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Prologue: Turn Back Time
He sucked in a breath, as if he was being deprived of the air humans are so dependant on. His breaths were steady, inhaling sharply, and exhaling loudly, almost as if it were a code to live by. There was no room for worry, it would no longer be necessary to worry what happened at the Final Battle, because this was the Final Battle. There were no more suggestions or training. There was nothing. All that remained was an empty front yard and a Muggle Manor the size of two American Football fields. As if on cue, they all looked at each other and their worlds merged with their companions.
“Shall we?” Harry asked in an attempt at dry humor. He knew that neither of them would find this funny in this situation, but it made him feel slightly better and that counted for something. He looked up again, his scar searing with pain but he was still determined. Standing in the doorway of Riddle Manor was the one man he had come to defeat.
“It has been so long since we last met, Potter. Where did you learn your manners?” Voldemort taunted, boring his lifeless eyes into Harry’s emerald green reflected ones with a sense of passionate hate. “Right… I did send you to the muggles after all… pitiful creatures, aren’t they?” Harry could feel the atmosphere change at that moment and the stiffness of Hermione’s posture as Voldemort made the jeer toward muggles. Voldemort smirked cruelly when he realized this, and turned his attention to the nineteen year old young woman next to Harry. “I see I struck quite a nerve there, didn’t I Miss Granger? Many have perceived you to be the smartest muggle born of your age and many ages before you…” he whispered, so quietly that Harry didn’t even know if Hermione could hear him, “Can’t be that hard, can it, considering your competition?” Harry clenched his fists and his right hand was firmly gripping his wand, ready for the spell he knew was coming.
Had Hermione not been so in control of her emotions at that point, he thought that she might have tried to curse him. He knew she had more sense than that, though, and he dug his fingernails so deep into his palms that a squirt of blood came out. It didn’t matter; it went right with the stains of blood that seeped through his shirt. There was no prolonging this, this was it. He knew everyone here knew this was it too. Even Voldemort now had his wand placed firmly on his side, and he waved it into the air with an effortless flick. As soon as this happened, at least half a hundred Death Eaters followed from the Riddle House, all draped in black velvet cloaks with masks hiding their identities.
As if a reaction, a huge violent sound of popping filled Harry’s ears. Thirty to fifty Order Members were now surrounding the Death Eaters, both sides looking particularly equal. The absence of their leader, Albus Dumbledore, made Voldemort smile wickedly. It was pitch black now, the only light coming from the moon and the lit lamps in Riddle Manor. No one spoke for a good moment or so before an unidentified female voice from the Order Side cast the first spell,
“Pateseco!”
That is how the Final Battle began.
Lucius Malfoy and Ron Weasley
Ron scowled with the instant reminder that this was the sole man that had made his Father’s Ministry life hell for the past decades. Lucius Malfoy attempted a laugh but before he could, Ron’s wand did the talking for him as he caught Malfoy off guard. Lucius responded with a quick change of pace and while smirking lightly, “Cae--”
“PROTEGO!”
The effect was immediate and effective. Lucius Malfoy was blown several feet from the ground and landed disheveled on the floor, hair sticking up in ways that would have made Harry proud. Ron smirked with a glimmer in his eye, but not before he took his wand back out and made damn sure that Malfoy was in no shape to get back up. There was no glint in his eyes anymore when Malfoy got back up and grabbed for his wand. “Expelliarmus!” The wand flew from Malfoy’s grasp and into Ron’s bleeding hand as he harbored a triumphant last look. Malfoy, however, looked unaffected. He couldn’t possibly… could he?
“Caedo--”
“Macero!” Well, that certainty answered that question. So, Lucius Malfoy was skilled in the art of wandless magic and to be blunt, Ronald Weasley was, as nicely put, screwed. Mainly because Lucius was only using the Dark Magic version of the Killing Curse, a slower and more dangerous death, causing much more pain and torture than the Avada Kedavra Curse: Caedo Lente. Ron took a sharp intake of breath before he let it all out, passing a nearby Death Eater and Tonks battling.
The effect of the weakening spell was instantaneous. Lucius dropped to the ground, howling in pain. He gritted his teeth to let the scream pass, but it only made it worse. Ron smirked for a moment or two, but the effect of surprise is a man’s worst weakness. Admiring your surprise successes can be harmful, so when Walden McNair stumbled upon the scene, there was no way that Ron could have proven ready. He was taken out by,
“Caedo Lente!”
It felt as though thousands of knives were entering his body. He howled with Lucius for a mere minute before dropping to the ground in a slump. McNair was already leaving his crisp fallen body on the ground and he was dead too fast to hear someone yell,
“Pungo cruor!”
