The Silver Millennium

-|- Chapter One -|-

The Past Meets the Future

Professor McGonagall narrowed her eyes as she peered around at the seven of them lined up in a straight line, looking nowhere but straightly ahead of them; they all had their hands behind their back in nervousness and expectancy. She slowly walked down the line looking at them all, her boot heels tapping on the locker room floor.

She stopped suddenly in front of Greg West and gave him a pitied look; he winced. She looked away from him and started back the opposite way. She had her arms folded neatly behind her back with her expression almost human-less.

They didn't know what was coming next. It was like walking through the Forbidden Forest at night; you never knew what was going to happen. Any of them had a chance of being chosen, though more than others. Harry was sure it was going to be him; how could it have not been?

"It is time for me, the Head of Gryffindor House, to announce the new Quidditch captain," she said slowly, almost as slowly as Severus Snape spoke. She glared around at them again through her square spectacles before she continued. "This decision has not indeed been an easy one. I have thought long and hard about whom I feel deserves the position of Quidditch Captain, I thought about whom has worked the hardest, which of you have improved the most. And I've thought long and hard about whom could actually handle the responsibility and lead our team into victory. After hours, days even, of thinking I have decided that the new Quidditch Captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team should be--"

She paused making everyone feel his or her stomachs drop. Harry stood up a little straighter and stared expectedly at Professor McGonagall; he wanted her to look at him so that she could reassure him that she had picked him.

"I have decided that the new Quidditch Captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team is," she repeated, "Ronald Weasley."

Ron's jaw dropped a long ways down to the floor. His face turned red in embarrassment as his fellow teammates (minus Harry) started applauding him. He stepped forward as Professor McGonagall handed him a shiny gold badge with the words, "Gryffindor QC," on it. He held it up proudly wearing a huge grin.

Harry hadn't moved a spot as everyone else went to their lockers to change out of their uniforms. Surely this must have been a mistake. He ran toward Professor McGonagall and stopped her just near the exit.

"Yes, Potter?" Professor McGonagall asked, annoyed.

"Pro-Professor, this had to be some sort of mistake. I deserved to be Quidditch Captain!" Harry exclaimed unfairly, even stomping his foot like a little whining child would do. "Why didn't I get to be Captain?"

"Because," she said simply as if this was common sense, "you forgot my birthday."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Harry screamed wildly, dropping onto his knees and grabbing hold of her around the knees. He wasn't going to let go until she took the badge back from Ron and gave it to him. "PROFESSOR! There's always Christmas!"

"Christmas was yesterday, Potter...you gave me a stinking fruitcake," Professor McGonagall told him rudely, pulling her robes out of his reach. She started back toward the door, her boots tapping on the locker room floor. She paused at the doorway, and said, "You should have listened to Granger."

Harry looked up from his hands in which he had been sobbing, and over his shoulder. Hermione was standing there holding up the same organizer she had gotten Harry the year before.

"You see, Harry, if you only were organized!" she exclaimed.

"Don't forget to organize before you dearly regret!" the homework organizer shouted wisely.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO! Come back, Professor! I can promise you I'll get you loads of presents next year," Harry screamed sadly as Ron danced a jig in the back round with Dobby, "please, professor! I won't forget to organize before I dearly regret! Professor!"

"IT'S NO FAIR! IT ISN'T MY FAULT I FORGOT!" Harry was yelling as he thrashed in his bed. He eventually got tangled up in his bed sheets and fell sideways off his bed, bringing him out of his horrible dream. He looked up from the floor of the dormitory and peered around him; it had all just been a dream. "Ron!" he shouted, sitting up from lying on his stomach. He looked over at Ron's bed; Ron was still asleep.

Harry ran over to his bed and began shaking it. Nothing seemed to wake Ron. He continued sleeping as if Harry wasn't there shouting at him and shaking him to wake up. Harry reached for the pitcher on the nearby nightstand to discover it was empty; he growled in frustration.

