Yesterday's Tomorrow

Yesterday's Tomorrow
Potter47
~ Part One ~
The Shadow of Death "Yesterday, a shaft of light cut into the darkness...."
~ John F. Kennedy ~ Chapter Two ~
Sunlight's Shadow

Harry sat now at the kitchen table of number four, Privet Drive, and he wondered how he had gotten there.

He stood and furrowed his brow. Had he not just been in the twins' room at the Burrow? How on earth was he back at Privet Drive?

All of a sudden, Dudley came charging into the room like he always did (well, always did when he was going for the fridge) and Harry opened his mouth to speak--but he was silenced when Dudley did not even look at him as he went by. Harry was used to being ignored by the Dursleys, but not quite so much as this.

Harry spoke now: "Dudley?"

Dudley still did not look up. The large boy grinned as he flung open the refrigerator door, a manic glint in his eyes.

Harry walked over to him, confused, and waved his arm in front of Dudley's face--nope, still no reaction. It was as if Harry wasn't even there...the feeling was quite familiar, actually.

Harry had felt this feeling three times before--on each of his visits into a Pensieve, and in his second year when he was taken into Riddle's diary. Harry could see the people around him, but they could not see Harry.

He wasn't really there--or at least...that's what Harry suspected.

"Dudley!" admonished Aunt Petunia distractedly, walking into the room. "You know you're on a diet, popkin..." She did not protest further, but instead walked over to the sink and peered out the window above it. "I heard something was funny up at number eight..." she said, and Dudley clearly could not hear her; his head was fully in the fridge, and Harry had a feeling he'd got it stuck. Harry's theory was confirmed when Dudley started to shake roughly to get himself free.

"Perhaps she's finally walked out on that rotted husband of hers...could have caused a big scene..." continued Petunia, reaching her neck as long as it could go.

Harry wondered again as to why he was here. Even if he wasn't really here, he was still there, and he must have gotten there somehow. He remembered suddenly that Petunia was at the Burrow, in bed, and that this must have happened hours, if not days ago.

Yesterday, perhaps.

Harry walked over to his aunt, whose head was up right by the window, looking distinctly giraffe-like. Harry followed her gaze, out the window, and thought that surely she couldn't see anything from here; the view was completely blocked by number six.

He was about to sit back down, when he felt a very odd feeling, one that was distant...yes, distantly familiar. But he thought it should have felt more familiar. Did that make any sense? No, he didn't think so...

This feeling intensified slowly and painfully inside of Harry. He found himself walking quite briskly--really almost running--towards the front door. The doorknob would not open at first, and Harry felt a pain in the back of his head that he could not place. Harry struggled with the doorknob for another minute before backing up slightly, and charging the door with his elbow.

Why did he do that?

Harry, who had too late anticipated a sharp pain in his arm, was quite surprised when the door opened quite easily, and he could not remember if he had felt it against his shoulder or not.

Instead of the familiar sight of Privet Drive, Harry found himself surrounded by light, by white mist, or fog, or something like it. He could see only three or so feet in front of him, and as he began to walk, this three feet came with him.

Harry suddenly felt a great need to reach the end of this mist--perhaps claustrophobia, but Harry had never felt that before. No--he simply had to find out what was at the end of it.

He kept walking, kept walking, kept walking until his feet felt sore, and just as he thought the mist would never end, it came to an abrupt--

--stop.

Harry looked back round; the mist was right there, as if an invisible wall was keeping it in place. It stood perfectly vertical, expanding to the left and right for what seemed like miles. It towered above him, extending high into the sky.

A moment ago, when Harry had been in the mist, there had been no end in sight--and yet here it stopped. Harry looked forward once again, and saw that he stood now on Grimmauld Place, just in front of number twelve.

Harry wondered what he was doing there.

Harry noticed now that it was inexplicably bright on this street, and a particular shaft of sunlight fell on the doorstep of number twelve. Harry thought it looked out of place--that house always had had a...dark air about it, and the brightness was just...wrong.

Harry took a step, to move closer to the house, (and to Sirius within it, for surely he was in there), but as soon as his foot touched the pavement, Harry found himself on Privet Drive once again, with the feeling inside of him intensified considerably.

Harry found himself running. Running down the street, right down the middle of the road, not caring to move to the sidewalk. He ran full out, and he didn't know why. Petunia had been wrong--something was wrong, yes, but not at number eight. It was further up, much further. Harry kept his eyes on the pavement in front of him as he ran, not looking up, and he realised it would be quite horrible if a car decided to come down this street now. But he didn't stop, or move, or anything.

Harry kept running, kept running, kept running until his knees felt as if they were about to unhinge themselves. He slowed and eventually stopped right at the end of Privet Drive, and finally looked up. The sight that greeted him he could only identify with one past experience, but that paled in comparison just the same.

