Amid the Star's Light

Chapter 1-Equilibrium Disturbed

Went away, sent away

Shadowed by star's light

Weary passengers aboard

A weary traveler's flight

- The Book of Lost

=/=

Ensign Harry Kim smiled down at his shinny black clarinet. Through all the battles and scrapes the starship Voyager and her crew had been though, not one scratch, mark, or dent had found itself on the clarinet's shiny black coating or the shiny silver keys on the front. Kim prided himself on how well he'd kept his clarinet, and showed it by playing the best he could when he practiced. He owed it that much, at least.

Kim placed the clarinet's reed to his mouth and blew, producing the melody he'd chosen to play beforehand. A somewhat simple, and rather lonely, piece for a single clarinet to play; Kim sometimes thought how fantastic it would sound coming from the varied voices of an orchestra's instruments. He'd found the 300-year-old piece in an old database before he'd been assigned to Voyager, and he had only shared it occasionally with his bed, his table, his chair, and the stars that floated by as he played. He'd always wondered who had created such a wonderful piece and why, but that information was never available to him.

In the middle of playing a certain passage Kim had grown rather fond of, a, for lack of a better word, beep sounded above the clarinet's aria, causing Kim to stop abruptly.

Somebody wanted into Kim's quarters.

Kim sighed, placed his clarinet on his table, and walked over to the entrance of his quarters.

"You ready, Harry?" Tom Paris' voice called cheerfully before the doors were even fully open.

"Ready?" Kim questioned. He looked at Tom and noticed that he was wearing Irish style clothes from the 19th century and a hat that complimented his sandy-colored hair nicely.

"Last time I checked, we were going to try out Fair Haven, see if it was working." It had taken them a while to fix all the damage done to Fair Haven, but they had restored it back to what it had been by working between shifts and battles.

"Oh," Kim suddenly figured out what Tom was talking about. "Right... Now I do... Hold on, I'll go change." He turned and reentered his quarters.

"You know, Harry," Tom followed Kim into his quarters, "I'd thought about reminding you while I was on my way over-"

Tom stopped right next to Kim and followed Kim's gaze to the floor. There, sprawled on the gray floor, was a boy, no older than 15, with untidy jet black hair and a pair of black robes over ordinary clothes, almost like the ones Tom had seen when Voyager had been sent back in time to the year 1996. The boy lay where Kim's table would have normally been, and perched by his head were Kim's clarinet and a pair of glasses, which were broken.

Tom picked up Kim's clarinet. Shaking it at Kim, Tom said, "What'd you do, Harry, clobber him over the head with that clarinet of yours?"

=/=

Nervously, Ron and Hermione waited in Filch's office, awaiting his return with Professors McGonagall and Snape. Being caught trying to break into Filch's office was not high on their list of things to do before they graduated from Hogwarts. But they had been caught, mostly because Harry disappeared and was replaced with a gray table, that looked very much out of place in the old castle, in a matter of less than a second.

"Well, if you think of it this way," Ron said, breaking the silence between them, "at least we got into Filch's office, didn't we?" He looked over at Hermione to see her reaction.

She didn't say anything, or even move for that matter; she kept her eyes straight ahead, staring at a spot somewhere around a rather large, over stuffed filling cabinet that said "Weasley, Fred and George" on the front.

"So... What's our excuse for being caught outside Filch's office in the dead of night with a table that came out of nowhere?" Ron asked Hermione, but he wasn't surprised when she didn't answer him. Then, he spotted an old, blank piece of parchment. "You wouldn't suppose this was the map, would you?"

Hermione stayed silent and still, her eyes not moving from Fred and George's filing cabinet.

"Oh, c'mon, Hermione!" Ron stuffed the piece of parchment into his robes. "We're not going to be expelled!"

Hermione moved; her eyes went from the filing cabinet to the floor, then to Ron. "How would you know?"

"Look at Fred and George," Ron pointed to the cabinet, "They've done worse, although, I don't think they've ever done anything in the company of a table like that..."

Behind them, the door to the office opened, and Filch walked in, followed by McGonagall, who was in turn followed by Snape. McGonagall looked very distraught, having been woken up so late at night, and Snape looked very happy, having spotted the two trying to get into the office. Filch, on the other hand, looked just as much like his usual self: all scowls.

