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Chapter Thirteen: In Which Time Becomes ConfusedThe spell finished off its plentiful nasty side effects of dry mouth, vertigo, motion sickness, rope burn, and headache by mimicking the feeling of how it felt to slam heavily into something hard and solid. (An experience which he was also, sadly, well-acquainted with. Few types of pain were a stranger to Sal, whom trouble managed to find no matter what he did.) It felt as if he slammed, heavily, into the hard stone floor, and broke several bones into the bargain.This was not, however, the case. To think, he’d spent the past several hours pulling himself along that ridiculous silver cord, and when he finally comes to the other end, wham. Yes. That was his luck in play, alright.“Harry, mate, are you alright?” asked a familiar worried voice, leaning over him. Harry grinned, despite himself. Ron! It was Ron! Suddenly, it was all worth it. He was home! He’d made it! Yes! Victory! Rich and Rowena were the smartest people in the universe! He was home! “Mate?” repeated a thoroughly flummoxed Ron Weasley. Harry could almost feel the deepening perplexity of his best friend.“I’m fine!” he said. “I’m wonderful! Oh, this is great!”Ron sounded dubious when he spoke next, “Are you sure? You sound a bit…” Ron trailed off. Harry could hear him just fine, but for some reason, sight had yet to quite find its way into focus. Harry had traded in the ghosts of glasses for the real thing, and now he had to get used to them. Their ups. Their downs. Their sudden ability to fall off his face….He reached to his side, and grabbed hold of the plain black frames, settling them on his nose.“Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry about me.” He was grinning. It was good to be home. And Hogwarts seemed just how he’d left it. Rich’s spell must have done precisely what it had been intended to. He couldn’t wait to tell—Oh. Oh, that was right.He tried to ignore the sudden, sharp pain, somewhere in the vicinity of his chest, at the sobering realisation that he would never be able to tell Rich how well he’d succeeded. Rich would have to assume the best. But, he was gone. Dead for at least nine centuries, if Harry were generous. Unless magic-users lived longer than muggles for some reason. Still, it was an obvious conclusion that all the Founders but one had been dead for a very long time.He swallowed, hard.“Mate, are you sure you’re alright? You’re sort of freaking me out, here….”Ron was hovering overhead, his brow furrowed. Harry had forgotten just how bright that hair was. And how many freckles he had. Did everyone in the Weasley family have that many freckles? He couldn’t recall.Hermione, meanwhile, was weaving through the rearranged desks to make it to his side. Fancy that. Hermione. The modern-day answer to Rowena Ravenclaw, but much better-tempered.Usually.“Is there a problem, gentlemen?” asked a creaky old voice. It was that guest lecturer, Professor… what’s-his-name. The one who’d accidentally started this whole fiasco.“No, everything’s fine,” said Harry, still grinning, despite himself. He tried to smother his grin. Hermione came over to stand nearby, hands on her hips. “Oh, honestly, Ron. What have you done now?” she asked, eyes narrowed. Her gaze flicked to Harry, saw that he was, at least superficially, unharmed, and her brow furrowed, briefly, but she seemed to decide that scolding Ron was more important. Poor Ron. Everything had worked out well in the end. He didn’t deserve to be henpecked.“I’m fine, guys. Really,” he said. Professor What’s-His-Face surveyed them. Professor Flitwick seemed to find Harry’s cheer suspicious.“I miscast the spell. I said the wrong thing,” Ron said, looking crestfallen at the idea that he might accidentally have damaged his best friend’s mind. Yet another sharp point of contrast: no one seemed inclined to listen to Harry Potter when he spoke. Professor Flitwick scrutinised Harry’s appearance, as if to find something visible amiss.“What did you say?” asked the aged guest lecturer.“Er… ‘tempus immutablis’,” Ron said, thinking. “It means something like ‘unchanging time’, Hermione said.”Hermione blinked, frowned, cocked her head. “…What? Ron, I haven’t even heard what you said before, let alone had the time to research what it means. I don’t speak Latin, you know. And how do you remember exactly what you said, anyway?”“What do you mean?” asked Ron. “We spent months researching it. Remember Dumbledore’s pensieve?”“Ron, you just cast that spell a few minutes ago,” said Hermione, as if she were worried about his sanity. Ron blinked repeatedly.“Oh…oh, yeah, you’re right. What was I thinking?” His frown was deep, brows furrowed in profound confusion. Harry looked back and forth between the two. It was his turn to have no idea what they were talking about. The two professors were the first to recover their wits.“Perhaps you ought to go to the Hospital Wing, just to be safe, Mr. Potter,” suggested Professor Flitwick. Harry cringed. He’d spent far too much time there to go there needlessly. He looked around the room for help, but none was forthcoming.“I’m fine. Really,” he tried again. Everyone looked unconvinced.“Harry, mate, you’d say that if you’d broken every bone in your body and were bleeding out,” said Ron, eyebrows raised in an expression that said, quite plainly, that Ron was not impressed.“There’s nothing to worry about. I just had a little adventure, is all!” And thank God that people used that expression often enough to refer to more ordinary mishaps. I’ll tell you more, later, he mouthed at Ron and Hermione. Ron frowned, as if he wanted to drag Harry to the Hospital Wing, and Hermione’s expression was still sceptical, but neither pressed the issue, and at last Hermione sighed. They knew that there was no sense in pushing it. The only thing they could do was attempt to stun him, or something, and physically drag him to the Hospital Wing, and Harry’s defences were better than ever.“Very well then, Mr. Potter,” said Flitwick, with a sigh that suggested that he was inclined to agree with Harry’s friends over Harry himself. It was quite galling how little faith they had in him. “Let’s see you cast the charm, then.”Harry froze. Ah. Ah, hell. He hadn’t heard the charm, hadn’t thought about it, in ten years. No matter that that ten-year span now felt a single moment, stretched out; that didn’t make the memory any clearer. There were too many thoughts and memories spanning the time between.“Ah…and that would be…what, again?” he asked. Ron’s eyes narrowed, as if he’d caught Harry in a lie. Hermione huffed, assuming that he hadn’t paid any attention.“It’s ‘tempus immobilis’,” she replied, before anyone could say anything else. Ron had his wand pointed down, which was just as well, as he was murmuring the proper words over and over again. “Flick your wand just so, jab it forward, and say the incantation,” said Hermione, in her bossiest voice.Sometimes, she was worse than Rowena of Ravenclaw, and that was saying something.“Tempus immobilis,” he said, jabbing the wand forward. He stared at it. Ah, good old holly-and-phoenix-feather wand. How he’d missed it. It felt right in his hand. But… he suspected that he didn’t need it. The only reason he needed it was not to seem out of place, not to draw attention to himself, when everyone else was limited to verbal, wanded magic. That, and because his wand and Voldemort’s shared cores.Hermione turned to stare at him, mouth agape. “Harry?” she asked.“Bravo, Mr. Potter!” Professor Flitwick managed to say. “And, on your first try, too! It’s good to see you make an effort in your studies.”Never pass up an opportunity to learn something new; you never know when it could save you or your friends. Apply yourself to everything, study hard, become the best you can be. You might surprise yourself, Rich said, shaking his head, in a rare moment of solemnity. Sal’s heart clenched.It doesn’t do to dwell on the past and forget to live, Harry, Dumbledore’s voice said, resounding in his head.Sal bowed his head, and turned away. It hurt to think about the friends he’d left behind, even in the corners of his mind. Subdued, he wandered off to the sides of the classroom, gently dragging Ron after him. He wanted to be out of the way, that people would have to come up with excuses if they wished to stare at him. Hermione stared, herself, but then shook her head, and then wove her way back through the desks, as if she were an ambulatory tumbleweed.Harry could feel the strand of magic holding Ron captive. He frowned at it, and pinched it between his fingers, until it broke.Ron opened his eyes, and clutched at his head. “Mate?” asked Ron, looking around in clear bewilderment. Harry sighed.“It’s your turn, you know. I just thought we’d go somewhere less in the direct line-of-sight,” he said, folding his arms. Ron frowned, opened his mouth as if to say something, changed his mind, closed his mouth, and then stood up straight. No one looking, now. He’d better not mess this one up.He swung the wand down, and jabbed. “Tempus immobilis!” he cried, his shout drowned out by those of others in the rest of the room.It must have worked, because the next thing he knew, Harry was leant up against the wall, his poor recovering head now saddled with a burgeoning headache. It was, he was sure, the result of the time travel spell.“Ugh,” he moaned, head in his hands, as Ron hovered nearby, looking strangely guilty for his success.“Alright, class! Well done! I want you all to practice this spell in your common room for fifteen minutes a day for a week, and write a paper on the nature of alternative disabling spells. Three feet of parchment, nothing major. Class dismissed.”The class groaned at the second assignment, and did not cheer up at the final pronouncement. Instead, everyone, with a strange, atypical lethargy, gathered together their belongings to head for their next classes. Harry went with them, already trying to figure out what he was going to say, and how he was going to say it.