Free Will and Fate

The Minister stood from his chair by the fireplace when they walked in. Instinctively, Hermione stepped closer to Harry, clasping his hand tightly in hers. Dumbledore eyed them both, his cool gaze taking in every detail from their clasped hands to the way Harry took a step forward and moved just slightly in front of Hermione. All three ignored the stares from other students who found the Minister waiting to speak to a student unusual at the very least. Harry began to walk forward cautiously, unsure of what to say when he caught sight of Dumbledore's sober expression.

"Pro--Minister. I wasn't sure if you--"

"We'll need to speak elsewhere, Mr. Potter," Dumbledore said, his voice even. With a swish of dark blue robes, he stepped past the two students and began making his way towards the portrait hole behind them.

Hermione squeezed his hand reassuringly and they turned to go back outside the room. As they stepped over the threshold again, Dumbledore gave Hermione a sharp look.

"Miss Granger, I don't believe your presence will be needed for our discussion."

Before Hermione could respond, Harry said, "I need her with me. She's going to help me tell you everything. And she's going to make sure nothing happens to me."

Hermione looked at him, surprised.

"Ah," the older wizard said. "Professor McGonagall said you were having trouble trusting anyone. I have to say, the feeling is mutual, Mr. Potter." Harry's eyes widened. "I shall permit her presence. For now." With that, he turned and walked down the hall, down a flight of stairs and the next corridor, stopping outside the closest empty classroom. He waited for both students to proceed him inside, then followed. Dumbledore waved an open palm at the door. It slammed shut and sealed itself with a squelching sound and a faint white glow.

Harry stopped breathing momentarily. It now felt as if they were trapped. He could feel Hermione start to tremble as Dumbledore turned and approached them. He sat at one of the tables in the front of the room. Hermione and Harry stood just in front of the teacher's desk, facing him. Wordlessly, Dumbledore conjured two chairs in front of himself and motioned for the two of them to sit.

Pulling Hermione forward, Harry sat in one of the stiff-backed chairs, at a loss as to where to begin his story.

As if reading his mind, Dumbledore said, "Perhaps it would be best to explain exactly how you obtained a Time-Turner."

Harry blinked in surprise. "I didn't steal it or anything. I didn't even use it on purpose the first time. I--"
"Didn't get permission," Dumbledore finished for him. "I remember your excuse from the other day. A fairly creative way to evade the effects of Veritaserum without telling a lie. I expect to hear your story from the beginning."

From when Voldemort killed my parents? Harry thought.

"Pardon me, sir," Hermione began. "But the story is rather complicated and...long."

Dumbledore leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers on top of the table in front of him. "I am sure Mr. Potter will find the time to explain everything if it means avoiding Azkaban. Dinner can be brought in. Beds if necessary," Dumbledore said, raising one eyebrow. "Whenever you are ready, Mr. Potter."

Hermione squeezed his hand again and he shot her a grateful look.

"I'm going to start by saying none of this is going to make any sense. You'll know why, of course," Harry said. Dumbledore nodded but said nothing. "The first time, I used the Time-Turner accidentally. I changed something in my past. Something big. The second time was my attempt to get back to the right date, which did not go as planned." Harry had to stop himself from visibly flinching at the understatement.

"Go on, Harry," Hermione said. "I'll help you if you need me to."

He nodded and looked Dumbledore in the eye as he said, "The year I turned one, Voldemort killed my parents."

At this, Dumbledore sat up straight in his seat. His eyes narrowed on Harry's face as he continued.

"He was after me. I've never heard a full explanation for why he tried to kill me, but I suspect it was because of a prophecy that had been made."

Dumbledore turned pale and leaned back in his chair again, the corners of his mouth turned down in a slight frown.

"I was raised by my mom's sister Petunia and her husband, both Muggles. They told me my parents died in a car crash. I had no idea I was a wizard until Hagrid delivered my Letter." In response to the question in Dumbledore's eyes, Harry added, "My uncle Vernon kept throwing away the Letters."