With one half-asleep, but still very deadly looking glare, Professor McGonagall said, "Explain yourselves," through very thin white lips.

=/=

Harry's eyes fluttered open. He didn't remember why he was lying on his back, or why he hurt so much. Above him he saw two blurry figures, one black and yellow, and the other had lighter colors and was holding something long, thick and black.

"You're awake," said the one with the light colors. His voice seemed friendly enough, but that long, thick black something loomed closer to Harry's head.

Suddenly, Harry's mind, which seemed more awake than his body did, made a connection. A guy was holding what looked like a club or a thick wand; possible pain, attack.

Before he knew what he was doing, Harry had scooted away from the figures, found his wand, and pointed it at the closer of the two.

"Hold on! It's okay!" the figure spoke again.

Harry, though, didn't seem to hear him. He kept his wand pointed towards the figure.

The figure leaned forward, towards Harry's glasses-

"Petrificus Totalus!" Harry shouted the first thing that came to his mind. The figure's legs snapped together, as did his arms to his sides. Then he fell over, stiff as a board, only his eyes moving about.

"Tom!" shouted the other figure, but he stayed where he was. He slapped something silver on his chest and said, "Kim to sickbay - medical emergency!"

Where am I?

Something wasn't right. The place Harry had found himself in was not Hogwarts. But what it was, Harry wasn't quite sure.

He noticed as he was escorted to what was had been called "Sick Bay" that the walls along the corridors were a dull silver-gray and were made of some material that Harry had never seen before - not that he could tell, mind, for his glasses were broken. The lighting seemed odd -- it looked artificial, like a Muggle light bulb or some such thing. But the people who they passed in the corridors seemed nice enough -- they smiled and sometimes waved at the black haired man who'd introduced himself as "Ensign Harry Kim".

Harry followed Ensign Kim through the corridors, unsure of what to do or where to go. His instinct told him that it might just be best to follow this Kim. His logic agreed with his instinct and told him that he wouldn't have been able to find his way around anyway -- seeing as how after just a few turns, he found that he'd become lost amid the identical gray corridors that he couldn't really see.

By the time they had reached Sick Bay, Harry had become a little disorientated. He wouldn't have been able to find is way back... anywhere. When he entered Sick Bay, he found that he hadn't escaped the grayness. The three or four "fuzzy" beds to his right were gray (although, there was a rainbow of various "fuzzy" spots on them). There was a gray bed straight in front of him as well; and there was also a light gray office area to his left, plus another room he assumed was gray.

"Good day, Mr. Kim..." a balding man with a blue-striped uniform on the other side of this new room said off-handedly. To Harry, he seemed puzzled by the little silver box he held in his hand.

"Something wrong, doctor?" Kim asked, making his way across the room.

"I'm not sure what is wrong with Mr. Paris; I can't make heads or tails of the readings... But he is alive, I can tell you that much..." The doctor looked at Kim, and then spotted Harry. "And who is this?"

A thought bubbled up in Harry's mind. They don't know who I am. It was strange to have someone actually not know who he, The Boy Who Lived, was; nice for a change, but still strange, indeed. A thought in the popped up in the back of Harry's mind: were these people Muggle...?

"Harry Potter," he said.

The doctor turned to Kim. "A friend of ours? Did the captain bring someone new aboard without telling me?"

"No--he just appeared. He had only woken up when he did... that to Tom..."

Harry looked over at the figure Ensign Kim had been talking about. Sure enough, "Tom Paris", the sandy-haired man with his 19th century clothing (which Harry could barely make out due to his lack of glasses), was lying as stiff as a board upon the bed that was on the other side of Sick Bay from the entrance way.

The doctor turned on Harry; he looked as though he was about to ask Harry a question, but was interrupted by a violent shaking. It seemed like the entire structure jumped up and slammed itself against something hard. Harry and Ensign Kim were thrown to the ground; the doctor, Harry noticed momentarily, only fizzled a little.

"What was that?" asked Kim. Before anyone could answer, though, everything slammed into another obviously hard object.

Then, all was dark.