***He continued to think more about that than he did about his classes, until lunchtime arrived. By that time, he felt that his heart had probably fallen into one of his shoes, and was both being trodden on, and weighing him down.Hermione seemed ready to burst with impatience. She’d heard that there was some manner of extra context to what had happened in Charms, and, unlike Ron, didn’t have enough situational familiarity to suspect that this wasn’t true. Harry’d been very unspecific in what had happened to him, somehow fending off Hermione’s questions with great patience. He promised he’d explain everything later, but, as time passed, he grew more concerned that…well, they’d judge him. Abandon him. It was one thing to be a parselmouth. It was another thing to be Salazar Slytherin. Right?But he was Harry Potter, first and foremost. They’d faced trolls and an obstacle course together. Ron had been willing to die for him, in the Shrieking Shack. They hadn’t known that Sirius Black was innocent. And Hermione…she was too rational to jump to conclusions. She’d hear him out. He hoped.Maybe he should have taken the risk, and stayed in the past.By the time lunchtime rolled around, he was too nervous to eat. It was breakfast before his first quidditch match all over again, except that he was older, and he wasn’t afraid of something ahead…or at least, the problem lay in the past and not the future. Before they could convene at the Gryffindor Table for lunch, Harry waylaid Ron and Hermione, and dragged them off, with his custom disillusionment charm, because why use the invisibility cloak when he didn’t need to? Also, it was still with the rest of his stuff at the top of Gryffindor Tower. He hadn’t been back up there, yet.Ron made a token protest at being dragged away from the most important meal of the day, but eventually he subsided, allowing Harry to lead him through the Hogwarts corridors, looking downright resigned.Harry ushered them into an empty classroom, sealed the doors, led them into the far corner of the room, and cast his best silencing spell in their corner. When in doubt, when trying for something unusually specific, try using a longer string of Latin, Rich’s voice suggested in his ear.He swallowed a sudden lump in his throat, and glanced around the room, before canceling the disillusionment charm.“Whoa, mate, wait a second,” said Ron, holding out his hands in a gesture of supplication. “Just what the bloody hell is going on here? You’ve been acting off ever since I miscast that spell….”Harry hung his head. Unfortunately, his hair was no longer long enough to hide his scar, and everyone in this time recognised him by it. He’d forgotten how irksome the staring was. He stared at his clenched fist, but the words I must not tell lies etched faintly into his skin did nothing to quell his sense of dread. He’d successfully hidden them from everyone in the past, but even without seeing them still present on his twenty-fivish self, he’d known they were going to scar. Thinking of Umbridge, the accusations, the school’s ambivalence towards him, did nothing to reassure him.Hermione and Ron waited with equal impatience for the big revelation.“I have something to tell you,” said Harry, and they tensed, because usually those words were followed by a warning of some great disaster awaiting them in the schoolyear, or at least a hint leading in that direction. Oops. He cursed his own word choice, but plunged on. After all, he was a true gryffindor.He winced. “Mate, are you alright? It’s not too late to go to the Hospital Wing!” said Ron, but Harry knew it was because Ron was concerned for his well-being. He let it pass.“I’m fine, Ron,” he said, head still hanging. He couldn’t look either of them in the eyes, and he had the sense that if he did, he’d never share the important story. He swallowed, hard, previous plans at how he was going to do this abandoned. He was not Rich, who could plan out an argument in advance, or something, and box his interlocutor up in a tangled weave of words of their own making. He was just Harry. Sort of. It was that very “sort of” that was the problem.“Right,” he said, coming to a decision. With the decision made, he outwardly seemed more confident, surer of himself. “I suppose I shouldn’t beat around the bush. Remember earlier today, when Ron cast that spell on me?”They both nodded, Ron leaning against the wall, arms crossed, Hermione sitting on a desk she’d pulled up, leaning forwards as if he were speaking in such a low whisper she wouldn’t be able to hear him, otherwise.“Well…” He took a deep breath. “…It sent me back in time.”Hermione looked almost giddy at the news, but Ron frowned, looking away, probably trying to figure out why this was such a big deal. Ron had never used a time turner. His only experience with even the idea of time travel was the story Harry and Hermione had shared, at the end of third year, and his own observations of Hermione’s behaviour throughout that year. He must be thinking, Well, Hermione acted a bit weird after all her time travel. Maybe that’s it.“Ooh! How far back in time, do you know?” asked Hermione. “How long were you gone anyway? I thought you were acting a bit strange! I hope you were careful, though. Remember what I said about wizards who meddle with time. I hope you didn’t do anything that—”“Whoa, Hermione, let him speak,” Ron interjected, with a grin. He folded his arms, and Hermione shut her mouth, and they went back to eager anticipation.“I…I don’t know, exactly,” said Harry, dragging out the words that didn’t want to be spoken. “I don’t think they’d created a calendar yet…or maybe not the same way of measuring time. Or maybe Rich just wasn’t sure if the calendar was the same, and was playing it safe. I don’t know.” He shook his head.“‘Rich’?” Ron repeated.“Uh…one of my friends, I made there. And, I spent about ten years there, if you must know.” And he suspected that they did. “But I was aged to twenty-five when I arrived, so…I dunno…it’s as if time didn’t pass, and I didn’t age at all…it’s weird, looking back on it….” He was going off on a tangent, again. Hermione gained a very shrewd look on her face, and he gulped, as she leant back.“So you still think of yourself as fifteen,” she said, shrugging in a way that suggested she was trying to be as nonthreatening as possible. Now he had to worry. He took a step back. Her eyes were gleaming. “Alright, Harry, what aren’t you telling us?”Harry spoke the most important bit in a highly undignified rush: “Uh, that I went back to the time of the Founders and was Salazar Slytherin?” he squeaked.Silence reigned. Harry checked to make sure that his anti-eavesdropping spells were still in place. Yep. But his friends must still have heard him.He kept his eyes fixed on the floor, and didn’t dare to meet theirs. Yeah. He should have planned for this a bit more. Rich would have been able to help him find a way to handle this.“I’m sorry, mate,” said Ron, and Harry didn’t even have a brief flare of hope, because Ron was speaking slowly, which meant that his hopes would only have been crushed. This was clarification, because Ron didn’t believe what he’d just heard. “I must have misunderstood you. It sounded as if you said that you went back ‘to the time of the Founders’, and became ‘Salazar Slytherin’.”“Er…” Harry said, unsure what the proper response was. He looked at the window to outside, as if it would answer him. It should. Why hadn’t he thought to add sentient talking windows…? Of course, they’d have doubtless been more trouble than they were worth….Instead, he nodded. “Yeah. Er, I understand if you hate me, now, and think I should…I dunno, leave the Wizarding World forever, or something.”He could see Ron digesting the new information, could tell the instant Ron’s mind caught up to what Harry had just said.“You’re really Salazar Slytherin?” he asked. “As in, the Salazar Slytherin? The Founder of Slytherin House?”Still speechless, Harry nodded. He did not seem a very impressive wizard capable of co-founding a school of witchcraft and wizardry at the moment. Well, that was it. He’d just lost the only two friends he had in this time. He stood up, turned to the door.“Oi, mate, where do you think you’re going?” asked Ron, sounding rather indignant, and…cheery? Wha—? Ron was laughing. Wait. What?“You…you don’t hate me? I mean, think of all that Salazar Slytherin is known for,” Harry said. This seemed way too good to be true.“Yeah, yeah,” said Ron, waving a lazy hand. “I know the stories. I also know that, according to the Daily Prophet, you’re a crazy, violent, attention-seeking liar. But you know what I know most? I know you. And mate, I know you wouldn’t do any of the things Slytherin is supposed to have done. Which means they’re libel, same as the Daily Prophet is. I mean, whom am I going to trust, if not my best mate?”“Honestly, Harry,” said Hermione, shaking her frizzy mane of curls in exasperation. Her hair practically came alive to hiss at him. “Did you think we’d just up and abandon you? Oh God, you did, didn’t you?”Harry drew back into himself. “Er…maybe?” he ventured. Ron shook his head.“I’m not sure I want to go to a school co-founded by someone this thick,” said Ron, shaking his head with feigned disappointment. Harry swallowed, hard. He had the best friends in the world. There was a stirring of warmth, of affection for his friends. They were the best. They were the absolute best.There was a moment of silence, as they basked in each other’s company, and then the interrogation continued, commenced by Ron, naturally, with a frown on his face, looking thoughtful.“And ‘Rich’ would be…?” he prompted.