Harry Potter and the Dark Force

     --- Chapter 2 ---

     Lost in Time

Before Sirius could turn he was struck by several stunning spells and slumped unconscious onto the floor. One of the figures stepped forward into the light inside the cave. It was Bellatrix Lestrange, she was staring up at Harry in astonishment. `Master ... you live?' she asked hesitantly.

`Yes, Bellatrix,' Harry said, thinking very fast, `but I'm afraid I no longer deserve the title of Lord, or Master, all my powers were lost in the final battle with Dumbledore and Potter ... and although I destroyed them both I was left devoid of magical power by a trick of Dumbledore's, and then this fool captured me and brought me here.'

The other wizards approached cautiously, Harry recognised Avery, Rookwood, Rabastan and Nott.

`I can no longer lead you,' Harry said, `I do not belong in the wizarding world anymore ... the leadership of the Death Eaters must pass to those who have proved their loyalty to the Dark Force ... such as yourself, Bellatrix. There is one task I would wish you to carry out, however ... Severus Snape must die, do you understand me?'

Bellatrix nodded slowly, fear evident in her eyes and in the apprehensive looks of the Death Eaters around her.

`He has betrayed us all too many times, he believes in nothing, and has no loyalty to anything except himself. His usefulness to us is at an end, he must be disposed of ... The Animagus Black can be useful as a spy on the remnant of Dumbledore's order, place him under the Imperius curse and let him find out their plans.'

`Master,' Bellatrix said nervously, `we all believed that you had disappeared, so Malfoy and Snape have taken over command ... they have directed that we should withdraw from Europe and concentrate on power here ...'

`No!' Harry exclaimed angrily, `That cannot be permitted, we were close to taking over the entire wizarding world ... it is very foolish to retreat now that the greatest barrier to victory has been removed.' Harry could see that Sirius was starting to come round, so he kept talking to try to distract the Death Eaters. `If you continue my work to its completion, Bellatrix, then ultimate power will be yours ...'

Sirius suddenly disapparated, Bellatrix spun around and shrieked at Avery and Rookwood for not watching him closely enough. While the Death Eaters were distracted Harry reached up to the alcove where Fawkes was hidden and touched the bird, hoping the phoenix would understand where to go. Abruptly the cave vanished and Harry found himself suspended in a blaze of golden light, moments later he landed on the floor of a small darkened room, which he recognised as Dumbledore's old office at Durmstrang. It seemed however that it was now Professor McGonagall's, since a tartan tin of ginger newts sat on the desk, and the office was spartan and devoid of ornamentation. Harry unlocked the door and went down the deserted darkened corridors, hoping to find Sirius before he could set off on a needless attempt at rescue. Fawkes followed, sweeping along silently above him. A devils-head gargoyle glowered at Harry as he descended the staircase to the basement, watching him suspiciously with its blood-red eyes. But light shone ahead and as Harry reached the Hogwarts quarters he could hear urgent voices through the door. He pushed open the heavy wooden doorway. Lupin and McGonagall stared at him, frozen in horror, but Sirius grinned and strode forwards. `That was smart thinking,' he said,

`Hopefully that should stir things up for a bit,' Harry said, `if they believed me.'

Sirius explained what had happened in the cave to Lupin and McGonagall. But they still regarded him warily when Sirius had finished. `Can I see Ron and Hermione?' Harry asked, wondering how Hermione would react when she saw him. He couldn't take much more of this mistrust and suspicion. Reluctantly, Lupin and McGonagall agreed, Lupin left to alert other members of the order about what had happened, while McGonagall accompanied him and Sirius to the Hogwarts student's hospital.

Ron was lying, motionless as a corpse, in the single bed of the small sick bay Madam Pomfrey had established at the far end of the basement. She also stared at Harry with suspicion, but ushered him and Sirius and Professor McGonagall forward. Ron seemed as pale and lifeless as one of the petrified victims of the Basilisk that Harry had seen during his second year, but as he bent over the motionless figure, Harry could just detect that Ron was breathing.

`Has there still been no change in his condition, Poppy?' Professor McGonagall asked with a worried frown.

`No, Professor,' Madam Pomfrey said regretfully, twitching the bed covers back over Ron's arms. Harry noticed a large collection of different coloured potions in bottles on the bedside cabinet. `I've tried everything I can think of ... perhaps a Mandrake restorative draught would be the answer, but where we can get the Mandrakes from, I don't know.'

`Snape is going to pay for this,' Sirius said grimly, clenching his fists, `the evil snivelling traitor.'

`Alright then, er, Potter?' McGonagall said curtly, looking sideways at him, `I don't think we can do any more for Mr Weasley at the moment, maybe you should try to get some sleep now, and in the morning we can decide how you might fit back in here at school ...' Reluctantly, Harry followed Sirius to the adult quarters in the basement and slept in Sirius's small room there.

