Down Memory Lane

Chapter One- The Big Bang

Harry squinted as he tried to see through the mist that enveloped him, and his squinting rewarded him the sight of swirling figures that seemed to dance around on the outskirts of his vision. A quiet laugh echoed around him, breaking the mist into pieces as if it had been no more than glass. The swirling figures that Harry had seen behind the fog danced into view and began to spin around him in a circle. Harry's eyes widened as he saw Cedric Diggory and his parents among the figures. Cedric's gray eyes held a deadened look that scared Harry slightly. Lily Potter's green eyes, so much like his own, held the same look. A red glow began to light the area, and Harry saw that the light was not coming from any natural source, but the spirits' eyes.

"Harry," they called. "We are dead because of you. You killed us."

"I didn't!" Harry cried. "Voldemort did!"

"You told me to take the cup with you," Cedric said, stepping forward out of the circle. The spirits continued their disconcerting dance around them. "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named wanted you, and therefore you killed me." He stepped back into the circle, and another figure took his place.

It was a young girl, no more than ten or eleven. Harry thought he had seen her in line for the Sorting the previous year. "My parents were Aurors," she proclaimed. Her voice was musical and haunting, and caused goosebumps to rise all over him. "You-Know-Who came to my house one night, wanting to know where you were living. They could not tell him, and therefore you killed me." She ducked her head forward, her light brown hair swirling around her head, and stepped back into the circle. Harry's parents now stepped forward.

"He wanted you," Lily Potter told him. "He wanted you to be raised as a loyal Death Eater. He wanted the children of the new generation to walk behind him and follow his bidding. We refused, so therefore you killed us."

"No, I didn't!" Harry repeated. "I didn't kill you; Voldemort did!

"It was Voldemort!" Harry sat straight up in his bed. He was breathing hard, and a cold sweat dripped down the side of his face.

"Whazzat?" a sleepy voice asked from a few feet away from him. Harry jumped and lost his balance. The end result was that he landed painfully on the floor at a strange position on his shoulder.

"Oww!" he moaned, using his left arm to push him upright. "Sorry, Ron," he told the other boy.

"Couldn't you have waited four more hours to start yelling?" he asked after glancing at his Chudley Cannons alarm clock that he had brought to Hermione's house.

"I guess not," Harry replied. "I'll try to get back to sleep."

"No more yelling! Owl Mum for a sleepless-dream potion." Ron's voice began to get thick and quiet again.

"Er...dreamless-sleep, Ron."

"Wh-ere..." Harry sighed and crawled back under the covers. He would owl Mrs. Weasley in the morning for one before they went to Heathrow airport.

~&~

Peals of laughter erupted from the living room of Lia Florence's house as she made her way there, juggling three large bags of popcorn, five Vanilla Cokes, and one handheld video camera.

"Waaaait!" she cried, shuffling her feet as fast as she could without dropping all the stuff she was holding. "Pause the movie! Pause the damn movie!"

"Lianne Christine Florence!" her mother's voice called from upstairs. "Watch your mouth!" Lia chose to ignore the use of her full name and continued to berate her friends.

"Cool it, Lia," one of the teens on the couch said. She curled one of her white-blond waves around her forefinger and attempted to make it spiral. It stubbornly remained a wave, and the girl released it. "We can rewind it."

Lia sighed and tossed the popcorn bags down the stairs to the couch and then followed with the cokes and camera. "It doesn't matter, Kirsten."

"You're right," said another of the girls who was lying sprawled across the only boy on the couch and the two other girls. "It was only an extra anyway. Pass me that DVD box, would you?" Lia put down the cokes and camera and tossed the DVD box to her friend.

"Could you give that one to me?" Kirsten asked, pointing to a Lord of the Rings DVD box. Lia gave her a funny look but did so.

"Pass that one, would ya?" the third girl asked.

"Okay, what is going on?" Lia asked suspiciously. "You aren't all going to throw the boxes at me when I sit down, are you?"

"No, but great idea. What do you think, Chris?" Kirsten asked. "Jack? Pyro?"

"Nah," all three said in unison.

