Thoughts bounced like Bludgers in Harry's mind as he stood in the fireplace.
"The Ministry of Magic." He murmured. Like every time, it felt like he was being sucked into a drain, but his heart was at the bottom of his stomach well before he stepped into Sofia's fireplace.
He'd been played. Tom had known he'd come for Hermione — and instead of choosing to set up a trap for him, the Dark Lord had chosen to take the greater gift. Not Susan as leverage over Amelia, but Amelia herself, for leverage over all of Britain.
And best of all, he took down Harry in the process, without even laying a finger on him, Polyjuiced from hero to villain. The British public would do that for him, directed by the papers and their inherent desire to see heroes fall.
Royals, celebrities, politicians — Harry had seen it in the Muggle world, and the magic was no different.
Unless Harry could stop him. His reputation could lay in rubble, as long as Britain didn't. Apolline was getting the girls — he'd have reinforcements.
Whatever it takes, he told himself, as the whirl of green flames spun him in nauseating circles. Tom could not take Amelia. She was the most prominent political figure in Britain — the leader of the Light, the chosen figure by light-sided Houses and the common man alike.
If she fell, it would be like Dumbledore dying. Voldemort would keep her hidden, mailing little pieces of her to whatever allies she had, reminders that they needed to toe the line he set.
A vote needed swinging and the right people would receive a limb of hers in the post. If a good soul decided to run for Minister, they'd receive an example of why they shouldn't.
Harry knew — this wasn't the first country Tom had tried to topple. The last one was done just for fun.
But the last one didn't have Harry.
He stepped forward into the blurry stream.
The Atrium. And the battle still raged.
Harry took it in with a single glance. Bodies on the floor, dead employees staring up at the ceiling of golden gleaming symbols. The polished dark wood had been Transfigured up, jagged shards of planks standing tall, like the angled anti-tank beams they'd used on the beaches of D-Day.
Makeshift defenses for the makeshift force that hit behind them. Aurors and Ministry Employees firing a rainbow cascade of curses, bloodied and haggard.
The gilded fireplaces set into the Atrium's walls spat single streams of fire into a conjoined flaming horned beast, large enough to stand over the Atrium's famed fountain of golden figures. The fireplaces were half-destroyed — none of the girls were joining him now, not unless they had the presence of mind to go back to the Veela court to use the international Floo. Would Sofia even allow them in?
The sparking animation spat burning blasts that torched the wooden defenses, controlled by a host of masked wizards at the far end of the Atrium, by the golden gates arching over the security stand to the lifts. And, Harry realized with a start, Ron Weasley.
His face contorted in a smirk very unlike the real Ron, as he stood in Hogwarts robes alongside his masked colleagues. The Death Eaters had swapped out their white skull-masks for black shells with green glowing eyes, the same lightning bolt on their foreheads.
It was a nice touch, Harry thought sarcastically.
But mask or no mask, dead men looked all the same.
He strode forward, his sudden appearance making the Ministry force scream. First, he blew some twisted Engorgement charms into the fountain — the spurt of water hissed into the flaming giant, making enough steam to buy them some time.
"It's him! Mercy!" An office woman shrieked. A flash of pink hair behind her — was that Tonks?
Harry batted away the flurry of curses, scowling. "The Dark Lord carries my face with the Polyjuice Potion. I'm here to help you."
The group shrank back. He sighed, absently reinforcing the rune they'd cast over their fortified plank-wall. The shield was good — someone talented cast it. That meant that there was some defense on the other levels — maybe even Dumbledore.
An Auror stepped forward after aiming a brutal Bone-cruncher through the steam. Harry vaguely recognized him as Shrike, the sour Auror he'd fought alongside all the way back at Greengrass Manor.
"Why the fuck should we trust—"
Harry twirled his wand. The cloud of smoke sizzled with crackling electricity. Harry blew a breath and the cloud blew too, became a tornado that spun and whirled into the Death Eaters across the Atrium. They screamed and fell, Ron retreating behind a shield with a furious cry.
But above the fountain, the beast of flame still raged, roaring fire that blazed through the wooden floor and ignited the offices and lifts overlooking the lobby. The peacock-blue tiled brick glowed orange.
Drops of sweat dripped down the bridge of his nose, onto his lips. Bitter as he for being tricked. He preferred the taste of blood.
A surge of magic swept through, his wand bucking as he twisted it over the fountain figures. The golden witch grew tall, splinters in her sheening skin as she grew and grew, large enough to wrap a hand around the beast's neck.
