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Chapter Text

The battle rages on, but Harry can’t hear it. All he can hear are his own harsh breaths catching painfully in his throat with every inhale and the quiet whispers from the tattered veil that has already resumed its tranquil rippling, as if nothing has passed through it at all. His feet propel him towards the centre of the room of their own accord, heedless of the spells that whiz past his ears.

He has a vague awareness of a hand catching his wrist and pulling him into a firm embrace, of words being shouted into his ear, but he can’t spare a thought to anything but fighting the grasp that keeps him from getting to the archway.

If only Harry can get to the archway, he’ll be able to reach through it to where Sirius waits just on the other side, and the man will give Harry a wild grin as they rejoin the fight together. He thrashes once more against the arms holding him back, but they only tighten further. Harry snarls wordlessly over his shoulder at the one restraining him, meeting startled, sorrowful amber eyes.

Lupin.

Why is Lupin stopping him from getting to Sirius? Can’t he see that he must be just on the other side of the curtain, winded from his fall, waiting for Harry to come and offer a hand to help him up? Doesn’t he realise that any second now, the slow undulations of the fabric will be disturbed once more, and Sirius will stumble through with breathless laughter spilling from his lips?

Harry’s struggles weaken with every moment that passes without Sirius’ reappearance, and finally, he goes limp in Lupin’s hold, letting himself be dragged back out of the paths of flying curses and into the shadows that line the edges of the room. Lupin relaxes his grip, turning Harry to face him but keeping his hands on Harry’s shoulders as if afraid he’ll try to make a break for it again.

Harry is helpless to do anything but look up into the pity that lines Lupin’s face, the anguish that turns the corners of his mouth down and coats his eyes with the shine of unshed tears. Lupin’s voice wavers when he speaks.

“You couldn’t have done anything, Harry, it was too late. There’s nothing you can do. He’s–”

“Dead.”

If Harry hadn’t felt the word scrape its way up his throat, he wouldn’t have known he was the one to say it. He can’t stop himself from looking back towards the veil, and he knows that if he allowed himself to focus on the whispers that emanate from its fabric, he would now hear Sirius’ voice among them. He feels Lupin’s grasp on his shoulders slacken further, senses his gaze following Harry’s to the centre of the room.

To the centre of the room, and then past it to where Bellatrix Lestrange stands tall amidst the duelling forces, staring straight back at Harry with a goading smile on her face.

Harry can feel Lupin try to regain his hold on him, but it’s too late – Harry is already off, hurtling down the stone steps and across the room in pursuit of Bellatrix. She races up the stairs ahead of him and through a door, mad laughter echoing in her wake. Harry lets his instincts guide him across the battlefield, ducking and weaving through the spellfire that ricochets in every direction. He hears a faint call of his name from Lupin as he reaches the door, but he pays it no mind, focused entirely on the cackle emanating from the darkened room.

The second after Harry bursts through the door, a shower of rust-coloured sparks hits it, slamming it shut behind him. Whipping around to face the source of the spell, he sees Bellatrix’s silhouette outlined in light from another doorway.

“Petrificus Totalus!” Harry shouts, but she slips into the next room before his spell can make contact, and it splashes harmlessly against the far wall.

In the back of his mind, Harry registers that he must be in the room Luna was talking about earlier, with the planets. He races across the dark space towards where Bellatrix vanished, pushing himself to run even faster when he feels his body getting lighter and his footsteps propelling him farther into the air than should be possible. In three more massive strides, he crosses the threshold into the next room, stumbling at the sudden restoration of normal gravity and blinking rapidly to adjust his vision to the sparkling brightness that tells him that he is, once again, in the Room of Time.

But there is no sign of Bellatrix.

Harry steps away from the door cautiously and closes it behind him. To his right, the bell jar still holds its glittery wind and bizarrely ageing hummingbird, and he can also see the door off to the left that he knows leads back to the Department of Mysteries’ dark, spinning antechamber.

He takes another step forward, drawing even with the first row of desks, and then nearly jumps out of his skin when every clock in the room – of which there are many – chimes midnight at once, forming a deafening cacophony that has him desperately squeezing his hands over his ears.

Then, in the silent moment after the last clock’s final toll, Bellatrix strikes. She shimmers into sight sitting on one of the desks to Harry’s left, swinging her legs back and forth gleefully, and then she is stalking forward, sending curse after curse towards him with negligent flicks of her wand. It’s all Harry can do to throw up a hasty Protego, and still, he can feel the way the shield trembles under the vicious onslaught. It shatters with only three spells, and he hastily replaces it, stumbling backwards towards the bell jar as Bellatrix advances. His second shield also breaks in less than a minute, so he casts a third, tiring rapidly, but it seems he doesn’t need it – the barrage of curses has stopped.

Harry blinks in confusion. Bellatrix is still grinning at him, but she makes no move to resume casting, just starts twirling her wand through her fingers casually. The shimmer of his shield between them warps his vision, causing her features to distort grotesquely. He stares, but when seconds pass and all remains quiet, he moves his feet into a more stable stance. Bellatrix’s grin widens. He drops his shield.

“Expelliarmus!”

Batting away the spell like it’s a fly, Bellatrix cackles in glee.

“Itty bitty Potter is mad, is he?”

She shoots a putrid fuchsia bolt of magic too fast for him to block or dodge, and it hits his cheek, leaving a searing wound.

“Not so scary now, no he isn’t. Weak and pathetic, gullible, getting his godfather killed–”

“YOU KILLED HIM!”

Harry’s spells crash against Bellatrix’s shield, but it holds firm, and she pouts at him, unfazed by the attack.

“That I did,” she coos in her horrible baby voice, “but he wouldn’t have even been here if it weren’t for how worried a certain someone gets about him… It was the easiest thing in the world for my Lord to send you that vision, and just as he predicted, you showed up to save the day…”

Harry forces more power into his spells, barely bothering to say the incantations aloud, just letting the magic pour through his wand at the deranged witch.

“And you brought your little friends, too! Oh, I was so happy when I saw them. More treats for me… I’m sure that, after I have captured the precious saviour for him, my Lord will gladly allow me to do as I wish with the rest. I’m especially looking forward to the Longbottom boy – he looks just like his mother, you know? Mmm… I wonder if he screams like her, too?”

Neville.

Harry sees, in his mind’s eye, Neville’s bloodied face and wide eyes. He sees the bubble-gum wrapper that Neville had slipped quietly into his pocket in St. Mungo’s, the love and pain on his face when he thanked his mum. He sees the words of the Daily Prophet article, Bellatrix’s photo smirking in black and white above them… convicted of the torture and permanent incapacitation of Frank and Alice Longbottom.

He sees red.

“Crucio.”

Bellatrix’s eyes widen, and then she is screaming, her knees giving out and the back of her head hitting the floor with a crack. She writhes under Harry’s wand. For a long moment, all he can think is– no one else. She took Sirius, she can’t take anyone else.

But it is only for a moment. Harry sees the way her spine arches in agony, hears the way her screams bounce off the walls, feels the way his magic sings with her pain, and he stumbles back. He wrenches his wand away. Bellatrix slumps, panting, and then she pushes herself up onto her elbows, slowly getting to her feet. Harry takes an unconscious step away when he sees the leer on her face.

“Well, isn’t this a lovely surprise,” she purrs, all traces of the mocking, childish tone long gone. Her voice is hoarse from screaming, and her slow steps toward him are more of a stagger. “Not bad, for a first try, but you’ve still got a lot to learn… I suppose I’ll just have to teach you.”

Harry’s back hits a bookshelf, and he startles. His gaze shifts back and forth from the wand pointed at his chest to the dark satisfaction on Bellatrix’s face. He braces himself as she casts the spell in a reverent whisper.

Pain.

His head whips back, colliding with the shelves behind him, but that is less than an afterthought compared to the burn of the Cruciatus racing through him. He has forgotten, since that night in the graveyard a year ago, what it felt like. His skin is on fire, his heart pounds against his ribs like it wants to break them. When he sucks in a breath to scream, it is not air that fills his lungs, but razor blades. And then it’s over. He sags against the bookshelf, staying on his feet through sheer force of will. He barely flinches when a cutting curse hits him, slicing deep into his right shoulder; the pain of it is nothing compared to what he has just borne. The ringing in his ears slowly fades away, leaving only the sound of Bellatrix’s ranting.

“So little Potter wants to play, huh? Casts the torture curse and suddenly he’s all cocky, thinking that he can defeat me, that he can defeat the Dark Lord. Oh, what a precious thing! So naive, so damaged.” She flicks her wand, and Harry sails across the room, crashing like a ragdoll through the front of a glass-faced cabinet. The contents – a variety of vaguely hourglass-shaped trinkets – fall to the floor and shatter, sending up plumes of silvery dust that make his eyes itch and coat his throat when he inhales. Shards of glass fall from his back and dig into his palms when he tries to push himself off the ground. He knows that if he looks, he will find hundreds of tiny cuts covering his body.

Unable to force himself to his feet, Harry collapses onto his side, exhausted. He lets his eyelids fall shut so he won’t have to see Bellatrix’s maniacal grin, and wishes he could block out the crunch of her footsteps in the shattered glass that adorns the floor between them.

