Chapter Seven: Hogwarts: Reprise

“Ah, Harry,” quipped Dumbledore with his blue eyes sparking, “I see you’re here to take yet another trip with the temptress adventure.”

“I’m not sure I’d call this adventure, Professor,” Harry grumbled.  “So far it hasn’t served a purpose other than peck marks and some spectacular retching.”

“I see…” laughed Dumbledore, “get into some bad Every Flavor Beans, did you?”  The old man reached up and scratched his chin.  “You know, I reckon I may have gotten a bogey-flavored one once or twice — choosing among those beans is a very bad business.”

Harry sighed, rolled his eyes and shook his head.  Somehow Dumbledore always knew how to lighten a conversation.  “Have you seen Professor McGonagall?”

“No, I’m afraid I haven’t seen her in quite some time,” Dumbledore answered as he swayed back and forth in his chair.  “I’m beginning to think she’s moved permanently to her other office.”

“I don’t think so, Professor.  She’s probably just busy,” Harry answered.

“Yes, yes, I suppose she is…the school is quite the shambles from what I understand,” Dumbledore articulated like he was talking about sunny weather or yesterday’s news.  “Harry, I think the Headmistress may be a bit — what I shall call it — unhinged right now.”

 “Are you saying you reckon McGonagall’s gone mad?” Harry yelped.

Chuckling, Dumbledore shook his hand in a negative gesture, “Oh no, please don’t misunderstand me.  The Headmistress hasn’t lost her marbles — yet…” he grinned, “but she’s had very grievous circumstances on her mind.  The most collected person would find making heads or tails of all this very problematic.  It’s an incredibly emotional time for her.”

Harry didn’t know what to say.

“Grief affects us all differently, Harry.  It’s a cycle of shock, sadness, bargaining, anger and acceptance; though not necessarily in that order, and its experience is always unique.  It’s what makes us human — along with our proficiency to love comes our capacity for grief.  Again, something Tom was quite incapable of experiencing.”

Dumbledore considered his student fidgeting uncomfortably in front of his portrait.  Though Harry’s eyes were downcast, the old man knew he was listening carefully.  “Grief can make the most outrageous seem ordinary.  I think you understand my point.”

“I reckon I do, Professor,” Harry said with a register of clarity.  “But Professor, what if you weren’t necessarily going back to change things — what if you just needed answers?”

“What sort of answers are you searching for, Harry?” Dumbledore inquired gently.

“The sort that makes some sense of it all…the ones that tell me this isn’t all a dream I’ll wake up from…” Harry said while rubbing the scar on his forehead.  “My whole life has been…has been…a nightmare.  How do I get past today and believe tomorrow is going to be better?”

“You know, I’m going to divulge something,” joked Dumbledore, “the Fat Lady came running to me as soon as she heard Miss Granger speak: it seems your friend thinks I only speak in riddles!” he laughed.  “Sometimes the best way to move past a problem is to tackle it head-on.  And, I should also add in our cases, sometimes the people who love us are much smarter than we are.”

“Huh?” Harry frowned at his mentor.

Dumbledore smiled.  For all his lessons about love, Harry still hadn’t figured out he was better with Ginny than without her.  “I think I know what you mean to do, Harry.  The answer to your problem is on the staircase.  Remember what I explained about being smarter…it will save you from unpleasant, bogey hexes in the future.”  He then rested his head on the back of the chair and drifted off to sleep.

Harry’s jaw dropped at Dumbledore’s statement…how did he know about Ginny’s hexes on the lawn?  Looking around, Harry considered the obvious: Dumbledore was omniscient.  As promised, the office door opened admitting a teary and swollen but very determined and irritated Ginny.  She took a deep breath and steadied herself, speaking evenly, “We are not going to go through this again, are we?”

Harry swore he saw a smirk cross Dumbledore’s slumbering face.  “No, I don’t think we will,” he answered.