The centaur's eternally nocked arrow was finally loosed, aimed at not-Ron and the Death Eaters not sizzling on the floor. Harry muttered as he cast a complex spell — part ward, part rune, part charm, four sparks in the air to create a window between the Death Eaters and the firing arrow — and as the arrow whistled through the window, his spell took effect.
The arrow was enlarged, ignited, propelled to a speed of blurs — and then, the coup de grâce, split into a hundred miniatures. The Death Eaters were pinned by burning shafts, blazing fletching gravestones, a row of arrow-stuck corpses, like a battlefield in the Trojan war.
The flaming beast dissipated without its master. Left without his pack, the false Ron Weasley ran, firing curses behind him. The fountain's golden goblin flung out its arms to dive into the path of the Killing Curse, before Shrike met an early demise.
Harry smiled. Ron could run real fast. In his head, Harry flicked through a metaphorical pack of playing cards and pulled out Dean Thomas' favorite. The boy loved to slide.
A jerk of his wand and the fountain's water surged from the flooded floor and iced over. Harry built up steam and then slid over the ice slide that dipped and curved with his wand's movement.
"Whoa—" He held out his arms to balance himself. Ron made it to the lift's doors and turned triumphantly as the doors closed.
Harry muttered a spell and the doors smashed back with a molten blast. Through the bronze doors, Ron's face and figure was enshrined against the back of the lift, like an iron mold forged over an open-mouthed gasp, his every feature carved into the door-mold.
It was like the sci-fi film Harry had watched once while visiting Arabella Figg, glimpsing odd scenes as the old woman's cats rubbed their tails in his face.
Harry stared at the figure as he was joined by Shrike and the other Ministry employees. Who was the Death Eater behind Ron's face?
"I guess we can trust you." Shrike admitted, red-faced.
"You think?" Harry muttered. Fuck it — maybe once the Polyjuice wore off, they could separate the man from the door. "Where's Amelia? Level two?" He looked up the atrium, at the lifts that rose so high above. The second highest floor would be the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
The whole Ministry building was shaking and Harry could feel the ambient magic vibrating, boiling water on the stove that was the push and pull of powerful wizards.
Shrike shook his head. "Down under. Department of Mysteries."
Harry frowned. "What?"
"She said they had to protect something down there."
Harry stilled, taking in the implications. Was Voldemort there for her or for something in the Department of Mysteries? Something like the prophecy ball inscribed with both their names…half-heard, unknown by Tom and Harry both.
It didn't need to be either or, he figured.
"Dumbledore?"
"Nope." Shrike said. "But she's got a bunch of Aurors, Unspeakables. The Dark Lord ain't getting through easy."
Where the fuck was Dumbledore?
A familiar flash of pink hair caught his eye as a young woman rushed up to them, her face sweating, robes torn. Tonks. She was there, somehow, reporting back to her Auror bosses perhaps. Her hair cycled through a dozen colors, but he only needed to see her face to see her panic.
"Harry, you need to get out of here. It's not—" She babbled.
"I am perhaps the only one qualified to be here." Harry said simply. "But I need you to stay, too."
"Huh?"
"This is not an attack on the Ministry. It's an attack on the ideal of Harry Potter." He brushed back his hair and pointed to his bleeding scar. "To the symbol."
Tonks frowned in confusion. "Okay, but the boss — Amelia, she's—"
"I'll rescue Amelia." He said confidently. "But I need you to rescue Harry Potter."
"H-how?" Her eyes shined even as her jaw set with determination.
"When the dust settles, somebody needs to have seen Voldemort here. My word may not be enough."
Glassy eyes narrowed. "Y-you mean?"
"Be careful. Don't take risks. Don't take fights. But make sure people see him here. More than you know depends on this."
She clenched her fists, scowling. "I'm an Auror, I can fight!"
Harry smiled at her gently. "Any fool can point a wand, Dora. But the Dark Lord has taken my face to fight me in the headlines, and so that is where I need your help."
She took a sharp breath. "Why have you gotta be such a Dumbledore?" She whined, even as her nose took on Voldemort's snake nostrils.
Harry didn't bother replying.
"How many did we lose?" He asked, looking over Shrike's shoulder, at the bodies lying in the water of the flooded fountain, washing away their blood. Someone had carved the words LORD POTTER HAS RISEN into the fountain side. Tom's words, maybe.
"Too many. You — not you — showed up, had a crowd of people excited. And then…you started—" Shrike swallowed. "Yeah."
"Start the clean up." Harry ordered. "Nobody comes in or out. Get those masks off those fuckers, check for the Dark Mark."