“…Godric Gryffindor,” Harry admitted. “He was really smart. He helped me figure out the way home. He did most of the work, actually.”Ron shook his head, in the slow, thoughtful way normal when you’ve just heard an incredible story that you nonetheless know to be true.“I don’t even believe it,” Ron said. “Only you, Harry.”Harry had explained much the same to Rich.“What do we call you, then? Harry? Sal? Harryzar Potterin?” Ron continued, looking dead ahead, his gaze fixed not on his surroundings, but on his mind’s eye. Harry froze, at the familiar moniker, as if his heart had stopped, and then started again. It had been making the trek from his shoes to its more natural abode. Maybe, it was tired.“Wha-what?” he sputtered.Ron snickered. “Well, ‘Harry’, because that’s your name, and ‘Sal’ because Salazar is too long, and ‘Harryzar’ because…well it’s sort of a nice combination of the two, you know? You didn’t think it was because of your hair, did you? Although that was a good reason….”That entire paragraph of explanation was far too, heart-rendingly, familiar. Harry stared at the wall, unseeing, reflecting back upon Rich, until Ron’s more sober continuation dragged him out of his thoughts.“Why’d you react that way, anyway?” he asked, and Harry pulled himself back together.“Rich called me ‘Harryzar’,” he said. It was hard talking about Rich. Maybe it always would be. He hadn’t realised that they were that good of friends. But, Rich had been willing to give up the thing he prized most, to reassure Harry, to make things easier for Harry. A true friend, Rich. “It just…reminded me of him.” He tried to laugh it off, but failed.Ron frowned. “It seems as if you were really close,” Ron said, with an audible hint of jealousy in his voice.“For were there two friends anywhere/As Slytherin and Gryffindor?” Hermione recited, predictably remembering the exact words of the Sorting Hat over a month ago.Ron frowned, looking down, and then, seeming a bit more vulnerable than usual, said, “but we’re your best friends, right? I mean, we’re still friends, right?”Harry stared. “Of course, Ron! I wouldn’t have told you all this if I didn’t still consider us friends! You’re my best friend; you know that. And I suppose I mean that you’re my best friend. Even if there hadn’t been a matter of the potential destruction of time, I still would have come back to the present to come back to the two of you.”“Hmm…ten years,” Ron mused, looking thoughtful, still. He was staring straight ahead, at nothing. “That’s a long time. It probably sounds weird, but I feel…jealous…of a man who’s been dead about a thousand years. You obviously think very highly of him.”“And you don’t think I think highly of you?” asked Harry, in return, somehow shoving aside the eerie familiarity of this particular discussion to focus on the moment at hand. “Ron, you’re my best friend.”Ron gave a heavy sigh. “I know. It’s just…it seems I’m always second best. The youngest son, but I have a younger sister, so I don’t get the ‘luck of the youngest’. And now I discover that my best friend was friends with Godric Gryffindor! How could I compete with that?” He threw his hands in the air in a gesture of hopelessness. Harry sighed, in return, glancing to Hermione for help.“Er…” he said, intelligently. “I always thought that you were the best, Ron. You’re really good at chess, and quidditch…and you’ve defended me from threats, and from Malfoy, and stuck by me when the rest of the world turned their backs. Rich never was tested thus. Besides, he sort of was the one to start all the slander about Slytherin being an evil, pureblood supremacist wizard, even if he did it for my own good….”“Wait!” Hermione interrupted, and he dared to hope that she’d found a way out for him. “Harry, don’t tell me that you told someone that you were from the future?” she asked, her voice laden with exasperation. Harry hesitated, and she glared at him. Hermione could be intimidating at the best of times, but right now her bushy hair could have been a thundercloud. Sparks seemed to fly off her.He gulped. “Er…yes? I mean, I needed to find some way of returning to my proper time. And it wasn’t as if I knew Rich was the Godric Gryffindor! I figured that whatever I did would be how things originally happened. And, look, I didn’t destroy the timeline, did I?”Hermione sighed, frowned, hands on hips, silently conceding the point, and Harry felt the anxious tightness in his chest fade somewhat. Crisis averted. “What else would you have had me do? And, I mean, it’s just as well I did, or I would have changed the timeline by not becoming Salazar Slytherin. That would have been catastrophic.”“Hmm,” she said, as if she were unconvinced.“I just thought,” said Ron, his eyes practically shining with excitement. “You can use this to end the pureblooded politics. And think of how Malfoy would react….”“You can’t tell anyone!” Harry said in a rush. “What we spoke of here is not to leave this room! Got it?”Ron sighed and slumped. “Got it,” he agreed, gloomily.
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Chapter Fourteen: In Which Ron Has a Nervous BreakdownThat particular conversation led inevitably to discussions of “Slytherin’s Heir”. This title came with the implication, now, that Harry had gotten married and had kids, which was a strange, and disturbing, thought. Harry explained it as being as if it hadn’t happened yet, because he was fifteen now, twenty-five when he’d arrived, and thirty-five when he’d left again. It was as if that family lay in the future, and not the past, which explained why he didn’t feel quite as inclined to grieve for them.Or, perhaps that had been the slight edge the marriage had taken in the last year. It could have been fixed, he thought… if he’d stayed, but he’d thought it would make everyone’s life easier and more pleasant to do a bit of harm then, to make the parting easier. And his son had only been three years old when he’d left. That had to be…you know, easier and harder to cope with, at the same time. But, it was a fact that Harry’d been preparing himself for the inevitable parting even before he’d married.“It’s a bit like a dream, you know,” he said, helplessly. “As if I only dreamt them all up. I mean, you can find references to Helga, Rowena, and Rich in any history book, but Ethel….”Ron came to understand full well how it was, to have dreams occupying that odd space between reality and fiction. For now, he assumed that what Harry was saying made sense. Hermione, by contrast, began nagging Harry, wondering how he could possibly not be grieving for what was essentially a second dead family.“Just drop it, Hermione,” Ron said at last, when Hermione opened her mouth to say something else about the matter. It was pretty obvious that no matter what Harry claimed, he was grieving—and not only for his lost friends. He didn’t need Hermione and Ron making it more difficult.Hermione’s mouth snapped shut, and she dropped it.***That was the last day that Ron Weasley found enjoyable for quite some time. This was mostly due to the problems he was having sleeping. Ordinarily, he was a deep sleeper, and he awoke feeling refreshed and re-energised. But, not now. Not since the nightmares started, leaving him feeling progressively more drained and listless.He tried keeping himself awake to avoid them, but that tactic didn’t work. He was at a loss. The closest thing he had to consolation, (and truly it was anything but), was that Hermione seemed to be having similar nightmares. She, however, refused to even admit that she had them, leaving Ron suffering from what seemed an otherwise unique affliction. On his own.His dreams were murky, and yet far too vivid to be normal dreams. Most were of a strange, catatonic, listless Hermione, frail as a doll and just as unresponsive. She ate when food was put in her hand, and drank water when he gave her a bottle, but her eyes were glassy and dull, and there was no conversation to be had with her.Then, there were the dreams of hearing her scream (he knew her scream; he recognised the unique pitch and timbre of it), coming from a distance, as he raced after the sound of her voice, following it, always too late, too late.But, they weren’t all about Hermione. Harry led them to an ambush in a strange, dark maze of corridors. Brains came flying out of a vat filled with them, suctioning onto his arms as he strove vainly to prise them off. Hermione was stricken down by a violet curse, and he himself felt his head growing fuzzier and fuzzier (under the effects of the brains, he suspected). Harry was nowhere to be seen.Later, Harry cornered Ron and Hermione, explaining to them in a strange, dull voice, that Sirius had “fallen through the Veil”. He was dead. Gone. And Ron, too, grieved, because whilst Sirius was not his godfather, he was a friend.The funeral of Remus Lupin. The war against a silvery locket, with a letter “s” graven on it. And a strange, distant Harry, who studied torture jinxes and other dark arts books. Was this just a delayed reaction to Harry’s confession? But it didn’t seem to fit.After a week of far too little sleep (judging by the lack of bags under her eyes, Hermione was feeling much better, and sleeping much better, than he), accompanied by Harry’s repeated suggestion that he go to the infirmary, whose voice seemed progressively more distant as the week progressed, and his mind filled with fog, until he could hardly string two thoughts together, Ron caved in and went to the library.Yes, that’s right. Ron Weasley. Went to the library. Of his own volition, even. He had the sense that, if he wanted to figure out what was wrong with him (and Hermione), it was his best shot. Hermione, he knew, was going through the same thing, but her reluctance to admit this meant that he was on his own, no matter how Harry tried to help him. He was feeling decidedly alone, as if