Living inside Yesterday

Living inside Yesterday
written and revised by Potter47 ~ Part One ~
The Shadow of the Past "Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough."
-- Shaw ~ Chapter One ~
The Bus and the Bell Jar

Vincent Crabbe (senior, of course) was honoured to have been among the chosen to retrieve his Master's prophecy. He knew that the Dark Lord took this very seriously.

Ha! Seriously!

He still could not believe that Potter had fallen for it. He always thought that his Master's foe must have had a brain on his shoulders--but apparently not.

How would the Dark Lord have got hold of Sirius Black anyhow? By walking into a house guarded by Dumbledore's greatest protective spells? Not likely.

Of course, there were ways around such spells, but--they weren't worth the trouble. (And Crabbe only knew vaguely of their existence, anyway.)

While Crabbe was honoured to go to the Ministry that night... one can never be too careful. So, he decided that if any opportunity should come to say... hurt Potter, for his Master... to make it less likely for him to escape once again... Crabbe would most definitely take the chance.

The Death Eaters that had been chosen for this excursion were among the highest ranking in the Dark Lord's army: the Lestranges; Lucius Malfoy--

Me

, thought Crabbe smugly. He could not get over that fact.

They were hiding--in strategic points of the Department of Mysteries, the Death Eaters were placed, simply watching. It seemed that Potter, and his friends, kept choosing the wrong doors, for Crabbe (located in the Time Room) had seen no sign of them. They had to go through this room after all, if they were to get to the Hall of Prophecy.

He was paired with one of the Lestrange brothers. They looked similar, so he wasn't quite sure which one it was--he hadn't really been paying close attention when Malfoy had assigned their orders.

He saw them! Potter led the way, and then there was Granger -- the Mudblood -- two Weasleys, the Longbottom boy, and a rather odd looking blonde girl that he didn't particularly recognise.

The group walked along the room, until they came to the great bell jar. The Weasley girl stopped and stared at it, mesmerised. "Oh, look!" she said, and pointed to the heart of the jar where the hummingbird was currently emerging from its egg.

Potter walked up next to her. "Keep going!" he said.

In that instant, when his eyes flicked back from the fluttering, struggling bird to Potter and the Weasley girl, Crabbe had thought of a plan. A great plan: he would crash the bell jar on the two standing in its shadow, and they would be nothing more than two babies! They won't stand a chance, he thought.

And the Dark Lord had said that there was something... unique... about the Weasley girl. Good to get her out of the way, too.

He whispered, "Wingardium Leviosa!" pointing his stubby wand.

A faint, faint sound--and the bell jar hovered an inch or two above where it had stood. No one seemed to notice anything out-of-the-ordinary.

Crabbe smirked at his own brilliance, and carefully directed the jar...

"You dawdled enough by--" the Weasley girl stopped short--her gaze was fixed upon the jar, slowly, slowly tipping toward herself and Potter--

"Move Harry! Ginny!" called the Mudblood, Granger.

But they didn't move. With a quick flick of Crabbe's wand, the jar came crashing down on them...

...and they were gone.

--|--

"--that old arch," Ginny finished softly, eyes wide and wondering how she could still be standing.

It was dark now, suddenly, incredibly so. Not even the thinnest ray of light shone to light the way, to show them where they were.

"Where are we?" said Harry. He paused a moment, and then added: "What happened?"

"I dunno," said Ginny. "There was that--that green stuff, and--" She fell silent.

The 'green stuff' had been a great deal of verdant smoke which seemed to have wisped its way by Ginny's eyes with a great deal of slowness in the barely-moments between the bell jar's fall and the darkness.

"Do you have your wand?" Harry asked, which was a good thing to ask--and there were pats on clothing, the sound of one searching all of one's pockets... all Harry had in his was his DA galleon, which he still carried upon his person, even since Umbridge had caught them. "I reckon I dropped mine."

"Me as well," said Ginny. "What do we do?"

Harry dropped carefully to his knees, and reached his hands before him so he wouldn't bang into anything. "We look for them."