"RON!" he yelled, "Ron, look! Fleur Delacour's in her knickers!"

Ron immediately jumped out of his bed, looking around every which way desperately. It took him a few seconds to realize Harry had been lying. When he finally did, he climbed back into bed to go back to sleep.

"Wait, Ron,"

"What?" Ron asked grouchily, peering up at Harry through half open eyes. Ron's red hair was still ruffled like that of an owl if their feathers had been out of place. It honestly wasn't a very pleasant sight to see Ron in the early morning.

"Are you Quidditch captain?"

"No," Ron answered, "not unless my dreams have come true. Have they?" He asked this last sentence with a very hopeful expression like that of a small child whenever they were being rewarded for good behavior.

"I don't think so," Harry said, "good. Anyway, I think we're going to be late to class. Look around us. Dean, Seamus, and Neville have all already left the dormitory. If we don't hurry, we'll be facing Snape's wrath."

"Yeah, and we all know that's as fun as a tea party," Ron said sarcastically.

Harry and Ron both dressed as quickly as they could before they headed down to the Great Hall. Thankfully, they still had five minutes before the bell was going to ring. They entered the Great Hall, heading straight toward the Gryffindor table. They found two seats right near Hermione, who was reading a huge blue-leathered book.

"You two are lucky you weren't late to Potions," she said sternly to them when they had begun to ladle food on their plates. She book marked the page she was on in the book, and set it down, peering over at the two of them.

"Well, good morning to you, too, Hermione. I must say your always one to be cheery," Ron teased, biting his bacon and chewing on it with his mouth open.

"Ew...Ron, close your mouth when you chew," Hermione ordered. She looked away from Ron and over at Harry. "So, Harry, how were your dreams? Did you dream anything special? Did you dream about...you know..."

Harry sighed. "No, I dreamed about Quidditch," Harry answered, "I did not dream about Sirius again. You both can stop worrying. I think I've finally learned how to deal with it. There's no need to panic about it, trust me."

Hermione gave him one doubting glace as the bell sounded off. The three of them collected their books and started for their N.E.W.T level class of Potions; Hermione had opened her book again as she walked and dedicated her attention to it.

"So, you had a dream I was going to become Quidditch captain?" Ron asked happily.

"Yeah, but it was just a dream," Harry reminded. He honestly couldn't stand the idea of Ron winning Quidditch captain over him; he felt if there was one thing he deserved more than Ron, that it was that Quidditch captain title.

"For now," he heard Ron mumble.

They entered the Potions dungeon and took the seats located primly in the back. Professor Severus Snape was standing near the front of the room, his hands behind his back, a nasty glare and smirk on his face. He hadn't changed a bit since Harry had first started having him in his first year. He still wore his usual all black robes, his hair was still black and greasy, and his nose was still huge and at an unattractive size. Most of all, he still disliked Harry as much as the first day he laid eyes on him.

Hermione closed the book she had been reading immediately, so that Snape wouldn't have an excuse to take any points away from Gryffindor. She was sitting between Harry and Ron, which was odd; usually Harry sat between Ron and Hermione, but for some reason today Harry, himself, had chosen the seat Hermione usually sat in.

For some strange reason, Harry didn't much feel like talking or even looking at Ron. The very thought that there was a possibility that Ron would get chosen for Quidditch captain over him, made his skin crawl; he didn't know if he could handle Ron beating him to a prefect badge, and now to the Quidditch captain position. He had been thinking and emphasizing on this so much he hadn't realized that Snape was already talking to the whole class.

What brought him back was Hermione's nudge to the ribs. When he looked over at her, she jerked her head toward the front of the room as if telling him without words that Snape had already begun the lesson. Harry nodded and folded his hands in front of him on the table desk, trying to pay attention; he forgot this was N.EW.T level Potions, so he was going to have to actually try to do well.