“Giving up, Potter?” she whispers into his ear. “I can’t say I blame you. I’m glad I could make it nice and painful for you, sweetheart. Just something for you to remember me by, something to tell my dear cousin about when you see him. Don’t worry, you won’t be separated for long… Avada Ke–”

“CRUCIO!”

Harry’s eyes fly open at the shout. There, in all his glory, stands Voldemort. His focus is not on Harry, however, but on Bellatrix, who is screaming on the ground once more. Endless seconds pass while the Dark Lord tortures his loyal follower, slitted nostrils flared with rage. Finally, finally, when Harry begins to think that the noise of the witch’s screeching will never stop, Voldemort ends the curse, and Bellatrix curls into a ball, sobbing.

Voldemort sweeps past Harry’s helpless form without a glance. He kicks Bellatrix onto her back, and she cowers away, muttering frantic apologies.

“You dare… ” hisses Voldemort, while Bellatrix shakes her head forcefully. “You dare presume to take what is rightfully mine?”

“No, my Lord! I would never– I couldn’t possibly–”

“Silence.”

Bellatrix whimpers, but holds her tongue. Voldemort turns away from her shuddering form, making eye contact with Harry at last. His scar erupts in pain, but before Voldemort can take more than one step towards him, a bright, warm flash of light fills the room, bringing with it the sound of phoenix song; Dumbledore has arrived. Harry can’t move his head to see the man, but a moment later, Voldemort no longer stands above Bellatrix’s shuddering body, and the sounds of battle resume.

Fawkes lands before Harry, crimson feathers shining with the colours of reflected spellfire. The bird greets Harry with a soft, melodic warble, his eyes wise and sad, and Harry has the strangest feeling that Fawkes knows what he’s done to Bellatrix. He sighs, eyelids fluttering shut, awaiting the phoenix’s judgement.

Harry nearly sobs when he feels the first tear drop onto his cheek. The bird continues singing as he heals Harry, a gentle, mournful tune that speaks of understanding. The noise of the fight fades into the background, and then disappears entirely, until the only thing Harry can hear is Fawkes’ song.

He’s so tired. He wants to sleep, but the brilliant golden light shining through his eyelids is making that impossible, and his scar is starting to ache again. He squints his eyes open and realises that the bright light does not, in fact, originate from the duelling wizards like he thought – it’s emanating from him. Fawkes is nowhere to be seen, the last echoes of his song fading from the room. The battle between Voldemort and Dumbledore has stopped. Both men are now in his field of view, and both are staring at him; Dumbledore in shock, Voldemort in what looks like fascination.

The ache in his scar grows into an insistent pull, and then grows even further, until it feels like something is trying to claw its way out of his forehead. He lets out a scream, the light grows blinding, and then he knows nothing more.

When Harry comes to, he is still in the Time Room, but it is different. The destruction caused by his duel with Bellatrix and the battle between Dumbledore and Voldemort is gone, along with the people themselves. The room has returned to the pristine condition it was in during Harry’s first trip through it. However, while before it was abandoned and empty, there’s now a lone figure working at one of the desks near the bell jar. The person wears a silvery-grey cloak that shines in the dancing light, but their hood is down around their shoulders, revealing a head of short, dirty-blond hair.

As Harry watches, the figure gets up from the desk and turns to grab a book from one of the shelves, allowing Harry to see his face in profile. He looks vaguely familiar, but Harry can’t remember where he’s seen him before.

Harry must have made a sound, because the wizard flinches and looks towards him sharply. When he sees Harry lying on the floor, covered in broken glass, blood, and who knows what else, his eyes widen. He hurries over, his wand appearing in his hand. The last thing Harry processes before his eyes close again is the feeling of being lifted into someone’s arms.

After what feels like only moments, he’s set down somewhat roughly on the floor of a different room. Indistinct voices are conversing above him. He groans, curling into himself, and the noise stops. He feels a hand press against his shoulder and, too weak to resist, he lets himself be turned onto his back. There, crouching next to him with an expression of slight concern, is the man from the Time Room. But he is no longer alone.

Tom Riddle stands on Harry’s other side, his appearance caught somewhere between the handsome looks of his sixteen-year-old self and the pale, serpentine visage that Harry associates with Voldemort. He sees the man’s lips forming words, but he is too exhausted, too confused, to tell what’s being said.

“Tom…” Harry rasps. He coughs, and tries again. “Tom Riddle?”

Riddle’s scarlet eyes narrow. This time, when he speaks, Harry understands.

“I think not. I’ll ask again: who are you?”

It’s too late, though. Harry is unconscious once more.

Chapter Text

The room in which Harry wakes is unfamiliar. The ornate canopy of the four-poster bed he lies in is slightly out of focus, and the soft sheets beneath him wrinkle when he reaches up to adjust his crooked glasses.

“I see you’re awake at last.”

Harry startles into motion, turning towards the source of the voice even as he scrambles away, falling off the bed and pressing his back into a corner. The sight of Tom Riddle, looking all too human sitting with one ankle crossed over the other and his chin propped up on a fist, causes the memories to come rushing back.

“You,” Harry whispers, shrinking even further into the corner of the room.

“Me,” the man agrees calmly. “However, you’ve made it clear that we both know who I am. The question now is how, exactly, you came by that information.” With those words, his voice turns dangerously cold, and Harry swears that the temperature of the room drops a few degrees as well. He shivers, eyes darting around in a desperate search for an exit, and makes himself respond in hopes of stalling long enough to find a way to get out.

“What did you do? Why am I here?”

“I believe I was the first to ask a question. You will receive no answers until you provide some.”

“You didn’t actually ask any questions,” Harry retorts thoughtlessly, then winces. He probably shouldn’t backtalk the Dark Lord. Having examined the room thoroughly enough to determine that there are no obvious escape routes, he returns his attention to the man sitting in the chair in front of him.

Riddle’s face is completely neutral, with no indication of anger, which Harry finds odd. After how Voldemort acted in the graveyard last year, any display of emotional stability strikes Harry as somewhat uncharacteristic. He would’ve honestly expected to be screaming under the Cruciatus by now. Actually, he would’ve expected not to have woken up at all after being captured by Voldemort. Harry frowns, unnerved by the situation, but decides to hold his tongue until he figures out what’s going on. After only a minute of wary silence, Riddle exhales in a sharp gust.

“Who are you?”

All notions of holding his tongue immediately flee Harry’s brain, and he leans forward with a scowl.

“What do you mean, who am I? Did your new look come with amnesia, or something? You know who I am.”

“I assure you, I do not. Which is why I find it curious–” Riddle’s eyes glint with some undecipherable emotion– “that you know so much about me.”

Slumping back against the wall, Harry bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from responding. Riddle tilts his head slightly to the side, but seems to get the message that Harry won’t be saying any more at the moment.

He stands up in a fluid motion and draws his yew wand, ignoring Harry’s flinch, only to cast a silent vanishing spell at his chair. A section of the wall opposite Harry’s corner begins to shimmer as he draws near, and a door appears. Harry is on his feet the moment Riddle exits, but the door has shimmered back out of existence before he takes two steps towards it. Regardless, he approaches and runs his hands over the space the door inhabited, but feels only smooth wallpaper. He strikes it with one of his fists and lets his forehead rest against the unyielding barrier as the frustration sinks in. Half a second later, he recoils from the sudden rippling of the wallpaper beneath his touch. He watches in shock as the door reforms right in front of him, then lunges for the handle before it can disappear once more. Despite his fears to the contrary, it turns easily, and he yanks the door open only to take several wary steps backward upon seeing what awaits him on the other side.

The Unspeakable who brought him to Riddle stands there with his hand outstretched, the handle presumably ripped from his grasp when Harry threw open the door. There’s a beat where the two do nothing but stare at each other, but then the man strides into the room. Harry stumbles back in an attempt to keep space between them, but only manages to trip himself and end up on the floor again.

The man – likely a Death Eater, it would explain why Harry has the feeling he’s seen him somewhere before – offers Harry a hand up. When it is met with nothing but suspicion, he shrugs and pulls out his wand. Oblivious to Harry’s intense gaze, the man conjures a chair for himself and slumps down into it with a deep sigh.

“You really shouldn’t talk to him like that.”

Harry pushes himself to his feet while noting somewhat hysterically that the new chair is much less gaudy and ostentatious than the one Riddle had vanished.

“For your sake, I mean,” the man continues.

“I’ll keep it in mind.” The words are clipped short. Harry has no intention of making friendly conversation with the man who delivered him to a Dark Lord, no matter how much amnesia said Dark Lord is experiencing at the moment.

“Look, kid–”

“I’m not a kid.”

The Death Eater looks at him sceptically.

“Seriously? You can’t be more than fourteen.”

Harry’s indignation overrides his common sense – again. “Almost sixteen!”

He should probably work on that.

“Whatever you say, kid,” the man replies, but there’s a glint in his eyes that reminds Harry of Hermione when she finds a fact that’s been particularly elusive. He squints at the man suspiciously.

“My name’s Gus, by the way.”

Harry’s eyes narrow further. Even he can tell that this is some sort of probe for information, and he doesn’t want to let it work any more than it already has.

“Suit yourself, I suppose. I’ll just sit here and talk to myself. Would you like a glass of water, or anything?”

Harry’s eyes snap back to Gus’s hand as he draws his wand again, and he nods, his muscles tensing as the wand draws nearer, until–

“Nuh-uh!” Gus chuckles, holding his wand out of reach of Harry’s grasping fingers. “Not going to happen, kid, sorry. Nice try, though.”