"But what if we dropped them before... the green stuff came? The smoke--"

"Then we're out of luck. Not that we had much to begin with, tonight."

This wasn't entirely true, of course--they'd had some luck with the Centaurs and Grawp, and luck in finding the Thestrals (or rather in the Thestrals finding them). But when one is in total darkness, one tends to forget the lucky things.

Ginny dropped to her knees beside him and began to search as well. It seemed hours passed in the dark, though surely it was only minutes--or was it really hours?

Clunk!

"Ow!" said Ginny and Harry simultaneously. They had crawled into each other's heads.

"Sorry," they both said, rubbing their heads--each rubbing his or her own. The world spun round Harry, and so did Ginny's face.

...her face?

He could see her face?

She was grinning now, too, he could see--and he could see why. She had found her wand, and lighted it--he wondered how he hadn't heard the Lumos! that she had to have spoken for it to light up.

"Found it," she said.

"I noticed," said Harry, and he blinked several times--it was very bright all of a sudden, and that hurt terribly--and looked away. He spotted his own wand, just a few inches away from Ginny's leg, and picked it up.

"Lumos!"

--|--

GONE?

Crabbe thought wildly. Where the hell did they go?

"What just happened?" Weasley said, to no one in particular. It was a valid point, for as soon as the bell jar had touched the ground, and the two had disappeared, it stopped without crashing and righted itself. Crabbe thought that was peculiar.

"I don't know." It was the Mudblood that answered.

"The bell jar ate them!" said the blonde, looking desperately worried.

The last boy--Longbottom--was silent. He blinked his eyes, as though to ascertain he had really seen the others disappear, and hadn't imagined it.

A door crashed open, and Crabbe could see Lucius standing there, eyes visible through the slits in his mask, clearly outraged.

"Crabbe, you fool! What in hell did you do that for?"

The remaining students wore matching expressions of horror and shock.

"Crucio!" Malfoy shouted, and

Pain coursed through Crabbe's body, and he was unaware of anything from that point on.

--|--

Harry held his wand aloft, and although the room--which seemed to be very large--could not all be seen by the light of only the two wands, enough was visible to make Harry feel everything was quite familiar....

"Gin," he said slowly, hesitantly; "is it just me... or does this look like... the same room?" Harry waved his wand around, to spread more light. Indeed, it did seem to be the quite definitely same room. The time-turners were still on the walls, the bell jar was still on the table--

"It's not broken!" Ginny said, amazed. "It crashed on us, and it's not broken."

For a moment the two of them just stared at the bell jar, watching the hummingbird once again--its wings moved so very, very quickly... Ginny stepped forward, careful so as not to bump into the jar, and put her face right up close to the glass to watch the bird. It seemed... calming.

And then Harry said:

"Where are the others?" and she pulled back, looking round once again.

"They disappeared," said Ginny finally. And then: "Or did we? It was probably us, wasn't it? This place looks so different."

It didn't really--it just felt different.

And then, suddenly, Harry had a sneaking suspicion that he knew what had happened.

"Come on. Let's get out of here." He led the way to the door, carefully so as not to disturb anything else in the Time Room--and went into the circular room, Ginny close behind him.

"This'll take forever," she said, as the room started to spin. "Which way's out?" she called desperately. "Where's the exit?"

A door opened.

"Oh--that was simple."

"Come on." Harry walked through the open door.

There they were, in the corridor--the one that had haunted his dreams for the past year, and now he knew there was, obviously, a reason.

When they reached the lift, Harry's suspicions increased--although the voice sounded just the same (for it was probably magical and not a real person's voice to begin with) some of what it was saying--the Department names, and floors--were different from how they had been just the short while ago that Harry had been in there last.

Clink

, went the doors as they opened, and the voice announced, "The atrium," in that cool voice of its. Harry and Ginny stepped out of the lift, and into the large blue-ceilinged room.