"You got it." Shrike looked pleased to be useful. "What about you?"
Harry stepped into the lift next to the immortalized Ron and stabbed at the button. "I'm gonna go see if Harry Potter is all they say."
Shrike nodded. "Never meet your heroes." He grinned around a bloody lip. "Fuck 'em up, Lord Potter."
The lift descended and Harry was left alone.
A moment of calm before the storm. The Department of Mysteries was something rare for both he and Tom — neither knew much of what lay inside. It was only the other night, as Hermione slept on his chest, that Harry glimpsed a scene that amused him, another memory coalescing from Tom's mind.
Tom trying to be nice, wining and dining Augustus Rookwood during the First War, seducing him into becoming a Death Eater, to embed the promising young man in the Department of Mysteries as a spy. But once employed, Tom was disappointed that Rookwood knew only about his own research project, the department so segmented.
Harry tightened his wand grip. They both knew enough. Space and time were studied here, the connection between magic and mind, as well as magic most abstract.
The one story that had escaped these hallowed walls dated back to the 1890s — Unspeakable Eloise Mintumble travelled back five centuries for five days. Once returned, a classroom's worth of people vanished into thin air, descendants of people she'd met on her travels. Accused of murder, she argued that figures had been un-born, not murdered. They did not exist, so could not have been murdered.
Time, Harry knew, worked in odd ways. A similar story across the pond indicated that those unborn would not be remembered at all, terrifyingly.
That was what scared Harry. Could Voldemort be here for that type of power, the power of the past? He knew Tom — he was Tom — but every time they encountered each other, they collided and bounced away, forging new paths. Paths that Harry could not predict — like attacking the Ministry.
He wouldn't be able to predict anything, down here — the Department was meant to be labythrine, corridors that moved and turned, doors that shifted and opened into random rooms.
The lift dinged. The statue of Ron shook with the lift itself.
Harry stepped out under an archway to a shadowed corridor.
And immediately ducked under a sizzling black curse.
"The fuck?" He shrank back into the lift side, against the button panel, watching with fascination as the black spell ate away at Ron's metal-cast face, like termites through wood.
Pain seared across his forehead — another memory sinking in. That was a Korean spell! Tom had spent days as a guest in North Korea, paid handsomely to be the dictator's magical representative at a function for foreign diplomacy, pretending his might was the result of the country's pathetic academy.
One of those payments had been this spell — a spell Tom had taught to Bellatrix.
Harry stared at the bronze reflections of Ron's stomach. There stood Hermione in a white blouse and Gryffindor plaid skirt.
His mouth turned sour — his love should not be stained by the Polyjuiced puppet strings of this evil bitch.
"You like remembering being young and beautiful, Bella?" Harry taunted.
In the reflection, Hermione grinned, tossing her bushy hair back. "I've never been a mudblood before. I feel deliciously dirty."
Harry grimaced. It was even worse to hear Mione's prim and proper voice.
She shoved her hand down her skirt waistband, giggling. "Ickle Harry hasn't touched this tight little cunt yet, has he? Master was disappointed." She popped a finger into her mouth and gasped. "Eww, I taste like mudblood. Maybe if I'm a good girl, we'll do some Hawwy and mudblood roleplay once we're home."
Harry sneered, letting his magic flood the lift, drawing his aura forth into the bronzed door that was being eaten away by black magic. He felt hot in the head, ready to snap at the thought of Voldemort touching his Hermione, even a facsimile of her. No…this bitch needed to die.
"Remembering what being tight felt like? Does Tommy even bother with your gaping hole anymore?"
The reflection showed her snarl — and that was Harry's cue.
The Ron-shaped door charged forward, a bronze statue being shredded by magic ant-balls. Bellatrix screamed and spat spells that poured off Ron's chest. Harry flicked his wand and the statue dove at her, pinning her to the ground.
The archway creaked.
Harry smiled. Cissy wouldn't mind, would she? "Avada Kedavra!" The rush of nothingness, the green light — only Bellatrix was no longer there. The corridor was no longer there. The archway had turned. Harry stepped out of the lift and found himself in a new circular room, with a new battle.
His Killing Curse splashed a huge cracked glass tank of green acid slowly seeping out, the vat of descending liquid containing floating white jellyfish. The glass was tinged orange from the lamps hanging low on golden ceiling chains.
Beyond the glass, refracted into odd shapes, Death Eaters in their Harry-inspired masks. One wore no mask. Neville Longbottom — wearing the confident smirk Harry had always hoped for his shy friend. The imposter's shaggy brown hair was swept away from the forehead, though Neville always let it cover his eyes.