he were the only one suffering from this odd malady. As the week wore on, he had more and more odd episodes. He remembered charms they hadn’t learnt yet, routinely referenced events yet to come in the past tense, speaking of people he’d never met. Just who was this “Professor Slughorn”, anyway? He seemed rather slimy. And what was the Slug Club, and why did he care whether or not he was associated with such a disgusting-sounding group?Sometimes, he’d bring up a memory, and Hermione would continue it. He reminded her of Slughorn’s Christmas Party, and she insisted that it wasn’t as great as it seemed, that he’d brought a vampire, and that the conversations in the Slug Club were generally of the sort that Ron would find “boring”.But, when she caught herself, she shook it off, dismissing it as a shared flight of fancy, leaving Ron feeling more alone than ever. He had the sense that she just didn’t want to remember being tortured by Lestrange. And really, who would?Harry, he knew, believed him. Perhaps because Ron knew what had happened to Neville’s parents. He’d brought it up as an explanation of an event in the future, with Harry watching him with folded arms. But, when he came to the part about what the unknown medi-wizard had told him, how Hermione had become “just like Neville’s parents”, Harry’s eyes had widened, his posture slackened. It was clear that he found it incredible that Ron should suddenly come upon such knowledge. Hermione pursed her lips, and seemed to reconsider the idea that this was all a “flight of fancy” when Harry admitted in a whisper that he’d “known since last year”, but Dumbledore had sworn him to secrecy.It was one thing to have dreams of a horrible future. It was another to have information about the past, even if indirectly. Information that could be corroborated. Information that proved this wasn’t all just some fluke.***And thus, here he was, in the Hogwarts library, arguing with Madam Pince. He was struggling to string two words together, never mind describe the odd, tangled situation he found himself in.When he explained that he was looking for books about “events that happened to me, only not really. It’s as if they happened to someone else, but someone who was me,” she’d misunderstood him, and directed him to books concerning reincarnation. Which looked strangely interesting, but they could be looked at or ignored later.When he wasn’t in the middle of a mental crisis.Several times, Madam Pince whacked him awake after he fell asleep (just briefly!) atop his ever-mounting stack of books. He continued his research, at last, on what was almost a whim, explaining that he was looking for prophetic dreams, and ways of knowing about the future.He discovered that his case seemed to be unique. However, there were some books, concerning developing his psychic powers (yay, divination!), which gave instructions on how to clear your mind, and meditate. Hermione would say that he was a natural (what was there to clear?), but she was busy pretending nothing was wrong. He was not. He studied the lessons, and practised clearing his mind, and fell asleep in the library for two hours, missing at least one of his classes, and lunch. He still felt as if he were going mad, but at least he’d managed a brief nap devoid of nightmares. Progress.Out of gratitude to Madam Pince, (and something that felt similar to idle curiosity), he opened up one of the books she’d found for him concerning reincarnation, and frowned as he read. Because he could see a certain parallel in the experiences. Perhaps, he’d been unfair to Madam Pince.***He checked out a couple of the books, and the ones he’d been reading on meditation and strengthening the mind, and brought them back to Gryffindor Tower with him. Really, there was no reason for all the stares he received, even on the way to the common room.“Mr. Weasley, kindly explain to me why you missed my class,” Professor McGonagall said, stopping him on his way to the common room. He gulped. Yeah, that had been unplanned, and her anger was doubtless warranted, but he looked around, desperate for an easy out, anyway.“I’m sorry, Professor,” he said, trying to stifle the huge yawn that took just that opportunity to want to emerge.Her expression softened into one that could be mistaken for parental worry. “Your friend Mr. Potter tells me that you have been feeling… ‘off’. He has said that he recommended you head to the Hospital Wing, and that you refused. Would your absence today have anything to do with that?”Ron gave a noncommittal shrug. His arms were killing him; those reincarnation books, as well as two of the meditative ones, were heavy.“I’m sorry, Professor McGonagall,” he said. “I’ve been having nightmares, and other…odd experiences. But, I don’t think the Hospital Wing could help. I mean, sure, they have Dreamless Sleep potion, but I think if I took that, my symptoms would come out in other ways. Rather hypocritical of him, anyway, to even suggest such a thing.”His mouth tried to scowl, but it felt a bit off. At least it was better than his recent smiles.“Mr. Weasley, I recommend that you go to the Hospital Wing straightaway. Otherwise, I will have no choice but to give you detention.”He gulped, thought of Umbridge still wandering the halls, swaddled in pink cloth, shuddered, and nodded.“Er…but could I maybe hand these books off in my dorm first?” he asked, hoisting the books into a more stable position. Her eyes flicked to the stack, but she gave a grave nod.“Straight to the Hospital Wing after that, Mr. Weasley,” she reminded him with a stern narrowing of the eyes, as he trundled off, continuing on his way, almost in a daze.Ron put one of the thicker books into his schoolbag, and wandered off to the Hospital Wing. If he still couldn’t sleep, he could always do some more meditation, and reading on the same.***He swiftly discovered that even the meditation exercises had their limits, and that Madam Pomfrey had no more idea than he what was causing this, and that the symptoms were unfamiliar to her. Something about the entire situation felt familiar, and Ron groaned at the odd dual nature of most of his experiences anymore.He had the sense that he had stunned Harry, and he and Hermione had brought him to see Madam Pomfrey… but she hadn’t been able to help there, either. At the same time, he was aware that the event hadn’t happened, that whatever events led up to it hadn’t happened. Instead of the strange…Shadarry, cold and distant, he had his best mate, the real, vibrant, living Harry. That should have been good enough, but still the nightmares, the strange sense of déjà vu, persisted. He wondered if he were going mad.Despite his new lifeline in the form of meditation, he found that it wasn’t enough. He began to work on consciously incorporating the foreign ideas and memories into his own mind. Harry had offered to use legilimency to help him with this (since when did Harry know this stuff? Oh, that’s right…), but he’d turned down the offer of assistance, and Harry had let him go his own way, but had made no effort to hide his own concern.For want of a better plan, Ron turned inward. The problem was, that served to make these… what, false memories? seem realer than they were. Distinguishing what had happened from what hadn’t became increasingly difficult, and he was still suffering from sleep deprivation.And then, there was the time he’d tried to hex Malfoy, and Hermione had pulled back his arm, saying, “No, don’t! Ron, he was the one who helped save me, when I was trapped in Malfoy Manor!”Ron’s eyes widened, and Harry frowned, trying to understand what they were talking about. But Ron, on the other hand, understood, or thought he did.“Are you telling me that he let you go after Lestrange—?”“Yes! Please, Ron, I know he’s not a very nice person, but just spare him this once…!”Ron wasn’t sure what was more startling: Hermione admitting that she knew about the alternate reality (or whatever it was), or her interceding on Malfoy’s behalf. Or perhaps Malfoy’s hesitation, before he sneered, and said,“As if I’d stoop to helping a filthy mudblood. When were you in my house, any—?”It was Harry who punched him, instead, with a fierce glare. “Don’t ever talk about my friends that way. And don’t use that word, either!” he ordered, as if he had any authority in Malfoy’s eyes.In different circumstances, Ron might have laughed at Malfoy’s indignant reaction, the way he puffed himself up like a pufferfish.“Why should I listen to you?” he asked. Harry didn’t give an answer. He just fixed Malfoy with a steely glare. Since Malfoy’s nose was bleeding, he went off to the infirmary rather than continue his quarrel. How unfortunate for Malfoy that his cronies hadn’t been there to back him up.It was a rare bright spot in Ron’s descent into madness.