His eyes landed on Snape, who was walking almost as silently as a ghost glided across the dungeon classroom, as he talked. He would stop every so often and peer down at a student trying to intimidate them, usually poor Neville several times. Harry didn't notice as he stared at Snape his teeth were clenched; how he hated him so much. He just wanted to make Snape pay for what had happened to Sirius.

But then, was it really Snape's fault? Harry knew he couldn't blame Snape for his stupidity and failure to realize a trap of Voldemort's when it was right in front of his eyes. Harry turned his emerald eyes away from Snape and surveyed the classroom.

His eyes stopped on the back of the head of Parvati Patil. For a second he gazed at her beautiful, long, brown, silky hair wondering how she got it so shiny. He never realized it, or really gave it much thought until now, but Parvati was very beautiful; of course, so was Padma, but something about Parvati made her prettier.

Harry looked away from Parvati and over at the table where Hannah and Susan were sitting. Nothing special about them, he concluded; they weren't particularly pretty, but that didn't make them ugly. His eyes traveled all the way across the room until he reached Pansy Parkinson.

She was probably one of the more ugly girls Harry had ever seen. He didn't know whether it was, because of the expression she always had on her lips, or the irregular end shape of her nose. Her eyes were brutal and her blonde hair was much too stiff like Snape's.

Harry's eyes left Pansy and instead landed on the person sitting right next to him; Hermione. He was annoyed that she was taking notes for every single sentence Snape spoke. Couldn't she just forget about note taking for once? It wasn't the first time Harry had noticed it, but Hermione was fairly beautiful mainly, because of the absence of her once overlarge teeth.

He realized that he had been thinking about the looks of his fellow female classmates for the past five minutes; he had never done this before, why had he suddenly had the urge to do this? Did this mean he was really over Cho?

Eventually the bell rang, and everyone gathered their things and left quickly. When they were out in the packed hallways walking toward the staircases leading to the floors above, Hermione turned to Harry with sour eyes.

"Did you hear a word Snape was saying today?" she asked him honestly.

Harry didn't answer this immediately. He was wondering what the consequence of telling the truth was; he knew if he did tell her, Hermione would probably go nagging off until they reached their next class, but if he lied she'd probably know. Harry looked over at Ron for help, but Ron seemed more interested in his shoes.

"No, not really," Harry answered finally.

"I thought so," Hermione said, "you kept looking around the room the whole lesson. And you, Ron, you were doodling on your paper. What were you doodling? I was going to try and look, but then Snape started talking about the Mors Mortis Potion, and I had to jot that down."

"Huh? Me? Erm...I was doodling Quidditch stuff," Ron said, bowing his head so that his eyes were looking at his shoes again. He remained silent the whole of their walk all the way up to the third floor for N.E.W.T level History of Magic.

Harry hadn't known why he had decided to take History of Magic for another year, but mainly because Ron had convinced him that it would be one less class in which they would actually have to pay attention; Hermione had taken it simply, because she was Hermione, and that was what she did.

The three of them took seats in the back like they did in almost every class. Hermione instantly pulled out a piece of parchment and a quill with a jar of blue ink. This class was fairly empty, because mostly everyone had grown tired of the absolute boredom this class brought.

But today was different, for the first time out of all of the History of Magic lessons Harry had ever had Professor Binns wasn't there. It was someone else. Professor Sinistra entered the room through the door, and shut it. She was looking rather moody about having to be here. Not once did she even look up at them.

Everyone was staring at each other questioningly. She pulled out her wand and waved it through the air, conjuring a stool. The Professor picked up the stool and carried it around the teacher's desk, before she sat down on it.

"All of you already know me. I'm Professor M. Sinistra," she said, looking up at them all with her dull brown eyes, "I am here to teach this class since Professor Binns could not be here today, I'm afraid."

Hermione raised her hand. "What happened to him?" she asked nosily, "I mean, he's a ghost. Nothing could have happened to him."