Harry sits slowly down on the bed, arms crossed over his chest. He startles a bit when Gus mutters an Aguamenti and offers him the water with a smile on his face. It was originally just a ploy to get access to Gus’s wand, but now that Harry thinks about it, his throat really is very dry. He takes the water hesitantly and downs it in two large gulps, carefully setting the empty glass down on the nightstand when he’s done.

“What do you want?”

Gus looks very uncomfortable with Harry’s blank tone. “This isn’t some sort of exchange, you know. I’m not going to deny you food and water if you don’t tell me anything.”

Harry just stares at him, conveying his doubt.

“Merlin, kid, what kind of person do you think I am?!”

“The kind with a tattoo on his left arm and an extremely questionable moral compass, in my experience.”

“How– nevermind. Look, I know you’re probably confused and scared–”

Harry scoffs.

“–but I can help you, if you’ll help me in return. How about I ask some questions, and then you get to ask some back? You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to, but if you pass on a question, I get to ask a different one until we find one you’re willing to answer.”

“...Fine. But I get to go first.”

“Works for me. Go ahead.”

It occurs to Harry that he doesn’t know what to ask first. He casts his eyes around the room, and decides that it’s likely safest to start with the basics.

“Where am I?”

“An estate in Somerset, belonging to a powerful pureblood family. I’m afraid I can’t get any more specific than that – wards, you see.” Gus smiles wryly. “May I ask you a question, now?”

“I guess.”

“What is the last thing you remember before I found you?”

“Mostly just a lot of light. And pain. There was a fight, but I was hurt, so–”

“Where was this?”

“The Department of Mysteries.” Harry frowns at the man, confused. “You know this, you found me there.”

If Gus had a pad of paper and a pen, Harry thinks he would be scribbling down notes.

“You mentioned a fight. Who was fighting?”

“Dumbledore–”

“Albus Dumbledore?”

“Yes, of course. How many Dumbledores do you know?”

“...Of course. Continue.”

“Hold on, don’t I get to ask another question first? You’ve gotten at least three.”

Gus raises his eyebrows, but makes a gesture for Harry to go on.

“Right. Er…” Harry racks his brain for another safe question, but keeps circling back to the one that’s been at the forefront of his mind since the moment he awoke, unmurdered, to the sight of an eerily human-looking Dark Lord. “Does Voldemort really not know who I am?”

Gus flinches when Harry says the name, and his eyebrows climb even higher on his forehead.

“Should he?”

That startles an incredulous bark of laughter from Harry. He slouches back against the headboard and stares up at the canopy, mind racing with the implications of those words. Then a thought strikes him, and he jolts upright.

“You didn’t find anyone else, did you? When you found me?” His voice is strained with panic. “There would’ve been five others, about my age – two boys and three girls. Were they–”

“Sorry, kid. There was no one there but you.”

“But–”

“Believe me, I checked. One security breach was bad enough, I definitely would’ve noticed six.”

Harry stands abruptly and starts pacing. Gus’ words don’t make sense. Had the defences of the Department of Mysteries been disabled for the night, and only reactivated when everyone except Harry had left? He supposes that would explain how he and his friends were able to just walk right in, but it still begs the question of why they would’ve left Harry behind. Even if the Order was wholeheartedly defeated – which he doubts – there should’ve been signs of a struggle, some indication that anyone other than Harry was ever there.

Unless… Is this all some sort of trick? If they’re trying to make Harry let his guard down, they’ve chosen an odd way to go about it. What advantage could be gained by making Harry think that his friends abandoned him and Voldemort no longer knows who he is? What could their goal possibly be?

Well, Harry isn’t currently being tortured or killed, which is a marked improvement over previous encounters with Voldemort and his Death Eaters. He can’t fight back; he doesn’t have his wand. It might be in his best interest to just… play along. He goes back through the information that has been given to him so far.

Firstly, Voldemort supposedly has no idea who Harry is. Nor does ‘Gus’, who, while presumably both a Death Eater and a member of the notoriously reclusive Unspeakables, probably hasn’t been living so thoroughly under a rock that he managed to miss the events of the last decade and a half. Secondly, Voldemort is disturbingly human-looking, complete with nose and hair and skin that is, while not the epitome of health, a far cry from the scaly nightmare it was before. Thirdly, Harry was the only one in the Department of Mysteries last night. Gus found him alone and unconscious in the Time Room.

Time.

It’s almost too simple, but Harry can hear an echo of Hermione’s voice lecturing him about Occam’s Razor. He stops pacing and turns to face Gus, who is watching him with something like bemusement.

“What’s today’s date?”

The Death Eater’s laugh is short and wondering. “You are a sharp one, aren’t you, kid?” Harry glares, and Gus holds up his hands in mock surrender. “Fine, fine. It’s the first of August.”

They want him to think he’s travelled a month and a half, then. Or maybe ten and a half months; Harry’s never heard of anything that could bring someone forward in time. He pushes down the satisfaction that wells up at the confirmation of his theory and realises there’s still one more piece of the puzzle missing.

“The year?”

“Nineteen eighty.”

Harry feels like he’s been struck; all the air leaves his lungs and he sways backward, his muscles no longer working to keep him upright. He squeezes his eyes shut as tight as he can and drowns the tiny sliver of hope in his chest that maybe it isn’t a trick with the wave of anger that rushes over him. It’s all he can do to stop himself from launching himself at Gus and going to kill the Dark Lord right that moment, wand or not. He breathes in; he breathes out. He breathes in again. He opens his eyes.

Gus is still sitting before him with open curiosity on his face. Harry wonders what he’d have to do to get the man to break his act, debates following through with his first instinct and lunging at the man for being so blasé. Instead, he sits down on the edge of the bed with a thud and buries his head in his hands to hide the rioting emotions he’s sure are written all over his face.

When he finally looks up, Gus is gone.

Harry is left alone long enough for him to triple-check the room he is in for anything he might be able to use to escape and come to the conclusion, three times, that there is nothing. On the surface, the room appears to be a relatively normal (if ostentatious) bedroom. With closer inspection, however, Harry discovers that the books on the shelves are all written in languages he doesn’t understand, the drawers of the desk are all locked, and there isn’t even anything remotely sharp he could stick up his sleeve and use as a weapon. He is in the midst of an attempt to break a leg off of the wooden bedframe – a splintered piece of wood is better than nothing – when he spots, out of the corner of his eye, the shimmer that precedes the appearance of the door.

Sure enough, Gus walks into the room a second later and beckons Harry over. He complies, albeit cautiously, but slows to a halt when Gus steps back out of the room and holds the door open for Harry to follow. The man sighs.

“C’mon, kid, I’m not gonna bite.”

“Where are we going?” Harry asks, even as he edges past Gus into the hallway beyond.

“The Dark Lord wants to see you.”

“He what,” Harry spits, recoiling as if he’s been burned. “No way.”

“Look, he isn’t going to hurt you–”

“That’d be a new and interesting experience.”

“–he just wants to talk,” Gus finishes, turning to face Harry once he realises that he has no intention of moving. Harry gives himself one, two, three deep breaths, and then resolves to play along with the charade for as long as it takes.

“What could he possibly want to talk about?” asks Harry, letting a thread of panic bleed into his voice. “He has no idea who I am.”

“Exactly,” Gus says gently, taking Harry by the arm and guiding him down the hallway. “And yet you not only know him, you also know his birth name, which he keeps firmly under wraps.”

“I…” Harry trails off. That’s a good point, and he knows it. He curses his half-asleep, shock-stricken brain for saying Riddle’s name earlier, but it’s too late to take it back now. He’ll just have to roll with it – say nothing of importance, even if it’s already known, and most importantly, play along.

They make their way up a flight of stairs, and the decor becomes more ostentatious – in line with what Harry imagines Malfoy’s house might look like. The floors change from stone to a dark, richly coloured wood, containing no breaks in the pattern of the wood grain, as if the length of the entire hallway was paved with a cross section of a single massive tree. The walls are papered in blue and covered in portraits that Harry can feel his eyes shying away from – some form of concealment charm, no doubt. The ceilings are high, causing their footsteps to echo in a way that puts Harry on edge.

After countless turns that Harry doesn’t even attempt to keep track of, they arrive at a door. It is relatively unremarkable, but when it swings open on silent hinges, he can see that it leads into the room he was first brought to after Gus took him from the Department of Mysteries. And there, standing at the head of the long rectangular table beside a chair so ornate that it might as well be called a throne, is Tom Riddle.

It’s strange to know that this is what the man must’ve looked like before his original defeat. It’s also strange to consider the amount of effort that must’ve gone into this scheme. For Harry, Voldemort is and always will be the skeletal, serpentine being that rose from the cauldron that night in the graveyard. That man and the man who killed his parents are one and the same. He wouldn’t have thought twice about it if Voldemort had appeared before him in all his snake-faced glory, claiming to be from the eighties. Of course he’s realised, intellectually, that something must’ve come between the handsome sixteen-year-old memory stored in the diary and the monster with which he is most familiar. Seeing Riddle standing before him, however – cheeks sunken, skin pale and a bit waxy, but otherwise undeniably, uncomfortably human – is a whole different experience.

