The World Beyond

Chapter Four: McGonagall's Questions

The library at Hogwarts was surprisingly full of people for the first week of school. After overcoming his initial shock at finding out who the Potions professor was, Harry had found the man to be quite a good teacher. The class spent the first day reviewing several potions that Harry had not learned before and were then split into groups to work on a special project.

The Potions project was, Harry assumed, the reason he saw so many fifth year students in the library. It was certainly the reason he was there, with Hermione, at a table towards the front. They were each poring through different books about Potions.

"I think this is the right one." Parvati appeared at the table and dropped a large book in between them. Dusting off her hands, she slid into a chair next to Hermione, who was sitting directly across from Harry.

"Moste Potente Potions?" Harry read from the dusty cover. "Shouldn't this be in the Restricted section or something?"

"You'd think," Parvati answered, flipping open the tome. "But it was right over there, with the other potions books. Honestly, if some of these potions got into the wrong hands... Polyjuice potion, for example," she pointed to the page in front of her, "I mean, you could sneak anywhere you wanted..."

Harry laughed at that, but stopped short when he noticed Hermione and Parvati looking at him. "Oh, just... you know, memories..."

"You've done that, haven't you?" There was a gleam in Parvati's eyes as she stared at Harry. "I wouldn't have thought you had it in you, Harry. You seem so innocent and... boring."

"Well, thanks a lot."

Parvati blushed. "Oh, I didn't mean it like that. I just wouldn't have thought you the type to get into any trouble, that's all."

"You have no idea." Harry grimaced, thinking of all the scrapes he had gotten himself into in the past.

"Oh?" Parvati grinned, the Potions project momentarily forgotten. "Do tell, Mr. Potter. Were you quite the troublemaker at your old school? Can we expect similar antics from you now?"

A loud sneeze from Hermione stopped him from answering Parvati. Harry turned to Hermione, who still had her nose buried in the dusty potions book, "Bless you."

At the sound of his voice, she looked up and blushed. "Oh, thanks."

"Finding anything useful?" Parvati asked her.

"Not too much," she sighed, dropping the book back to the table with a thud. "Never mind that I'm completely useless at making potions, I can't even seem to research them properly."

"Who can, in this kind of book?" Parvati sympathized, with a disgusted nod towards the old book Hermione was flipping through. "Except Neville, of course, who could find anything in any book if he would ever get his mind off of Quidditch."

Harry chuckled at that. "Well, where is he, anyway? He is a member of our group, and if he's so good at this, he ought to be helping out."

Parvati rolled her eyes and Hermione huffed her obvious disapproval at the situation. Harry glanced between the two of them, confused, until finally Parvati clarified, "Off flirting, as always. If it's not Quidditch, it's a girl. Honestly, he's useless. How he got to be prefect..."

"He got to be prefect because he has the best marks in our year," Hermione said. "But really, I don't know what girls see in him. He isn't even very attractive."

Parvati nodded her agreement. "He really doesn't have that great a body. I mean, you'd think with all that Quidditch... But Cho Chang seems to like him enough. He's with her now, I believe."

"She's a sixth year Ravenclaw," Hermione told Harry.

Harry nodded his understanding while resisting the urge to laugh at the idea of Neville Longbottom as a ladies' man, but before he could say anything more, the group was disturbed by the sound of the nearby library door banging open. Harry turned in his seat and he, Hermione, and Parvati watched as Professor McGonagall strode into the library and surveyed it quickly with her eyes. After a moment, her gaze settled on him and she came quickly to their table.

"Good afternoon," the Headmistress said from the end of the table by Harry.

"Afternoon, Professor," Parvati said with a smile, shutting the thick potions book in front of her. "Can we help you with anything?"

Professor McGonagall smiled back, but her attention was really on Harry. "Yes, Miss Patil, actually I was hoping for a word with Mr. Potter. I hope everything is going well for you, Harry, and that you are getting settled all right?"

"Yes, ma'am," Harry said with a nod, "everything has been good so far."

"Good," she said. A more serious expression came over her face. "I can see that you three are hard at work, but if you have a moment, Mr. Potter, I would like to have a word with you in private."

Harry glanced across at the two girls and then turned back to Professor McGonagall. "Um, yes, of course. I mean," he glanced back at Hermione and Parvati, "if you two can do okay without me for a while..."

