Harry Potter and the First Ones

Additional disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Babylon 5.

Author's Note: I forgot in the first chapter that there's a glitch in Fiction Alley with these notes, so I'll repeat them here. This story takes place during Sixth Year at Hogwarts, so it's definitely AU. It begins with the final episode of Season 3 of Babylon 5, "Z'Ha'Dum," and will continue through about the first 6 episodes of Season 4. I am trying to keep it as close to canon as possible for B-5, but I might need to change a few details.

Home of Shadows

After their ship had passed through the jumpgate, the small portals around them showed only a mottled orangey-red landscape. Harry suddenly realized that he really didn't know what a jumpgate was.

"So, can someone explain to me what jumpgates are?" he asked generally. He didn't expect Ron or Ginny to know anything about it, since they were completely ignorant of most technology, but he thought Hermione might have some idea.

"Well, it's mainly theoretical, at least in our time," she explained, getting into lecture mode. The idea is that you build a gate that sort of tears a hole in space, taking you to another dimension called hyperspace. I gather that's what we're seeing outside. It provides a shortcut through space from one point to another. If we had to travel across these distances directly, it would take years, even at light-speed. Then you have the possible time-dilation effect to worry about."

"Time dilation?" Ginny asked curiously.

"Albert Einstein theorized that, if you were to travel at speeds approaching that of light, time would begin to slow for you. That is, it would feel the same, but when you came back to your starting point, you might find that ten years had passed, even though it might seem like only weeks to you."

"So, if we left earth in our time, on a ship that could go that fast, we might be able to come back at the time of Babylon 5?" Ron wondered, frowning.

"Well, yes, I suppose we could," responded Hermione. "Assuming we could stay away long enough."

They all fell silent at that point. Harry looked around at his friends and decided that now might be a good time to confess the secret he had still not told them. After all, they had several hours with nothing to do. He cleared his throat.

"There's something I think I should tell you all," he said. "I probably should have done it a long time ago, but it took me a while to really grasp it myself." He licked his lips, trying to figure out how to do this.

"What is it, Harry?" Hermione inquired with concern. Her eyes, as well as Ron's and Ginny's, were fixed seriously on him. For some reason, Ginny took his hand. This seemed to give him both comfort and strength, and he gave her a little smile of thanks. When Harry spoke again, though, he found he couldn't look at any of them. Instead, he focused on a point above Hermione's head.

"Last year, after...after the Department of Mysteries, Dumbledore took me to his office. He showed me something there. Something important. You know that prophecy Voldemort was after?" When the others nodded, he went on. "Well, Dumbledore showed it to me. He had the complete memory because he was the person Professor Trelawney told it to. See, he was interviewing her before I was born. He was just about to send her off when she went into a sort of trance and spoke in a different voice." He paused as he tried to remember the exact wording. A few months ago, he was sure those words would be engraved on his brain forever, but now, though he remembered the gist, he couldn't remember the exact quotation.

"It went something like this: 'The one with the power to bring down the Dark Lord will be born before the seventh month dies, born to those who have thrice defied him. The Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have a power the Dark Lord knows not. One of them must slay the other, for neither can live while the other survives.'"

There was utter quiet for a moment, except for the faint humming of the engines.

"So let me get this straight," Ron broke the silence. "If you don't kill You-Know-Who, he's going to kill you?"

Harry nodded solemnly.

"Well, you'll just have to kill him, then," said Ginny matter-of-factly. Harry looked at her in amazement. "Don't make the mistake of thinking he's human," Ginny continued at his expression. "He isn't. Don't forget that I had him in my head. Even at 16, he didn't value life at all."

Harry hadn't forgotten, although he usually tried not to think about it. It always made him feel responsible.

"I'm so sorry for that, Ginny," he apologized, not for the first time.

"Oh, stop it. It wasn't your fault."

"But if it hadn't been for me, Mr. Malfoy wouldn't have slipped you that book."

"And if I had taken some time to think about it, I wouldn't have written in it so much."

"I reckon there's enough blame to go around, mate," Ron put in. "If Fred, George, and I had been better brothers, she might not have felt lonely enough to try to find a friend in a magic diary."

"You're absolutely sure the prophecy referred to you?" Hermione weighed in at last, interrupting the festival of guilt.