And closest to the archway, two Unspeakables held their organs in with one hand and fired with the other, combining curses with conjured caltrops to stop the hostiles rounding the glass tank. Heavily wounded, they looked at Harry with the resignation of those embracing death.
"I'm on your side." Harry said, but he wasn't here to talk. Wand up — and the jellyfish rose out of the tank. Depulso to thrust them forward. They were only meant to be a distraction to bounce against the walls, but the pearly jellyfish screeched once free, and latched like Grindylows onto the Death Eater's skulls. Even Neville's banishment charm wasn't fast enough.
"No!" One of the Unspeakables cried. Neville and the Death Eaters flinched as one, shuddered as one and then, to Harry's amazement, turned as one. Perfectly synchronized, they marched around the glass vat, a zombified army.
Harry swore, bringing a shield up as they raised their wands in unison and cast the same unidentifiable red blast. The jellyfish wriggled and Harry realized they weren't fish at all, but brains.
A dozen brains controlling a dozen Death Eaters to form a single mind.
What the fuck did I do?
He didn't have time for self-recrimination. Freaky magic things bled like any other. Harry hissed a flow of spells. The chained lamps above lengthened, coiling like snakes around the necks of the Death Eater zombies and tightening.
For a second, sweet triumph.
But the Death Eaters each grabbed their chain with a single hand and tore it like a handle from a clay vase. Their march continued.
The fuck? Are they super powered now?
Harry's shield was faltering.
He froze, lost in the mass of battle plans, the same problem Tom had overcome years ago. Too many incantations, ideas, spell chains. Analysis paralysis.
Fiendfyre — but these weren't Inferi and the Unspeakables would likely die too.
A lightning bolt to arc between each of them — but the vat had green liquid onto the floor, against Harry's shoes. The bolt would light them all up.
Could one Killing Curse kill them all, if they shared a mind?
Stupid.
The solution looked him in the face. Neville Longbottom. The pudgy boy with hidden bravery, enough to stand up to his friends in their First Year, as Harry, Ron and Hermione tried to sneak out the Common Room to stop the theft of Flamel's Stone.
Hermione had froze him with the Full Body-Bind Curse.
A Blasting Spell blew the glass tank apart, the gallons of water blowing out and knocking the Death Eaters off their feet, an aquarium unleashed. But with a modified twist of the Body Bind, the glass shards froze in mid-air, suspended in motion. A thousand shards.
A thousand daggers.
Harry swept his wand and watched dispassionately as Neville and his cohort stained the acid green red.
"H-Harry Potter?" One of the Unspeakables gaped. "It's really you?"
Harry cast every healing spell he knew on the two men. That was one area of magic Tom cared very little about, preferring to force a talented minion to heal him, but there was one. An accidental discovery Tom had made on a hijacked archaeological dig in Egypt, loose lips in a local tavern leading Tom to believe he could find destructive time magic in the tomb.
It was time magic, true enough, but of a type that had enraged Tom — he'd filled an entire sarcophagus with the blood of the dig crew. A spell used by the mummifiers after they created a hole in the back of the head to drain the brain and fluids.
Harry closed his eyes to recall the wand motions and cast it on both men.
"Hatshepsut alhayaa altarjie ankh-sut." An incantation where the rhythm mattered more than the words, where their Pharaoh had to be invoked first of all.
It was like death played in reverse — blood streamed back into their bodies, skin knitting back together, color returning to their cheeks. They weren't healed by any means, but it would keep them alive until real Mediwizards looked at them.
The two had gone from stuffing their kidneys back inside their bodies to holding warm skin. The Unspeakables looked at him like he was a god.
"T-thank you!" One blubbered.
"H-Harry Potter." The other said in wonder.
Harry had no time for it. "Amelia?"
"Through the door behind the tapestry, last we saw her." He pointed at a flapping tapestry of a sitting room — the wizard depicted had presumably fled. "You'll need to fight through the time-stream. It's bad." One of them advised. Harry didn't know what a time-stream was, but he wasn't going to ask twenty questions.
"Is Dumbledore coming?" The other said hopefully.
"Right behind me." Harry lied. From the corner of his eye, the slimy brain wriggled on Neville's head. "Take it easy, maybe try and restrain those brain things."
"We got it. Good luck."
"I'm gonna need it." He stepped carefully around the fallen Death Eaters and then paused thoughtfully. He tugged a Harry-Eater mask from the face of a pale young man and fitted it around his own features.