"Oh, sure," Parvati waved her hand at him. "Ditch us, of course. We did fine before you appeared at this school, we'll do fine a little longer without you. At least you've got a better excuse than Neville..."

McGonagall's eyes narrowed. "Where is Mr. Longbottom? Is he supposed to be part of your group?"

"He'll be along!" Hermione exclaimed, eyes wide. "He just had to..."

"...meet with someone!" Parvati finished for her.

Professor McGonagall didn't look like she believed either of them, but she didn't seem to care enough to question them any further. With a quick nod to the girls, she motioned for Harry to follow her. He picked up his things from the table, stuffed them into his bag, and hurried quickly after the headmistress.

"I'm glad to see you are making friends here," McGonagall said as soon as she and Harry were out of hearing range of the others. "Though I must impress upon you the seriousness of your situation. No matter how close you become with the other students, you must not tell them anything out of the ordinary."

Harry nodded quickly. "I understand. I don't want to cause any trouble. Have you found anything out about how I got here?"

"It has hardly been long enough, Potter," Professor McGonagall glanced at him as she led the boy through the halls. "We are doing everything we can, but I assure you, this isn't a question that has ever really been looked into before."

Harry nodded again as they turned a corner together. A bit of movement caught his eye, and he glanced over to the side in time to see Neville Longbottom pull a girl behind a suit of armor and out of range of Professor McGonagall's eyes. He needn't have bothered, as the Headmistress never glanced in their direction.

Harry held back a laugh as he briefly caught Neville's eye and then came to a quick stop behind the professor, who had stopped short, herself, right in front of him. Harry looked at the wall in front of them and realized he was outside the entrance to what had been Professor Dumbledore's office the last time he had been in it.

"Skittles," the Headmistress said, and the entrance jumped to life. As they made their way up to her office, McGonagall turned to Harry, "A Muggle candy I'm particularly fond of, you know. And I do hope that I won't later find you have spread it about the entire school. Hardly a point to a password, is there, if everyone knows what it is."

"Of course not, professor," Harry answered quickly, suppressing a snicker at her sudden similarity to Professor Dumbledore. "I mean, I won't tell anyone, of course."

Professor McGonagall pushed open her office door and ushered Harry inside. As she shut the door behind them, Harry glanced in awe around himself at the office. It had the exact same structure as Professor Dumbledore's had; Harry guessed that probably wasn't too strange, as the entire castle seemed to be built the same way the one he remembered had. McGonagall's desk also seemed to be in the same place Harry remembered it should be, but that was the end of the similarities between the two rooms.

A fairly large calico cat was lounging on a pile of pillows in one corner. Its eyes watched Harry warily as he walked into the room, but it seemed more interested in licking its front paw than in him. A few pictures covered the walls. Harry thought they all looked like they might be family portraits. A picture window behind the desk looked over the Quidditch pitch, and the remainder of the walls was covered in bookshelves packed full of dusty, old books. A display case in the opposite corner to the cat's bed held the battered old sorting hat amid assorted other trinkets.

Harry slid into the chair facing Professor McGonagall's desk as the Headmistress ran her hand affectionately over the cat's head before sitting down across from him. She had hardly been seated a moment before the cat leapt up and onto her lap, running its tail over her nose.

"This is Pandora." McGonagall motioned to the cat now purring contentedly in her lap. "A beautiful girl, but full of trouble."

Harry smiled and reached a hand to pet the cat, but quickly pulled his fingers out of harms way as Pandora hissed at him, displaying a mouthful of sharp teeth.

"Not the most friendly sort, I suppose," Professor McGonagall chuckled. "Not with strangers, at least. But, anyway, we haven't come here to discuss her, have we?"

Harry shook his head no. Professor McGonagall didn't say anything else immediately, so Harry glanced around him again. "Professor Dumbledore had a pet phoenix, Fawkes..." he commented offhandedly.

"Professor Dumbledore?"

"Oh," Harry began. "My... other... Headmaster. He had his office in this room, too, but it was nothing at all like this."

McGonagall's brow wrinkled in interest, "Did you spend a lot of time in his office?" At Harry's uncomfortable expression, she waved the question off with, "Never mind, I'm not sure I want to know. Do you know, I do seem to vaguely remember hearing something of a wizard called Dumbledore..." She looked thoughtful. "Oh well, that's hardly relevant at the moment, is it? We really had better get down to business. I don't want to keep you from your schoolwork any longer than possible."