"That's the funny thing," Harry informed her. "It actually could have been Neville. We were both born at the end of July, and our parents were all members of the Order. The part that makes Dumbledore sure it's me is the part about marking me as his equal. He thinks Voldemort did that when he gave me this." Harry gestured to the scar on his forehead.

"So, when You-Know-Who was trying to prevent the prophecy from happening, he actually fulfilled part of it?" Ron asked. Harry shrugged.

"I guess so."

"Thank you for telling us," Hermione said after another pause. "I don't know if there's anything we can do to help, but you know we will if we can."

Harry nodded silently. He did feel like a tremendous burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He'd followed Dumbledore's advice, and he felt better. Now there was just the matter of the assignment - something to live for. He noticed that he was still holding Ginny's hand. Ron noticed this, too, looking at their clasped hands and then sending a significant glance toward Harry. Ron raised his eyebrows in silent inquiry. Harry gave a half-shrug and looked away, unable to bear the scrutiny. He knew he should probably pull away, but he just couldn't bring himself to do it. Not yet, anyway.

Eventually, Hermione suggested this might be a time to look through their schoolbooks. Harry wasn't really in the mood, but he pretended to read his Charms text to keep the peace.

Finally, the reddish tapestry outside dissolved, to be replaced by an unfamiliar pattern of stars. Harry couldn't see a planet, but he reasoned that it was probably directly below them.

"Here," Zathras said, coming back into the passenger area. "Quickly. Into pod." He guided them to a tiny escape pod, helped them strap in again, and pressed some buttons on a console at the front. Once this task was complete, he went back past them to the doorway.

"Aren't you coming with us?" demanded Ron.

"No," was the abrupt answer. "Zathras go back soon. Someone else bring others."

"What? Who?" They were all clamoring over each other.

"No time. Trust. Go."

With that, Zathras left them and ejected the pod. From the front window, they could now see a very dark, foreboding planet below. As the cramped vessel followed its programmed trajectory, Harry noticed that a shuttle seemed to be going to the planet from the Whitestar. He shivered with a strange feeling like déjà vu. Whatever was going to happen to the captain would happen soon.

"Not very welcoming, is it?" Ginny commented.

"I don't think it's supposed to be," Harry replied dryly. "I get the feeling they don't encourage visitors."

The pod took them down to the planet's surface, which seemed to be totally barren. Harry felt a twinge from his scar, but it stopped as they entered a crevice and went underground. Their descent felt like it took ages, but at last they landed, none too gently. The kids simply sat there for a minute or two, still feeling at a loss.

"I think this is where we get off," Ron said in an attempt to lighten the tone.

"Right," Hermione agreed, adopting a businesslike attitude. "Whatever we're supposed to do, we have to find it in here."

They exited into a nearly featureless rock tunnel. There was dim light, but it was impossible to distinguish a source.

"Lumos," muttered Harry as he drew his wand. The tunnel was just large enough for the escape pod, but it became much narrower ahead and appeared to branch off in different directions.

"How are we supposed to figure out which way to go?" Ginny asked in a frustrated tone.

"Maybe we just trust to destiny to put us in the right place at the right time?" Harry guessed.

"I've never put much faith in destiny," Hermione said. "Technology has brought us this far; maybe magic will have to do the rest."

She took her wand out and rested it on her palm so that it could spin like the needle of a compass. She said "Vectore Captain Sheridan." The wand shook a little like it was trying to lift up, then settled on a direction slightly to their right. The group followed the wand for a while, Hermione stopping periodically to check their bearing. They turned a corner just in time to see an impossibly bright flash of light. They turned away quickly, but not soon enough for Harry to avoid the afterimages behind his eyelids. Understanding that this must signify something important, the teens scarcely exchanged a glance before almost running to the source. Harry raised his wand to see a roughly circular hole that seemed to go straight up through the rock. He reasoned that it must go all the way up to the city above them.

Suddenly, Harry saw what looked like a human figure falling down the hole.

"Wingardium leviosa!" shouted three voices in unison, and the body swung drunkenly, hitting the side of the pit. Harry winced.

"Let me do it!" Hermione hissed. Ron complied immediately, ending the spell on his wand. Harry did the same just a beat later. He saw that only Ginny had not reacted as they had, probably because she was not yet really used to working with them. However, she did have her wand out. Harry raised an eyebrow at her questioningly.

"I cast a Featherbed Charm at the bottom," she explained, shrugging. Harry liked her novel way of thinking. Of course, depending how far the person - probably Sheridan - had fallen, the feather landing alone might not have been enough to cushion his fall. In any case, Hermione was bringing the man to rest on the ground. As the four approached, they saw that it was, in fact, Captain Sheridan.