"At the beginning of the school year, you'd asked Hagrid to remove the Philosopher's Stone from a vault at Gringotts because of rumors about Voldemort. You were right, there was a break-in at the bank not too long after. It was hidden in the school and several teachers put protections around it to guard it. Voldemort possessed Professor Quirrell and made several attempts that year to steal the Stone."

Dumbledore had raised both eyebrows at this last, but remained silent.

"On his last attempt, I, Hermione and Ron Weasley set out to steal the Stone before he could get it. I managed to get the Stone and Quirrell tried to steal it from me. Contact with my skin made his burn and when Voldemort left his body, the combination of the two killed him. The way he reacted to touching me, it had something to do with my mother's protection before she died and the scar Voldemort gave me." Harry lifted his hair, but he didn't need to. He knew from experience Dumbledore's sharp eyes took in everything.

"My second year at Hogwarts, Ginny Weasley was given a diary containing a memory of Tom Riddle. The diary possessed her--"

"Wait," Dumbledore interrupted. "Did you say his memory possessed her?"

Harry nodded. "It forced her to open the Chamber of Secrets and unleash a Basilisk into the castle. Several people were Petrified, but no one died because they hadn't looked it in the eye directly. Hagrid was taken to Azkaban because he'd been framed when the Chamber was opened before, and Lucius Malfoy threatened the Board of Governors into removing you as Headmaster." Dumbledore's eyebrows were so high at this point, they looked to disappear under his hat.

"In the end, Ginny was taken into the Chamber so Riddle could drain her life and become human. He also hoped to lure me down there so he could kill me. Hermione had been Petrified, so Ron and I went into the Chamber--"

Dumbledore interrupted again. "I'm sorry, did you say you know where the Chamber's entrance is?"

"Yes," Harry responded. "The bank of sinks in the second floor girls' bathroom." Hermione gasped. "You have to use Parseltongue to get it open." Preempting Dumbledore's next question, Harry said, "Voldemort gave me some of his powers when he attacked me. Now that I think about it, wouldn't Neville have different abilities too?"

"I told you, I've never seen anything unusual around him," Hermione said.

"Maybe he's never had the opportunity to display any powers," Harry suggested. "I had no idea speaking Parseltongue was anything unusual until Draco set a snake on me during a duel."

"So you know Neville and his parents were attacked?" Dumbledore asked.

"In this reality, yes." Harry paused to let that sink in. "Ron and I went down into the Chamber with Professor Lockhart--he was teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts that year--but he turned on us. Turns out he'd never done any of the stuff in his books and was scared to fight the monster." There was another gasp from Hermione. He hadn't told her this either.

"He tried using a Memory Charm on me--same as he'd done the wizards who actually lived the stories in his books--and it backfired because he was using Ron's broken wand. He ended up losing his memory permanently and had to stay in the Janus Thickey Ward at St. Mungo's. There was a cave-in after the charm backfired and I had to go into the rest of the Chamber by myself. Fawkes brought me the Sorting Hat, which gave me Gryffindor's sword and I killed the Basilisk with it. I had gotten a fang stuck in my arm and Fawkes healed me with his tears."

At this point Hermione was squeezing his hand so hard, it was starting to grow cold from lack of circulation. He gave her a long look and jiggled his hand in hers. With a concentrated effort, she relaxed.

"Then I used the fang to stab the diary, which kept Tom's memory from killing Ginny Weasley. Later on, with the help of his house-elf, I figured out Lucius Malfoy was the one who'd slipped Ginny the diary while we were shopping in Diagon Alley."

Harry stopped to take a deep breath. Dumbledore was showing no signs that he believed the story so far, but he wasn't showing any that he didn't believe a word of it either. That, at least, was mildly encouraging. The Minister waved his wand and two bottles of butterbeer and a small glass of firewhiskey appeared, hovering in the air. Hermione and Harry took a bottle each and Harry swigged his drink down his parched throat gratefully. When he was finished, Dumbledore refilled it with a quick flick of his wand and Harry continued.