Narcissa Black-Malfoy and Hermione Granger
Narcissa, however, realized her weakness. “Your parents… what is it they do? Dentists… aren’t they? Cleaning muggles teeth as a job, what a disgusting thing to do… simply pitiful,” she mocked, and spat every word out to her as if she were talking about some species that didn’t deserve her mention. Hermione’s teeth clenched together so hard she thought she might have broken a few of them, “It’s too bad there dead, isn’t it? Did you love your pitiful muggle parents, girl? Did you?”
Hermione’s hand flew to her wand and before she could react to what she was doing, she shot out the most hurtful curse she could think of without actually killing the woman, “Vulruor!” The effect of the curse took a moment before it came into its full element. Narcissa sank to the floor, blood gushing from a wound in her stomach. Hermione could have almost sworn on her life that Narcissa was laughing as she tried to hold in the pain.
“I remember when I was your age… so young, and yet, so angry. You are angry at me aren’t you, Hermione?” At the mention of her name, she stiffened with intensity. She felt as though breathing couldn’t be achieved, at least not at this point. She wouldn’t let the woman who had just insulted the memory of her parents get away with saying her name… she wouldn’t. She, however, kept silent as Narcissa kept talking. “I know you want to kill me. I know you do. Do it. Come on, kill me.” Her wand dropped to the ground and she looked up at Hermione with a pleading expression. “Kill me, you damn mudblood!”
“I--” she stated. Staring down at the wretched witch, it reminded Hermione of her mother, howling in pain as the Death Eater killed her. “I can’t--” she muttered, but she knew she had to. She raised her arm, pointed her wand at Narcissa, and forced herself to look away.
“Yes you can! Think about it, you damned girl! I just insulted your parents! Think of it… you hate Draco Malfoy.” This one really stung. It was very clear that Narcissa hadn’t a clue what her relationship with Draco was. That’s why it was even harder to kill his mother. “Kill his mother and just get it over with--”
Hermione wanted her death to be painless. She couldn’t force this woman to live through the pain her parents had.
“Kill me! Don’t make me do it myself, you useless girl.”
Hermione picked up her wand; just barely able to get over the pain she felt and yelled, “Avada Kedavra!”
There, limp and still, dead in an instant from the curse only her best friend had been known to survive, was Draco Malfoy’s mother, the woman who had pleaded Hermione to kill her. She whipped around immediately upon hearing footsteps. She dodged away from one of Bellatrix’s curses, but Bellatrix was quicker with her curses then Hermione had thought. The moment after one shot had been fired, another followed it. She collapsed with a blood splitting spell and clutched her side. Bellatrix watched with immense pleasure. Hermione was able to hold onto life long enough to see Neville sneaking up on Bellatrix and shouting the killing curse.
“Avada Kedavra!”
Bellatrix wasn’t fast enough. In the moments before her death, Hermione felt proud of Neville that he finally defeated the woman who had caused such hardship in his life. The last thing Hermione heard was Neville calling her name from a vast distance.
Rodoluphus Lestrange and Draco Malfoy
“No, Draco, Bellatrix did. Unfortunately, she herself did not make it. Ah, the price we pay.”
Draco didn’t respond. He was staring at Hermione; his face dripping with blood and grass stained with the blood of those who hadn’t survived the battle. It was the end now, moments before this encounter Harry Potter had defeated the Dark Lord. The Ministry was to arrive at any moment, and they had fought a battle in which no one had won. They were in a stalemate… for another Dark Wizard was sure to gain strength and popularity just as Voldemort had… That, Draco knew, was not to be taken lightly. Something horrible was coming, something much worse than this. He couldn’t wrap his mind around the concept however; as he was staring at the one girl he had ever loved, if he had ever known what love meant.
“She’s just a useless, ugly muggle-born know it all, Draco.”
Draco clenched his fists and spat in a rage, “Useless? You want me to take about useless, Uncle? I’ll tell you who is useless. First, Voldemort is useless, for his ideals and motivations for killing innocent people were just a fear that he himself would lose… he is a cowardly phony, which makes him not only a useless wizard and a pathetic excuse for a human but a hypocrite as well, being a half-blood himself… Want to know who else is useless? You, my dear Uncle, and your pathetic wife who gave her life to kill and torture; you follow blindly in his path and have never looked back. You spent years in Azkaban, simply waiting for the chance to show your Lord how faithful you were to him… dying in a way for him… did he ever give you recognition? A day of praise perhaps; a week of no torture; then it was over. You are a sick puppy dog in the eyes of him, and a leech that no one wants to have around--”
“Is this how you treat family, Draco?”