He was woken at a time which seemed hours too early, by the movements of Sirius and the others getting up, and by the bitter cold of the air in this unlighted subterranean stone vault. Lupin looked in and told them to meet him in McGonagall's office. Harry followed Sirius along the corridors. A few Durmstrang students stopped and stared as he passed, and Harry began to feel increasingly nervous and uneasy as they reached the office. Sirius knocked and they entered, Hermione, Ginny and Luna were waiting there, together with McGonagall and Lupin.

Hermione stared fearfully at him, and Ginny seemed mortified with horror, but Luna merely looked up at him with her usual vague disinterest. `You can't be Harry, I can't believe it,' Ginny cried hysterically and fled from the room. Luna ran after her to try and calm her down. Harry had half expected this reaction but that didn't make it any easier to take. He sank resignedly into a chair as Sirius closed the door and came over to stand beside him. Fawkes, Harry noticed, was now perched back in his original alcove in the office.

Lupin cleared his throat nervously, as if steeling himself to say something he would rather avoid. `Harry, we must ask you to prove your identity again, I'm afraid. Can you take out your wand and lay it on the table, please?'

Harry pulled his wand out from inside his robes and put it on the desk. Lupin drew his own wand, touched its tip to the tip of Harry's wand and said `Prior Incantanto!' The ghost of a stag billowed out from the point where the wands met, a shadow of the patronus Harry had conjured in the cave. Lupin said `Prior Incantanto!' again, and now a second spell echo emerged from the wand, the nexus exchange incantation with which Harry had forced Voldemort to exchange bodies with him. Silvery filaments of smoke formed the words of the spell before slowly fading away. Lupin put his wand away and handed Harry back his wand. Both he and Professor McGonagall seemed very relieved by the reverse spell test, Hermione looked questioningly at them, and Lupin smiled at last and said `It's ok, Hermione, he is Harry, I'm fairly sure now, do you agree, Miranda?'

`Yes ... yes, I think that's proof enough,' McGonagall said, somewhat unsteadily, before pulling herself together and resuming her usual brisk manner. `Welcome back, Potter, I think you should take the morning off lessons, after all you've been through, but I do want to see you in my class this afternoon, since your NEWTS are only a few weeks away, as you must be aware ... I will speak to the school and explain what has happened.'

Lupin stepped forward and clasped Harry's hand. `Well done, Harry,' he said quietly, `I'm sorry we couldn't bring you back before, but we had to be careful, you know what Voldemort is capable of ...'

`It's ok, Professor Lupin, I understand,' Harry said, swallowing his feelings of resentment with some difficulty. Hermione was still watching him warily. They walked back to the dormitories with Sirius.

`I've got to go to Arithmancy,' Hermione said quickly as they reached the basement, not meeting Harry's eye. She turned and disappeared into the girl's dormitory.

Sirius looked sympathetically at Harry, `don't worry, I'm sure they'll get used to this in time,' he said.

Harry felt depression sweep over him as he realised that things would never be the same again, always now he would be an outsider, even with the people he cared about most of all ...

`I must return to Britain,' Sirius said, `we still need to keep up to date what is happening there, maybe we can take advantage of any infighting amongst the Death Eaters, you know ... I can't imagine Bellatrix following Malfoy's orders for long, somehow ...' He grinned humourlessly.

`Ok,' said Harry, too weighed down with other worries to protest. `Be careful, don't take any risks, ok?'

Sirius clapped him on the back and strode away down the corridor. As Harry pushed open the entrance to the basement, Hermione came out with Parvati and Lavender, who stared at him in astonished disbelief before walking away as rapidly as possible. Hermione looked back and gave him a tentative wave as she disappeared round the corner. Feeling worse than ever, Harry stepped inside the common room, bracing himself for more unwelcoming reactions from his housemates, but there was only Luna Lovegood there.

He just wanted to disappear into Sirius's room again and hide away from everyone, but Luna came towards him and before he could escape, had stood on tiptoe and embraced him. He stared back at her, amazed. `It's ok,' she said, `I know that you're really Harry. You see, I'm a Seer, like poor Trelawney, only ... I see things all the time, the future ... so I know that what you say is true, you see?'

`Let's get out of here,' Harry mumbled when he'd recovered his voice. Seamus and Neville had just come in, eyeing Harry with great suspicion.

They walked up to the entrance hall and along a deserted side corridor which looked out over the grounds. `I've never told anyone outside the family before,' Luna said, `because Seers are often treated quite badly and persecuted, you know, I think people really are afraid to know about the future, whatever they might say.'

Harry didn't know whether to believe her or not, Luna often came out with such bizarre things. But if it was true ... `So that's why you weren't surprised by the way I look now?' he asked, `and you know if Ron lives or dies?'