“Look,” Ginny started as she crossed the room to sit next to him, “I don’t know what McGonagall was thinking when she asked you to do this, but it was wrong.  She can’t have been thinking clearly about whatever she asked you to do.  Hermione has been studying all this feverishly — I don’t think I’ve seen her so agitated since the O.W.L.s —she says it’s dangerous.  You just can’t change fate…please don’t do this.”

Ginny looked at Harry with her soft, brown eyes, willing him to feel what she was having difficulty expressing in words.  “You can’t go back to fix things.  The consequences of one wrong move are too great: you could be killed.”  Agitated with the tears that were consistently creeping into her eyes, Ginny sniffed and pressed on. “Voldemort could live and the whole world could change.  If you think for one minute my feelings — or my family’s feelings — will change about you because you don’t go back for Fred, you’re wrong.  Fred wouldn’t want this.  Fred doesn’t want this.  In fact, I can feel him haunting you as we speak,” she insisted as a small smile spread across her face.

Harry smiled back at his girlfriend.  Dumbledore was right.  She was smarter — much smarter.  “I reckon I keep making an arse out of myself, don’t I?” Harry posed, gazing at her intently.

Ginny sighed deeply.  Harry had no idea what his green eyes did to her when they locked onto her own.  She had yearned for his eyes…dreamed of them…had nightmares of never seeing them again.  She took his hand.  “If I tell you I’m not angry I’ll be lying.  In the corridor I was so close to hexing you again…you should feel lucky.  This batch would have been much worse,” she maintained.  “But I love you and I’ve missed you and we’ve all been through so much in the past day or so…I reckon I should bear in mind that maybe we’re all not quite acting ourselves at the moment?”

Harry stared dumbfounded at Ginny.  She had just paraphrased most of Dumbledore’s discussion.  “I-I love you, too,” he said while squeezing her soft hand in his.  “Dumbledore and I had a talk before you came up.”

“You did?” Ginny asked.

“Yeah,” Harry answered, “he said sometimes the best way to deal with problems is to face them head-on.”

“And?” Ginny prodded.

“Then he told me that sometimes the people who love us are smarter than we are,” Harry admitted sheepishly.

“Genius, that Dumbledore,” Ginny laughed.

“Gin,” Harry said taking both her hands and looking deep in her eyes, “I really want to go back to make sense out of what happened — so I can figure all this out in my head.  None of this feels real…I’m scared I’m going to wake up and find I’ve been dreaming again.  There’s so much you don’t know about — it all went down so fast.  I want you come with me — no, I need you to come with me.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with changing the outcome of the war?  You’re not asking me because you think I’m the Master of the wand?” Ginny asked suspiciously.  “Because I won’t go if you’re about to trick me into doing something I disagree with.”

“No.  I promise,” Harry vowed, “really, seriously — I promise.  Cross my heart or you can feed me to Romilda Vane.”

Ginny snorted at Harry’s joke.  “Really…I think Romilda may be too good for you,” she mused.  She looked at Harry and considered him carefully.  He seemed earnest — she gave him her answer:  “So what do we do now?  Wait for the professor?”

“No, look,” Harry pointed, “the Time-turner is sitting on her desk.  We can go and no one will ever know we’ve been gone.”

“Is this safe?” Ginny worried out loud.

“We’ll be fine.  Remember, Hermione and I did it for Buckbeak and Sirius…Hermione used it during her entire third year.  I have my invisibility cloak.  We’ll wear it when we have to.”

As Harry moved to grab the Time-turner from McGonagall’s desk, he was startled by his old Headmaster.  “Harry, one thing,” Dumbledore added, “the thing in the forest?  If you and Ginny held it together you might find it exceptionally helpful.”

Harry stuttered in shock, “B-But Professor, I thought we…”

“I know what you thought Harry.  Your point is well-taken.  However, one more go at it may be a prodigious comfort to a number of people,” he said pointing to his pensieve.    “Now, my sources tell me the Headmistress is about to leave the Staffroom for this office.”