“Don’t give me that, Rodoluphus. You are not part of my family, nor am I of yours. Blood means nothing in a time like this, and you have brother slaughtering brother out here… and I’m afraid there may be another case of it before the night ends. Ugly? Really, are we talking about Hermione or your precious wife? For if you are talking about Hermione, you must be blind…” he remarked, looking down at her with a final smile and pulled himself back up to face his Uncle, finding it harder to breathe every time he went for air. “She is the most beautiful person I have ever encountered…Bellatrix, on the other hand, don’t compare to her… not in the least.” He took a pause to see his Uncle’s angry-twisted face and reacted with a simple smirk. “Muggle-born? Well, I can’t exactly deny that, Uncle,” he said, and Rodoluphus looked positively thrilled, “But I will tell you that she is a more capable witch then Bellatrix and all the other female Death Eaters combined…” he added, watching his Uncle’s face turn into fury, “As for being a know-it-all, since when was that a bad thing? Sorry, but I can see no problem in knowing more than you, something she obviously knew a lot about. Now Uncle, I will not hesitate to kill you right now, because you were a part of what harmed her. You mean nothing to me as you are, simply, another Death Eater that touched her. Anyone that touches her messes with me, understand?”
“How long have you been in love with the enemy, Draco?”
“Doesn’t matter; Caedo Lente!”
Within a minute, he died, and Draco fell to the grass, holding Hermione in his arms, letting tears of silver fill his eyes.
“Cheers, Mr. Potter,” he muttered, glancing down at the black-haired boy for a moment, clearing his throat and pressing the subject so it made Harry twitch angrily. “Have you had a nice stay at my –fathers—house?” Harry could feel the amount of venom coming from the hissed word –father—that Voldemort seemed to dislike so much. He spoke as if it were a curse word or someone would strike him down if it was used in an affectionate manner. A chorus of things entered Harry’s mind and he could feel the very presence of the man behind him, a sorrowful and yet so blatantly corrupt presence that was evil in its most pronounced form. His only dire wish was that his companions had made it out alive, but this wish was looking as though it had a slim chance of becoming true. Harry’s jaw was hurting him the most, which was odd because it was the only part of him that wasn’t oozing blood from a wound.
A feeling of skepticism cursed through his veins again and only then, for once, did the villain look at him, straight in the eye with a hazed expression of such hatred that Harry didn’t know how to react to it, “Can I help you with something, Mr. Potter?”
“Doubt it,” he replied icily, never taking his eyes off him. Every once in a while, Harry would feel the courage to do something he wouldn’t normally ever do, and now of course, was one of those very rare times that he took himself out of his comfort zone. The unspoken animosity between the two men was an outright failure to agree on any aspects of life. See, Tom Marvolo Riddle grew up to be the most feared wizard in Britain and Harry Potter was the savior, and that was the way it would always be.
“I have no patience Harry, why don’t we finish this?”
The boy nodded, but in a brief moment, the wand in his hand decided to go icily down back to his shirt pocket. The air was crisp now, in a soothing sort of way, not the best weather for an attack. An attack was supposed to be antagonizing, excruciating and painful, but the weather predicted otherwise. The two men stood in a rectangular pathway and neither spoke for the longest time. “Eighteen years ago, Potter, is when I first heard the prophecy predicting my doom.”
“Did you?” Harry asked, trying his best to sound unconcerned. He was doing a terrible job however because at that moment, a sharp seering pain shot through his head and he couldn’t breathe. “Congratulations then, Tom. You’ve finally figured it out then, have you?” He asked, a smirk forming on his lips. “Kill me then, Tom. Just go ahead and kill me. Let’s get it over with.”
“Gladly, Potter.” Tom bowed his head and waited for Harry to do the same. He forced Harry’s head down with a simple flick of his wand and in seconds the curses were flying. Red and green lights emitted from Harry and Voldemort’s wands respectively and neither of them spoke. A cutting hex forced itself into Harry’s leg, making him wince with pain. Harry shot a weakening spell but it missed the target. He barely escaped a Killing Curse sent his way but was not lucky enough to escape the Crucio only moments after. He withered in pain but had enough air in him to raise his wand at the laughing Voldemort and yell,
“Protego!”
“Avada Kedavra!”
The two spells hit each other with a beam of light. It surrounded them and Harry was blinded by it, unable to see. Taking a chance now and using the light to his advantage, he closed his eyes and focused all the power he could muster and yelled, “Avada Kedavra!” It all came rushing back to him. Memories of hunting down the horcruxes were speeding threw his mind and his life was flashing before him in slow motion. He saw an overview of his life in backwards motion until he was back at the Dursleys, a small, naive child. Was he dying? Abruptly, it changed.