"Whatchoo doin' 'ere?" said a voice they did not recognise--the watchwizard was apparently on-duty tonight, and present just as much as he wasn't when they had arrived. But this watchwizard was not the one Harry had seen at the time of his hearing at all.

Harry was sure of his suspicions now; completely so.

"We fell asleep," said Ginny, then--Harry looked at her, puzzled, but she continued: "in my dad's office. Official Gobstones Club, you know," she lied, naming one of the names that was still there to be heard in the lift. "We were playing again and again and we just plopped over there at the board--we have to have been out for hours."

The wizard-who-was-not-Eric Munch furrowed his brow, perhaps wondering why they had no ink on them from the hours of Gobstones--or perhaps why Harry was covered in blood (a fact that he had just noticed--he'd completely forgotten about the battle in the forest). However, the wizard seemed quite confused as to how it was wrong to be leaving the Ministry after-hours, and so they were soon on their way.

Just as soon as they had smushed themselves into the telephone booth, Harry whispered:

"You've figured it out too, haven't you?"

"What? Figured what out?" Ginny asked as the lightishness of the atrium gave way to foot after foot of earth.

"That we've gone back in time," said Harry, and as the words left his lips there was a bit of a finality to them; they had gone back in time. Really.

"Oh, that?" said Ginny. "Yes, of course we've gone back in time."

Harry was infinitely relieved that she agreed with him--it would have been much more difficult to have to convince her himself. But then, he thought, Why wouldn't she have realised it herself?

She seemed to be biting the inside of her cheek. Then she said, aloud:

"The question is, of course... when are we?"

--|--

Hermione Granger was not a stupid girl. She knew exactly what had happened; Harry and Ginny had gone back in time. She didn't know what year they were in, but she was sure that was what happened. What other explanation is there? she thought to herself. Of course, there were other explanations; Luna's thought, for instance, that the bell jar had eaten them. Or perhaps they had just been enveloped into oblivion.

But Hermione knew better, of course.

Malfoy barked at them:

"All of you! Hand over your wands and no one need get hurt. We're all going to see a friend of mine, and explain--" he jerked his wand, which was still cursing Crabbe, "--just what has happened."

"And why should we listen to you?" Luna inquired suspiciously-yet-politely.

A woman came up beside Malfoy, and said:

"And who are you, little girl? I don't recognize you."

"Luna Lovegood," Luna informed her. Luna could use a lesson in dealing with a sociopath--Harry could add it to the DA curriculum. Malfoy could be a test subject.

If Harry can find his way back, that is,

Hermione's mind added against her will.

The woman took off her mask and smiled. Urgh. Not a pretty sight.

"Hello, Luna. My name's Bella. Would you like to play a nice game?" Her voice was disgustingly sarcastic.

Neville looked as though he was struggling to remain standing. "Longbottom?" Bellatrix asked, turning to him.

He nodded, just barely.

"I haven't seen you since you were this--" she put her hand a couple of feet from the floor, "--small. You were so cute back then. Whatever happened?" She laughed. Hermione felt a strong urge to just curse her.

In fact, she did.

"Bogius!"

Ginny has good taste.

Hermione had never actually seen the Bat-Bogey Hex performed before, but she had read about it numerous times. Bellatrix Lestrange, taken aback, flew backwards into three of other Death Eaters, one of whom was rather large, and knocked over a few more. Great flapping things attacked her face.

Imagine if Ginny had done it.

"Dominius!"

Luna

. Luna of all people was the first to follow. Her charm knocked one Death Eater over into the one next to him, and him into the next, until the four remaining students were the only ones left standing.

The Domino Charm.

They ran--

--|--

Light poked through at the top of the telephone booth, and Harry wondered why it was bright out--then, as the booth moved farther and farther above the ground level, the light disappeared, turning--

A man stood with an electric torch in the street, Harry could see, moving it back and forth, as though searching for something. Harry and Ginny kept their wands firmly in their grasps, yet hid them within their robes, so that this man--clearly a Muggle--could not see.