"Pass the boxes, Lia," Pyro said.

After the DVD boxes had been fairly distributed among the four sniggering teens, Pyro, who sat squished in between Kirsten and Chris, and beneath Jack, pressed the play/enter button on the remote control. Lia looked at the TV screen and saw the words "Sing Along" on the top of the screen before it blacked out and the clip began. Lia quickly grabbed her video camera and turned it on, pointing it at her friends.

Before long, Lia barely had enough breath left to breathe. The four teens were doubled over laughing, but that didn't stop them from trying to chant along with the monk on the television screen. Every few seconds or so, they would take the DVD box and slap themselves in the forehead with it at the exact moment the monks on the screen would.

"Oh, that's rich, that's rich!" Lia yelped as it finished. Jack fell off the couch and began to cough and whoop violently. Chris lunged for the coffee table and plucked up her inhaler and offered it to her. She didn't take it.

"Shit; she's dead!" Pyro whispered.

"I'm not quite dead yet," Jack murmured. She opened her eyes and was forced to fend for herself when pillows came flying at her from all directions.

~&~

Harry and Hermione each grabbed one of Ron's arms and attempted to haul him through the doorway onto the airplane. Ron stuck fast, however, and stood with his blue eyes dark and wide with fear.

"I-I-I--you can't be serious!" he finally stammered. "You-you can't make me go on that thing!"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake!" Hermione burst out. Then, in a quieter tone, "You rode Harry's broomstick around your house forty-two times this morning before we could get you to come down."

"Excess energy," Harry input with a yawn. "He stole most of mine and used it for his own."

"I'm pretty sure it was the coffee tart that Fred gave him," Hermione disagreed, shaking her head. "We all know not to trust whatever either twin gives away willingly."

"All of us except for Ron," Ginny said, coming up behind her brother. She stopped suddenly and looked at the door as if it was the gaping maw of a Basilisk. "You can't be serious," she said.

"I'll take Ron," Harry said, "and you take Ginny." Hermione transferred herself over to the youngest Weasley and both her and Harry managed to get the scared magic users onto the plane.

"I can't believe that we're going to go to Seattle!" Hermione said excitedly. "They have a music museum that I really want to go to!"

"And a quidditch museum," Harry whispered.

"All you think about is quidditch, don't you?" Hermione asked soberly.

"Mmm...yep." Harry grinned at her and a small snort of laughter from behind Harry told him that Ron had heard the whole conversation.

"I haven't been on an aeroplane in years," Hermione announced, gazing around the cabin. "And I can't believe that Mum and Daddy got us first class seats! I've never been in first class."

"We needed to give you something significant for being made a Prefect," said Helen Granger. She smiled down at her daughter.

"Thanks Mum." Hermione grinned back at her mother and then began to climb the stairs to the upper level of the 747. Harry glanced up the stairs at Hermione's retreating back, and then to at Ron and Ginny. They were looking up the stairs as well, but their feelings about them were plastered all over their faces.

"We have to go up there?" Ginny asked quietly. Harry sighed and grabbed Ginny's wrist and began to climb the stairs.

~&~

Jack groaned sleepily and opened her eyes to see what had woken her up at such an ungodly hour. Sitting in front of the screen door sat Lia, writing in a notebook no bigger than her foot.

"Lia?" Jack asked croakily. She swallowed and cleared her throat as the teen looked up.

"Did I wake you up?" she asked, finishing what she wrote and closing the notebook.

"Sort of. I heard something scratching."

Lia held her pen out for Jack to take. "I rub the rubber part along the bottom when I'm thinking. I didn't think it was so loud, though!"

"Don't worry about it. I need to use the bathroom anyway." Jack wriggled out of her sleeping bag and got to her feet.

"Hey Jack?" She turned around again to face her friend. "Do you believe in magic?"

"Magic like miracles or magic like..." Jack wiggled her fingers around.

"Yes."

"Yes what?"

"Yes, magic like..." Lia wiggled her fingers around too. She leaned back up against the couch and stared out the window.