"Third year was a little less eventful. Over the summer, Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban and everyone thought he would be coming after me. He'd been falsely convicted of killing Peter Pettigrew and twelve Muggles after Pettigrew betrayed my parents as their Secret Keeper. He escaped after he saw a picture of Pettigrew in his rat form and realized he'd faked his death. Dementors surrounded Hogwarts the entire year looking for Sirius and Professor Lupin--"

"Remus Lupin?"

Harry nodded. "He had to show me how to do the Patronus Charm because the Dementors kept coming after me. In the end, Pettigrew was caught, but escaped, Sirius went on the run again and Professor Lupin quit when Snape let it slip that he was a werewolf. Oh, and Sirius escaped the Dementor's kiss after you gave Hermione and me permission to use a Time-Turner. She already had one for class and knew the rules."

"And did not teach them to you," Dumbledore commented. Harry didn't respond to this. Maybe he still had a chance to talk his way out of jail. He didn't want to blow it by getting too defensive.

"Fourth year, Hogwarts hosted the Triwizard Tournament." Harry thought of the events of that year and shook his head. "To make a long story much shorter, you'd hired Alastor Moody to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, but just before school started, Barty Crouch, Jr. took Moody's place by using Polyjuice Potion and keeping him alive in a trunk all year. He Confunded the Goblet of Fire to make me a fourth Champion and spent all year arranging for me to get hints for each task so I would have a good chance of winning.

"At the last minute, he turned the Cup into a Portkey. When Cedric Diggory and I touched it together, it took us to a graveyard where Voldemort was waiting with Pettigrew. Voldemort was...he was in a small, kind of deformed body at that point. He had Cedric killed immediately and used Pettigrew's hand, one of his father's bones, and my blood to create a new body for himself. Those were the last three ingredients, at least. He said using my blood allowed him to touch me where he couldn't before, it made him stronger. Then he forced me to duel with him surrounded by Death Eaters. I barely escaped and brought Cedric's body back with me.

"When I told you what happened, after you exposed the fake Moody, you--" Harry stopped. He didn't want to say almost looked happy, but that was the truth of it. "You told everyone Cedric had been killed by Voldemort, including Minister Fudge who refused to believe it. I think you also reformed the Order of the Phoenix around the same time, but I don't know because you refused to tell me anything. All summer," Harry added.

Dumbledore nodded for him to continue.

"Fudge was worried that you were scaring everyone purposely because you were after his job, so he put pressure on the Daily Prophet to paint you as a senile old fool and me as a crazy attention-seeker. People who didn't know how I'd gotten into the Tournament believed what was written about me. By the time school started, everyone here and most of the public believed I might have killed Cedric to win the Tournament and used Voldemort as an excuse and that your believing my story was proof that you'd gone around the bend yourself. He succeeded in getting you demoted from Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and a few other things. There was even a campaign to discredit me further from within the Ministry. Two Dementors came after me and my cousin Dudley in Little Whinging and I was put on trial for using a Patronus to defend both of us. I would've been expelled before school began if it wasn't for you," Harry said.

"Fifth year." Harry sighed. "You were having trouble finding a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher by then, so Fudge passed an educational decree, the first of several that year, allowing the Ministry to appoint teachers to unfilled positions. He appointed Senior Undersecretary Dolores Umbridge as the new teacher. At Fudge's order, she changed the class syllabus to a theoretical knowledge and refused to teach us defensive spells. Ron, Hermione and I formed a group we named Defense Association. Most of the time we called it Dumbledore's Army."

Another brow raise from Dumbledore in response to this.

"I was teaching everyone who wanted to learn real defense. Umbridge started me out with two weeks of detention when I openly challenged the Ministry's story that Cedric's death was simply an accident. She made me write in my own blood." Harry leaned forward then and showed Dumbledore the hand not holding his butterbeer, watching the older wizard's face change from stoic to shocked as he saw the physical evidence of Harry's story. "When she caught the D.A. meeting, she told Fudge it was evidence you were plotting against him and you left the school to avoid being put in Azkaban."