"It is a private matter, Miss. Granger. Now, open your books to page 654, please," she said conjuring up her own book. She looked down at the text of that page, seeming to be skimming it "Okay, this section is about the parable of the Half-Blood Prince. This was left out of the previous textbooks from the past, because it seemed to only be a myth, not an actual factual story. But, within the past ten years, some proof has arisen that there was indeed a Half-Blood Prince that lived long ago. And, it has also been proven that the Half-Blood Prince had children, which had children, and so on. Meaning a present day Half-Blood Prince could be alive right now."

Neville raised his hand. "Erm...Professor, what's a Half-Blood Prince?" he asked, "if he was a prince, then wouldn't that mean that all Half-Blood's are princes? And what about girl Half-Bloods? Would that make them princesses or would they still stay a prince?" Neville's facial expression was that of someone who was extremely confused.

"A Half-Blood Prince, Longbottom, is or rather was the supposed bringer of peace in a spiritual and Divination sense, but to explain it in more logical terms like the textbook does, the Half-Blood Prince was the one with the fifth talisman of Resurrection. The other four belonged to each of the Four Founders,, which is why each talisman has a central jewel of the Four Founders; one is ruby for Gryffindor, another is topaz for Hufflepuff, the third one is emerald for Slytherin, and the last one is sapphire for Ravenclaw. The fifth one was created a long while after the demise of the Founders, because at the end of the sixteenth century the world, both magical and Muggle faced great chaos and threat of world destruction by the Sovereign of Obliteration. A Seer by the initials G.P.T foretold in a Prophecy about a Prince that was supposed to be the bringer of peace, for the current heirs of this time to the Founders were no match for the Sovereign and her army. The fifth talisman's central jewel was a white diamond to symbolize purity and the good rebirth of the world that was to happen when the Sovereign and her army were destroyed.

"Sure enough there was indeed a Half-Blood Prince by the name of Percival Pevlon, whose great-great-great-great-great ancestors were the original proprietors of this very castle until they gave permission for the Four Founders to create the school. Anyway, Prince Pevlon lived up to what the Seer predicted he would, and has gone down in the magical history books recently as a great hero of the War of the Silence. So, in answer to your question, Longbottom, the Half-Blood Prince, Pevlon was nicknamed that because he was a Half-Blood and he was as charming as a prince, and he was a hero like a prince. It's in a way, a metaphor. Now, anyway, since I do not feel like imitating Binns by rambling on during the whole class, I assign you to do the chapter reading in groups of three's or fours. For homework I want you to write an essay on the Half-Blood Prince," Professor Sinistra assigned, snapping shut her history book.

Hermione elbowed Ron awake angrily. Ron jerked awake from his nap, not aware that he was drooling on Harry's textbook. Hermione rolled her eyes in pure disgust as she moved her own textbook out the way of his slobber.

The bell rang a few minutes later, and everyone headed out of his or her classes to head to lunch. Harry was glad to be away from the stuffy classrooms. For some reason this year he didn't like school at all; even Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures Lessons were a bother for him. He was beginning to question why full time education was needed when most of it was a waste of time compared to the darkness they were facing.

"Ron, before you fell asleep what were you scribbling on your parchment?" Hermione asked Ron as they joined the huge student throng heading toward the Great Hall. "You looked awfully dazed as you were doodling it."

Ron looked up in surprise at Hermione, and gulped. "Erm...nothing...Quidditch stuff...again," he answered vaguely, "you know just stupid stuff that's useless." He gave Hermione a small apologetic, almost embarrassed glance before he looked down at his shoes as he walked.

Harry wasn't paying much attention to his two best friends. Somehow things didn't seem like they used to. Something was oddly different about their friendships. He didn't know what was wrong with him lately, but he had been feeling this way ever since he had reunited with his best friends during the summer holiday.

Every emotion Harry was feeling was strange to him. He didn't know how to describe them, but they were mixed emotions about everything; absolutely everything. Before things he never even gave second thoughts to were now taking up minutes of his thought, and other things he had been sure of now seemed subject to debate in his mind. He didn't know if this was just some teenage emotional change he was going through, or if this was irregular, because after all almost everything about him was irregular.