***He continued his attempts to incorporate all this other knowledge in his mind, because he had no better plan, and if he said anything too unusual, he was sure his friends would call him on it. After a certain point, he could tell the difference between his own memories, and those of the alternate timeline’s Ron, by various cues. “Professor Slughorn” was an immediate one, perhaps the first clue. Likewise was the catatonic Hermione, life on the run, Malfoy Manor, the Department of Mysteries… any person he’d never met, and any place he’d never been.Harry occasionally extended the offer of legilimency again, which grew tempting. Two heads were better than one, right? And Harry was one of the Four Founders. Part of what little knowledge remained of him suggested that he had been known as a master of the mental arts, which… wow. Of course, they also tended to say he was a master of Dark Arts, which was probably, come to think of it, an abbreviation of “Defence against the Dark Arts”, or a similar corruption of the knowledge. Amazing how much sense things made when you operated under the knowledge that Harry was Salazar Slytherin.Ron continued to attempt to drain the power of these false memories (not false though, were they?) by consolidating and merging them with his real ones, and finally took Harry up on his offer.As it turned out, legilimency was not a pleasant experience. His first impression was that he needed some manner of mental defences to prevent this sort of thing from happening to him again. In fact, he almost tried to construct some manner of mental barricade within the confines of his own mind, but reminded himself that Harry was his friend, and that he was trying to help, and that would not be made any easier by Ron blocking him out. Again, difficult.Harry inhaled sharply, and his incredulous voice resounded in Ron’s mind. He tried to kill you? he asked, perhaps because it was easier to think of Shadarry as a different person. Lord knows Ron’d done the same. It had to be done. After all, as Ron had had to remind himself progressively more often, this was Harry, not Shadarry, whom he was talking to, and hanging out with. Harry was his friend, and the best person in the world. Ron trusted him.Or he used to. But that was hard to do, with all those memories hanging around, mocking him, reminding him of Hermione, reduced to an empty shell, when he thought of Remus Lupin, who had died because of that deceit, the devastating blow Voldemort had dealt by forcing the Order to try to fight their would-be saviour.But, that had not been Harry. This was Harry. And Harry was, understandably, concerned. Harry took in the new information, saw what was troubling him, frowned, and there was a shift in his awareness.Before, he’d shoved memories back behind doors, padlocked those shut, stuffed them into boxes sealed with the strongest charms he knew, when he didn’t just throw them in a mental wastebasket.Which, come to think of it, implied a certain mind-heart centre, a place for all those doors and boxes and wastebaskets to be. His mind might have become a cluttered mess, with all the new data, and who knew what it even was, but Harry brought him into what could only be called a realm of pure thought, in which there was little for Ron to comprehend but the sensation of movement, or thought, or fragments of colours. He knew that this was because he was not a master of the mind arts, and that this was the closest he would come to understanding what was going on.This will take a while, said Harry, shaking his head. There’s a lot of information here…some of it you haven’t even triggered yet…. I think I can help you to get a handle on it, but it will take weeks. Until then….Harry’s uncertainty was somehow much more prevalent, when Harry’s presence was recognisable only as a voice in Ron’s head. Just try to leave that knowledge alone. If it pops up, let it. Don’t give it any special attention. Let it run its course. Know that we’ll eventually iron all of this out. And you could probably use some Dreamless Sleep potion, or something. For the first few days.Harry retreated, and Ron somehow found his way back into the physical world, for which he thought he ought to be commended; Harry might at least have given him a hint. But, he had the sense that that was an oversight on Harry’s part, with no malice behind it; he let it go.Still, there remained the question: what of Hermione? And, apparently, Draco Malfoy? Who else remembered, if even only occasionally, the alternate timeline, and how were they coping? Did Voldemort remember? Ron shuddered at the thought.
You-Know-Who is dangerous enough as it is. But, with knowledge of the future….
The rest of the sentence was better left unsaid.“Ron? Are you any better?” asked Harry, which was one of the strangest experiences for Ron in his life thus far. Usually, Harry was the one needing to be asked such questions… and he had the habit of insisting that he was fine.Ron shrugged. “Dunno, mate. I guess we’ll see tomorrow,” he said.It was the only thing that could be done, in such a situation. Take an action, wait, see if it paid off. There was a certain hectic madness to it, to keeping up such a regimen when it might not even work, in guessing what to continue trying, and what to set aside. But, Ron trusted Harry—he did—and if Harry said to give these… visions… their space, and let them pass, he would try to do that, and not shove them aside, or analyse them. There was probably something to the idea that trying to get rid of them, even, was paying too much attention to them. It was like a loose tooth. You were better off just leaving it be, and letting the expert take care of it.He was spending too much time around Hermione. Or had. Or was going to have had.Bloody hell. How did Harry keep track of timelines? But of course, Harry had traveled back in time, and then returned to the exact moment he’d left. He’d said a bit more about the experience, and Ron thought he could honestly say that he understood the most basic framework of the experience. Ron’s, on the other hand… he was remembering events that might never happen. In the case of the deaths of the various individuals he remember having died thus far: Sirius, Lupin, Dumbledore… hopefully they wouldn’t die. But with knowledge of exactly what might come in the future (albeit an alternate future), he could fix things. That was why it was important to get these… memories… under wraps.That and that their presence was impairing his ability to function, and hurting his grades. Not that he cared about his grades overmuch, because what was the point, with Hermione as one of your best friends, and the Harry Potter as the other? (Not that he begrudged Harry his fame; it was obvious he didn’t want it, he just wanted a normal life, and given recent experiences, it was hard to blame him. But that didn’t change the fact that Ron was stuck in a position of being lucky to be considered second best, even before you considered his five—er, make that four—elder brothers. But he digressed….)But, Ron slowly began to pull his life back together, with plentiful help from Harry, which marked the start of a turning point for the better in all three of their lives.Or, at least, for the stranger.
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Chapter Fifteen: In Which There Is an Unhappy ReunionRon had more or less resumed a functioning frame of mind, and all it had taken was Harry flagging his mental impressions, colour-coding the strange, futurey stuff, and creating a mind-space just for them. Ron could access it if he wanted… and slowly, it would filter across, but at a one-to-one temporal ratio, more or less, unlike what it had been doing thus far.When it ran out of data, the space would collapse in on itself, and become just another part of Ron’s mind. It was taking rather a long time to wrangle up all those foreignish memories, and shove them into their happy little separate world, and meanwhile, he’d become perhaps too acquainted with Ron’s mind.It had been a great show of trust, Harry knew, for Ron to allow him to help at all, since it meant invading Ron’s mind. But, it had paid off, and Ron was more or less sane.There was the question of where that strange, red door led to; it had appeared suddenly and without warning, hidden behind the equivalent of mental clutter, and was connected even to Ron’s higher self…. Harry had been very curious about it, at first, but Ron had, rightly, pointed out that the task at hand was to preserve his sanity, and opening a strange door would probably be counterproductive to that end.But, all was well that ended well. And, there was a strangely familiar undercurrent to the residue such ventures left in their wake, as if he were forging a connection between their two minds.Like the one he’d had with Rich.But now, Ron was more or less functioning, and he’d come to the library to return the books he’d borrowed on meditation, among other things.It started in the library, where Ron was looking for the specific books “Harry” had used to learn new jinxes and curses, as if that would convince Hermione of the truth, and that she should be correcting her own mind-heart. Hermione and Harry tagged along, because Hermione’s presence was the whole point, and because Harry was trying to show his support.That was where they met Luna Lovegood, idly wandering the shelves, and humming to herself. Even Madam Pince seemed to realise that it was hopeless to try to correct her behaviour; Luna was not easily expelled from the library, because it was difficult to convince her that she was supposed to leave, but at the same time, she could not be made to understand why the library was meant to be a place of quiet. Probably the entire affair was giving their poor librarian grey hairs. Or white hairs. Whatever.“It’s very smart of you to look for information on strengthening you mind,” Luna said, seeming to appear out of nowhere. “After all, you can never have too much knowledge, and everyone knows that You-Know-Who is a legilimens.”Everyone knew it, which was why Harry had had to puzzle it out, with help from Rich. Uh-huh. Sure.Still, his experiences with Luna were more or less positive. Sure, there was the incident in which Neville had covered everyone in stinksap on the train ride here, but she couldn’t be faulted for that, and she had been the one to reassure him that the skeletal winged horses were real (when he’d described them to the Care of Magical Creatures expert amongst the Founders, Helga, she’d said that they were called thestrals). And, she’d been among the first to declare that she believed Harry. Sure, her beliefs were a bit odd, as was she, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, and he was slightly more inclined to tolerance than he’d been before his sojourn into the past. (Whether this was ironic, or not, was anyone’s guess.)Thus, he responded to her sudden appearance with a smile. “Oh, hello, Luna,” he said. “What are you here for, if I may ask?”