Harry sat back in his chair and sighed. This was the hard part of his story. The part that had forced him to make his decision in the Ministry Atrium. "Voldemort had been sending me visions in my dreams. I had been having strange dreams of true things for a while, but it wasn't until the summer before fifth year that he was sending them deliberately. Before that, he had no idea our minds were connected. I had no idea the visions were real until I saw Arthur Weasley being attacked by a snake in the Department of Mysteries. You asked Snape to teach me Occlumency." Harry decided to leave out the part about being the snake at the time. It all sounded strange enough coming out at once.

"I never got the hang of Occlumency, partly because Snape wasn't really making an effort with me," he said bitterly. "During exams, Voldemort sent me a vision of my godfather being tortured in the Hall of Prophecy. I thought it was real and I went there with some D.A. members to save him. There were Death Eaters there, Bellatrix Lestrange and Lucius Malfoy among them. I had been tricked so they could get their hands on the prophecy for Voldemort. I heard some of it, so I know it had to do with some power I'm supposed to have, but I don't really know what that could be." He searched Dumbledore's face for a clue, but the Minister was showing no expression as he listened to this part of the story. Harry took a long sip from his drink before continuing.

"There was a battle as the Death Eaters chased us around the Department of Mysteries." Harry stopped and licked his dry lips. This was where the story got sticky. "Sometime during the fight, a cabinet got broken, a Time-Turner fell in my lap and I was hit with several spells at once. I passed out. When I woke up, I had gone back in time to 1981, to the night before my parents would be murdered." Dumbledore refilled Harry's butterbeer again and he took a long swallow. Hermione squeezed his hand.

"I--I went to Godric's Hollow and left a note for my parents warning them what would happen to them." Harry stopped talking as Dumbledore set his tumbler on the desk, his normally searching eyes narrowed.

"What do you mean, you left a note? That's not possible," Dumbledore said.

"The Fidelius Charm," Hermione said. "Harry was included because--"

"That's not what he meant, Hermione." Harry sat and waited for Dumbledore to catch on to what he'd already figured out, that Snape had taken credit to get back into his mother's good graces after he'd lost her friendship years before. "I wrote them a letter," Harry said. "I knew that the Longbottoms were going to be tortured by the Lestranges and Barty Crouch, Jr., so I asked my parents to warn them too." His eyes began to burn and he blinked away the sudden tears.

"I just wanted to fix everything. All the people that had died or been hurt..." He shook his head slowly before continuing. "I waited to make sure my parents got the note and escaped to safety, then I went back to the Ministry and attempted to go back to June of next year. Obviously, that didn't happen. I couldn't get the Time-Turner to work anymore, so I came to Hogwarts to ask for help from you or Professor McGonagall. That was last Sunday night."

Dumbledore sat staring at Harry for a long moment. "I see now why McGonagall had doubts about you."

"I could take a truth serum. Again."

"He told me the entire story while he had the Veritaserum in his system," Hermione said. "If it helps."

"It does indeed, Miss Granger. But I can tell that both of you are telling the truth without it. For the most part," Dumbledore said.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked. "I can prove whatever you think isn't true."

"Ah, now we come to the reason for such blatant honesty. How do you propose to prove it?"

"If--if you can show me how to use a Pensieve, I can give you every memory you have questions about. Anything you need."

"Anything to stay out of Azkaban," Dumbledore responded. "In some respects, you've raised more questions than you've answered." He sipped his drink and eyed Harry over the rim of the glass. "What about the attack?"

"I'm sorry?"

"The attack that landed your modern counterpart in St. Mungo's. What do you know about that?"

Harry nearly choked on his drink. He exchanged a panicked glance with Hermione. "So, I am in the hospital? How serious is it?"

"Serious enough that I had to sit in on your first talk with Professor McGonagall. I had to be sure you weren't the attacker," he said. "You are currently suffering from an illness caused by an unknown curse. The same that killed your father 10 years ago."