The mask was tight and uncomfortable, amplifying the sound of his own breathing, but he could see well enough. A quick charm and he was in the right robes too.
He peeled away the tapestry and through a door. "What the hell is a time-stream?" Harry muttered to himself.
The room was wide and long, like the Great Hall expanded width-ways, but instead of stone, every wall gleamed with clock faces, little alarm clocks and huge grandfather towers. All around the room, their hands turned, playing the same orchestra — a synchronized ticking noise, an army of clocks marching in unison.
They told the time — and within these clock walls, the Unspeakables worked at breaking it. Harry knew at once what a time-stream was, as a vast light flowed from one side of the room to another, dancing light that sparkled, a river of wedding rings.
Harry's heart leapt as he saw Amelia in the stream, batting away a spell, her hair in a tight bun. There she was!
But she dissipated into ethereal white light. She appeared once more, only now her copper hair flowed around her neck, her lip bleeding, clutching a shoulder that was missing a chunk of flesh.
Before the time-stream, a gaggle of Death Eaters watched. Seamus stood at their front, his arms crossed as they watched the light form into shapes, scenes.
Harry let himself mingle with the crowd of masked men as Amelia appeared again. She wrenched open the door, took a look back at the time-stream, and disappeared.
"Fuck. She made it." Seamus said flatly.
"We going in, boss?" One of them asked.
"Nah. There's enough of us in the stream. We'll hold here, stop anyone joining the fun. She's in a dead-end room, anyway — our Lord drew us a map."
Seamus turned and looked directly at Harry. Harry swallowed, well aware he was in the middle of eight hostiles.
"Any trouble?" Seamus asked, his Irish brogue thick, but his face held none of the boy's easy levity.
"All good." Harry crossed his arms.
Seamus raised an eyebrow and looked down at Harry's robes. They were green with acid.
"Brain juice. The boys are exacting revenge. Don't ask." Harry said gruffly. He gestured at the door beyond the time-stream. "If our Lord wants her, let's just grab her."
"It's not that easy. The time fucks everything." An anonymous man said, shoulder-bumping the man next to him. "Look at Jeffries."
Jeffries' head was lolling on his chest. "I only got three NEWTs, Miles." He said, incomprehensibly.
Miles shook his head as Seamus snorted. "We'll go through when our Lord is here. He'll be here soon, once he has the prophecy."
Harry's blood ran cold. So Tom was getting the ball — and Bones both. Did the prophecy speak of Harry's new advantage? Did it reveal that Harry knew Tom inside and out?
That would be disastrous — Harry needed to hunt down Tom's Horcruxes before he moved them, before he knew the truth. But there was only one thing he could do now — save Amelia Bones.
But how to get into the time-stream without appearing suspicious to this group? He didn't have time to fight them — Death Eaters were showing up in the time-stream, fighting through Aurors to reach Amelia.
Seamus sighed loudly. "Did you guys read that column in the Prophet yesterday? The glasses girl, wazzername?"
"Rainbow hair bitch." Miles clicked his fingers. "That's what I call her."
"Yeah!" Seamus laughed. "She was talking about how Hogwarts still favors students from particular areas of the country. The magic-concentrated areas, the towns. London, of course."
Harry frowned. Why were they talking about this now?
Miles rolled his eyes at Harry's side. "Everything's 'bout diversity with her."
"Right?" Seamus griped. "She'd done a whole study. Said the area with the least Hogwarts representation was Liverpool." He scratched his neck. "Only one in the last twenty years." He said casually.
Alarm bells rang in Harry's mind, but it was too late. The Death Eaters turned, and he didn't need to see through their masks to know they were grinning at him. The circle tightened.
"Our boy Griffiths." Miles gripped his wand.
"The thickest Scouse accent you ever heard." Seamus smiled. His cheery smile had a discordant malicious tinge.
The hair raised on Harry's arm, the adrenaline mixing with the fear. He was in a tight circle — breath on the back of his neck, his elbow rubbed against someone's arm, Seamus' wand almost touching his abdomen.
Harry cleared his throat. "Too late for me to give the accent a go?"
Seamus' smile flickered. "Take off the mask, stranger. Join the part-ay!" He sang.
It was a pregnant pause. Eight Death Eaters pressing against him, their wands already glowing with magic, spells on their lips. How did he escape the cell he'd made for himself?
They were confident, their wands held but not fully pointed.
Because they didn't know he was Harry Fucking Potter.
Behind his mask, he smiled, running through the battle in his mind before it even began.
They wouldn't use the Killing Curse — too many syllables. Non-lethal only, because they could hit each other.