“I’m looking for information on burglebaps,” she said, in her usual, dreamy voice. “I don’t suppose this library will have much information on them, though. Perhaps, I could help you with something, instead.”Harry shrugged. “I think Ron’s looking for some specific book that only he would recognise,” he admitted. “Something about special curses and jinxes.”“And here’s the one about ‘Tormentous Curses’ that Shadarry was reading!” Ron said, in triumph, pulling out a murky-brown leatherbound book, and holding it up for them to see. A History of Banned and Tormentous Curses, eh? Yeah, no wonder Ron was a bit alarmed. Such histories must have discussed the curses themselves, perhaps even how to use them.“Ah! So, you believe it’s true, then! Very smart of you, Ronald!” Luna said, her expression slightly less dreamy than usual. “Perhaps, you should have been in Ravenclaw!” She giggled, which was not a sound that Harry had previously associated with her. It occurred to him that she looked rather similar to Rowena, with that blonde hair, and grey eyes. Of course, Malfoy had the same (if paler hair)….“You know what they say: ‘Wit beyond measure, is man’s greatest treasure!’”Harry’s attention snapped back to Luna at those words (and he hadn’t even realised it had left the conversation).“Wha—? Where did you hear that?” he managed to sputter. Ron and Hermione both shot him a glance that said that they guessed precisely why he’d reacted that way, Hermione’s tinged with a bit of annoyance, because it had made her take her eyes off the title of the books in the section she was in, and now she wasn’t sure quite which she’d been looking at.Luna smiled her dreamy smile, and looked around the library, sending her radish earrings swinging. There didn’t seem to be a real reason for it; she was just sort of…curiously looking around.“It’s the motto of Ravenclaw House!” she said, nodding to herself. She bounced on her feet, and Harry noticed that she was barefoot. Why…?Well, at least it made sense that if Ravenclaw House had a motto, it would be Rowena’s catchphrase.“Also, you hear it often from the Ravenclaw House ghost.”He’d never given a thought to the ghosts of the other houses before—except that of Slytherin House, and that was only because Peeves obeyed only him.“The ghost of Ravenclaw House?” he asked. “Who’s…er…?”Luna understood. “No one knows her name. We just call her the Grey Lady. Apparently, she’s from a time before there were many records about Hogwarts, or before the records of new ghosts started being kept in 1159. By then, Hogwarts had been around for at least a century.” Ah. She was clever, and not just quirky. He remembered Rowena’s penchant for divination, and kept any comments to that effect to himself.Now, even Hermione was curious, abandoning her search for the right book, temporarily, to come over to speak with Luna in almost a civil manner.“Well, it’s nice to see you talking about creatures that actually exist,” she conceded, with a bossy shake of her head.Luna lost her dreamy expression. “Ghosts are people, Hermione,” she said. “Not creatures. And, I understand that most people don’t accept the existence of many of the creatures my father has been studying. But, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. A Ravenclaw will never dismiss such knowledge out-of-hand.”She almost looked haughty, when she lost that dreamy expression, further underscoring her outward resemblance to the most… aloof… Founder.The four of them wandered over to a table, and Harry noticed Luna’s lack of shoes again as they sat down.“Luna, what happened to your shoes?” he asked, and saw both Hermione and Ron glance downwards. Hermione’s hand flew to her mouth, which had rounded out into an ‘o’ of surprise.“People think it’s fun to take my belongings… I put up notices asking for them back at the end of the year, and somehow they always find their way back, so I suppose it doesn’t matter….”“Of course it matters!” said Harry fiercely, leaning forwards towards her. “Luna, it isn’t right that they do that, surely you can see that. Let us help you! Just tell us who does this, and—”“I don’t know who it is,” said Luna airily. She didn’t seem terribly upset. “And I’ll be needing my boots, anyway, come winter. Until then, I might as well enjoy the feeling of walking on bare grass. Just think of it as an adventure!”“Luna—” Harry tried to continue.“It’s fine,” she said, with a smile. “And, we were talking about something more interesting, anyway. There are records on all of the ghosts that have died in Hogwarts since 1159, but none before that year.”Harry glanced to his two best friends, but Hermione was enthralled by the story she was being told, and Ron shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, what can you do?.I don’t know, Harry silently replied. But there must be some way to help her.Well, right now, you can help her by showing you’re willing to listen to her, Ron seemed to reply. The whole quasi-conversation felt suspiciously real. Maybe, then….He returned his attention to Luna’s explanation.“Unfortunately, from all that I’ve heard, The Grey Lady died centuries before these records started to be kept. No one living when the records began to be made could even take a guess as to how she died, when, or who she had been in life. However, ghosts are generally rather forthcoming about their lives and deaths. That she isn’t has led some to believe that her death was particularly gruesome, or tragic, and given the death of your House’s ghost, that’s saying something.”Harry looked down, deep in thought, as Ron stared up at the ceiling, and Hermione frowned, and began scribbling down notes into a notebook she’d removed from her pocket. Since when had it been there?“Then… if she died long before the records started to be kept… could she be from the time of the Founders?” she asked, and Harry stilled, as if he would have to focus all his attention to hear the reply.Luna fiddled with her necklace of butterbeer corks, with a thoughtful little frown. “No one knows. Unlike the other ghosts, the Grey Lady doesn’t talk much with us students. She keeps to herself, mainly…. The only ghost as reclusive is the Bloody Baron, and he at least sometimes interacts with students.”Harry felt torn. Who could this “Grey Lady” be? Could it have been one of the students… or even Rowena Ravenclaw herself? Did he want to know the answer to those questions? Suppose he did recognise her… suppose she recognised him? There was such a great risk here.But, she rarely interacted with students. And, he was a true gryffindor, which meant doing sometimes quite foolish things.“Then, how would you find her?” he asked, as if this were a matter of utmost urgency. Ron facepalmed, and Hermione shook her head. Only Luna seemed not to think his behaviour strange.“You have old eyes, you know?” she asked, humming to herself. “Not old as in your secretly fifty years old and only pretending to be fifteen. Old as in you’ve seen things the rest of us can’t understand. I wonder if she’d talk to you. The rare time I’ve seen her, she seemed to have that strange sense of grief.”Harry’s heart was racing, because it sure sounded as if Luna knew, which was ridiculous. But, there was often this odd sense about her (perhaps part of what intimidated people, and made her so… unpopular) that she understood the world on a more fundamental level than most people could ever hope to. That she saw right through to your soul. It was rather disturbing, even for Harry.It made him wonder if perhaps she’d known he was Salazar Slytherin… even before he went back in time. Something in Luna’s demeanour made you question just how much she knew.That still left the question of how to find the Ghost of Ravenclaw House.Luna was frowning thoughtfully. “Well… she often hangs out in the Ravenclaw dorms. I can show you the way, if you like. But, if you aren’t good at riddles, you won’t be able to pass.”Harry remembered the riddling sphinx, last year, and sagged. So much for that.“Or… you might come by the Ravenclaw Table on feast days. She’s usually there, then,” said Luna, correctly guessing the cause of his dismay.Harry glanced at his two best friends. What would it be? They might as well try to enter the Ravenclaw dorms, right?“I’ve always wanted to see what the Ravenclaw House dormitory looked like,” said Hermione, finally extending an olive branch. She was lucky that Luna rarely realised that Hermione’s scathing comments could be construed as insults.Luna nodded, and, as if that had been their purpose in coming to the library all along, the four of them stood as one, making their way to the exit. Maybe it was nothing, but Harry found himself feeling a strange anticipation for the coming meeting. Or would that be reunion? Or… confrontation?***They never made it to the Ravenclaw dorms, as it turned out. They were not the only ones wandering the halls. They caught suspicious glances from Umbridge as she passed, and Harry wilted at the thought that he’d just potentially added Luna to Umbridge’s list of highly suspicious people. Luna didn’t seem to notice, however, and they redirected their steps towards the Great Hall, until they were confident that Umbridge wasn’t following them. This added quite a bit of time to their walk, but the added security was necessary.And, predictably, it was all for nothing, anyway, when they ran into Malfoy in the corridors. He sneered at Harry, which meant that his nose was no longer hurting him. Harry resisted the urge to punch it again. Malfoy inspired that kind of feeling in even the best of people.But not Luna, apparently. She seemed not to notice his derisive sneer, the way he analysed her robes to see how well-made they were, and took in her radish earrings, the butterbeer cork necklace, her lack of shoes.