"Harry, Harry," Hermione was saying when he snapped back to the present, "now you look dazed. What is up with you two today? Have I missed something? Are you both keeping something from me?" She looked beady eyed at them both.

"Huh? Oh, no, not really. Sorry, I just have a lot of things on my mind," Harry confessed. His eyes surveyed around the hallways again paying attention to the different females around him. After he did this he felt like an immature jerk. Sirius was dead, and here he was thinking about girls. He started to become overcome with pain from the thought of Sirius' death; he thought he had learned to push it behind him.

"Oh, okay," Hermione said, eyeing them both strangely, "I guess that's Ron's excuse, too."

-|-

That night while everyone in Gryffindor was down in the common room, Harry decided to retreat to his dormitory. There he simply lay on his back on his four-poster bed staring up at the ceiling, thinking. He liked to do this, because it gave him a chance to escape mankind in a way.

On that same night he lay there thinking about everything from his homework to the current chaos they were facing now with Voldemort; he thought about that a lot, at least five times a day. He knew that sooner or later he was probably going to have to face what the Prophecy said he was going to have to; he only hoped that day was far away.

After about an hour of pondering, he stood up from his bed and began pacing the length of the room, his arms folded behind his back. He had begun to think over the Order of the Phoenix and it's members.

He wondered what their newest plans to prevent Voldemort's forces, the Death Eaters from gaining more claim on the magical community were. Since last June to that present evening in October, Voldemort's forces had been more silent than likable. They hadn't made many appearances in public minus a few small battles against the still rather baffled and incompetent Ministry of Magic. Other then a few mourned deaths of innocent by-standers, everyone was apparently safe and unscathed; it made Harry, and many other's that were fully aware of Voldemort's sly capability, scared of what he was planning.

Harry stopped in mid-pace, and peered out the dormitory window at the grounds below, and around the castle. He could see Hagrid's hut from where his window was positioned; right now Hagrid's large figure and shadow could be seen heading out to the Forbidden Forest with his usual crossbow, obviously heading into the deeper parts. The huge, and very tall trees in the Forbidden Forest went as high as the lower sky, so that they were blocking some of the pinkish orange sky from Harry's view. Fairly above the trees that appeared to be leaning against the sky from Harry's view, was the setting sun. Harry gazed around at all of this scenery for a moment or two, until he turned away.

A tingling sensation exploded inside of Harry's stomach; he didn't actually know how to describe or name the feeling, only that it made him uneasy. The sensation seemed to be a mixture of fear, and nervousness, and even a bit of anticipation mixed in; he hated the feeling, and began to wonder when it was going to go away.

"What if it doesn't go away until...until...un-til," he repeated nervously; he couldn't bring himself to say 'the final battle'. He turned away from the window, and began pacing the room again in anxiety, the way an expecting father would in a hospital waiting room.

Poof!

THUMP!

Harry turned around in surprise at the sudden two noises. The first had sounded like the same kind of poof-ing noise someone that just Apparated usually made, and the second sounded like a body hitting the wood floor. Indeed he appeared to be right; out of thin air someone had just appeared in his dormitory, and had landed on the wood floor rather uneasily.

Harry's eyes opened wider in utter shock at what he was seeing. Sprawled on his floor was a woman of about her early twenties looking rather tired, and disheveled. One of the first things that caught his eye about this woman was what was hanging around her neck; it was a Time Turner, a Time Turner unlike those of what he had ever seen before.

The woman sat up from her sprawl, and opened her eyes, looking dizzy and dazed. Her emerald eyes looked up at Harry as she rose shakily to her feet. She dusted herself off, and gaped at him as if he was a ghost, and she really didn't believe he was there.

"Harry Potter," she said in a dumbfounded tone, "all the pleasure in the world to meet you breathing and alive in the flesh!"

-|-