They stayed within the booth for a long time, unsure of what to do. And then the man seemed to fade away, taking the light with him, and disappeared into one of the buildings--

"Oh my God," Ginny murmured in a terrible voice as she got a look at the buildings for the first time.

Barely visible in the darkness, the buildings... they would have been barely visible anyway, as they were hardly there at all. Rubble, most of them--or at least completely unsteady-looking, like a twisted, Muggle take on the Burrow.

Harry swallowed as he looked round further, moving round in the telephone booth to peer through a different pane of glass--Harry reckoned that the phone booth itself must have looked terribly out of place in the destruction.

"What happened?" Ginny said, her voice echoing emptily before even escaping her throat.

"We must be..." Harry began, but blinked and tried to focus once again: "I think we know when we are, now."

Ginny seemed to know what he meant, instantly, and a terrible shiver passed over the two of them. They both knew exactly when they were, more or less. Harry thought of it as the second world war--Ginny thought of it as Grindelwald's reign.

"What do we do?" Ginny said in that small voice.

"We need to get to Hogwarts," Harry said, uncertain and quivering. "If anyone can help us, it's Dumbledore."

Hesitantly, Harry slid open the door to the booth, and stepped out--the street beneath his feet was gravel-y, like the play park in Little Whinging, but completely different at the same time.

"I wonder what year it is?" said Ginny. "You think it's near the end of it?"

They heard a distant sound, a dog barking in the distance, and Harry turned round on instinct, some crazy part of him assuming it was Sirius. Of course it wasn't--Sirius hadn't been alive during World War II, and even if he had, he certainly wouldn't be prowling round in Muggle London in the middle of the night.

"Let's go," said Harry, and they started to walk.

--|--

Once Ron, Hermione, Luna, and Neville were in the circular room, it began to spin again. Luna murmured: "I wonder if we're moving or if the rooms are moving round us?"

Nobody really heard her.

"This one," said Ron, pointing to the door directly in front of him. He tried to push--

"Locked," he said, frustrated.

"Wait a minute," said Luna, looking at the door thoughtfully as Ron was about to choose another. "Ronald, let me help you."

Hermione knew it was fruitless. "Luna, it won't--"

Ron and Luna pushed together.

"--open," Hermione finished rather pathetically.

It had opened. Luna caught Ron's robes so he didn't fall over, into the room. They all looked in, expecting some sort of magnificent secret chamber, but--

"It's empty," said Ron bewilderedly.

"How anticlimactic," said Luna disappointedly.

"Maybe... maybe the door is the point of the room?" Hermione said adverbially. "Maybe something about the people who open it..." Hermione shook herself. "This is really not the time. Nor is this the right door."

Neville chose next--

--and there were Death Eaters, twelve Death Eaters, slowly helping each other up--

"Great choice, Neville," Ron muttered as Neville slammed the door back shut, nearly catching his fingers in its handle-less doorway.

Luna chose the door to a room they hadn't seen before: there were planets floating in it, and in the centre was a very realistic model of the sun.

She took a step forward. At least, she tried to take a step forward. As soon as her leg had passed the threshold, it began to float. It didn't seem all that odd...almost as though she was supposed to fly without a broom. However, it was a rather peculiar sensation for Luna herself.

"I do wonder what spell does this?" she inquired to no one, doing a sort of pirouette in the air. A moment later, she added, frowning: "Although I don't like the look of that sun."

"Er..." said Ron, who was more than a bit lost as to how to get Luna back to the door. Should he step in himself, and try to help in some way that probably would be foolish? Should he try to conjure a rope and toss it out? Should he ask Hermione?

But then it hit him like something quite hard:

"Accio Luna!" he shouted, not quite thinking things through properly.

Luna came speeding back toward the door. Quickly. Very quickly.

"Whee!"

Luckily, Ron was right there to catch her. Well, more like he was right there as a target for her...

"Ow."

--|--

Harry and Ginny had been walking for a while; a long, long while that felt more like a mile than a while, and a mile wasn't even a measure of time.