“Well, who’s the newcomer to your little group, Potter? I’m surprised someone like you managed to make friends at all, so it figures they’re obviously from the lower classes of the Wizarding World. Probably a mudblood or a blood traitor, right?”Both Harry and Ron lunged at him, then, and Hermione could only restrain one. She wisely chose Harry, but Ron landed in a few good hits despite his recent health. Luna frowned.“It’s not very nice to speak to people that way,” she said, in her airiest voice.“Truly a remarkable deduction,” drawled Malfoy, suggesting that he was spending too much time around his Head of House. Those words were otherwise too big for him. “It’s clear why you’re a Ravenclaw.”How he knew that was anyone’s guess. Perhaps he’d noticed her sitting at the Ravenclaw table? But that suggested a level of perception that Harry hadn’t thought him capable of.Of course, Harry wasn’t thinking about matters so clearly at the moment. Malfoy had used The Word, for one thing, and he’d insulted one of Harry’s friends, for another. He was straining against Hermione’s hold, but the muscle mass, such as it was, he’d developed in the past had been negated in his return trip, which made it a bit harder than it might otherwise have been. Note to self: find a sword and somewhere to practice. Say, maybe steal the Sword of Gryffindor from Dumbledore’s Office?Harry settled for leveling his fiercest glare on Malfoy. Crabbe and Goyle came around the bend, naturally, and Hermione hesitated in her grip, just relaxing for a moment in surprise, and Harry took the opportunity to wrench himself out of her hold, and to drag Ron out of the fray. Because, if anyone was going to get detention, or in any sort of trouble, it had better be he, Harry. That was how friendship worked. Besides…for all their progress, Ron still wasn’t quite up to a confrontation. That is to say, he was still in the early stage of convalescence, and Harry would be damned if he let anything happen to slow that down. Thus, his glare leveled in Malfoy’s direction was truly venomous.As befitted the founder of Slytherin House, he quietly allowed to himself.“A weakling and a pauper, Weasley? I don’t know why they let riffraff like your lot in. Mudbloods and blood traitors! Why, I bet Salazar Slytherin is turning in his grave at the very thought—”There was something to be appreciated in the irony of that statement, but before Harry could think of the best retort (which would probably have been a combination of jinxes, curses, and a good silencio to shut him up), a quiet voice behind them said,“You’d be wrong.”Malfoy, already highly bruised and bleeding, no matter what he’d said about Ron’s weakness, turned to the side to see the witness to their confrontation; a woman, misty and pearly white in the manner of all Hogwarts ghosts, dressed all in a white gown, with long white hair.“I’m sorry. Who are you? What would I be wrong about? Why should I listen to you?” asked Malfoy of the ghost-woman. Harry turned to Luna, who cocked her head, studying the woman, before smiling and nodding.“It’s her, Harry,” she confirmed, with an airy expression, and dreamy smile. She seemed to now have tuned out the conversation, her eyes roaming along the lowest bricks of the wall. Harry couldn’t see what so fascinated her about them, but hey, Luna was Luna.Meanwhile, the ghost of Ravenclaw House, who did not seem to have heard Luna, spoke, drawing herself up in a stiff, straight-backed posture that must be hard to maintain when you were a ghost, and lacked the requisite bones to support yourself thus. (Ghosts didn’t have bones…did they?) “I am Helena Ravenclaw, the ghost of the House of Ravenclaw, and I can speak such words because I knew Salazar Slytherin personally. He was a friend of my mother, Rowena.”Wait a minute. Harry slumped against the wall, feeling as if someone had just cut the tendons in his legs supporting him where he stood. Out of all the people he might have expected or accepted, the thought of the little girl he’d left behind, now trapped forever in the castle in the inescapable form of a ghost, was not one he could have prepared himself for, even had he had forewarning.Ron noticed his reaction, and, with a surreptitious glance at Malfoy, Luna, and Helena (Helena! Imagine!), he dragged Harry back to his feet, leaning him up against the wall. Hermione, Malfoy, and Helena were too absorbed in the confrontation to notice—they hoped. It could be hard to tell just where the Hogwarts ghosts were looking—that silvery sheen, or their washed-out appearance, obscured their features, and made reading expressions difficult from a distance. As for whether or not Luna was looking…well, her eyes seemed to be roaming the floor at the moment. Harry nodded silent thanks, pressing his back against the wall, as his mind spun. Malfoy seemed to recover more quickly, affecting a politely interested expression that—if Helena was who she said she was—she saw right through.“For over a millennium, I have watched, idle, as the man who was as good as an uncle to me has been slandered and libeled across the Wizarding World, as his name has been defamed, his character sullied. “Well, no more! I will not have it! Slytherin House has become the ‘evil house’, the one that the good dread to be associated with, turning out the scum of the earth as its graduates. He would never have stood for all these ‘pureblood politics’. Shame on you, Draco Malfoy! You are unworthy of my uncle’s house!”That indignation was very reminiscent of Rowena herself, when she was sufficiently outraged. Ron’s hand landed on his shoulder in a sign of silent support, and Harry closed his eyes, breathing slowly in and out, trying to calm down.He’d never even said goodbye. Who would defend him after that, save for those in the know? But she clearly was not in the know, and just as clearly cared.“And you think—what, that he didn’t espouse such views? That we Slytherins developed them on our own, just so that we could be shunned by the entire rest of the school? Because let me tell you this: Harry Potter—” He pointed, and Harry winced, as Helena turned her attention to him for the first time. “—went down into the Chamber of Secrets, and killed Slytherin’s monster, which was put there to rid the school of mudbloods, before the other Founders forced your uncle to leave.”The sneer as Malfoy spoke the word “uncle” was slow to leave his face. There was an irrational part of Harry’s mind that wondered whether Malfoy knew the truth, and his derision was at the thought of Harry being anyone’s uncle. More likely, it was a fundamental lack of regard for the house of Ravenclaw itself. Harry’s fists clenched. Helena hesitated, clearly thrown for a loop.“Ah—Harry Potter?” she asked, regarding Harry with an expression of undisguised curiosity. Harry glared again at Malfoy, and then turned to face the ghost of Ravenclaw House again. His legs were working, thankfully.“There were some things I had meant to speak with you of, even before this lout drew my attention. Is it—is it true? Is there truly a secret chamber built by Slytherin under the school?”Malfoy fumed at being temporarily ignored; Luna was glancing at him askance; Hermione was still paying rapt attention; and Ron’s hand, which had not left his shoulder, gave it a reassuring squeeze.“Er—yeah,” he said. “There was a basilisk down there—I had to kill it at the end of second year. But…er—I didn’t see anything that said why it was there. There’s all sorts of reasons someone could leave behind a basilisk in a school, right?”No one seemed to know what to make of his hedging, except for the three in the know. Luna did not seem unduly concerned, one way or the other, but Malfoy seemed to have been momentarily stricken speechless by what might be mistaken for Harry defending the founder of Slytherin House. Silence reigned.“I mean,” Harry clarified, as the silence began to grow vexing. “I mean, you seem fond of him, and well, you’d have to know better than the historians, and everyone who never met him. And The Daily Prophet’s been rubbing my face in the mud, so I know how it is to be slandered—I mean, libeled. I just—”He cut himself off, before he could say something he couldn’t take back. Helena stared at him, eyes open wide, and he wondered if he’d given himself away. He fidgeted, rubbing at the bangs that wanted to cover the curse scar on his forehead. Way to be obvious, Harry, he chided himself.“Yes,” she said after a long moment, and the building tension in the air seemed to dissipate. “That’s more or less what I mean. Malfoy, you should not be so swift to discount the words of those who know better than you, nor to assume without proofs. When I was alive, there was little thought given to the blood purity of prospective students. This school was a sanctuary, a safe haven for those who had no other, meant for all those with the ability to wield magic. I myself am a halfblood, and no one begrudged me, nor envied me, for this.”The cracking of Crabbe and Goyle’s knuckles recalled them to mind; Harry had been thinking of far more important matters than bullies. He was sure that they were about to start a brawl, and drew the holly-and-phoenix-feather wand.“You should all be ashamed of yourselves,” she said, turning to encompass Crabbe and Goyle as well as Malfoy, whilst excluding Hermione, Harry, Luna, and Ron. “Now leave. Go and think about what I have said, and if you try to cause trouble for Luna, Potter, or their friends, then I shall be sure to set the record straight.”She thrust her chin up in a familiar haughty pose, crossing her arms before her.Malfoy glowered, but seemed to think that he would have plenty of opportunity to torment the trio-plus-one when they didn’t have an audience (at least one that would vouch for them).He jerked his head at Crabbe and Goyle, and they retreated down the corridor. Another silence settled about those who remained, but with none of the earlier tension.