Suddenly nervous, Harry motioned for Ginny to join him behind the desk.  He noted the time, thought for a moment and then placed the long chain around both their necks.  He then pulled out his invisibility cloak and situated it over their heads.  “We can’t be too careful,” he smiled nervously.  “If I’m right, we should be going back to just before Snape caught McGonagall, Luna and me in the corridor as we left Ravenclaw Tower,” he explained.  “That means this office should be empty.”

“Okay,” Ginny gulped, realizing she had no idea Snape had nearly caught him in the corridor.

“Trust me,” Harry whispered as he planted a kiss on Ginny’s nose and began to turn the small hourglass counter-clockwise the number of revolutions necessary to take them back.

* * *

Minerva McGonagall lingered in the staffroom drinking a medicinal cup of tea.  After resting and eating a small meal her emotions were more under control.  The dream-like quality of the previous day was fading and reality was becoming easier to accept.  Her initial idea of using the Time-turner now felt ridiculous.  The families who converged upon the school hadn’t blamed her…in fact, their resilience was astounding.  There seemed to be a kind of honor in the casualties sustained here…the loved ones of those lost were relying on each other for comfort and support.

That simple reassurance made her realize how impossible and irresponsible altering the battle would be.  In fact, she felt quite ashamed her emotions had run so high she had allowed herself to bring Potter into her foolishness.  The boy was forever trying to solve the world’s problems…she was horribly wrong to suggest any of this nonsense.  He needed to move on — to put the nightmare of Voldemort behind him — so that maybe, just maybe, he might have the chance to live a normal life.

She looked to the clock on the wall.  The two hours Harry had asked for were now over.  She would return to her office and put a stop to her entire, ludicrous proposal.

* * *

Harry finished spinning the Time-turner and looked at his watch.  It was just past ten o’clock the previous evening.  To his great relief, the office was indeed empty; he looked at Ginny and squeezed her hands reassuringly.  “Are you ready for this?”

“I guess so,” Ginny whispered.  Now that she had actually made the jump back, she wasn’t so sure about her decision…

“Gin,” Harry urged, “we need to get out of here, fast.”  As she started to pull the cloak from their heads he stopped her.  “No, we’ll be safer this way.  But we’ve got to get out of the castle and try to stay in the shadows as much as possible.  I want to go toward Hogsmeade.”

“But if you wanted to go to Hogsmeade, why didn’t we just use the passageway in the Room of Requirement?” Ginny asked.  She immediately regretted asking the question, realizing their past selves were most likely in the room at that very moment.  “This is going to take some getting used to,” she admitted.

Harry smirked.  “I know.  We’ll be all right.  Just keep close and we’ll make our way out of the office.  When we get to the corridor we’ll stop to check for activity and then move out to the stairway.  We’ll keep going like that until we hopefully make it to the door.  Okay?”

Ginny nodded and they slipped out of the office and down the spiral staircase into the second floor corridor.  Finding it empty, they crept through the passage to the stairwell where they narrowly missed Peeves, who was up to his usual antics.  Harry rolled his eyes and nodded toward the poltergeist, indicating they should pause a moment until Peeves moved on.  Once Peeve’s attention had been drawn elsewhere, they made their way stealthily down the stairs, through the Entrance Hall and out the front door.

Harry glanced around and then looked at his watch, noting they had taken ten minutes to clear the castle.  “We have a few minutes yet before all hell breaks loose.  I want to be in the passageway to the Shrieking Shack when it does, so let’s head there now.  Once we get safely away from the castle we can pull off the cloak and I’ll start to explain,” Harry whispered.  Ginny nodded and they moved quickly across the lawn toward the diabolical tree.  When they’d crossed half the distance, Harry stopped and surveyed their surroundings.  Finding nothing out-of-place, he pulled the cloak from their heads and breathed a heavy sigh of relief.  He smiled reassuringly at Ginny and pecked her on the forehead, taking her hand in his.  “Let’s get into that passageway.”