Hogwarts was quite a distance from London. And that distance seemed multiplied horribly by the sights round them--broken down buildings and other, more disturbing things. Anyone with a brain would not be out walking in the middle of the night, when the world was like this--not in the middle of London.

They had begun hearing more noises as the night went on: howls and yowls and owls, oh my. Harry had begun to sense things were familiar--he had walked these streets before, he knew (After? he wondered), on the day of his hearing. Mr Weasley had walked both ways with him, to and fro the Ministry, and although this did help him a small bit--preventing him from walking off to Gloucester, for instance--

But there really was no advantage, as these streets had been completely rebuilt by then. They walked in the direction he reckoned was towards Grimmauld Place, although of course it would do no good to find it. Harry didn't feel much like meeting Sirius's mother in person, nor any of the other Blacks, for that matter. They walked the way they did only because they had no better ideas.

And then Harry heard something quite unlike anything they had heard before, if only because it had a figure attached.

It was a strange, guttural snarl, like that of an animal but somehow a bit more human. Harry saw the 'person' it belonged to, standing strangely illuminated in the moonlight by the side of the road--he had longish black hair and a vaguely familiar look about him, but Harry was sure he had never seen him before.

Harry and Ginny shivered at the sight of him. He recalled a Dementor in some sort, or perhaps a Dementor's victim. But he was, for the most part, human--he just seemed to be a very desperate human, perhaps desperate for something Harry didn't want to think about, like flesh. That was a terrible thought.

Harry knew, somehow, inherently, that this person was not a Muggle, even though he wore no robes. And although he made no move for Harry or Ginny, Harry felt that he was dangerous--perhaps a servant of Grindelwald, although Harry wasn't really thinking of that at all.

They sped up their stride, passing the man quickly, who watched them the whole time. Harry did not want to leave his back to the man, but he had no choice, did he, if they were to move on? He couldn't very well walk backwards.

Taking a breath, Harry ploughed onward, Ginny never missing a stride. After another few moments, she put a hand on his arm, and Harry couldn't tell if it had been meant as comforting or to comfort herself, but he didn't really mind.

Harry glanced backwards once again, unable to stop himself, and the man was still watching them. Harry didn't like that. Finally, making up his mind, he turned down a small alleyway, and Ginny continued to hold on firmly to his arm. Obscured by a mostly-there brick building, they stopped a moment to catch their breath.

"Who was that, do you think?" Ginny whispered, leaning against the building and making herself rather small and close to the ground.

Harry--seated next to her, and trying with all his might not to look back round the corner, for fear of being spotted--shook his head. "I dunno," he said. "But I didn't like him."

"Me neither," said Ginny, and they both shivered again, simultaneously.

They sat in relative silence for a few moments, and Harry felt it was very cold for a mid-June night. He put his hands in his pockets.

The thought crossed Harry's mind that an alleyway wasn't quite the best place to hide from a potentially dangerous person, but where else were they to go?

"D'you think the others are all right?" Ginny asked, then. "Will be all right, I mean, in the Ministry?"

Harry hadn't really thought of that, and the thought of that led him to the thought of something else.

"They're stuck there with Voldemort!" Harry suddenly realised, and he remembered that Sirius was still trapped as well. "We've got to get back--"

"Shh!" said Ginny urgently. "You're screaming. If they are, there's nothing we can do about it right now, is there? We'll have get back before anything we could do could help, and we've got to get to Hogwarts if we're going to get back, right?"

Harry was slightly calmed down by her words, and she smiled: "You do realise I just repeated what you said to me earlier?"

Harry hadn't.

And then, without so much of a moment's preamble or thought, Harry said:

"We are stupid."

"And why is that Harry?" said Ginny with a wry grin. "Because we didn't know enough to run from the big scary falling bell jar? Because we landed ourselves in the middle of another war?"

"No. We're stupid because we didn't think of this." He stood, then, and pulled her up with him, and made impatiently for the other end of the alley, where it opened into another street.

