Learn From the History

Prologue

Harry woke up from yet another nightmare about Voldemort. He sat at the edge of his bed, panting heavily. He placed his hand on his scar which was burning again. Designing it was not a good idea to go back to sleep, he quietly slipped out of his bed and grabbed his invisibility cloak. He made sure Ron was still sleeping peacefully on his bed before closing the door behind him.

Harry stood alone in the corridor of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. He rubbed his scar in attempt to ease the pain. The memory of the recent events suddenly rushed back to him: A large group of order members "rescued" him from the Dursleys, Sirius' talk about Voldemort's plan, the hearing in the Ministry of Magic, Dumbledore's attitude towards him. He didn't want to tell anyone about his constant nightmare and the pain of his scar. He didn't want to show the others that he was so worried and so weak. Besides, he was still angry with them for hiding everything from him. And Dumbledore didn't even look straight into Harry's eyes.

It was still hours from dawn. Harry sighed and wandered around in the house aimlessly. The house was quiet, no members would arrive and no meetings would be held at that time. After not more than half an hour, Harry found himself sitting on the floor of the drawing room, thinking if he should went back to sleep or just wait until dawn. In the meantime, something caught his eyes: a faint light was coming out from the cupboard. Harry frowned; he didn't remember something like that when he was fixing the cupboard. He followed the light and finally found out the source of it. It was a stone, glowing brightly between various strange items in the cupboard. Harry grabbed the stone and examined it closely. It seemed... familiar. Harry had seen something like that before... the Sorcerer's Stone. Before he could think any longer, he felt a force pulling him forward, just like what he felt when he traveled by a portkey. In the next moment, he disappeared and the drawing room was once again dark and quiet.

Chapter 1: Unexpected visitor

BANG!

Harry landed heavily on the floor. He clenched his head with one hand and gripped the stone with another. His head was very painful; it seemed like the world was spinning around him. He vaguely saw a dark figure approached him.

"What..." The figure knelt down beside him immediately. "Are you all right?"

Then everything went black.

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Harry woke up and found himself lying on a bed. His head was still aching and someone had obviously taken away his glasses, so he couldn't tell where he was.

"Finally you are awake. Are you all right?" Someone sat beside his bed and handed him his glasses.

Wearing back his glasses, Harry sat up and observed his surrounding carefully. It was an ordinary room, at least for wizard, though it was quite messy. There were several cauldrons near a dusty corner, a large shelf fully filled with books and other items. Harry looked back at the person sitting beside him. The person was an old man, with grey hairs and beard.

Before Harry could further examine the man, his head was in pain again. He let out a gasp and clenched his head.

"Drink this, it'll make you feel better." The man handed a potion to Harry.

Harry, too pain to think if it was safe to drink an unknown potion offered by a stranger, took and swallowed the potion in seconds.

"Better?" the man asked.

"Yeah, thanks." Harry looked at the man uncertainly. "Um... where am I?"

"My house," said the man. "Do you remember what happened before you... came into my house?"

Harry tried to recall his memory, but his mind seemed blank.

"No," he answered.

"Do you remember your name?"

"... No."

The man looked at Harry thoughtfully. Finally he stood up and said, "I know what happened to you, child. I promise to help you, but I need you to trust me."

Harry stared at the man for a moment and nodded.

The man smiled and handed Harry another potion. "I'll tell you what happened after you have taken a rest. Drink this dreamless sleeping potion and sleep well. You're exhausted... Oh, and my name is Nicolas Flamel. I'll come and see you later." With that he left the room.

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In the next morning, Harry woke up and found Nicolas sitting on a couch in the living room. It was a rather large room. There were several bookshelves near the wall and beside them was a cabinet with glass door. There were several stones in the cabinet, with various shape and colour. A red stone was placed at the top section of the cabinet, separated from the others.

Nicolas turned around and gestured Harry to sit down.

"Lemon drop?" he asked as Harry sat down on another couch facing him.

"Er... no thanks," Harry answered.

"Fine." The old man stood up and walked to the glass cabinet. He took out a blue stone from it and handed it to Harry.

"You were holding this when I found you yesterday. Do you know what it is?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't know. I don't even remember my name..." He looked down at the floor

Nicolas sighed. "It's the past-revealing stone invented by me. It was lost few years ago when some dark wizards attacked my house; taken by them I assume. It was designed to let the user travel back in time and experience the events happened in the past. It would choose its owner, just like what a wand does, and also what time the person would be transported to. But time traveling is very dangerous as one may alter the timeline and change the future, so I added a little precaution in it. Anyone who activates the stone would lose their memory temporarily until they return to their own time."

Harry stared at Nicolas. "So the stone choose me... why?"

"Maybe there's something you should know or experience here. You may not know until you go back to your own time, but I'm sure this experience will be useful in your future," said Nicolas. He sighed and looked at Harry apologetically. "I'm sorry to bring you here, child. You must be scared, being transported to a strange place without any memory by a crazy invention of an old fool."

"What am I going to do than? I don't remember anything!" Harry covered his head with his hand. "How long am I going to stay here?"

"A year or two," said Nicolas. "The stone may bring you directly back to your time or bring you to another time period in the past, so I can't tell you for sure. The stone will store energy for the next time travel and it will take about a year to do so, so you may not be able to go back home any time soon... oh, and you won't age during these years. That is, even you stay here for two years, no time will pass in your own time and you will still remain in the same age as you are now."

He stood up and started pacing to and fro across the room. "In the meantime you will be staying here. Until September, you may go to Hogwarts."

"Hogwarts?"

"Yes, do you remember it?" asked Nicolas.

Harry closed his eyes and began to search for his memory about Hogwarts.

He groaned and shook his head. "It's useless."

"It's all right," said Nicolas. "Hogwarts is a wizarding school. You do remember about magic, don't you? Only a wizard can activate that stone."

Harry sat still for a while and concentrated on his memory. Finally he nodded. "I know it somehow, I know I can do magic."

"As you see, you still have your memory about your knowledge. But memory of what happened in your life and any information that may affect the future will be lost temporarily, until you go back to your own time."

Harry nodded. "So, what year is it now?"

"Nineteen-forty-five."

Harry remained silent. He wondered how many years he had been transported back in the past and what would happen in the following years.

Nicolas' voice broke Harry's chain of thought. "Well, we'd better give you a name first. You will need it in Hogwarts anyway. What do you think?"

"Um... anything is alright," answered Harry.

"Better be something more common... how about Alex?" asked Nicolas.

"Alex... sounds good," said Harry. "And last name?"

Nicolas thought for a while and smiled. "Salutor."

"What?"

"The visitor of time," said Nicolas. "It'll be better if we tell the truth that you lost your memory, it'll be easier for you. We'll have to keep the time travel part a secret though."

Harry nodded and yawned. "I'm sorry."

Nicolas smiled. "You better take some rest. Time traveling is very exhausting and the loss of memories will cause headache for a few days of so."