"Lia, some people believe that magic is given to people by the Devil. Others believe that people are just born with it--as if it were just an eye or a leg. I believe that the only kind of magic that exists is miracles." Jack looked out the window too. "There are too many people on this damn planet for magic not to exist in one form or another. We just haven't discovered it yet."

Lia nodded slightly, but didn't say anything again until Jack had come back from the bathroom and fallen back asleep. "What about the magic that is gifted in a person to use as they feel fit?"

~&~

Hermione pushed the button on her chair and leaned back. First class isn't all that I thought it would be, she thought idly as the steward walked down the isle offering beverages.

"Let me do the ordering," she had told Harry, Ron, and Ginny earlier, after an almost disastrous breakfast at the airport. Ginny had wanted a glass of pumpkin juice, but Muggles didn't sell the drink, since they thought it was distasteful.

"Can I get something for you, Miss?" asked the steward as he stopped at her row.

"Er...just water, please." The steward scribbled something on his notepad and looked at Ron. "He'll have the same," Hermione interrupted as Ron opened his mouth. He glared at her, but she ignored it.

"Alright." The steward moved on to Harry's row behind them, and Hermione heard Harry ordering water for himself and Ginny.

Oh, I really hope that Ron doesn't get airsick, Hermione thought suddenly. That would make everyone up here miserable, no one more than me!

The flight to JFK international airport was uneventful except for whenever the pilot came over the PA system to speak to the passengers. Ron and Ginny were akin to Mexican jumping beans at those times, causing Harry to laugh helplessly and Hermione to attempt to explain to the other passengers that it was Ginny and Ron's first time on an airplane.

Hermione felt that she was overly perky when they stepped off the plane. Ginny and Ron kept stifling yawns, and Harry looked half dead with his face pale and dark circles under his eyes.

"Harry, when was the last time that you had a good night's sleep?" Hermione asked him as they sat down on a row of uncomfortable blue plastic chairs that had been placed by the front doors.

Harry yawned widely. "The night before the Third Task." Hermione's eyes widened.

"Harry, that was almost a year ago!"

He looked mildly surprised. "Only? I thought it was much longer."

Hermione buried her face in her hands. "Harry, why didn't you tell someone?"

Harry shrugged. "Nobody asked. Plus, it's not like I'll fall down dead from lack of sleep. It's more likely that Voldemort will burst through those doors over there and start cursing everything in sight with an incomplete Jelly Legs curse." He grinned at her.

He's so disarming, Hermione thought with a sigh, glancing out the window to see if the bus that was to take them to their hotel had arrived yet. Their next flight--this one to San Francisco--didn't leave for another fourteen hours. Maybe that's what makes him so darn cute.

~&~

"Anyone up for a road-trip?" Lia asked, dangling a key chain with four keys on it in front of her.

"Where?" Chris asked. He had come over--again--insisting that they watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail once more.

"I'll have to call my mother and ask," Kirsten said at the same time.

"The Saab or the Mercedes?" Jack asked with an evil glint in her eyes.

"Seattle, the phone's right there, and the Saab," Lia said. "And no, Jack, you can't drive. You got to drive us all the way to Newport and back; now it's my turn to scare everyone half to death." Jack pouted.

"Suits?" Pyro asked.

"Suits," Lia confirmed, promptly dragging out a duffel bag and beginning to stuff things into it, including a blue racing swimsuit.

~&~

As the plane lurched violently due to the terrible turbulence, three teenagers with a secret to keep stared at the fourth.

"I hate flying. I hate flying!" Harry repeated, gripping the armrest of his chair and trying to keep what the airline had called "lunch" in his stomach.

"How can you hate flying?" Ron hissed. "You're the captain of the quidditch team, and you're practically attached to your Thunder 3000!"

Harry ignored him. "I ha--"

"Remind me," Ron interrupted. "What was the final score of the last quidditch match that you played?"

"Three-hundred fifty to ten," Harry told him. "In our favor."

"That's what I thought. How can you hate flying?!"

"Would either of you two care for some peanuts?" the dimply stewardess asked them. Instead of responding, Harry thrust his hand into the pocket of the seat in front of him and pulled out the small paper bag, and emptied his stomach quite thoroughly.