Harry doesn’t realise he’s staring until Gus nudges him into the room, closing the door behind them with a quiet click. He sends the man a panicked glance, but gets no sympathy this time – only a prompting nod toward the Dark-Lord-shaped elephant in the room, who has been studying him just as intently in return.

“Well? I believe you owe me an explanation, little time traveller.”

“I don’t owe you shit,” Harry snaps back. Then he bites his tongue and stares at the ground. So much for not backtalking the Dark Lord.

When he hears Riddle move, he flinches back, but instead of flinging a curse as Harry expected, the man just steps away from the throne and approaches the two of them. Harry glares into his eyes – still red, at least that hasn’t changed – before remembering his disastrous Occlumency lessons and shifting his gaze to the bridge of Riddle’s nose. Which is present and accounted for, something that is kind of weirding him out.

Riddle stops a few feet away. He studies Harry’s face for a moment, then seems to have a silent conversation with Gus over Harry’s shoulder. When he speaks again, it’s not in the high, cold voice that Harry is familiar with, but a low tone, almost coaxing, that makes Harry all the more wary.

“What do you know of prophecies?”

Harry stiffens, recalling the battle that took place mere hours earlier. He hadn’t had the time to think much on it then – a little busy fighting for his life, thank you very much – but now… the memory resurfaces of a dusty glass sphere in his grip, of demands for him to hand over the prophecy before someone gets hurt… The taunts of the Death Eaters, mocking him with hints at the knowledge that had been hidden from him, the knowledge of why his parents had died…

“Nothing.”

“Really?” Riddle says, but it sounds like a statement, not a question. “Well then, little time traveller, let me enlighten you. A prophecy is a glimpse into the future, provided by a seer. All record of them is kept under lock and key in the Department of Mysteries, inaccessible to all but those who work there. Unless, of course, you are lucky enough to witness the prophecy firsthand… which is exactly what one of my loyal servants did.”

He pauses – for input or for dramatic effect, Harry doesn’t know which.

“You see, there is a prophecy pertaining to myself, the Dark Lord. It speaks of one with the power to vanquish me… Quite the conundrum, is it not? I had, at first, thought it referred to a child not yet born, but now I see how the words could’ve been misinterpreted. It was wise of Augustus, here, to bring you to me once he made the connection… Wise of me, as well, to entrust him with the words of the prophecy that he has thus far been unable to retrieve for me.” With this, Riddle sends a dark look at the man standing behind Harry.

“The prophecy speaks of a child born as the seventh month dies… Or does it? It’s a dangerous thing, the spoken word. So many misunderstandings can be caused, so many mistaken assumptions formed. Augustus, in a–” he sneers– “rare moment of competence, realised upon your arrival that perhaps the prophecy did not refer to one who is born, but one who is borne.”

Harry must look exceedingly confused, because Gus nudges him from behind and, ignoring his jump of fright – he had almost forgotten the other man’s presence – whispers into his ear: “Borne, with an ‘e’ on the end. It means carried, or maybe delivered. Sort of.”

The explanation seems half-hearted, and only eases Harry’s befuddlement on the most basic level. It doesn’t make sense for Voldemort to be telling him all this. The desperate, hysterical feeling of surreality still roils in his gut, making him want to scream and bash his head into a wall, but he manages a shaky nod of acknowledgement.

“So, little time traveller , when you arrived last night, as the seventh month met its end… Landing in the Department of Mysteries, who have thrice denied me the right to see my prophecy… Well, there is no other conclusion I could’ve reached, is there?”

Riddle steps forward once more, his expression blank, and moves his hand slowly towards Harry’s face. Harry has no choice but to allow it. His escape route is blocked by the Death Eater standing behind him, so he stands stock-still, squinting his eyes shut and bracing himself for the pain that always accompanies Voldemort’s touch.

It doesn’t come.

His scar lies dormant as Riddle tilts his chin upwards with one finger – not even a twinge, much less the searing agony that shot through it in the graveyard last year. His eyes shoot open in surprise, and he meets Riddle’s crimson gaze.

“It seems that you, little time traveller, are the other subject of my prophecy.”

Harry is shaking his head, dislodging Riddle’s hold on his chin, before the man finishes his sentence.

“I’m not.” Because that seems like it would lead to ending up very dead, very quickly.

“Oh, really?” Riddle asks, one eyebrow lifting in condescension. “And how do I know you’re not just saying this to save your own skin?”

“I guess you’re just going to have to trust me.”

Riddle’s handsome face twists into an expression that Harry might’ve found funny if he wasn’t so utterly terrified.

“Take him back,” he orders, and Harry is pulled quickly from the room by a wide-eyed Gus.

“Merlin, kid, you have one hell of a death wish.” The man looks like he just watched his life – or Harry’s – flash before his eyes.

“Yeah, thanks a lot for the help back there,” Harry retorts as he tugs his arm out of the Death Eater’s grasp. “Augustus.” He knows, now, why the man looks familiar – his picture was next to Bellatrix Lestrange’s above the article about the Azkaban breakout. Rookwood, he recalls, convicted of sharing Ministry secrets; although the man in front of him appears to be in much better health than the one in the photograph, it’s undoubtedly him.

The Death Eater grimaces. “Just Gus, please. The only ones to call me Augustus are the Dark Lord and my mum.” He snorts, probably realising the absurdity of that statement.

They say nothing more to each other during their trip through the labyrinthine hallways, but Harry can tell that Gus is brimming with questions from the way he keeps glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. Harry keeps his gaze fixed firmly ahead, which is the only reason he realises that the path they are on is not the one they took to get to the throne room. Gus is leading him somewhere else.

“I thought you were supposed to take me back to the other room?”

Gus gives him a considering look. “Well, he didn’t say that, did he? I figure it’s in the best interest of your health to remove you from my lord’s vicinity, so I’m taking you back to the Department of Mysteries instead.”

Harry narrows his eyes. “Why would you disobey your lord for my sake?”

“Not disobeying,” Gus corrects. “I’d say it’s more like an… alternative interpretation.”

“Right,” Harry scoffs. As if any of Voldemort’s cronies would dare consider one of his orders as ‘up for interpretation’. Gus does seem to have more spine than all the Death Eaters from the graveyard put together, but Harry thinks it’s still more likely Riddle took Gus aside beforehand and told him his true intentions so Gus could pretend it was his idea and become more trustworthy in Harry’s eyes. Harry is determined not to let it work.

The hallway widens into a foyer, at least two stories tall with marble columns stretching up towards the vaulted ceiling. Staircases frame the room to the left and right, but in the centre of the opposite wall, where Harry would expect the front door to be, there is instead a hearth so large that even Hagrid could step inside without stooping. A wide, shallow bowl filled with glittering Floo Powder rests atop a small table to one side. Gus stops next to it and draws his wand, casting something that creates an incomprehensible jumble of smoky letters in the air. Once he waves the smoke away, he scoops up some Floo Powder and tosses it into the grate.

Against the backdrop of roaring emerald fire, the Death Eater becomes little more than a silhouette with one hand outstretched. Harry hesitates, casts one more glance around the room, but then places his hand in Gus’ and steps into the flames with the thought that no matter where the man takes him, it has to be an improvement, if only by virtue of being farther away from the Dark Lord.

Gus shouts “Parsimony!” and they’re gone.

Chapter Text

Harry stumbles out of the fireplace, coughing violently and cursing his seemingly innate aversion to any form of magical transportation other than flying. Gus steps forward to slap him on the back a couple times, which does actually help, but Harry waves him away as soon as he catches his breath – the whole ‘Death Eater who captured him and brought him to be the prisoner of the Dark Lord’ thing is still something he’s bitter about, and quite reasonably, in his opinion.

Gus, oblivious to Harry’s uncharitable thoughts, grins and gestures him towards the door that is the only feature of the room other than the massive fireplace Harry came out of. As soon as he crosses the threshold, Harry is overwhelmed by noise and movement.

They stand in an unfamiliar room that must be at least the size of the Great Hall at Hogwarts, and filled with just as much conversation. The ceiling above them is obscured with clouds, but not in the same way as the Great Hall, which is enchanted to seem roofless, open to the sky above – no, this room is simply so large that Harry wouldn’t be surprised if it had naturally developed its own weather system.

Dozens of platforms, each at a different altitude, are scattered haphazardly around the room. Some connect to the floor via spiral staircases, some with ladders of varying credibility, and some don’t appear attached at all, drifting around and occasionally ricocheting when they collide with another platform or the wall. About half the platforms carry people, but they are far outnumbered by the population at ground level.

Everywhere Harry looks, he sees people in heated debate, people rushing across the floor with their silver robes flapping in their wake, people waving their wands about in intricate patterns, people entering the room through one door and exiting through another just as quickly. Odd flashes of light and bursts of colour overlap in constant competition for his attention, and at least every thirty seconds, there’s a bang! or a pop! or, once, a quack! nearly loud enough to deafen him.

“Welcome to the Courtroom!” Gus crows jovially, eyes alight with glee. “It’s a bit of a pun – this is where all the trials happen, you see. All inventions, concoctions, and spells in development get tested here. We used to use the actual courtrooms down on Level Ten, but, well… the less said about that, the better.”