But they were on edge, hands a little shaky, grips too low on their wands — adrenaline mixed with the effects of some Pepper-Up potions, maybe focus-enhancers.
Harry had one spell. A short incantation. It'd have to be a good one.
"Well," He said casually, feeling his magic surge. "I guess the ruse is—Accio wands!" He snapped. An overcharged Summoning Spell as he dove backwards into a Death Eater, falling to the ground.
Nobody lost their wand — but their wands shot from loose grips just as they unleashed their spells — and wands held three quarters down were suddenly gripped by the last inch. Wands bucked, wobbled. And their target was no longer there.
Two of them stunned each other. One coughed up black blood. But Harry was on the ground, staring up.
Pinned.
But not worried.
A Switching Charm worked on people if he strongly overpowered it, like he'd done with Astoria in Greengrass Manor to get her out of harm's way. And only if the recipient was weak, like a child.
People didn't use it for that reason — there was no way of gauging strength, usually, and if it was misjudged, the effects were gruesome, like an Apparition splinch. Half a body here, half a body there.
Harry wouldn't switch with any of the targets he could see.
Except one. The one wizard that wasn't all there.
Jeffries was pointing his wand up at the sky, dazed — until he was lying on the floor, the unfortunate recipient of some very nasty spells.
Seamus realized first, but Harry had already stunned a Death Eater to his side. One hand to hold him up, his wand hand through the crook of the man's elbow to let loose — bone-breakers, blasting curse, any curses which an old dueling tutor of Tom's had called 'can openers'.
The Death Eaters dropped before they could penetrate Harry's body-shield. Only Seamus remained.
Harry re-enervated his body shield — the man had chunks torn from him courtesy of his panicked colleagues, but Harry didn't care about that. And after Harry's muttered Imperius, neither did the man.
Matthew was his name — he had weak Occlumency shields, too weak to withstand Harry's barrage of forceful instructions.
A single second passed.
Matthew snatched Harry's wand from him with an "A-ha!" and easily stunned a confused not-Seamus, who'd lowered his guard all too soon.
"My fucking luck," Harry grumbled. "I picked the one Death Eater who's a Scouser."
He sighed, took his wand back from his Imperio'd new friend Matthew, and marched them both into the time stream. A body shield was always handy to have, whatever time it was.
The ethereal lights almost blinded them. And once through they were…
In another world. Harry was in the elevator again, descending to the Department of Mysteries, standing next to the Ron statue. Matthew had vanished.
The doors opened.
The same dark corridor.
Harry sidestepped neatly as the same black curse shot through.
There she was. Bellatrix in Hermione's body.
Time to die, again. This time, Harry skipped the banter, animating Ron to charge her. But Bellatrix didn't go down so easy, somehow — had he tipped her off or was she more wary with his lack of concern?
"Ooh, so decisive!" She cackled. "I bet your mudblood likes that."
The witch froze Ron in ice, using the man-sized cube she'd created as cover from Harry's barrage of spells. Fire to make the ice melt, lightning to make the melting ice dangerous, wind to push it forward — it was a spell chain he didn't have to think about, muscle memory from a duel he couldn't even recall.
But again, he was denied her death. The archway shifted, rooms rotating. When he blinked, he was in the room of floating brains, the tank of green acid.
Yet the two Unspeakables were more alive than when he'd first found them, retreating slowly, Transfiguring the floor below into sludgy tar to slow the advancing Death Eaters.
"I'm on your side!" Harry growled as he launched into the fray. A blast of fire to light the tar into a flesh-melting blaze, and that was enough for the Unspeakables to trust him.
"You shield, I fight." Harry ordered.
It took only a moment for Neville, or rather whoever wore his face, to blink the flames away. A swaying portal, like a window in mid-air, that swallowed the blaze into a vanishing void. Harry's eyebrow twitched — the portal was a beautiful twist on the Vanishing Charm, using ancient runes to draw up a portal in the air. Tom had been generous with their secrets.
But Harry had already fought this fight once. A Blasting Curse against the acid tank…only the vat just glowed golden, shielded. Neville smiled. They'd been warned.
But how?
Harry scowled as the Death Eaters smashed through the Unspeakables' shields, a nasty curse slicing through a few strands of his black hair. If he was Lockhart, he'd be fuming.
How much warning had Neville and his Death Eaters got, he wondered. Surely not enough to learn of all his tricks. They advanced, and Harry nudged his wand casually between decoy spell barrages. Above the fray, the lamps on their ceiling chains slithered down to coil around the necks of the Death Eaters backing up Neville.