~&~

"Thirty-nine bottles of Sprite on the wall; thirty-nine bottles of Sprite!" sang the five teens as they passed around a twelve ounce bottle of the mentioned liquid.

"Take it down," Jack yelled.

"Splash it around!" Chris dumped half of it over her head and listed to her scream. Chris smirked. Jack smacked him. He didn't stop smirking.

"This is my brother's car!" Lia yelled at him. "You get the seats sticky, guess who gets to clean them?"

"You?" Chris asked innocently. Lia turned around and glared at him.

"Caaaaaaaaaaar!" Kirsten and Pyro screamed, pointing at the road. Lia turned around and swung the steering wheel violently to the right to avoid becoming a hood ornament on the 67' Chevy that plowed through where they had just been.

"Watch where yer goin'!" a voice yelled to them. As one, four of the five teens raised their hands through their windows and made a very rude gesture towards the Chevy.

"Now, where were we?" Chris asked. "Oh, yeah; thirty-eight bottles of Sprite on Jack's head...!"

~&~

"Thank God; they're finally asleep!" Ginny whispered to Hermione. She turned and saw that Harry was leaning up against the window, his half-full airsickness bag sitting in his lap. Hermione gingerly leaned over and picked it up, disgusted at the way the puke sloshed up against the sides of the bag. She nearly thrust it at the stewardess, who also looked disgusted, and tenderly wiped off Harry's flushed face with the wet cloth the stewardess had given her. Harry moaned slightly, but did not wake up.

Ron snorted and turned to face the other way.

"I hate to say this, but they're so cute this way," Ginny murmured.

"I know." Hermione gently removed Harry's glasses and put them in her purse.

"They're so...vulnerable."

Hermione snorted. "Harry's anything but vulnerable. He can take anything that anyone tosses at him, and then some."

"And Ron?" Ginny asked. Her bright brown eyes sparkled with humor.

"Ron's just an overgrown puppy that likes to pick fights with anything that moves," Hermione said simply.

"I heard that," Ron murmured, opening his left eye and glaring at her. More than one of the passengers glared in their direction when Ginny and Hermione burst out laughing.

~&~

"Okay...chicken burger with pickles, cheeseburger--whoops, that's a hamburger--Dr. Pepper--hands off my milkshake!--pass me the fries, would you?"

Chris picked up the nearly empty Burger King bag and peered inside. "Didn't you order onion rings?"

"Don't be an idiot, Chris. Of course I did."

"They're not in the bag."

"That's because they're all over your jacket." Pyro and Jack sniggered in the back seat.

"May I have my Root Beer now?" Kirsten asked after swallowing a bite of her hamburger.

"Take it. Chris, fork over the French fries!" Lia told him.

Chris stared at her, then began to imitate her. "French fries! I need French fries! I need--" He passed the bag over and Lia dug into it for the box.

"Hey, hey, hey! Road. Attention payage!" Pyro scolded as the teen frowned down at the constricting bag.

"Sorry!" Lia straightened just in time to careen out of the way of a person on a bike. The tires on the Saab squealed in protest, and several squeals of pain were issued from the back seat.

"Slow down, Lia!" Kirsten said, emerging back into view with French fries sticking out of her hair. "If I had wanted to get killed in a car accident, I would have asked my sister to drive!"

"Oh, hush," Lia scolded. "Your driving skills aren't any better than mine."

"But at least I wasn't sixteen when I got my permit," Kirsten taunted. The back of Lia's neck reddened. She turned right around in her seat and glared at her friend.

"At least I don't--"

"Oh my God! Look out!" Lia swiveled around and her eyes widened. There was a thump, another squeal of the tires, and a terrific crash. Then everything went black.

~&~

//One and a half hours earlier...//

"Urg...ug...mmph," Harry groaned as he stepped off the plane. The weather in Seattle was sunny, bright, and hot, a normal northwestern day during the summer according to Hermione. Harry fervently disliked it immediately, since he was wearing a sweater and long pants, and his dark hair soaked up every ray that tried to reach everyone else in the area. Quite the opposite, Ron was shivering violently and couldn't talk without stuttering.