Swarming above Harry, in front of him, and to the sides, were what seemed innumerable Dementors. Thousands, he thought, but surely that number was crazy? There couldn't be a thousand Dementors--there hadn't been nearly that many at the end of his third year...but then, the Dementors had not revolted yet, had they?

Harry's eyes widened in disbelief as he took in the sight, and without another thought he began to run right back the other way.

The mist was back, but only the tail end of it, apparently, for Harry was in front of number twelve, Grimmauld Place before he knew it.

He kept running, however, up to the door and right through it. But had it been open?

The door slammed behind Harry, and Sirius's mother began screaming and screeching, but Harry could not hear the words--in fact, when he turned to the painting, it wasn't Mrs Black at all, but Aunt Petunia, in the kitchen of number four Privet Drive, and Harry was sitting in the chair once again, as he had been before everything had started, just watching.

Harry began to feel quite dizzy from all this jumping around.

Petunia was screaming and screeching because the Dementors were coming, she could see them out the window, and Harry thought for a moment that it was odd that she could see them--the house was in the way, he had seen it before--but that wasn't important.

"Diddy! Vernon! We've got to--" Petunia finally said, after a long while of inarticulate screeches.

"We don't have to do anything," said Uncle Vernon, and Harry spun round to see that Vernon was at the table, sipping his tea--it struck Harry as vaguely odd that the man wore a chicken suit, "because Potter isn't here. Everything is perfectly normal, thank you very much, and nothing could possibly be wrong. Bwa-bwaaak!"

Harry blinked. Had his uncle just...clucked?

"But the Dementors are coming!" shouted Petunia in a panic, and Dudley suddenly oinked in fear.

Oinked in fear?

"Snnort...snonort...not those things, oink!" said Dudley, dressed quite handsomely as a large pink pig.

Harry blinked several times. Something had to be wrong with his eyes--why would his uncle and cousin be dressed as farm animals? It made even less sense than some of the things he'd heard out of Luna Lovegood's mouth, and that was saying something.

"The dementoid-whatsits?" said Vernon. "No, they only came for the boy. We're perfectly safe." Vernon ruffled his feathers.

"But they're right there!" said Petunia, pointing at the window, and as Harry looked out he did saw the Dementors, yes, but he was suddenly at Hogwarts by the lake, and as they reached the lakeshore, they saw why -- Sirius had turned back into a man. He was crouched on all fours, his hands over his head.

"Nooo," he moaned. "Noooo...please...."

And then Harry saw them. Dementors, at least a hundred of them, gliding in a black mass around the lake towards them. He spun around, the familiar, icy cold penetrating his insides, fog starting to obscure his vision; more were appearing out of the darkness on every side; they were encircling them....

"Hermione, think of something happy!" Harry yelled, raising his wand, blinking furiously to try and clear his vision, shaking his head to rid it of the faint screaming that had started inside it.

I'm going to live with my godfather. I'm leaving the Dursleys.

And it was almost true--for though he wasn't going to live with his godfather, Harry was no longer at Privet Drive; he was back at Grimmauld Place, right inside the door.

"Harry," said Sirius, standing in the shadows, hands up over his eyes. "Would you mind shutting the door? It's bright out there. I can't stand the sunshine, sometimes...guess I got used to the dark, you know?" He grinned at Harry as the latter shut the door, but Harry suddenly remembered the door slamming shut. How had it opened again? Had someone else come in?

Sirius grinned again and put an arm round Harry's shoulders. "That's better, isn't it? Now, what brings you here? I thought you were at the Burrow."

"So did I," said Harry, and he let out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding.

"Something wrong?" Sirius asked. "Hey, let's go down to the kitchen, eh? You must be starved from all that running." He smirked. "I should know, right?"

"Sure," said Harry, relieved that something seemed right at last. Sirius was right; he was just right. Everything had felt wrong since he'd first been in the kitchen of Privet Drive, but now everything was back to normal. Sirius could help him figure out what had happened...how he'd gotten here, what he was supposed to do...

Yes, Sirius could help him.

And so Sirius led Harry down to the basement kitchen. Harry sat down at the table, and Sirius asked, "What do you want to eat? I'm quite the cook, you know--can make anything you want, except for...Chinese, French, Indonesian, Japanese...all sorts of others...and Italian. I've never had any luck with those. Especially Italian."

Harry laughed. It felt good to laugh, and the grin on Sirius's face, seeing Harry laugh, was just...it seemed to be pure bliss.

Harry missed Sirius. To actually see him in person, that is; not through a fire, not through a mirror. To actually know he was right there, tangible and real. For the first time in what seemed to have been hours, Harry's head wasn't spinning.