He was now watching a memory that was not his own. There was a small group of boys in front of an old orphanage jeering at a smaller, ebony-haired young boy who was whimpering and backing away from the others. “Scared are you, Tommy?” One of them asked, grinning maliciously. “Look at this, guys, the freak is ‘scared’ of us. Come on, I thought you weren’t afraid of anything, Tommy!” He could see the hot tears rolling down the younger boy’s face. Harry suddenly felt a huge pang of guilt. He knew whose memory this was, and he had just attempted to kill him. “Look, he’s crying!” One of the boys taunted. They ran away laughing and Tom was sitting alone.
“Riddle!” Someone yelled. Tom looked up to see an older woman coming towards him. “Why aren’t you in the dining hall?”
“Mrs. Cole, the older boys were teasing me! They called me a freak.”
Mrs. Cole only laughed in response. “I’m sure they did, Tom. Now, go get some dinner.”
Harry had a huge lump in his throat. This scenario sounded like something that could have happened to him, changing the boys to Dudley and his gang and Tom to him. He knew they had both had horrible childhoods, but the similarity was uncanny. Feeling worse than he had before, he didn’t have time to register this because he heard a scream. He watched as the light dissolved and it revealed Voldemort, on his knees, screaming.
Before he knew what was going on, he had passed out.
“Remus?” Harry asked, his voice shaky. He steadily got up off the floor and wiped the dirt off him. He felt dizzy and tried to lie back down again. “You’re alive,” he smiled. Remus smiled and nodded and propped his head up against a rock. He looked around and widened his eyes. “Voldemort…” he muttered. “What happened?”
“He died, Harry,” Remus responded, grinning, “You defeated him.”
Harry looked down, depressed. He knew that he should feel proud, but he felt dirty. “I murdered a man, Remus.” There was a pause. “He might not have been the best man or even a real human, but he was a man. He didn’t deserve to be killed, Remus.” He let tears roll down his cheeks. “He had the same childhood as I did, Remus. He was bullied into thinking he was worthless, and I killed him. It wasn’t his fault he was a psychopath.” He let the tears run freely now as he tried to find some condolence in what happened.
“You couldn’t have helped him either, Harry. I think you did him a favor, really. Maybe he’ll realize the destruction he’s done now that he’s dead.” There was another awkward pause now. “I--” Remus muttered, looking towards the ground.
“Can you tell me who survived, Remus?” Harry asked with a wary look. “Please…”
“Other than myself…” he said, thinking about what he was about to say, “Charlie and Fred Weasley, Mad-Eye, Molly Weasley, Tonks, Emmeline Vance and Neville. Neville did survive but he is pretty beaten up and was carted back to Hogwarts immediately. Charlie and Fred are still here but Fred is really beat up so Charlie has taken to staying with him. Fred swore he saw Draco Malfoy wandering around these parts an hour ago,” Remus said, breathing heavily.
Harry couldn’t see because the tears were blocking his vision. Ron… Hermione… Ginny. It was all coming to him now. They were all dead. He widened his eyes in surprise at the knowledge of Draco, but the more he thought about Malfoy the more he thought about Hermione. Then he just broke down and did all the crying he had been holding inside. Remus held him as he cried and kept whispering, “I’m sorry, Harry” over and over again. “Harry?” He asked. “There is a way… to fix all of this.”
“How, Remus?” He asked, wiping the tears out of his eyes.
“It’s called the ‘Tempus’ charm, and it’s a very complicated charm that deals with time. Harry, this may be your last hope. The world isn’t safe anymore, and we all know it. There will be another Dark Lord and we will all come crumbling down. We need to start again where it all started. You need to go back in time to before you went to Hogwarts… change it all. You have to be ready for what’s coming, we all do. When it comes, I want you to be ready.”
“I’ll go Remus,” he answered, standing up, “But I won’t go without you.”
Remus was perplexed, but nodded. “Are you ready?” He asked, grinning slightly but still anxious.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” he answered.
They both looked at each other. This was it. He looked around the battlefield and noticed all the dead bodies spread across the land. He grimaced as he saw all the dead bodies, but he knew he could change that. He knew that he could change these people’s deaths. Just knowing he had that power gave him a small shred of hope. He needed to do this. There was no going back.
“Tempus!” As soon as the world began to spin, he became so entranced with the spinning he never noticed the presence of a hand on his shoulder. If he had, he would have figured it was Remus but if he had thought that, he would be very wrong. At that point in history, three people who were supposed to be there had ended up somewhere else entirely.
And that was that.
S.S.M.
Seriously Sirius Marauder
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