heard nothing, so they hurried as quickly as they dared down from the seventh floor, past the eighth floor where the Atrium was located. They could still hear a lot of noise going on beyond that door as the fireworks eluded all efforts to extinguish them. At the ninth floor, they came to an open corridor that they would have to cross to get to the staircase for the tenth floor courtroom.

The stairwell itself was a bit of a problem to navigate. Being underground, it was very cold here, and slightly dank. The stairs were made of stone, and echoed with every movement they made, so that they had to be very careful about how they put their feet down. They also had to control their rapid breathing in case they were to alert someone below. All of them were feeling horribly exposed on the stairs, as there would be no way to hide their presence if someone were to come up or down. The cloaks they wore would only conceal them to a point, and they certainly wouldn't be hidden from anyone at very close range. It had taken them at least a quarter of an hour to make their way down to level nine without noise, and now they waited to see if it was clear to cross the corridor to the next set of steps.

Connor peered around the corner as cautiously as he could, reminding himself, yet again, that the Chameleon Cloak would not render him completely invisible, and that anyone looking in his direction would be able to detect movement. There was a long corridor before him, and a set of doors to the lift. This was as low as the lift would go, leaving the tenth floor courtroom accessible only by stairs. It was one of the reasons they had chosen to use those stairs to wait for their opportunity; no one was likely to sneak up on them from behind at this time of night. Opposite the lift doors, there was a single door with a tall desk-like table to the left of it, with a tall chair that looked to be a security station of some kind. Presently, there was no one manning the desk, and that made Connor nervous. Was the guard up in the Atrium, trying to help with the fireworks? Was he in the loo, or just on break? Maybe he was inside the Department of Mysteries on patrol? Wherever he was, he wasn't at the desk, which meant that they could move across to the other staircase. Connor had just turned back to tell his friends that they should quickly and quietly move to the next set of stairs, when a door below them opened, and a security wizard in peacock blue robes climbed up the set of steps that they had almost just snuck into.

Connor heard a faint squeak, and couldn't be sure if it was one of his friends, or simply the shoes of the guard climbing toward level nine. Whatever the case, the guard apparently didn't notice it, and kept climbing. Connor froze where he stood; hating that he had no way of knowing if they were about to be caught. Should he just stun the man now, or wait to see what was going to happen? Connor was still deciding when the man reached the corridor and turned, apparently returning to his post at the tall desk by the entrance to the Department of Mysteries. They could hear the scrape of his chair being pulled back, and the grunt and sigh of the man as he settled himself down at the desk. They could hear the crinkling of paper, and then a soft click. A moment later, soft music floated over the air, sounding tinny and faint to Connor's ears, but making him smile as he let out a shaky breath. With a wireless playing near him, the guard was less likely to hear any accidental noises that they made.

Connor carefully extracted a hand from his cloak so that the others would be able to see it, and he motioned to let them know that he was going to cross the corridor to the other stairs first. He motioned for them to stay put. Drawing his hand back in, and making sure he was covered, he ever-so-slowly eased against the far wall, and took a slow, tentative step out into the open, facing the guard. He was relieved to see that the man was holding a newspaper up in front of his face, and dared to move slightly more quickly across, half afraid that the thumping of his heart was going to give him away. He made it to the other set of stairs, and turned around when he was sure he was out of sight of the guard, but could still see the place where he knew his friends were waiting. He lowered the hood of the cloak, and freed his hands, trying not to let the cloak make any sound as he did so. He waved his hands and motioned for one of them to follow him across, and soon saw a hand (he thought it was Zack's) appear in the air in a thumbs-up gesture before disappearing again. It seemed like an eternity before he felt a body pass him, and he gestured for the next person to come.

He looked over his shoulder and saw that it had been Zack who had just passed him, his face visible in the folds of his partially drawn hood. A few minutes later, Ivy joined them, and then Rachel, and then Quentin. Connor looked at his wristwatch and was surprised to see that it was already twenty minutes past two! They would have to speed things up; they had to be there by 2:54, to cover the fact that his dreams had shown him both that time and 2:58. He didn't want to take any chances of being to late. That left them with just over a half an hour to find the clock room and catch Samantha Tillman! He didn't know how it was possible, but his heart rate picked up and fresh sweat beaded on his forehead.

The panic must have shown on his face, because Rachel put a hand on his arm and gave his a quizzical look. In answer, he held up his watch for her to see, and she blanched. Connor pulled out his wand, and gestured to himself, then to the corridor above them, mouthing the word, 'stupefy'. Rachel looked terrified, but when he pointed at his watch again, she nodded. He turned to the others to make sure they were prepared, and saw that they looked as scared as he felt, but were ready to follow his lead.

'One,' he mouthed to them, gripping his wand tightly and holding up the index finger of his left hand to tick off the numbers. 'Two," he mouthed silently, holding up a second finger. He was just about to move on to three, at which point he would step out and attempt to stun the guard, when a bell sounded with a sharp ding! They all jumped, and Ivy had her own hand clapped over her mouth, the other pressed against her heart. Zack looked as though he'd like to be sick, and Quentin's face was far too pale. Rachel had grabbed his arm as soon as they had heard the bell from the lift, to prevent him for stepping out into the open. They could hear what could only be the doors of the lift opening up, and they hurriedly covered themselves completely with their cloaks.

"Hey Lawrence," came a voice from the corridor. "Your kids buy stuff from that Weasley joke shop all the time don't they?"

"I swear half of my paycheck disappears into that shop," the other voice said jovially. "Why?"

"Some idiot set off some fireworks in the Atrium, and now the whole place is full of the things. We think there must have been some in a dustbin, and that they got wet somehow. Everything we try to do just makes 'em multiply. You know how to get rid of 'em?" the first voice explained.

Connor was glad that the distraction was still working so nicely.

"I can try," Lawrence the guard said with a chuckle. "Come on."

"Can you leave right now?" the first man asked in concern.

"Oh yes," Lawrence said easily. "The place is empty tonight. Jamison was going to come in and work, but his wife and son got sick, so he sent an owl saying that he wasn't coming. No one else is scheduled to be here until five."

"Let's go, then," the first man said. "It's chaos up there."

There was the sound of the chair scraping across the floor again, and footsteps, then the lift's doors slid shut with a clatter. Connor carefully peered around the corner and let out the breath he'd been holding.

"He's gone!" he whispered to the others, pulling his hood down once more. "Let's go before he comes back!"

They all lowered their hoods and quickly ran to the door by the desk. Connor looked at the top of the desk and found a key, and used it quickly on the lock. He couldn't believe his luck when the door gave way, and they all hurried inside, replacing the key on the desk and closing the door firmly behind them. Connor removed his Chameleon cloak and whispered, "That man said the place was empty, and it will be easier if we can see each other."

The others shed their cloaks and folded them up into their pockets as well. They were in a long corridor, and there was a door at the end that Connor knew without a doubt would lead to the strange round room with all of the doors.

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

Connor recognized this from his dreams, and so he answered, "I think so. 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. They had reached the door, and he pushed it open, striding inside with the others on his heels.