"So what's it gonna be?" Sirius asked. "I don't have all day, you know."

"How 'bout just cereal?" said Harry. "Cereal's fine."

"Cereal it is then," said Sirius. "I've always liked cereal...especially the name: 'cereal.' Just sounds great, doesn't it? Has such a ring to it."

And Harry laughed again. It seemed he'd laugh at anything today, and he liked that. It had been so long since he'd been able to just laugh, and...it had been so long since a lot of things, hadn't it?

"So," said Sirius, "how are you and Ginny doing? Any good snogging lately?"

Harry turned bright red, as scarlet as blood (which, he figured, was what was making his face red). "How can you say that like that?" he wondered out loud. He shook his head. "I could never just say that. Say Ron had a girlfriend--I could never just say that to him--to anyone."

"Your father could," said Sirius, sounding a bit wistful. "Oh, he'd say stuff like that all the time--you think I'm funny? (Apparently very much so, today.) Besides, you're not answering the question."

Sirius put down a bowl and spoon, and opened several cabinets in search of the cereal.

"Do you really expect me to answer that?" said Harry very quietly, and Sirius shook his head in laughter.

"Of course not--but, since you didn't just say 'No way!', I'll assume you have had some good snogging lately." And Harry, if possible, turned even redder.

"You know, I miss real cereal," said Sirius. "When Arthur was here for so long, he brought all these Muggle ones, and I haven't had any real Wizard cereal since before...well, you know. Seriously, though--what kind of cereals are these?" Sirius took one out after another, to reveal brightly coloured cartoon boxes. "Trix? Count Chocula? Lucky Charms? That doesn't even look like a leprechaun..."

"I'll take the Lucky Charms," said Harry. "I could use some of them nowadays."

"Sure," said Sirius. "Whatever you say."

Sirius now opened the refrigerator--Harry had just noticed that there was a refrigerator. which looked slightly out of place--for the milk, and Harry saw a blood-red substance inside it, some sort of potion.

"What's that?" Harry asked, pointing.

"What's what?"

"The red stuff."

"Oh, that--" Sirius cleared his throat, handing the milk to Harry. "Just some medicine, I--"

"Medicine?" Harry said. "What are you taking medicine for?"

"Nothing, nothing serious," said Sirius, shaking his head. "Don't worry about it."

Harry watched his godfather suspiciously while he ate his cereal, and he didn't actually taste it at all; not even the marshmallows.

"You done?" said Sirius when Harry had eaten the last marshmallow from the now-scented milk. Harry nodded and Sirius took the bowl from in front of him, and walked behind Harry to put it in the sink.

In another moment, Harry noticed the silence. He could not hear Sirius at all, not his footsteps, not his voice, not even his breathing. He turned round--Sirius wasn't there, he was gone, he had disappeared.

Vanished.

Harry stood, and lo! he was in Privet Drive again, standing by the kitchen table. Petunia was screaming, and two Dementors were hovering over Vernon and Dudley, both of whom were out of their costumes. Just as both lowered their hoods, a great bang! sounded and a great scarlet bird appeared by Petunia. Somehow, it seemed, she knew what she had to do; she grabbed hold of the tail feathers, and appeared to steel herself.

Quickly, Harry moved over and grabbed the tail feathers himself, and in a moment both of them were gone, reappearing in the front lawn of the Burrow. Petunia ran for the door, screaming, and Harry watched her go.

He was inside the Burrow now, laying down on a bed--was it Ginny's?--as an annoying song blasted in his ear. He stood, ran down the stairs, and flung open the front door, and--

--he was in Grimmauld Place, flinging open that front door. Standing on the doorstep was Bellatrix Lestrange, and she was grinning evilly. In her hands was a large bucket of water, which she now tossed atop Harry, who began to melt, slowly and painfully, bit by bit.

"I'm melting! I'm melting!" he couldn't help but say, and there was an odd, grim humour in the words, even as he became nothing more than a puddle.

"FILTHY HALF-BLOODS! FOULING MY BEAUTIFUL CARPETS WITH THEIR GOO!" screamed Mrs Black's portrait.

"Shut up!" said Sirius, stepping over Harry and peering down at him with an appraising look. "Well," he said, "I've always liked the word 'goo', haven't you?"

Harry, who somehow could still see, now saw the grinning Bellatrix Lestrange push Sirius out the door. He fell in a graceful arc, into the unnaturally bright sunlight, and was gone, he had disappeared.

Vanished.

And Bellatrix Lestrange laughed, laughed her evil laugh, before kneeling down by Harry and scooping him up into a glass jar. She sealed the jar, and grinned at Harry's swirling form.

"My Master will be pleased," she said to him, and she tucked him into her robes, and his eyes snapped open.