Harry nods mutely. Could this really all be fake? It would be impractical, to say the least, for Voldemort to set up a whole replica of the Department of Mysteries, complete with false Unspeakables, just to convince Harry that they were in the year 1980. Then again, this is the same person who orchestrated an entire international tournament in order to get Harry to his resurrection party, so maybe it’s not that far-fetched.

And what’s the alternative? That he has travelled back in time more than fifteen years? Everything he’d ever learned about time travel – every lecture Hermione scattered throughout their third-year misadventures – indicated that such a thing was impossible, but here he is.

When he has to break into an awkward half-jog to catch up to the man who has begun to wander away, still talking his head off, Harry realises that keeping up with Gus’ introductory tour is a good idea either way. Whether it’s because he should stay close to the only empathetic Death Eater he’s ever met or because he’s actually going to need the information Gus is giving him is something that can be resolved later.

“This next one is my personal favourite,” Gus says, leading Harry on a winding path across the floor of the Courtroom to a door on the far wall. He pushes the door open on a familiar sight: the dark room with planets floating about, through which Harry had chased Bellatrix just before his time-travelling incident. With a clearer state of mind, Harry can admit that it is quite a mesmerising tableau: each planet seems to dance to its own rhythm, and they never quite touch, however much it sometimes seems like they’re about to. Unlike during Harry’s unauthorised previous visit, there are small glowing orbs scattered around that provide enough light to make out the features of each planet and the forms of the people hovering alongside them.

Two of the people, upon seeing Harry and Gus enter the room, point their wands straight up and fire off a spell that sends them sailing downwards, coming to a gentle stop just above the ground. The man who had been sitting on the rings of Saturn reaches them first, a mild frown deepening the lines on his face. A younger man with spiky brown hair runs up a second later and gives Harry a curious smile.

“Who’s this, Rookwood?” the older man asks. “You didn’t cave to Knight and finally get yourself an intern, did you? Because you know what I keep telling you, they’re more trouble than they’re worth.” Behind his back, the spiky-haired man – the intern, presumably – rolls his eyes.

Gus shakes his head fondly. “Not yet. I think her mind is elsewhere at the moment – quite possibly on another world, in fact,” he jokes, nodding towards a stern-looking woman who is examining Neptune so closely her nose is brushing its clouds.

“Yes, I did think he looked a little young,” the man replies, turning his frown on Harry. “What’s your name, son?”

Harry tears his gaze away from the intern’s. “Er-”

“I’m afraid he can’t tell you that,” says Gus, his smile fading for the first time since they’d arrived at the Department of Mysteries. “He’s not an intern, he’s a project. One of Croaker’s, now. I’m only transport.”

“Croaker’s? You don’t say?” the man asks, his interest audible, while Harry mouths the word ‘project’ with a scowl. “Well, I’m sure–”

Gus cuts him off. “We do have to get going, actually – Croaker was expecting us ten minutes ago, and you know how he loathes people wasting his time.” He pulls Harry away from the curious duo abruptly, taking long strides and tugging on Harry’s arm whenever he slows down to look back. Harry gets one last glimpse of the pair as the door shuts behind him and makes eye contact with the intern, who is still staring at him even though his mentor has turned away and started walking back towards Saturn.

“Sorry about that,” Gus mutters, sounding sheepish and slightly out of breath. “I forget how Obie gets, sometimes. Clever as anything, but he’s like a dog with a bone when he senses a mystery.” He huffs. “It’s no wonder the Department snatched him up, really.”

“Who was that?” Harry asks, eyes still on the closed door.

“That was Obie – short for Oberon. Oberon Brahe. He’s the unofficial right hand of Phoebe Knight, who you saw–” here he makes a vague gesture upwards. “She takes the lead on space projects, usually.”

“No, I–” Harry stammers. “I meant his… intern?”

“Oh.” Gus looks confused for a second, but then his eyes light up and his grin returns full-force. “Oh! Of course, his intern. Well, I’m not sure about his first name, he only started earlier this month – graduated from Hogwarts in June. But his last name is Sullivan, if Obie’s shouting is any indication. It’s always ‘Sullivan, don’t do this,’ ‘Sullivan, don’t do that,’ ‘Sullivan, Mercury had better still be in one piece when I get over there.’” He leans in conspiratorially and whispers: “Bit of a troublemaker, that one.”

“Right…” Harry glances back again, the back of his neck still prickling with the man’s stare even though he knows there’s a closed door between them. It hadn’t felt malicious, but it had been odd – it almost reminded him of the way Ginny used to look at him back when they first met, before she had gotten over her hero-worship. If he is in the past, free from his unfortunate notoriety, what could provoke such a reaction from someone he’s pretty sure he’s never even heard of?

He resolves to keep an eye on the intern – Sullivan, apparently – and then absently notes that this room is not one he recognises before his eyes catch on a figure with long dirty-blonde hair that he would recognise anywhere.

“Luna?” He whispers. His legs start moving, and he’s leaving Gus behind without acknowledging the man’s puzzled noise. The figure turns a corner out of sight, and he starts running.

“Luna! LUNA–”

The woman turns to face Harry just before he catches her arm, and it’s the polite confusion on her face that dashes his hopes before any of her features do… because she does look remarkably similar to Harry’s peculiar friend.

“It’s Pandora,” the woman corrects gently, “but I have always loved that name. Luna.”

Gus catches up then, panting a bit from the run. He takes in Harry’s stunned expression in an instant and claps him on the shoulder, drawing the attention of the woman who can only be Luna’s mother.

“Sorry about that, Lovegood, just a project for Croaker here. He doesn’t mean anything by it,” Gus says, doing a wonderful job of pretending he hadn’t completely missed what ‘it’ was.

“Yes…” There’s a calculating expression on Pandora’s face that Harry had never seen on Luna’s, but it quickly fades into an enigmatic smile that is painfully familiar. “I’ll take over from here,” she decides, somehow looping her arm over Harry’s shoulders and breaking Gus’s grip on him all at once.

“But–”

“Croaker will assign him to me anyways,” she says flippantly, and departs without another word, taking Harry with her and leaving Gus gaping behind them.

As soon as they are out of the man’s line of sight, Pandora spins Harry to face her and examines his face intensely. He tries to shrink back, uncomfortable with the inspection, but her hands on his upper arms keep him in place. Whatever she finds must appease her, though, because she relaxes and lets go of him after a few short seconds.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Harry responds automatically, only to grimace when her brows raise sceptically. “Well, not fine, but…” He doesn’t know what he should and shouldn’t say to this woman. She may be Luna’s mother, but he doesn’t truly know anything about her; as far as he can remember, Luna had only ever mentioned her father. He’d never wondered about that before, but now he does.

He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes, suddenly exhausted. Everything has been happening so fast since he received that vision during his History of Magic exam, and he just needs some time to sit down and process. Pandora seems to read it in his expression, because she takes his arm again and leads him further down the hallway. They stop at one of the doors lining the walls, and Pandora ushers him inside.

The office space they step into is cluttered and a bit cramped, with piles of papers and books covering every available surface – even the seat of the desk chair. Pandora quickly changes that by scooping up everything on the chair and plopping it down in a patch of clear floor space. She then drags the chair over to where Harry stands and transfigures it into a simple mattress with a wave of her wand.

“Here you go, then. I bet you’re starving – I’ll go get you some food. Feel free to take a nap, no one will disturb you here.”

“Wait–” Harry starts, but Pandora is already out the door. Slowly, he sinks down to sit on the edge of the mattress, only to get right back up upon realising that there’s no way he’ll be able to sleep. He’s tired, yes, but there’s still the aftermath of adrenaline buzzing through him, preventing him from dropping his guard. Not to mention his ever-present curiosity – or as Snape would say, his insatiable need to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong. He steps up to one of the overflowing bookshelves and peruses the titles there.

He hesitates over Animagi: Unleashing the Animal Within, but a dull pulse of grief forces his search onwards. Eventually, he pulls out a thick volume with Predicting the Unpredictable emblazoned upon its spine and sits down with it, thinking wryly that it might be able to help him with these situations he always seems to find himself caught up in – if not to avoid them, then at least to see them coming.

About a half hour later, Harry has made it through the introduction to the text via the power of sheer incredulity – it turns out not to be a practical guide as he had assumed, but a highly theoretical treatise on predicting electrical storms with a bastardised combination of divination and muggle technology. He hasn’t been in muggle school since he was ten years old, and even he knows that’s not how extension cords work.

He’s still deliberating whether or not it’s worth it to indulge his morbid curiosity and start the first chapter of the book when Pandora returns, a metal tray floating behind her. When it sets itself down on the desk, Harry sees that it carries a plain sandwich and a tea set, complete with two cups and a tin of biscuits.

“There weren’t many options to choose from – I had a hard enough time scrounging this much up,” Pandora says crossly, “what with the experiments some people do on our lunch meats–” She notices the suspicion with which Harry is regarding the sandwich. “Oh, I checked this one thoroughly.”

She looks around for a place to sit, then seems to remember she had transfigured her only chair and plops down on the floor across from Harry. He sets down his book and picks up the sandwich cautiously. When it doesn’t spontaneously explode or show any other unexpected magical properties, he takes a bite. The first burst of flavours on his tongue reminds him just how hungry he is, and he devours the rest at a speed Ron would be proud of. Pandora eyes him with concern as he swallows the last few crumbs.

“I would offer to get you another,” she says, “but I think it’s probably better not to test our luck, don’t you?”