They stopped at a safe distance from the willow and Harry started to outline his plan to Ginny.  “In about ten minutes or so, Snape is going to fly out the third floor window, leaving McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout, Luna and me standing there in shock — then McGonagall is going to call the statues and armor to arms to defend the school.  That’s when we should start to hear activity.” Harry explained.  “I want us to get into the passage and make our way to Hogsmeade.  But first, I’d really like to see you use that wand.”

“What?” Ginny asked incredulously.

“The Elder Wand, Ginny — use it to hit the knot on the tree.”

“You mean just cast a Wingardium Leviosa or something?”

“Yeah.  See that knot?” Harry said pointing to the secret knot at the base of the tree.  “Use one of those twigs and levitate it until it activates the knot to make the willow un-Whomp so we can get in without getting our heads ripped off.”

“Well, okay…” Ginny uttered.  Harry handed her the Elder Wand from inside his robes and Ginny stared at it for a moment, not sure whether she should take it.  “This was Dumbledore’s wand…I can’t believe I’m about to use Dumbledore’s wand…this is, well, wicked,” she grinned at him, sounding a lot like Ron.  Then she turned and looked all around her, including above her head.  “Professor, if you’re out there, I hope you don’t mind that I’m taking your stick for a test drive…”

Harry rolled his eyes at Ginny’s obvious wonderment with the wand.  “Can we just get on with it?”

“Oh — well, if we must,” she blushed.  She bounced the wand in her hand to assess its weight and springiness.  She looked at Harry hopefully and said, “well, here goes — Wingardium Leviosa!” as she swished the wand and flicked her wrist in perfect Flitwick form.  The twig, however, didn’t move.  “Wingardium Leviosa!” Ginny chanted more firmly while swishing and flicking.  The twig still did not move.  Exasperated, she pulled out her own wand and cast the spell, levitated the twig into the knot and stared at Harry quizzically.  “Maybe you should try,” she offered.

Harry took the wand, unsure why it didn’t work for Ginny.  Even if the wand didn’t recognize her as its master it should at least function to perform a minor charm…something wasn’t right.  He cast his own spell with the same result: no movement.  “The wand doesn’t work,” Harry said in frustration.

“What do you mean the wand doesn’t work?” Ginny asked fretfully.

“Well, it should at least perform normal magic…it shouldn’t matter about the Master.  It’s like anyone who picks up a stray wand; they should be able to at least do something,” Harry insisted.  “That’s why Voldemort killed Snape.  The wand worked normally for him…but not spectacularly.  It didn’t do anything Voldemort hadn’t done with any of his other wands.”  Harry scratched his head in confusion.  Already the trip back was beginning to feel like a mistake.

“Well,” Ginny offered, “why don’t we duck into the tunnel and go from there?  At least we’ll be under cover.”

“Good thinking, Gin,” Harry conceded.  The pair ducked into the narrow passage and stopped just inside the entrance where light from their wands wouldn’t be detected from passersby.

“Why is this wand so important, Harry?” Ginny asked.  “I thought you told me we weren’t changing anything.”

“It’s not that, Gin,” Harry maintained, “what if we need it for defense?  You know, a battle did go on here…I was counting on having it in case we got into trouble.”

“Oh…” Ginny muttered.

“Let’s get going.  We need to get through this tunnel and outside the Shrieking Shack before Voldemort makes his first proclamation from the gates,” Harry said as he began pulling her along through the narrow passage.  “Once we get clear of the Shack, I’ll feel a lot better about all this and I can start to explain some things — really explain.”

“Okay, Harry,” Ginny agreed, “but you keep saying you’re going to explain and then we keep moving on to something else.  Are you ever going to tell me why I’m really here?”

