Oh, Boy! I'm a Wizard!

Disclaimer: In addition to the character and situations from the Harry Potter series, this story is based on characters and situations from Quantum Leap, created and owned by Donald P. Bellisario , etc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Chapter One

As the feeling of Leaping dissipated, Sam tried to discreetly check out his current situation. He never knew if he would Leap into a bathtub, an electric chair, or something in between.

To his relief, this time it was closer to the bathtub than the electric chair. Then he took a second look at the chessboard and winced; he was less than a dozen moves from checkmate.

His opponent was a tall teenaged boy, with red hair, blue eyes and a ton of freckles. He was grinning at Sam. "Ready to concede?" he asked. His voice gave Sam a shock; the boy spoke with an English accent!

"Not quite yet," Sam answered. There was a risky set of moves he could try. If his opponent realized what he was doing, he'd lose even more quickly, but it was worth a try. He could already tell that this was a friendly game, not a competition. The few youngsters who were watching the game seemed to be doing so because they were tired of studying. From what Sam could see, he was in a school. Possibly a boarding school, but he wasn't entirely certain of that. He started to make the first move, but was startled when the pawn he was about to sacrifice looked up at him and pouted. He glanced up at his opponent, who didn't seem to notice anything odd, and tried to ignore it.

His opponent stared at the board. He muttered, "What are you up to now?" but didn't seem to be expecting Sam to answer. He took several minutes and made a move that told Sam he hadn't seen Sam's strategy.

It took almost an hour, but Sam finally lost. He looked up, wondering how he was supposed to react. Before he could find out, a girl with bushy brown hair stormed into the room and glared at Sam and his opponent. "Ron! Harry! Why aren't you studying? You have more O.W.L.s next week; you can't give up now! And Monday's Potions!"

"Relax, Hermione," the other boy said. "We haven't stopped studying, but we need a break before our brains leak out our ears."

She huffed, but sat down. "How'd you do this time, Harry?"

Sam wasn't sure if he should answer, but the other boy did. "He was amazing," he said. "Came closer to beating me than he ever has. Where'd you come up with that set of moves, mate?"

"Uh, I could just see it. Lucky, I guess." Sam hoped this wasn't too out of character for his host.

Judging from Hermione's reaction, it wasn't. "Don't think you can rely on luck to pass your exams, Harry Potter," she said firmly. "You need that Potions O.W.L. if you're going to become an Auror."

It seemed his name was Harry Potter, which meant that the other boy was Ron. But Potions? Auror? And what kind of test was an O.W.L.? And was there any way of asking without sounding as if he'd just developed amnesia. "Maybe I won't be an Auror," he tried. The kids seemed to be in high school; did English kids decide on their careers that early?

Hermione didn't pay any attention. "It doesn't matter; you still need Potions. Come on; we'll study after dinner."

Sam followed the other two out of the room and down a set of stairs. Before they could get on the second set, it moved! Sam stared at it open-mouthed. Ron noticed his reaction. "What's wrong? This staircase is always a pain; just keep going to the next one."

Trying to hide his reaction to moving staircases, he followed Ron and Hermione until they got to the dining room. He looked around as they walked; the walls were stone, broken up with an occasional tapestry. The floors were stone as well and the windows, what there were of them, were of leaded glass. Sam couldn't put his finger on it, but the building had an air of age about it.

The dining room was huge. There were four long tables standing parallel to one another, slowly filling up with other hungry students and another table standing perpendicular to the others and raised a little. That appeared to be the teacher's table, and that gave Sam his second shock. The teachers seated at the table, and walking up to it, were dressed in outfits that came from books of fairy tales. Noticing that no one else was goggling at them, Sam tried not to stare, but it was very hard.

Sam remembered reading that English boarding school students didn't eat very well; he was expecting a very light meal. To his surprise, it was exactly the opposite: there was enough food on the table that even the teenaged boys could eat their fill. Sam decided that his sudden, intense hunger was from his host; no one seemed to notice anything odd when he filled his plate to overflowing. Ron did the same--three times--and so did most of the other boys around him. The exceptions looked too nervous to be able to eat.