`Yes, well, I'm rarely surprised by anything. Sometimes I've seen a particular scene dozens of times before I actually live through it ... it's useful, but it's also a curse. I see things and it's hard to remember if they're in the future or the past, you become lost in time, you know ... And sometimes, if you tell someone else, or act on what you've seen, the future changes ... yet other times, no matter what you do, the future remains the same. I saw that my mother was going to die, and I tried to stop it happening, I tried everything I could, I tried to warn her, but she wouldn't listen ...' Luna said sadly, staring out of the cobweb shrouded window at the bleak grounds of the castle. `I couldn't change what happened. So I won't tell you everything I've seen. But I did see you trying to save Ron, mixing a potion, a very complex potion, to bring him back ...' She turned round to face Harry and smiled, `he was very brave, wasn't he, I saw what was going to happen before you left. If he hadn't taken on Snape then You-Know-Who could have won ...'

Harry stared at her incredulously, trying to digest the implications of this statement. `Hang on, you knew that Dumbledore was going to die, that Ron would be cursed and left like this, and you let us go, knowing all that?'

`I couldn't interfere, Harry, if I'd stopped you, that might have prevented you defeating You-Know-Who, maybe things had to happen this way, don't you see? Imagine if You-Know-Who was still alive, hunting us all down ... we might all have been killed. And, you wouldn't have believed me anyway, so don't blame me for what happened!' she finished sharply, glaring at him.

`Is Ginny ok?' Harry asked.

`She's still very upset,' Luna said, shaking her head, `maybe you should give her a while to get used to you coming back like this, I'm sure she will accept it, eventually ...'

Harry sighed, realising that the way Ginny had suffered, and nearly been murdered, at the hands of Tom Riddle, were going to make it almost impossible for him to regain her friendship, let alone anything more ...

`We'd better go to lunch,' Luna said, as the rumble of hordes of students leaving their lessons came from above them and voices started to echo along the corridors leading to the dining hall. Inside, the hall was just as dismal and cold as he'd remembered it. He sat down at the end of the Hogwarts table with Luna, feeling like an exhibit in a zoo as everyone stopped eating to peer around at him.

Professor McGonagall stood up and explained that Voldemort seemed to have been defeated and that his reign of terror was over. This news was greeted with somewhat less than wholehearted applause from the Durmstrang teachers and pupils.

Fred and George entered the hall as McGonagall finished speaking and sidled to the end of the table and sat down opposite Harry and Luna. `Alright there, Harry?' Fred asked quietly, `congratulations on finally doing away with You-Know-Who.'

`A bit of a high price to pay, though, being stuck looking like that,' George said, cracking open an egg and frowning on discovering that the shell was completely filled by a dead bird embryo.

`As long as it's Harry who's stuck, and not me, who cares?' retorted Fred, grimacing at the greenish reptilian scales floating on the surface of his stew. `Anyway we came to tell you that we're planning to leave here in the next few days, as soon as we can get away really ...'

`We reckon we might be able to return to Paris now,' George added, `since the Death Eaters seem to have left there.'

`They're still hunting down members of the order, though.' Luna objected.

`I'd rather face Madam Bellatrix and co than put up with any more meals like this,' Fred replied grimly, as a ghoulish red and green eye of unguessable provenance floated to the top of his dish.

In Transfiguration, McGonagall lectured them on the need to revise for the imminent NEWTS, and set them to work practising the conjuring spell, but Harry found it hard to concentrate with all the curious glances that the other students kept shooting at him. Hermione sat beside him, but avoided meeting his eyes as she waved her wand and summoned into appearance a series of teacups and white mice while Harry struggled to conjure up even a forlorn piece of tail.

`Have they been able to do anything for Ron?' Harry asked her as they headed back, exhausted, to the common room after the lesson.

`No, he's still completely unconscious,' Hermione said worriedly, `they think there may be mandrakes in the forest marshes, but of course there are all kinds of other things there as well, like those ghastly liches, so its very dangerous ...' She shuddered, and Harry remembered the lecture that Professor Vanadair, the part-vampire Defence against Dark Arts teacher, had given on these murderous dark beings.

As they reached the Hogwarts basement, Arthur and Molly Weasley came out, Mrs Weasley wiping her eyes as Mr Weasley tried to comfort her. They both stared at Harry in bewilderment as he went forward to greet them. `It's me, Harry, Mr Weasley,' Harry explained.

`Ah, of course, Remus did tell us what had happened, but it's still a surprise to see ...' Arthur said, cautiously reaching out to shake Harry's hand. `Well done, Harry, it sounds like You-Know-Who has really been finished with this time.'

`Yes, I'm sure of it,' said Harry, `but I couldn't stop him killing Professor Dumbledore, and I'm really sorry about what happened to Ron ...'

`Don't be silly, Harry, it wasn't your fault,' Mrs Weasley said, dabbing at her eyes again.

`I let him come with us, and there was no need for that,' Harry said guiltily.

`I'm sure they'll find a way to cure him,' said Hermione, trying to reassure them, but in her eyes was an expression of bleak regret and loss that Harry had never seen there before. He returned to Sirius's room determined to do everything he could to bring Ron back to life, whatever the risks.