"What happened up there?" Ron wondered.

"It looked like some kind of explosion," Harry said, peering upward. He couldn't see anything more than a few yards up, though. He heard faint sounds carrying through the rock and pressed his ear to it to see if there was any more he could pick up. He felt some vibrations and caught some clicking noises, but he couldn't make any sense out of it and gave up.

"So what do we do now?" Ron asked generally.

"I guess we wait," Hermione answered, settling herself beside the captain and checking him over as best she could. Harry came up beside her. Sheridan looked exactly as they had seen him in Dumbledore's office, only that hadn't happened yet. Well, it had for them, but not for him. Harry frowned and vowed to stop thinking about the paradoxes of time travel.

"So we did this to him?" Ginny inquired, as though she were also trying to wrap her head around everything.

"Well, yes and no," Hermione told her, sounding a little like Dumbledore. "For whatever reason, he would have jumped whether we were here or not. But if we hadn't been, he'd have had an unchecked fall for however deep this hole is."

"Two miles," said a strange voice behind them, causing everyone to turn quickly.

"Who are you?" Harry asked, holding his wand in front of him.

"Who are you?" the stranger responded mildly. It stepped a little closer, allowing Harry to see it (him?) more clearly. The individual was humanoid in appearance, with two visible arms. The legs were mostly concealed under the long robe he wore. His head was long, bald and bulbous at the top and surrounded by a small sort of crown with a red gem in the middle of the forehead. He had a long, heavily lined face with a very flat nose and a white beard, and his dark eyes glittered in the magic light.

"I'm Harry Potter," Harry said, lowering his wand slightly. "These are my friends. We're from Earth."

"Indeed?" the stranger commented, studying each of them in turn. Then he swept by Harry to evaluate Captain Sheridan. "Why are you here?"

"We're hoping someone will tell us that," Ron muttered.

"That's Captain Sheridan," Ginny explained to the stranger. "We're not sure why he was here, either."

"I think I know that," the alien sighed. Then he touched Sheridan and tilted his head as though listening to something. "And he's not alone. There's a Vorlon inside him."

"Kosh!" Ron exclaimed. He also bent and touched Sheridan. "Yeah, I feel something sort of familiar."

"You know this Vorlon?" The newcomer seemed surprised.

"It's a long story."

"Well, we're likely to have plenty of time. My name is Lorien. Your wands remind me of someone I once knew."

"Dumbledore!" Hermione announced. "You know Albus Dumbledore. But how?"

"I visited Earth about 350 years ago," Lorien answered. "Perhaps a better question is, how do you know him? Even wizards of your species don't live that long."

"Unless you count Nicolas Flamel," Harry put in.

"Yes, I met him as well," Lorien mused. "He'd found a secret to immortality. Very interesting."

"Is that how you've lived so long?" Ginny wondered. Lorien smiled gently at her.

"No. My people were naturally immortal. That is, we have no natural limits on our life spans. I was already an old man by the time any kind of life existed on your planet."

Harry tried to think about how many years that would be and grew dizzy with the concept. Hermione seemed to be similarly struggling with it. Ron and Ginny, not having experienced Muggle science classes, didn't really seem concerned.

"We're from Earth's past," Ron said, finally answering the question posed some time ago.

"We saw Sheridan in Dumbledore's office before we left," Hermione added. "He said an old friend had paid him a visit."

"That is an excellent idea," Lorien said. "When are you from?" When they told him, he touched Sheridan and closed his eyes, growing very still. He stayed that way for a minute or two. At last, he rose and faced them again, seating himself on a protruding rock. Sheridan flickered, as though he were both there and not there at the same time.

"He should be safe now," Lorien declared. "All we have to do is wait."

"What are we waiting for?" Harry asked.

"For John Sheridan to find a reason to live."

Author's Note: So far, I don't think this story is as good as the first. Maybe it will get better as it progresses and I get more into it. The idea of using the levitation charm to aid Sheridan was my husband's. Thanks to Eleanna for reviewing. She asked a question about the timeline. I thought I had covered that with Draal, but since there still seems to be confusion, I will try to deal with it early in the next chapter.

I hope to be able to update every two weeks. However, if I get 10 reviews for a chapter, it might encourage me to submit sooner.