Harry nods. “I’m feeling much better. Thank you.”

A soft smile spreads across Pandora’s face, and she looks like she’s barely holding herself back from leaning over and ruffling his hair.

“Of course.”

The tea is poured in silence, and Harry is grateful for the time it gives him to gather his thoughts. Sitting with Pandora, Harry finds himself relaxing for what feels like the first time in days. Still, he jumps when there’s a knock at the office door, and tenses up again when Pandora stands to open it and he sees that it’s Gus on the other side.

“Honestly, Lovegood, I don’t know how Penrose puts up with your antics,” he scolds, but he looks like he’s resisting a smile. “You can’t just say things like that and walk off – Croaker isn’t even your supervisor!”

“Isn’t he?” says Pandora airily. “Well, I suppose we could always go ask him, just to make sure. You can come with us, if you’re up for it,” Pandora says to Harry as Gus splutters.

“I guess so,” Harry replies, standing up and placing the remaining biscuits down on the desk somewhat regretfully.

“Don’t worry, it’ll still be there later,” Pandora consoles when she sees how his eyes linger on the food as the three of them leave the office. “I’ll even show you where to get them on our way back from Croaker’s office! You’ll need to learn some detection spells, of course, but those are pretty easy to get the hang of.”

“Erm, I don’t exactly… have a wand,” Harry admits, unable to help his nervous glance at Gus. He’s pretty sure the man’s not going to attack him out of nowhere now that he knows he’s essentially defenceless, but he’s still wary. Pandora, however, seems to misinterpret the look, and stops in her tracks to glare at Gus.

“Augustus Rookwood, did you take the boy’s wand?”

“I swear, I didn’t!” Gus shrinks back. “He didn’t have one when I found him, so I just assumed it got left behind!”

The words feel like a stab in Harry’s gut, but he can’t say he had been expecting anything different. He imagines his friends, battle-weary and determined, following the path of destruction he and Bellatrix had carved through the Department of Mysteries to find nothing but a wand of holly and phoenix feather lying amongst shattered glass, and he has to look away. He follows the two Unspeakables blindly out of the hall of offices, trying to wrestle his emotions into submission and only looking up when they stop short in front of a closed door.

Pandora pulls Harry up to the door at her side and knocks, then opens the door without waiting for a response. The room beyond puts Pandora’s office to shame – it’s the messiest Harry has ever seen, and that’s saying something, considering he grew up with Dudley Dursley. There are papers strewn everywhere, and piles of books and scrolls, some taller than Harry, teeter on the brink of collapse. In the centre of the room, behind a mountain of paper products under which Harry assumes a desk is hidden, a man with a head of wild grey hair is scribbling furiously with a large quill, his nose almost touching the parchment.

“Hey there, Saul,” Pandora greets cheerfully. The man doesn’t look up from his work, but his quill stops moving for a moment.

“Hm?”

“I’ve got the new project, here,” she continues. “The one Rookwood found?”

“Mm-hm.” The scribbling picks back up. Pandora doesn’t seem bothered.

“I was hoping you would assign him to me–”

“Mm-hm.”

“Great!” Pandora grins at Harry, who smiles tentatively back. Gus looks from Pandora to Croaker and back again, then steps up to the desk and begins a protest, only to be interrupted by a long, drawn-out sigh from the man sitting behind it. With a finger to her lips in a sign for quiet, Pandora tugs Harry back out into the hallway, leaving Gus with Croaker.

“Now that that’s done with, I have something I think you’ll like.”

Harry almost has to jog to keep up with Pandora’s quick stride. They make their way back to the Courtroom, somehow – Harry can’t imagine ever being able to navigate this place with Pandora’s confidence – and then through a door tucked away in one of the corners into a storage closet the size of the Gryffindor Common Room. Pandora goes right for a drawer to the left of the doorway, at about waist height, and slides it open to reveal a row of wands.

There are eight total, in varying conditions – the second one to the right looks almost as bad as Ron’s had in second year, though without the tape – and as Harry steps closer, Pandora smiles.

“Not much of a selection, I’m afraid,” she says, “but we like to keep a few on hand in case of… accidents. Hopefully one of them will suit you well enough.”

He starts on the far left, with a short wand made of warm brown wood and a hilt that looks like tree bark. It doesn’t do anything when he picks it up, so he waves it around a bit, feeling foolish. Pandora coughs, and he stops to look at her.

“Try casting a spell, dear,” she says, lips twitching towards a smile. “Just something simple. These wands are used, so you won’t get the same effect as with the new ones in Ollivander’s.”

“But– the Trace?”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that here. The wards of the Department are state of the art, and even if they weren’t, you don’t technically exist. You can do all the magic you want, now.”

That’s a relief, but Harry doesn’t let it show on his face. He holds the wand up in front of him, focuses, and casts: “Lumos.”

A brief, sputtering light flares at the tip of the wand before going out.

“Not that one, then,” Pandora comments wryly. Harry grimaces and places the wand back in the drawer.

The next one isn’t any better, and leaves the tips of his fingers tingling like he’s been laying on top of his arm for too long. The third seems determined to blind him, no matter how much he tries to limit the power he puts into it, and the fourth feels so downright hostile that he puts it down without even trying to cast anything. The fifth is marginally promising, emitting a steady reddish glow, so he sets it aside before trying out the remaining three. He gets nothing out of the sixth – “We’re pretty sure that one’s just a stick someone snuck in here to mess with people, but no one’s ever had the heart to throw it out,” Pandora admits – and the last two are as ineffectual as the first.

He picks up the fifth one once more. It’s carved from dark wood in a slim, streamlined design, and it settles comfortably in his hand. When he casts again, it lights up with the same dull glow as before, but he manages to brighten it a fair amount by increasing his concentration. It’s not his holly wand – not by a long shot – but Harry thinks he can make it work. He goes to close the drawer containing the rest of the wands, but Pandora stops him in order to pluck out a scrap of paper that had been laying beneath Harry’s new wand.

“Black walnut and…” She squints at the paper. “Dragon heartstring. Two previous owners.” She places the scrap back in the drawer and slides it shut. “Of course, there’s no telling how many Unspeakables have used it as a spare since the Department got their hands on it, but…”

“Thank you, Pandora,” says Harry, a genuine smile on his face for the first time since he arrived in the past. “I really appreciate it.”

“Happy to help. Now come on, let’s see if we can find the food and teach you those detection spells before Rookwood escapes Croaker’s lecture.”

They make their winding way to the Department's cafeteria – thankfully empty, as they had missed the lunch rush – and Harry does his best to cast the charms Pandora says are standard for checking food for tampering. There’s a bit of an issue in that his new wand only works part of the time, and a failed spell looks exactly the same as a successful spell on something that’s safe to eat, but Harry grits his teeth and forces his magic out until he’s got it right ten times in a row, as verified by Pandora. He might end up turning into a canary at some point if he’s not concentrating hard enough, but such is life.

Harry learns it’s Friday when Pandora informs him that it’s almost the end of the work day, and she won’t be coming in tomorrow due to taking weekends off like most other Unspeakables. They finish eating, and then she’s dropping him back off at her office and heading out. He can hear other voices in the hallway once she leaves, but they eventually quiet down.

When he at last opens the door to Pandora’s office and steps out into the corridor, it’s eerily quiet. The only sounds he can hear are the beat of his heart and a faint, rhythmic clicking echoing down the hallway from his left. He spares one last glance to the office behind him and decides to follow the noise, leaving the door open behind him in case closing it would lock him out.

The clicking becomes louder as he pads down the hall and turns right. He discovers its source behind an unassuming door at the very end; knows where he has ended up as soon as the first traces of that glittering, silvery light spill through the cracked-open door.

Harry settles at the foot of the cabinet Bellatrix had thrown him into, his back against the legs of one of the Time Room’s many desks.

He’s in the past. It’s the only conclusion he can come to, faced with such overwhelming evidence. He’s almost sixteen years displaced in time, and somewhere out there, an alternate version of him is only a day old, probably sleeping soundly by his mother’s side. Everyone that he has lost – his parents, Cedric, Sirius – is still alive and oblivious to what is to come.

He feels the weight of the future, heavy on his shoulders, and decides that they shouldn’t have to ever know what fates befell their alternate selves. He will change things. For them, but also for the child that he himself never got to be, his family torn away from him all too soon.

There are half-formed plans already swirling through his mind, but he shuts them down. He can’t change things too soon – things could so easily spiral out of his control, and everything could end up even worse than it did the first time. It’s August 1st, 1980. Riddle has no reason to go after the Potters, now – he thinks Harry the time traveller is his prophesied counterpart, not Harry the newborn.

He has time.

In a manor in Somerset, the Dark Lord sits at a desk, his fingers steepled before him as he thinks. He is disturbed only by an owl that flies up to his open window, drops a newspaper on the sill, and flaps away just as fast. Voldemort summons the paper to his hand without a word and flips to the final page.

BIRTHS AND DEATHS

Flint On July 27th, to Tobias and Miriam, a sister for Marcus, Claudia.

Longbottom On July 30th, to Frank and Alice, a son, Neville.

Potter On July 31st, to James and Lily, a son, Harry.

He traces one finger down the list, tapping the page when he gets to the end. He could eliminate these threats immediately, it’s true. Perhaps he should – it does not do to tempt fate, especially when there is a prophecy involved.