Shortly after the desserts appeared on the table as if by magic, Sam heard the sound he'd been hoping to hear: the Imaging Chamber door. He looked up to see Al gawking at the room. After several minutes of staring at the ceiling--which deserved it, as Sam thought it duplicated the appearance of the sky--Al finally looked for Sam. "I guess the kid was telling the truth," he said. "Sam, we need to talk."

Sam nodded and turned to Ron and Hermione. "I'm going for a walk. I need to clear my head before I start studying. I'll meet you at the dorm." When they nodded, Sam stood and left, looking for the nearest bathroom.

When Sam got into the bathroom and had checked that they were alone, Al was pounding on the handlink. "I hate meeting in bathrooms," he complained. "OK. Your name is Harry Potter, you're six weeks away from your sixteenth birthday, you're right outside Hogsmeade in Scotland, and you're a fifth-year student at Hogwarts School, not St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys."

"What?" He could usually understand Al's sense of humor, even when he didn't share it.

"That's where Ziggy says the kid goes to school. He says he goes to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; from the little bit I've seen, I believe the kid."

Sam shook his head. It was going to be one of those Leaps. "Why am I here?"

Al glared at the handlink. "We don't have a lot of information on the kid; once he starts secondary school, he mostly drops off the map. We're trying to get more information, but the kid isn't cooperating and Ziggy hasn't figured out where to get it. For now," he sighed, "Sam, I think you're here to make sure the kid makes it to eighteen."

"He's dead?" Sam asked. The image in the mirror was a thin, pale teenager with messy, black hair and almond-shaped green eyes behind round glasses, and Sam had already decided he liked the boy's friends. "How did he die?"

Al shook his head. "We don't know. All the obituary says is that he died." Still scowling at the handlink, he said, "We do know that he dies on June 24, 1998, just over a month before his eighteenth birthday."

There was something wrong with the dates, or the ages. "What's the date?"

"It's June 19, 1996," Al answered. "As best as we can figure, something that's about to happen will change whether the kid lives or dies, but it doesn't actually happen for another two years."

"But we don't have any idea what that is," Sam said. "And magic is real?" Occam's Razor made it the best answer, even if it didn't make any sense.

"The kid pulled the handlink out of my hand from across the room," Al answered. "He said he could do more if he had his wand; is it on you?"

Sam checked the pockets of his robe and found a stick, almost a foot long. "I guess I do." He waved the wand and said, "Abracadabra." To his shock, red and gold sparks flew out of the wand. "Oh, boy!"

Al looked as if he were slowly taking this in stride; he was certainly less stunned than Sam was. "Put something on the sink and step away from it."

Sam went through his pockets and came up with a gold coin, which he set down on the sink. Stepping about ten feet away, he asked, "Now what?"

"Point at it, with the wand," he said when Sam used his finger to point, "and say, uh, 'Accio coin'. And mean it."

Sam looked over at Al. He felt silly, but he followed Al's instructions. When the coin flew into his hand, he stared at Al, feeling a little panicky. "What do I do now?'

"Learn magic," Al said practically. "I'm going back to the Waiting Room and have a nice long chat with Harry. I suggest you study magic." Shaking his head, he smiled. "You have all the luck." Sam rolled his eyes and headed back to the dorms.

It took him longer than it should have; Sam wasn't used to staircases that moved, paintings that talked to him and, once, he saw a ghost. He ducked out of the way of that one; Sam was a man of science and talking to people who . . . weren't anymore was more than he could sanely handle. When he finally made his way back to the dorms, he found himself stuck. There was a portrait guarding the entrance to the dorms, and she wouldn't let Sam in without the password! Fortunately, Neville, one of the boys who appeared to share Harry's bedroom, came along and gave him the password with only mild surprise.