Harry nodded slowly, unsure of what he was supposed to do.

"No enthusiasm to get right back to your work, I see. You will find the workload here to be rigorous. I don't know what you are used to. Which," she looked directly at Harry, "brings me to my point. I know hardly anything about you at all. We didn't get to speak much at the feast, and it is essential that we do. If there is to be any hope for getting you home, I must know exactly how you got here in the first place." She raised an eyebrow. "Assuming you do want to get home, that is?"

"Of course!"

"All right," the headmistress continued. "Why don't we start with you telling me everything you can remember about how you ended up here, in our world?"

Harry took a deep breath. Pandora was purring loudly from her spot; all Harry could see of the cat was her tail, flicking back and forth across Professor McGonagall's face. After a second, Harry began, "Well, as I said, I went to King's Cross Station, to catch the Express, like every year. I met up with the Weasleys. Mrs. Weasley, Fred and George, Ron, and Ginny, that is. And Hermione..."

"Granger?" McGonagall interrupted him.

"Yes." Harry nodded. "Hermione Granger. She, Ron, and I are best friends. Well, we are in my other world, anyway. We have been since first year, and the thing with the..." Harry glanced up at Professor McGonagall's inquisitive expression, "the... troll..."

Professor McGonagall gave a short laugh. "The troll, Mr. Potter? Since meeting you, I have heard of a troll, a flying car, and apparently frequent visits to the Headmaster's office. I'm beginning to wonder if keeping you around here isn't more trouble than it is worth."

Harry's eyes widened. "But, Professor..."

"Oh, Mr. Potter," the Headmistress chastised lightly, "I'm joking, of course. Even if I was to find that you were a great deal of trouble, there's hardly anything else to be done with you that I know of. Of course you are welcome here at Hogwarts. Until we have solved the dilemma of how to get you home, that is."

"I don't mean for it to happen, Professor." Harry shrugged his shoulders. "Trouble just seems to find me. It has all my life."

"And I'm not here to criticize you for it at the moment, Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall said. "But, right now, we do need to discuss this most recent trouble of how you ended up here. I think we can all say with a fair degree of certainty that it was not, in fact, a prank played by the Symmons twins?"

Harry shook his head, "No, professor. I don't even see how they could've, really. I mean, to charm the barrier like that, wouldn't it have taken some really powerful magic?"

Professor McGonagall shook her head in thought, running her hand absentmindedly over the back of her cat. "I cannot imagine any magic that would have been able to do that. I certainly have never come across any such spell. Not that I have a better explanation for what happened, mind you." She shook her head again. "Now, back to your story, Mr. Potter."

"Right," Harry nodded, taking another breath. "Well, Fred and George, Ginny, and Hermione had all gone onto the platform. So I went. But then I didn't. The barrier didn't let me through, simple as that."

"Did you notice anything unusual about your surroundings as you were unable to get through?" the Headmistress queried.

Harry thought about it for a second. After a moment of silence, he shook his head, "I was concentrating on the barrier. I didn't notice anything unusual until I turned back and Ron and Mrs. Weasley were gone."

"And you know nothing else about what happened?"

"No, professor," Harry answered. "I mean, I tried again, and I got through. And everyone was different. And now I'm here."

Professor McGonagall nodded, lost in thought. Her eyes drifted from Harry and focused on a bookshelf across the room, though Harry was pretty sure she wasn't actually seeing anything but her thoughts. Pandora leapt from McGonagall's lap to the desk and trotted over to Harry. Harry watched the cat cautiously, but Pandora seemed to be in a friendlier mood now. After a moment of sniffing at him, the cat stuck her head out to be petted. Harry complied and soon the cat was settled comfortably in front of him.

Harry had almost forgotten that he was not alone in the room when Professor McGonagall spoke again. She still seemed to be mostly lost in thought as she said, "Thank you, Mr. Potter. I will be looking into this further, of course. Professor Black will be doing the same. In fact, we may have to enlist his wife's services - she's a historian, you see. If anything like this has ever happened before, she'd be the one to know. For the time being, however," she continued, "I see no other reasonable alternative than for you to continue on as you have here. Assuming you are all right with that?"

"Yes, ma'am." Harry nodded.

"Then I suggest you get back to the library and back to your work," she dismissed him. Harry grabbed his bag and hurried from his seat. "Oh, and Harry," she stopped him. "You should find, in the next few days, a new set of textbooks in your dormitory."