Green eyes flash through his mind. Voldemort folds the paper back up and resumes his previous position, gazing off into the distance, deep in thought.

It would not do to be overly hasty, either.

He has time.

Chapter Text

Either Pandora was lying when she said that most Unspeakables only work weekdays, or there are more Unspeakables than Harry thought, because he spends a good portion of his weekend dodging curious questions. It seems that not even being in a place renowned for its secrecy can keep gossip from spreading like wildfire. It’s not nearly as bad as it was at Hogwarts – here, he at least knows that people are asking out of curiosity instead of greed or malice. That doesn’t mean it’s not awfully annoying, though. He does his best to avoid everyone, staying away from the Courtroom except for when he has to pass through it on his way to get food. He’s not in the mood to answer their questions – not when he has so many of his own.

Instead, he co-opts Pandora’s office and begins strategising.

In the Time Room on Friday night, Harry had assumed that Riddle was certain about Harry’s role as the other subject of the prophecy, but he’s been second-guessing that thought ever since. After all, there was nothing stopping the man from killing Harry when Gus first delivered him. If anything, Riddle’s ignorance of Harry’s identity should have made his death more likely. He considers that he’s still alive because Riddle wants to extract his knowledge of the future – berates himself again for giving so much away before he’d figured out what was going on – but dismisses the possibility, because no knowledge extraction of any sort is happening while he’s sequestered away in the Department of Mysteries.

Since he’s not dead, he can only assume Riddle is aware that he might not be the person that the prophecy refers to, which means the Potters are still in danger. He may not have changed anything yet. He’s not sure how he feels about that.

For lack of a better option, he decides to design his plans with the assumption that things would happen the way they did before. He is woefully short on information about the first war – most of what he knows came either in the form of overheard rumours or Sirius’ agitated ranting. Extricating a blank piece of parchment, a quill, and a bottle of ink from Pandora’s things, Harry sits down on the mattress and begins by writing down what he knows for sure.

Lily and James Potter die – Oct 31, 1981

He tears off that bit of parchment, uses a sticking charm to fasten it to the stone wall above him, and stares.

His parents are alive. They will be for the next fifteen months, and much longer than that if he has anything to say about it.

The scrap of parchment is moved to his far right as he adds more to his makeshift timeline. It’s frustratingly sparse, and he’s sure there’s a lot he’s forgetting, but his head is beginning to hurt with the effort of piecing together what little information he has. He only realises his eyes have drifted shut when he’s awoken by the sound of the office door opening.

He sits up, acting like he wasn’t just sprawled awkwardly across the transfigured mattress where he must’ve fallen asleep. Pandora stands in the doorway, the sleeves of her silvery cloak pushed up past her elbows and a neon green muggle tote bag slung over one shoulder. Harry blinks blearily at her.

“There you are! I was looking all over for you. I realised I must’ve forgotten to show you the bunkroom before I left on Friday, but I’m glad to see my transfiguration lasted you the weekend regardless.”

Once Harry stands up, she waves her wand at the mattress. It turns back into a desk chair, leaving several ragged scraps of parchment to drift to the floor. Harry flushes guiltily.

“Sorry for making such a mess.” He bends down to collect his notes, but Pandora waves him off.

“It’s no problem at all, I hardly ever set foot in here. I much prefer the larger rooms,” she reassures. “In fact, you can keep your work here if you’d like. I’ll clear some space for you later today.”

“Thanks.” Harry finishes picking up the parchment, to be polite. He catches a glimpse of the topmost one as he sets them aside, and it reminds him of something he thought of the night before.

“Do you happen to have a Pensieve here I could use? I’m trying to write down what I remember of the future, and apparently my memory’s not as good as I thought it was.”

Pandora’s eyes flick to the timeline on the wall behind him.

“A Pensieve? That’s a bit of an obscure request, but you’re in luck. I’ll show you where to go. But first–” she flashes a grin– “breakfast!”

A muffin is extricated from the tote bag and shoved into Harry’s hands. Pandora gets one out for herself as well, and they eat in comfortable silence. Once both muffins have been thoroughly devoured, Pandora casts one last lingering glance at his timeline with an inscrutable expression before leading him out into the hallway and locking the door behind them. Harry hurriedly backtracks towards the wall to avoid getting run over by a silver-cloaked individual chasing a small, furry gray blur.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to drop this off before we get caught up in anything else.” Pandora shrugs the shoulder that holds her eye-wateringly bright bag.

“Sure,” Harry responds. It’s not like he has anything better to do, and in the light of day, with so many Unspeakables around, he’s a bit more apprehensive about exploring than he was on Friday night. There’s now a much higher chance he’ll actually get caught if he ends up somewhere he’s not supposed to be – and, with the virtue of a couple nights of half-decent sleep, he can acknowledge that perhaps it hadn’t been the best idea to wander blindly in a place as full of potential dangers as the Department of Mysteries. The last time he tried that, after all, he’d ended up more than a decade displaced in time.

He follows Pandora down the hall and up a flight of stairs tucked into the corner, giving a curious look to a door they pass with a surface as smooth and shiny-black as spilled ink and resolving to ask about it later. On the next floor, the hallway is much wider, and it opens up into a small common area where the door leading to the Time Room would be if they were on the floor below. This is where Pandora leads him. The far wall is taken up by lockers of varying sizes, though each has a thin film of iridescence – like a soap bubble – covering the front of it in place of a door.

As Pandora chooses a locker and deposits her bag, Harry examines the rest of the room. Several mismatched couches are scattered around with no apparent rhyme nor reason, and on the wall opposite the lockers, there is a large blackboard. He only has enough time to read part of it – a rant about whoever keeps allowing books to be ruined by something referred to as the Mire, capital letter included – before Pandora comes up behind him.

“Alright, I’m finished here. I just realised, you probably still need a tour, don’t you?”

“A tour would be brilliant,” Harry admits. “Thanks.”

“It’s the least I could do, seeing as I interrupted your last one.”

Harry doesn’t mention that he’s much happier to get a tour from her than from Gus, even if it means he had to wait a whole weekend. The soon-to-be mother of one of his future friends, in comparison to a servant of his future attempted murderer… not much of a competition there.

The thought makes him wonder whether Pandora is already pregnant with Luna or not. He can’t remember when Luna’s birthday was, just that she was in Ginny’s year at Hogwarts, so it’s certainly possible – he was one of the youngest in his year, which makes it probable, even. He’s not sure if it would be rude to ask, so he decides against it.

It’s surreal that so many of the people he knows are not even alive yet, or else barely starting their lives. Other than the Hogwarts staff, he doesn’t – or didn’t – interact much with adults. One of the effects of boarding school, he supposes. He hasn’t ever really considered it before, accustomed to the isolation that came with growing up in a household like the Dursleys’.

That’ll be changing now, he presumes. It’s difficult to spend time with people your own age when the people who are supposed to be your age are infants.

Pandora leads him to a door halfway back down the hall they came from, and ushers him through while he’s still lost in thought. He only comes back to himself when the next step he takes fails to connect with solid ground.

His hand flies back and latches onto the fabric of Pandora’s sleeve to anchor him; glancing around leaves him with an abrupt sense of vertigo. As his heart rate slows, however, he realises that they are not actually on a small ledge above a bottomless void, but rather back in the room with the planets. At first glance, the floor reflected the darkness above it, making the drop seem much further than it actually is.

Undaunted, Pandora pulls her robes from Harry’s grasp and walks off the edge. Her long hair lifts from her shoulders as she drifts slowly downwards. She taps a floating orb on her way down, and it begins to glow, with more lighting up in a cascade outward from the first. After settling gently on the ground a dozen feet below, she turns around to beckon Harry.

He takes a deep breath and jumps. This was, apparently, a bad idea, as it sends him careening forwards across the room instead of towards the floor as he intended. His flailing only serves to flip him upside down, much to Pandora’s amusement.

His foot collides with something midair, and he kicks off it to stop his rotation and redirect his motion towards the sound of laughter. The few seconds of flight he’s in control of are quite intoxicating; he spreads his arms wide and revels in the feeling of weightlessness. By the time he lands, he’s grinning. He hadn’t thought anything could be better than flying on a broomstick, but it seems he’s been proven wrong.

A hand enters his peripheral vision, and he accepts it, letting Pandora pull him to standing. She glances upwards.

“If anyone asks about the footprint on Mars, I promise not to tell them a thing.”

Harry grimaces and follows her gaze. Sure enough, there’s a faint outline of his shoe on the red planet, and it seems to be spinning slightly off-axis. Well, he consoles himself, at least he hadn’t blown it up. It’d probably be fine.

He brushes off his robes and starts towards the opposite door in Pandora’s wake. It’s the same inky black as the one they passed in the office hallway, and his question about its significance is answered when Pandora opens it into the circular, spinning room that had given him and his friends so much trouble. He hadn’t realised during the chase that there were two different types of doors. That likely would’ve helped in their escape from the Death Eaters.

Once the walls stop moving, Pandora draws her wand and casts a silent Lumos – or that’s what it looks like until she approaches a door and the light cast upon it reflects oddly off a symbol in the shape of a simplified fire. This seems to be all the Unspeakable needs to find her way, because she cancels the spell and beelines to the door two to their right, stepping through into the bustle of the cafeteria.