Once back in the dormitory he settled down to study his Potions text. Sam had been half expecting it to be written in Middle English, Latin, or some bastardized combination of the two, but it didn't look that different from the chemistry texts he remembered from high school. It even had drawings to explain the difference between "powdered", "ground", and "finely ground". Once he got used to the strange ingredients and the stranger expected effects, he found that it wasn't that much different from studying chemistry.

He did find himself wishing that Harry was a better student. He would underline terms in his book for no apparent reason and his notes were a disaster. Although he would copy down the instructions from the board, Sam found it hard to read them through the written arguments and games of Hangman Harry seemed to have with Ron, the doodles and the complaints about Snape. Snape was apparently the Potions instructor; Sam thought he knew which one he was from Harry's "Greasy Git" and "Great Bat" comments. One of the male teachers had limp hair, a large nose and a sallow complexion; Sam hoped that the resemblance to a vampire was coincidental.

Studying was considerably easier when Hermione finished her Prefect's rounds and returned to the dorm. Her notes were perfect. Sam thought someone needed to have a talk with her; they were too perfect, and she seemed a little more high-strung than she needed to be. It was clear that she was a good student with exemplary grades. She also seemed used to Harry and Ron begging her for study help and was generous with her help; she only made them grovel a little bit.

They had been working for several hours, and Sam was ready to suggest a break, when he heard the Imaging Chamber door open. He glanced over to see Al, then looked again. Earlier, Al had been wearing his favorite purple tie with the matching purple suit; he'd looked relaxed with a cigar in his hand. Now, he was in his dress whites, wearing every ribbon and medal he was entitled to, and no cigar in sight. He jerked his head to the door. "C'mon, Sam. Tell your buddies you're going to take a quick walk; you've got enough time before curfew. It's gotta be alone, though."

It took Sam a few minutes to get out without Ron or Hermione. They both seemed to think Harry was looking for trouble: Ron wanted to join in and Hermione wanted to keep him out of it. When he finally managed it, Al led him to an unused classroom. "What's with the uniform?"

"Kid didn't believe I was a real admiral," Al said, grinning. "Said no admiral would wear a suit that would glow in the dark." Sam grinned back; Al's earlier suit had been subdued for the man. "So, I pulled this out to show him and started barking orders at him." His grin softened into a distant smile. "He's a good kid, Sam, who hasn't been given a break. We've got to help him."

"So far, the only thing I know about him is that he's not such a good student, but he's smart enough to make friends with one of the best," Sam said.

"Hermione Granger?" Al asked. When Sam nodded, Al grinned. "Yeah, Harry says she helps him and Ron Weasley with their schoolwork and they keep her from going too nuts with the studying."

Sam grinned; he was glad to hear that Harry and Ron tried to pay Hermione back for her help. "Do we know anything more?"

"Ziggy still hasn't been able to get any more information on the kid, but I got a lot of background, and you're going to need it." Al's expression had turned grim. "They're in the middle of a war, here. It's between groups of magical people; so far they've kept it away from people like us -- Muggles, they call us. Anyway, when he was a baby, the leader of the other side, a madman who calls himself Lord Voldemort, killed his parents and tried to kill him. The kid's the only person known to have survived the Killing Curse; it bounced back on Voldie and, well, Harry's not real sure what it did, but he was out of commission until just last year." Al shook his head, his eyes sad. "The government, the magical one, won't believe that Voldie's back, so the kid's taken a lot of heat for it. When they finally admit it, Harry thinks everyone's going to expect him to take care of the bastard. He's not sure, but he thinks Dumbledore, the leader of his side, has been training him for it since he was a kid."

Sam stared at Al open-mouthed. "I can't ..."

"Relax. Ziggy thinks, and for once I agree with her, that the final confrontation isn't for two years; we think that's how the kid dies. There's something going on now and I've got a guess as to what it is."

Sam waited for Al to go on. He could tell that Al liked Harry; he suspected that Al could see something of himself in the boy. After a moment, Al continued, "Because of what happened the kid has a connection with this Voldemort nozzle, a mental connection." When Sam looked surprised, Al glared. "If magic is real, that should be nothing. Anyway, he gets visions of whatever the creep is doing, or dreaming, or thinking about. He's a little vague on the details. Once the adults on his side--they call themselves the Order of the Phoenix--realized it was happening, they set up lessons to teach him how to block others out of his mind."