"New textbooks?"

"New textbooks, Mr. Potter. I daresay yours might be a bit different than ours." She glanced over her glasses at him. "Your history books, for example?"

Harry nodded quickly. "Of course, professor. I hadn't thought of that. I should just, umm, keep my old books stored in my trunk, then?"

"I do think that would be for the best. We don't want them stirring up any trouble here," Professor McGonagall said. Harry nodded and slung his bag over his shoulder and turned for the door. Pandora hissed at him again as he left, but then she turned back to Professor McGonagall.

The Headmistress's voice stopped Harry once more as he pushed the door open. "Potter." He turned to face her. "Do be wise when choosing your friends here. I cannot say I am entirely impressed with some of the families you have chosen to associate with, in you former world."

Harry looked down and nodded slowly, "But the Weasleys... they were different before..."

Professor McGonagall didn't respond, so Harry left the room. He pushed the door securely behind him and made his way down the staircase and away from the Headmistress's office.

The hallway was empty as Harry made his way back towards the library and his Potions project. He was in no real hurry to get there; he would much rather have thought more on what Professor McGonagall had said. He had hoped that she would have found out how to return him home already. Harry sighed as he realized just how much he really did miss his old world and his old friends.

A group of girls in Ravenclaw robes passed Harry as he made his way down a staircase. It took him a second to register that Cho Chang was among them. He glanced after her for a second, but she made no notice of him.

Before he realized he had walked far at all, Harry found himself outside the library doors.

Harry pushed the heavy doors open and stepped inside. Hermione and Parvati were seated at the same table as before, but now Neville Longbottom was with them. They appeared to be packing up their supplies. Harry hurried over to them.

"Potter!" Neville exclaimed. "So nice of you to join us. In trouble with the Headmistress already?"

"No." Harry shook his head as he watched Hermione load several large books into her book-bag. "She just wanted to check that I was settling in all right. Make sure I was finding my way around the school. That sort of thing."

Parvati grinned over at him. "All right, then." She motioned at the table as she, too, stuffed a couple of books in her bag. "In your absence, we have completed the research bit of our project. Now we just have to write it up. Turns out Neville's, ahem, flirtation with Cho Chang wasn't such a horrid thing after all."

Harry turned, confused, to look at the other boy, who was grinning. "Her group had the same project last year. She's a sixth year, you know. I was able to... persuade... her to tell me what books we should look in."

"Great," Harry laughed. He heard Hermione snort with disgust at Neville's actions and had to laugh again.

"Well," Neville began, "since we've gotten finished so early and we have so much free time on our hands, why don't you," -he pointed at Harry- "show me if you're any good on a broomstick."

"Not Quidditch," Hermione moaned as Harry nodded his approval at the suggestion.

Neville smiled. "Good. Since Harry and I will be heading out to the Quidditch arena," he spoke to the girls, "how about you lovely ladies taking our books back to the dormitory?"

"How about we not?" Parvati responded. "You want your things back in the dorm, you get them there yourselves. You can go play Quidditch after." With that, she walked off towards the library exit. Neville hurried after her, pleading his case for her to carry his books.

Hermione and Harry laughed at the two of them and then started off in the same direction themselves. The four students made their way, talking and laughing, through the near empty hallways back to the Gryffindor Common Room.

To be continued...

Scenes from Chapter Five: 'The Invisibility Cloak'

- A tentative smile came over Hermione's face, "So you're not upset with me?"

"Of course not!" Harry exclaimed. "Hermione, you're probably my best friend here. I couldn't be mad at you. Well," he clarified, "I probably could, but not over something silly like that!"

"Okay, then," Hermione smiled more brightly than she had before. "I was just so afraid I was going to offend you..." she trailed off.

- "Harry!" she hissed once they were safely outside. "Tell me what is going on. What is that?"

"This," Harry grinned and shook the cloak out in front of him, "This is an invisibility cloak."

- After only a few steps, Harry fell to the floor with a thud. He heard a grunt from Hermione's direction and looked back to see her sprawled in a similar position to his. The invisibility cloak lay abandoned between them. Harry glanced dreadfully towards the portrait of Slytherin and was surprised to see that the founder was laughing at them. He didn't seem upset to see the two students out of their dorm, though Harry thought he could hear the founder muttering something that sounded a lot like, "Stupid Gryffindors."