"Where are you going?" Ginny asked quietly, yet loud enough for him to hear, and she chased after him. As soon as he reached the end, he pulled out his wand again and stuck his arm out into the street.

BANG.

"Welcome... to the Knight Bus, emergency transport... for the stranded witch... or wizard." An old wizard, with a rather odd shaped nose, stood on the steps to the Knight Bus. He spoke very, very slowly, and Harry thought there couldn't have been anyone less like Stan Shunpike. He also had a strange twitch about him, barely noticeable yet very pronounced, somehow. "Just stick out your wand--"

"Er, hello," Harry said, "my name is Harry Potter, and this is Ginny Weasley." It almost felt odd to use his real name, not worrying about being recognised. But then again, he would not be born for decades to come, would he?

"--hand, step on board... and we can take you anywhere you want to go. Please... let me finish my sentences. People always are interrupting me... and frankly, I don't like it."

"Er, sir?" asked Ginny. "There was an accident at school. Somehow we got sent out here, to London, and frankly we have no way to get back. And we really need to, quick, you know, what with the war and--"

Frankly

, Harry thought, Ginny is a good liar. First the watchwizard and then this one... he'd have to keep an eye on her, he thought, trying not to smirk.

"Do you have the money... to get to Hogwarts? Because frankly... I don't like it when people try to ride the Knight Bus for free. It clearly states... in the rules for my occupation... that a trip from London to Hogwarts is two gal-- "

"Two galleons?" Ginny was, quite clearly, outraged. "But there's a war on! It's an emergency!"

"--leons. Please let me finish my sentences. People always are interrupting me... and frankly, I don't like it. And I am aware that there is a--"

"Er, it's OK Ginny. Sir? Could I just speak with her for a moment? Privately?" Harry had an idea.

"--war on. That is perfectly all right with me, lad... I have always been a patient wiza--"

"Thanks."

Harry led Ginny away a few feet. He asked her softly, "Do you have your galleon?"

"What? Even if I did have one, I would not pay that much just to get to Hogwarts--"

"No, not a real one. The galleon from the DA. Do you have yours?"

The old man seemed to be humming something, as thought to brighten the spirits of the dreadful night.

He sang under his breath, "...off to see the Wizard... the wonderful Wizard of Oz, because, because, because, because, because...! Because of the wonderful things he does..."

"Yes, I have mine." She had been rummaging through her robes as Harry listened to the man sing. It gave him an idea.

"Good."

They walked back over to the man, and Harry handed him the two fake galleons, hoping that he would not know the difference. He said to the man, "You Muggle-born too?"

Ginny looked at him curiously, wondering whether he'd gone insane or had a plan.

"Er... yes, why?" said the man, rather uncomfortably.

"The song. The Wizard of Oz. I forget, how long ago did that come out?" Harry asked, innocently.

"Oh, that was... round the start of the war, wasn't it? ... nineteen... thirty-nine I think. Six years ago, then, yes. I don't know why... but frankly, I just love those Muggle films." He started to hum again, the sound sounding eerily out-of-place.

"Me, too," Harry lied. Truth was, he'd never actually gone to the cinema. The Dursleys would never take him.

They climbed aboard the bus, and Harry realised--as he saw the numerous beds spread across the floor--that the conductor must have been rather gullible to believe that there had been some accident that had sent them here, as it was the middle of the night. Unless

it had been an Astronomy accident, of course.

"What, was that Harry? The Wizard of Oz? Who?"

"It's a film," said Harry, hoping that perhaps she'd heard of the concept from Mr Weasley. "From nineteen thirty-nine, apparently--now we know what year we're in. Nineteen forty-five. There was some fiftieth-anniversary thing when I was nine, you know, and Aunt Petunia almost had a heart attack when she saw Dudley singing along to 'We're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz,' in the living room." She chuckled at that, to cover her incomprehension.

"You should see it sometime," Harry said quietly as an afterthought, and they sat down on two of the last beds, towards the end of the bus, and it BANGed back to wherever it had been before.