Al shook his head. "Of course, the person they picked to do this is someone who hates the kid because he hated the kid's dad and Harry looks just like his dad. And as far as I can figure out, no one's really explained why it's a good idea to be able to block off his mind. The time when the adults found out about it was when he saw Ron's dad being bitten by Voldemort's pet snake and giving the alarm saved the man's life. I'm going to work on that; I have the background to explain security to the kid, and I think I can get him to listen to me."

"Do you think this is one of those Leaps where it's you who needs to make the changes?" Sam asked. It didn't happen often, but it wouldn't be the first time.

"I think this one needs us both," Al said. "I told you; the nozzle who's supposed to be teaching the kid Occlumency--that's what they call it--hates the kid, and he returns the favor. Before he starts these lessons, he pulls memories out of his head." Al grinned at Sam's expression. "Yeah, they can do that; you should hear Ziggy. Anyway, he stores them in this thing called a Pensieve and, during the last lesson he gets called out of his office and leaves Harry there. And Harry couldn't be any more curious, so he takes a peek. He thought Snape was storing stuff the Order didn't want Harry to know, but the memory Harry saw was of Snape getting bullied by Harry's dad and his buddies when they were all in school. When Snape saw what Harry'd done, he lost it and threw Harry out. Harry won't go back, and Snape doesn't seem willing to go after him to insist."

"So, you convince Harry that he actually does need these lessons, even if they're from Snape," Sam said, "and I go to Snape, apologize, and beg him to teach me again."

Al nodded. "Bingo. If he gives you trouble, mention how disappointed Dumbledore would be if he didn't. From what Harry's said, Dumbledore's about the only person Snape'll listen to."

Sam nodded. "Any reason I should wait?"

"Nope. The sooner you get it done the better, I'd say," Al said. "His office is in the dungeons."

"The dungeons," Sam said. He didn't know why he was surprised; dungeons fit right in with talking paintings. He headed towards the dungeons, walking quickly.

It took him three tries to find Snape's office. Fortunately, the man was there. Sam knocked on the door. When Snape looked up, he straightened up and said, as respectfully as he could, "Excuse me, Professor Snape, may I have a moment of your time?"

Snape sneered, but waved Sam in and closed the door. He didn't say anything; just stared at Sam.

Sam said, "I'm sorry for looking in your Pensieve. I shouldn't have done it. If I could, I'd apologize for what my dad did to you, but ..."

The longer Sam talked, the angrier Snape looked. By the time Sam had trailed off, there were patches of bright red on his cheeks. "Do you really think I'll forgive you if you apologize, Potter?" he said, almost spitting. "Who put you up to this?"

Sam shook his head. He suspected that Snape's anger was why Harry hadn't apologized. "No, sir. I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do. What I did was wrong."

"When does a Potter admit that he did anything wrong unless he's forced to it," Snape said, his voice sounding bitter. "How do I know you're even Potter?" He smirked. "How do I know you're not Granger under Polyjuice, hm? And you'd believe there's no way of seeing through that, wouldn't you?" He pulled out his wand and pointed it at Sam, speaking a long incantation.

It happened too quickly for Sam to react. By the time he reacted, Snape was staring at Sam in horror and Al was shouting, "Get out of here, Sam!" Snape saw Sam's almost instinctive glance at Al and he pointed his wand toward Al, speaking a second incantation. Sam saw Al begin to glow.

Hoping to salvage something, and hoping he wasn't condemning Harry to an even earlier death, Sam dove for Snape, grabbing for the other man's wand. He'd assumed that Snape wouldn't be expert at hand-to-hand fighting; from what he had seen so far, everyone here used magic for everything. Snape avoided him easily and, before Sam could dodge, pointed his wand at Sam and shouted, "Stupefy!"