Before, the jelly-brains had made them strong enough to break the chains. But now, they silently choked, hands flapping uselessly at their necks as Harry's lamp-chains tightened and lifted. Nooses with a lamp glow — for the hangman that didn't want to work in the dark.
"Harry Potter, but you're too late. My men and I have Bones exactly where we want her." Neville sneered.
"What men?" Harry smiled.
Neville paled and when he checked his shoulder, Harry hit him with a Full Body-Bind, for old time's sake.
"Hey, thanks man—"
Harry was already gone. He didn't have time for time's bullshit. In the next room, the time stream swam with the same sparkling glow.
But the gaggle of Death Eaters was facing towards him. And at their center, there was Matthew, pointing in triumph. "It's Harry Potter, like I said!"
Of course. Harry felt stupid — he wasn't the only one fucking around with time. Matthew had travelled back too, far enough to warn his colleagues of Harry's arrival.
Harry snapped up a shield just before he was overwhelmed with a colorful array of nasty spells.
"We're big fans, Harry Potter! Welcome to the part-ay!" Seamus laughed.
The room was bare but for the time stream, leaving Harry with few options with which to fight with. Against the eight opponents, he was throwing up shields as fast as they fell. But around the side of the room, inlaid into the wall, the hundreds of clocks played the same ticking beat to his increasing panic.
Harry jabbed his wand and ripped the clocks from the wall, if only to stop the infernal ticking. The huge pile of wooden clock debris still ticked on, as Harry was forced back.
A low Cutting Curse across the floor surprised him, skinning under a shield he'd cast too high and slicing into his ankle's tendon. "Fuck!" He growled.
Tick-tock, said the broken clocks.
Their loud ticking made his blood boil, even more so when Seamus laughed.
"Damn it." Left with the massive pile of wooden clock debris, he figured he might as well use them. Harry narrowed his eyes as he traced a complex chain, combining Charms and Transfiguration. The clocks welded together and rose, a grandfather tower given legs, arms and hundreds of alarm-clock eyes.
His clock guardian blocked some spells and bought him time, time enough to finish this once and for all.
He summoned another clockface from the wall and ripped the hands off.
"Engorgio." The clock hands swelled enormously, looking more like propellers, twice as large as Harry.
A strong Sticking Charm at their center, to ensure they stayed together. A Levitation Charm to float his clock-hands into the air. The final touch — a localized Banishing Charm on the tip of the clock hands.
The hands span so fast he couldn't see them, creating a wind blast that forced his mouth open, his hair flying back.
His clock guardian had fallen, ignited and torn to rubble, but it didn't matter.
"Big fans all round." Harry muttered. He took aim — this time, the Banishing Charm was very large.
The clock-hand fan made a stomach-turning squelch-whizz noise as it shot through the Death Eaters, through paltry shields. It did not dismember or pulverize — it mulched.
Where once stood Death Eaters, only remained liquid.
Harry looked at Seamus had stood.
"Purée." He sang.
The room was clear. The path was free.
He stepped back into the time-stream and this time, it did nothing. He walked through the sparkling light and to the door on the other side.
This room was small. There were no decorations, no paintings or tapestries, and, Harry realized with dismay, no doors. No exits.
It was just a raised stone dais in the center of the room, and in the center of dais there stood an archway. An archway with a fluttering black veil, and it was like cold air streamed through that veil, a window left open in winter.
Tom knew of this place, by rumors only, which meant Harry did too. The Death Chamber, where the Unspeakables studied souls, death and the thin tether between this world and the next. Which meant this archway was the veil to the land of the dead.
Whispers echoed out from the archway. It felt like there was someone standing on the other side of the veil, trying to communicate.
Standing next to the fluttering curtain, ears perked and listening intently, stood Amelia. She turned to give him a wan smile.
"Which Harry are you?" She said wearily.
The middle-aged witch was bloodied and battered, but composed as always.
"The real one?"
"That's my favorite. I knew you'd come. Potter's are always in the thick of it, though I wish you hadn't."
Harry raised a brow. "Why's that?"
Amelia sniffed, gesturing around the room in buried hysteria. She swallowed a lump in her throat, blinked her eyes until they were dry — the stateswoman once more.
"Oh." The chamber was like every other in this Department. Inescapable. Each stone block in the wall would be fortified with runes, curtained with wards, charmed together — a chamber that could hold any force. Or any man.
He opened the door behind him again. Through the time stream, three dozen Death Eaters lined up in formation, behind…him. The other Harry Potter. Lord Voldemort had come, finally, and he held the glowing prophecy ball.