"Oh, this is wonderful!" Hermione said cheerfully.

Harry grunted and walked forward as if his limbs had been filled with lead. Mrs. Granger yawned and stretched, while Mr. Granger looked around the runway and squinted up to the control tower.

"Did you know that they had to rebuild that tower due to an earthquake two years ago that was centered in Olympia?" Hermione asked them, turning towards Harry.

Harry grunted again and picked up his suitcase off the nearby cart. He noted dimly that on the side it read A La Carte.

"Hermione, give it a rest," Ron yawned. "The only thing I want to know is that we'll be at the hotel in five minutes."

"Actually..." Hermione grinned at them sheepishly. "It's a bed and breakfast that's a few miles outside of town."

"And that will take us how long to get there?"

Hermione made a noise that sounded suspiciously like, "Meep!"

"Hermione..."

She looked up at him with a sheepish grin. "An hour...?"

Harry stepped between them before Ron could blow up at her. "Thank you for arranging this for us, Hermione," he said, giving Ron a warning glance. He looked furious, and rubbed his arms the way he did when he was irritated.

"Yes," Ron said through gritted teeth. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Hermione mumbled, and began to walk towards the covered walkway.

"That girl," Ron spat. "An hour...for God's sake, an hour!"

"Plus typical Seattle traffic," Ginny added.

"Maybe that's what she was allowing for," said Harry. "We might end up lucky. Or we could try for Wizarding transportation if things get iffy," he added in a whisper.

"Muggles can't ride on the Knight Bus, though," Ron reminded him. "They can't even see it!"

"Then we're stuck taking the way Hermione said." Harry yawned widely. "Come on. I'm exhausted and I would like to get to bed."

The trip through the airport was fascinating for even Harry. A small underground train that Harry had heard a small American Muggle call "the subway" (wasn't that sandwich shop? Now he was confused) stretched between four of the terminals. Ron and Ginny had no problems with the train other than the sliding doors. After they were sure that they wouldn't randomly shut on them, they boarded and again started when the PA system began to spit out directions in multiple languages, including French Spanish, German, Japanese, Albanian, Jamaican, Zulu, and last, but not least, English.

After hiking around for about twenty minutes, they located the front doors and called a cab. The cab arrived five minutes later and before too long, they were off, crammed into the small vehicle. Because Harry and Hermione were small, they were able to double-buckle in the back seat, while Mr. and Mrs. Granger sat in the front. Harry was so tired that he leaned up against the door and dozed.

An hour later Ron was, in his opinion, rudely shaking him awake. "Come on; we're here!" Harry opened his eyes blearily and pushed his glasses up so he could rub his eyes.

"Where are we?" he asked, yawning.

"The Starlight Inn," Ron said, sniffing distastefully. "The best thing about this place is that they have a pool."

"Oh," Harry said gloomily.

"I thought that you would like that, Harry," Hermione called from the boot of the cab. She was trying to dislodge her suitcase without bringing everything else down on her.

"I would, if I could swim."

"But you swam in the second task!" Ron insisted. He walked around to the back of the cab and yanked Hermione's suitcase out with one hand and then handed it to her.

"I was using Gillyweed. Anyone could swim using Gillyweed." Harry got out of the car and walked around to the back as well. He began to help Ron pile suitcases on the ground, and watched as Ron took two of them inside.

After all of the suitcases had been brought into their room, Harry decided that he needed to take a walk to clear his mind. Hermione had nixed their idea of taking naps, saying that it would be better if they got used to the time change by going to bed at a more decent hour.

The scenery was different than in England, he noticed immediately. There were more evergreens, and the air was fresher. Up ahead, he saw a biker kick off from the sidewalk and begin to ride forward. A red car suddenly screamed around the corner, nearly hitting the biker. It swerved, narrowly missing him. Music blared from inside the car, and Harry suddenly realized that if he didn't move, it would hit him. But like a deer in the headlights, he couldn't even blink. He felt as if he'd been frozen into place by a petrificus partialus charm.

The car slammed into him, and everything was lost in a whirlwind of pain, screaming, and eternal darkness.