Which… doesn’t make any sense.

“Wait, how–”

“Ah, you’ve discovered the Antechamber,” comes a voice from one of the nearby cafeteria tables. Gus sits there, watching the two of them with bright eyes. “No one really knows how it works. Just the Department of Mysteries trying to live up to its name, is the consensus.”

Harry dismisses the fact that he’s having a casual interaction with a Death Eater – again, how does this keep happening, he thought he would be free of the man when Pandora was assigned his ‘project’ – and the implication that the Department has some level of sentience to focus on the physical impossibility that just occurred. He’s walked from Pandora’s office to the cafeteria before; the route takes him both through the planet room and diagonally across the entire Courtroom. There’s no way any shortcut that short could exist between the two locations.

“Magic,” Gus says, seeing the look on Harry’s face. “Don’t think about it too much, you’ll hurt your brain.”

“Speak for yourself,” Pandora retorts. “By the way, how did your conversation with Croaker on Friday go, Rookwood?”

Gus’ expression sours, and Harry ducks his head to hide his smile. Pandora sends a mildly suspicious glance at Gus when he gets up to follow them out of the room, but otherwise doesn’t address it.

“This is the Bunkroom,” Pandora says as they cross the threshold. “It’s rarely used, and almost never at this time of year, since deadlines are typically around the summer solstice. That’s when people stay overnight to get as much work done as possible. With that in mind, feel free to spread out as much as you wish.”

“Within reason,” mumbles Gus from near the door. Harry doesn’t think he could take up too much space in this room if he wanted to – there are at least ten bunk beds lining the walls, each with their own nightstand-desk setup beside them. His material possessions at this point consist only of the clothes on his back, his glasses, and his newly acquired secondhand wand. He expresses his thanks to Pandora regardless, ignoring Gus as she also seems wont to do.

“The bathroom – including showers – is through there,” Pandora says, pointing at the other door. Harry gazes at it longingly; he hasn’t had a shower since before leaving Hogwarts, and magically cleaning himself and his clothes all at once just doesn’t have the same effect. Noticing this, Pandora gestures him over.

“It connects to the cafeteria, as well. I’ll wait for you there until you’re done.” She sighs. “I’m very sorry for rushing home Friday night without telling you these things. I’ve got to get better at this,” she says, muttering the last part under her breath.

The shower stalls are quite nice and the water is pleasantly hot, so Harry is tempted to spend a while under the spray, but he doesn’t want to keep Pandora waiting. He’s out in less than five minutes, including a minute and a half spent giving his school robes a more thorough cleaning and attempting – unsuccessfully – to mend a few rips on the edges now that he’s not wearing them. Accepting defeat, he puts them back on and uses the outrageously fluffy towel to stop his hair from dripping, placing it in a laundry hamper as he walks out.

Pandora and Gus are silently sitting across from each other at the same table Gus was at before. The rest of the room is slightly emptier than it was before, some of the Unspeakables having finished breakfast and headed off to work. When Harry approaches, Pandora shuts her book, and Gus dispels the colorful sparks he’d been casting into the air with a flick of his wand. They both get up.

“Feeling better?” Gus asks. Harry nods, but refocuses on Pandora immediately after.

“Where to next?”

“The best room in the Department – the Library,” she states with a grin.

“Swot,” Gus whispers, and she pinpoints him with an exasperated glare.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

“Not really.”

“Are you sure?” Her glare intensifies until he relents, holding his hands up in surrender and escaping out into the Courtroom. When they follow a minute later, he is nowhere to be seen.

The two of them stick close to the wall, and are only in the Courtroom for a short time before they are entering yet another unfamiliar room, this one almost as vast and absolutely full of books. Pandora’s expression, which had grown less troubled with Gus’ departure, lightens further.

She places her book on a table near the entrance and makes her way down one of the long aisles, running her hand along the edges of the shelves and humming absently as she goes. The book floats up from the table behind her and zooms off into the distance, presumably for reshelving.

As they walk through the library, Harry catches glimpses of other Unspeakables perusing the shelves, though there doesn’t seem to be anyone in their row. Just when the rows of reading material begin to feel almost endless, they arrive at the far wall. Pandora opens the closest door and leads him through.

This is a room he recognises, much to his dismay; the light from the low-hanging lanterns glints oddly off the glass of the brain tank, which is just as disconcerting as he remembers. He cringes as Pandora walks directly up to it and puts her hand on the side of the tank, despite knowing that the brains had been entirely innocuous until Ron had made the mistake of summoning one.

Pandora looks strangely fond, gazing through the green-tinged liquid at the lazily floating body parts. Harry flinches away when one bumps against the glass near the woman, but she only splays her fingers wider against the tank and grins when the brain unfurls its thought-tendrils and presses them up to the glass opposite her hand.

“Is that… safe?” he asks warily.

“Of course! We’re old friends.” She glances back at him, and whatever expression is on his face, it causes her to pull her hand away from the tank. The brain on the other side retreats as well, using its tendrils like a squid would. “Why wouldn’t it be safe?”

“I…” Harry considers her thoughtfully. If he tells her what happened to Ron, it’s going to bring up a lot of other questions he’s not sure he’s ready to answer. On the other hand, she is Luna’s mother – or at least, she will be. She’s proven to be at least mildly at odds with Gus, who is both incredibly charismatic and a Death Eater, so she’s probably a decent judge of character.

Also, Harry kind of – well, really – wants to talk to someone. He’s not built for keeping secrets; ever since he was eleven, he’s shared almost everything with Ron and Hermione. But Ron and Hermione aren’t here, and he’s not likely to find anyone better to confide in than Pandora anytime soon.

“My friend, he got grabbed by one of them,” he says, mind made up. “Just before I… came here.”

“Before your time mishap?”

“Yeah, that.”

She frowns, tilts her head to the side, and takes a seat atop one of the nearby desks. Harry follows her lead, sitting down across from her.

“They’re usually quite gentle. I wouldn’t describe what happens as ‘getting grabbed’. Was your friend fully submerged?”

Submerged?

“You’re meant to go in there?” Harry says incredulously, staring wide-eyed at the glass tank.

“Well, that would be the problem, then.” Pandora’s voice is calm, but she looks mildly disturbed. “Your friend wasn’t even partially in the tank? How did he come into contact with one of the brains?”

“Er, summoned it?” Harry admits.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” Pandora says, sounding utterly certain.

He shrugs. “Well, it happened.”

She points her wand at the tank and with no hesitation, casts “Accio Brain!”

Harry shields his face, but nothing comes flying toward them. When he lowers his arms, every brain is still in the tank, swimming as tranquilly as ever.

“Huh.”

“The enchantments on the Think Tank prevent the brains from being removed by any means, including summoning. They’re tied to the wards of the Department itself, so I’ve no clue how you and your friend managed to bypass them.”

“Do those wards limit who has access to the Department?” Harry asks, remembering Gus’ words about how his appearance had been a ‘security breach’.

“That is one of their functions, yes,” Pandora responds slowly.

“I think they may have been off at the time.”

Pandora throws her hands in the air helplessly. “Wonderful. The wards were down, and not a single Unspeakable stopped your friend from messing with the Think Tank. Were any of us even there?”

“No. I mean, I don’t think so. There was a bit of an invasion going on.”

“And here I thought your temporal displacement might’ve just been an experiment gone wrong.” She takes a deep breath and lets it back out. “How did it happen, then?”

“The invasion, or the time travel?”

“Either. Both. Start at the beginning,” she amends.

That’s what he was afraid she’d say. But he made a decision, and he’s going to see it through. He begins with leaving Hogwarts, leaving the identities of his friends vague and dancing around how he learned that Sirius was in trouble. Eventually, though, he forgets to leave names out of his story.

“And I had to drag Ron in here, because he was still acting odd. They were right behind us, so I started sealing off the doors with Neville and Luna–”

“Luna?” Pandora interrupts, her hand coming to her lower stomach. “My Luna?”

She is already pregnant, then, Harry assumes.

“Yes, she’s…” He tries to think of words to describe Luna Lovegood, and comes up short. “She’s quite a lot like you,” he settles on, and averts his eyes from Pandora’s beaming smile.

“I’m sorry, I’ve distracted you,” she says after a moment more. “Please continue.”

“The De– the people that were chasing us were faster than we were,” he resumes. He’s still somewhat wary of the story getting back to Gus somehow. “They came through a door Luna was trying to lock, knocked her out.” He glances over. Pandora’s smile has faded. “That’s when Ron summoned the brain. After that, everything started happening so fast.”

He swallows, his mouth dry.

“I tried to distract them by running with the prophecy, and that worked – they left everyone else behind. Ginny and Neville were trying to get the brain off of Ron, last I saw. But the room I went into–” he glances past Pandora at the doors lining the wall. His mind shies away from the thought of what lies behind them. “I fell down to the bottom of the steps. The prophecy shattered. But then Sirius was there, and we fought them together, until–”

Harry’s throat closes up. He doesn’t know why it’s so hard to say it now, when he’d had no trouble during the battle. It makes no sense.

There’s a hand on his arm. It pulls him up and into a hug.

“Oh, child,” Pandora says softly.

He sniffs and scrubs the back of his hand across his nose. “Harry.”

“Hm?”

“My name,” he says, uncaring of the consequences any longer, just wanting to be known. “It’s Harry.”