For a moment, their green eyes met each other. Tom smirked. Harry smiled, before he rolled his eyes and closed the door once again. He sealed the door with a nasty rune.
It would take them time to traverse the time stream. But Harry and Amelia weren't going anywhere.
"Back through the time stream—"
"Once conquered, it has no effect." She said calmly.
"Then while Voldemort is playing time games, I'll take the Death Eaters he's left behind—"
"Can you?"
"Yes. Maybe." Harry grimaced. "But not fast enough." Voldemort wouldn't take long to cross the stream — he had no obstacles. "And then I'll duel him and—"
"Can you defeat the Death Eaters, duel Voldemort, escape him, all while protecting me?" Amelia asked calmly, her eyebrow cocked.
"I…no." He clenched his fist.
"You know he won't kill me." She said. "I'm far too useful for that."
"I know." He'd take her, torture her, imprison her, use her to control this country for as long as he lived. With magic, that could be a long time. Voldemort wouldn't take her anywhere Harry could rescue her, either.
He stared at her as she listened to the veil's whispers. For a long moment, he considered killing her. It would be a mercy, in a way, though he could admit to himself that wasn't why the thought crossed his mind.
If she was taken, the Ministry fell. Britain fell.
Harry's fingers itched towards his wand. The Killing Curse would solve all his problems.
But outside that door, there were fakes of people who believed him to be better. Ron, Neville, Hermione, Seamus, Ernie, Dean.
They believed him kind and heroic.
His girls loved him for it, couldn't see the decay of his soul, the way he'd warped their minds.
But despite himself, he wanted to be the Harry they believed in.
He wanted to look Susan in the eye and tell her that he'd done all he could.
"My brother Edgar. And little Annie." Amelia smiled beatifically, nodding at the veil and the whispers she heard. "Susan's mother."
"Just deceptions." Harry said, his voice raspy. The time was ticking down.
Lord Voldemort was coming.
They both knew it.
"The Dark Lord comes. I suppose…I suppose I'll be leaving soon." Amelia declared, like she was popping out for some milk. "You'll protect Susan, of course?"
"Of course." It felt like there was a dagger in his throat.
Her eyes penetrated him. "Are you a good man, Harry? I see the way you look at her sometimes. Even at me."
His fingers were numb. "I…I'm trying to be."
She paused. "Well, I suppose that's the best anyone of us can do, in the end."
Kill her. A voice in his head…or was it a whisper from the veil? They could rebuild the Ministry, elect someone strong, just as long as they didn't have Voldemort holding the public in a paralysis of fear.
Susan's wide eyes looked up at him, in his mind.
He couldn't do it.
"You have great power, Harry." Amelia said absently, her eyes glassy. "But there is power, too, in institutions. My brother Edgar saw it too, before I did. Power in law, in democracy, in systems. Wizards and witches die, but the things we build?"
She shivered. "They can outlast all of us."
"I…haven't seen what you've seen." He'd only seen the weakness of Aurors, the corruption of Fudge and Umbridge and their ilk.
"We do more. We do good." She wiped at her eyes, though they didn't run. "Grants for Muggleborns, subsidised loans for businesses, tax breaks for our industries."
There was a thunderous crack at the door. Harry's seal shook.
She snorted, suddenly, her voice but a whisper. "To help those who don't want to get in bed with a noble House like your own, like Malfoy's. We do good." She repeated.
"I believe you—" The door was vibrating.
But she wasn't done. "Protecting the house elves, the goblins, centaurs. Fighting for their right to their own land."
"I know—"
"Taxes and fundraisers to pay for St. Mungos." Her eyes were large, beseeching. "Muggles! We protect them, crack down on those that hurt or use them."
"I understand." The whole room trembled — Harry's seal was burning hot.
"Don't forget." She chided, though she wasn't looking at him, not really. "A man may change the world, but a government keeps the world running. I," She clutched her wrist suddenly. "I don't regret it."
Harry gripped his wand tighter. "I'll do what I can. We'll make a chokepoint. If I can hold Tom and his men off for long enough, maybe Dumbledore will come. We can do this. You can do this."
"Yes." She said.
Harry glanced over his shoulder at her. The veil fluttered behind her.
"I can." She closed her eyes. A murmur. "Amelia through the looking glass."
A smile.
She fell back through the veil.
"No!" Harry yelled, reaching out uselessly.
But she was gone, like she'd never been there. The veil fluttered like it was in a high wind, blowing back and forth and then stilling once more.
Harry felt cold.
The door opened.
Voldemort entered.