Harry stopped as they came to a portion of the tunnel where the ceiling dropped considerably making it necessary for Ginny and him to crawl in single file.  “I will, Gin, but I don’t reckon crawling and talking makes for a good conversation, yeah?” he said as he clamped his glowing wand in his mouth as he ducked down and began to crawl forward.

“Well if you put it that way,” Ginny said following suit.

The pair crawled through the narrow section until they started to reach an incline and the tunnel opened up a bit allowing them to proceed along in a crouch.  “It’s funny,” Harry remembered, “this didn’t seem like it took so long a few hours ago.”

“Adrenaline,” Ginny countered.

“Yeah, I reckon so,” Harry agreed, “I was scared shitless.”

Harry’s admission made Ginny laugh out loud.  “You know,” he said, “I didn’t mean that to be funny!”

“I’m sorry, Harry,” Ginny apologized, “but you’re right: this all seems so surreal.  I can’t believe you’re taking me back to show me what happened.  I didn’t realize I was so important to your mental health,” she jibed.

Harry stopped a moment and looked Ginny squarely in the eyes.  “Ginny, you are my mental health,” he declared, causing a blank look to fog Ginny’s countenance.  “All those months…do you know how I stayed sane?” She shook her head with wide eyes.  “The Marauder’s Map — I would pull out the map and watch your dot move through the school.  I would watch you get ready for bed until I knew you were sleeping and safe.  When you stayed home after Easter, well, that comfort was gone and I was mad with worry…”

“I didn’t know,” she whispered with tears forming in her eyes, “I’m sorry…”

“Don’t apologize.  If anyone should apologize, it’s me.  But now, after having gone through all those months, I would do it again.  There wouldn’t have been a way for anyone to stay safe if I had been around.  The Burrow would have been decimated…you know that.  Death Eaters were practically on the front stoop of Grimmauld Place.  What Ron, Hermione and I did moving around every night…that was no life, and nothing I would allow your entire family to suffer for my safety.”  Harry paused and tilted Ginny’s chin so she was looking at him again; during the course of the conversation her gaze had slowly turned toward the floor.  He brushed her beautiful hair from her face.  “I was a right, noble prat.  I’m sorry.  But if you have any idea how hard it was for me to leave, loving you the way I do, you’ll understand why I made that decision.  Especially now that we can look back and know what happened after Voldemort took over.”

Ginny nodded her head; she was unable to speak.

“Let’s get out of here.  When we do, we’ll set up outside the Shack in the forest where I can place some wards.  Then I’ll start to tell you as much as I can until we need to move on,” Harry said while looking at his watch.  “The school should go nuts any moment now, and I really want to be out of this tunnel.”

The pair walked for another few minutes and noticed a faint light appearing ahead of them.  They slowly inched toward the opening in the grate, Harry gesturing for Ginny to remain silent.  When they came to the opening, he pulled out the cloak again and yanked it over his head.  “I’m going to go in there and make sure it’s empty.  I’ll be right back for you,” he promised as he disappeared.

Ginny stood numb with fright in the passageway.  For the first time in her life she was starting to understand what it felt like to be Harry Potter.  He was a noble prat, but he was a brave, noble prat — her prat.  She remembered waking up in the Chamber of Secrets to find him begging her to live, whilst he was dying from the Basilisk poison…she had known then, right that very moment, she loved him.  She was a little girl, sure, but she had known.  Something…something had told her that very moment he was going to save the world; and he had taken her heart in the process.  Michael, Dean…the others, they were all good fun; a pleasant distraction from the ache of loving Harry.  Then, after the battle in the Department of Mysteries, their relationship changed and she noticed his unusual behavior — the intense gazes; the long, easy talks; the fierce looks at Dean.  Then the final Quidditch match…

“Ginny!” Harry whispered fiercely from outside the grate.  “Let’s go!”

She crawled through the hole and under the cloak, allowing him to take her on his journey into the past.