“Ah, er, thank you,” Harry said, speaking first, as if there were no other who might be turned to to guide the conversation. “We…well, we were looking for you, actually. Luna said you’re one of the oldest Hogwarts ghosts, and one whom no one knows anything about, and—but we shouldn’t be having this conversation in the corridor!”He decided to take the risk of using the supreme disillusionment charm, which might have been passed down through the centuries, after all, bowing his head when he saw Helena’s eyes go wide, and her begin to speak.He motioned for silence, and set about disillusioning the rest of his friends. Luna seemed completely unaware of the strangeness of the situation, following along behind them as they left the corridor, Harry thinking hard.He led them to the seventh floor corridor they used for Dumbledore’s Army, and paced outside, as Helena watched him, apparently stricken speechless. Perhaps she was trying to find what other explanation there could be for Harry’s knowledge of the spell. He wondered if there was some way to politely send off Luna: this confrontation had just become very personal. Only the Trio knew Harry’s secret—and now, perhaps, Helena, who seemed ready to burst. She must have a million questions.He shook his head, and went about lifting the charm.“Well, I see that you don’t need my guidance anymore,” Luna said, as if sensing that this was a private moment. “Good luck with whatever you’re planning, Harry.”And she left without another word. Really? That was all it had taken?
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Chapter Sixteen: In Which Hermione Meets a Book She Doesn’t LikeThe day got only stranger after Harry led them to the Room of Requirement, as if this were the only way the universe knew how to function around Ron’s best friend. Logic and reason shifted aside to give room for the unprecedented chaos that surrounded Harry wherever he went.Take now, for instance, with the Trio standing around a comfortable-looking room—the sort where you could probably host a formal soirée, except more casual, with plenty of armchairs, a couple of sofas, and a merrily burning fireplace. Ron had the sense that Harry had been seeking reassurance, first and foremost, when he had called forth the Room. It had obliged with the most reassuring furnishings it could think of (if the Room could think). The only way it could have been more inviting and unassuming was if it had littered itself with children’s playthings, and that might have put its visitors on edge due to the sheer incongruity of finding such in the middle of a castle where, supposedly, all of the inhabitants had outgrown such things years ago.It was a very welcoming room. Ron could feel himself relax, saw the tension leave Hermione’s shoulders, see Luna’s downcast eyes clear as she left the room, knowing in whatever way she knew things that things were about to get Serious.“Helena” stared around the room, just briefly, as if to give them a spot of reprieve, but then her eyes shot back to Harry. Ron’s head began to pound, proving that Harry had been right in his assumption that Ron was not yet fit for strenuous activities like putting Malfoy in his place. He sank into one of the soft sofas. (Red, of course, because the entire room had coloured itself according to the Trio’s house: red and gold, Gryffindor colours.) His movement was the first any had made since Luna left, and an awkward silence had permeated the room.“Er...hello?” asked Harry, and, despite his headache, Ron couldn’t resist facepalming. Really, Harry? he wanted to ask, but his throat didn’t seem to want to push the words out.“I’m Harry Potter, and these are my best friends, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley.”Ron managed to muster up the willpower to raise a hand briefly in greeting. Hermione scowled at him for his perceived rudeness before turning to Helena, looking slightly breathless.“Oh, wow! Are you really the daughter of the founder of Ravenclaw House! You must know so many spells and potions that have been forgotten since then! Is it true that Ra—”Helena silenced her with a look. “It is a great pleasure to make your acquaintance, Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley. I have seen you around Hogwarts often, but never before have I found the courage to speak with you. Courage is not my forte, I’m afraid. I was not a Gryffindor, as the three of you are.”She glanced around at the three of them. It was quite glaringly obvious to Ron, headache or no, that she had not said that she was pleased to make Harry’s acquaintance. Perhaps it wasn’t a pleasure to meet him, or perhaps she was suspicious. He glanced over at Hermione, but she was still sulking at the thought of the access to tantalisingly obscure knowledge being denied her. He turned to Harry, instead, but Harry just looked awkwardly back at him.What should I do? Do you think she suspects? his expression seemed to say. Ron considered the best answer to that silent question.She’s definitely suspicious, he mused to himself. But does she suspect? If she were really from the time of the Founders, she knew Salazar Slytherin personally. Harry hadn’t known how to make that special disillusionment spell before he’d gone to the past; it must have been developed there. If it had ever been used around Helena Ravenclaw, the girl would know it. But she might not know how unique it was.Harry gave a grim nod, as if they’d had a conversation aloud, and turned back to Helena. She was looking, now at Harry, now at Ron, as if trying to puzzle something out.“When I sought you out, I did so hoping to learn the truth about the rumours I have heard running rampant through the school—first, that you entered the Chamber of Secrets and slew the basilisk, and then of what happened last year, of the Triwizard Tournament, and the resurrection of Lord Voldemort,” she began, drawing out her words as if they were each lodging in her throat and had to be pried loose by extreme measures. She glanced down, and seemed to be gathering her nerve. She would not look at any of them. Hermione huffed, and flopped down next to Ron on the sofa. He tried to pretend that he didn’t notice her sudden presence there, the warmth her body exuded, or the continued muttering under her breath.“But now,” Helena paused, hesitant again. She and Harry the only two still standing. There was a surreal quality about it, as if he were watching a rehearsed play. Would this go well or poorly?She abandoned this line of thought, and tried again. “I had heard rumours that Lord Voldemort was the Heir of Slytherin—” Ron still could not suppress a flinch at the name Voldemort, and he felt Hermione flinch beside him, no matter that she’d managed to say the name at the first meeting of the D.A., back at the Hog’s Head. “It did not fit with my understanding of either man. I suppose I wanted reassurance, someone to tell me that I was wrong, to help me see what flaw in my logic had led to such an injuriously false conclusion.”She shook her head, still looking down, and clasped her hands before her, wringing them as if some great tragedy had recently occurred. Perhaps, for her, it had. Ron felt very much a spectator in a private drama, suddenly, and resisted the urge to stand and leave. Harry might yet need his and Hermione’s help.“But, you’ve changed your mind?” asked Harry, sounding genuinely puzzled, as Ron was himself. It never did to assume too much, but he rather suspected that he and Harry were confused about the same things. What did Helena know, what did she suspect, and what was she still completely unaware of?“Now,” she said, giving the illusion of taking a deep breath. “I think that there are other matters which are far more important to me, for me not to focus my thoughts and efforts to their end. Tell me this, Harry Potter: how do you know that spell, the one you used to bring your friends to the Room of Requirement unnoticed?”Harry blinked, and his shoulders slumped. Was it that bad, that Helena at least suspected him? She didn’t seem to bear a grudge against Slytherin, after all, and if she were truly from the same time, it might help Harry to readjust to the modern world, learning what had happened after he’d left.“The Disillusionment Charm?” asked Harry. “Professor Moody used it on me before we left my relatives’ place this last summer. I studied it afterwards, because it seemed useful, what with the current times being what they are. Why do you ask?”Helena’s eyes seemed to flash in the light of wall sconce. “I know of the Disillusionment Charm!” she cried. “But, there is only one whom I know who can make it behave thus! Only one for whom it blocks almost all sight, and sound, even smell.... Is that the charm you learnt from a book?” she asked, voice sarcastic and harsh. Ron could almost feel Harry frown.“...No,” he conceded, but did not elaborate. Helena actually stomped her non-existent feet. You could only tell by the movement of her dress, but she did it. She crossed her arms, and threw back her hair.“Then, how do you know that spell?” she asked.Harry turned to Ron for support, but Ron felt completely out of his depth on this. How would he know what was best? They both turned to Hermione. She said nothing; with a smug expression, and crossed arms, she raised her eyebrows, as if telling Harry that he deserved this, and that, if he dug himself into this, he should dig himself out. If that were even possible!Harry turned back to Helena, and sighed, again, shoulders slumping. They did not rise again, as they had before. “...I figured it out on my own,” he said, at last. Ron facepalmed, but Hermione remained entirely still. She looked oddly pleased at this turn of events.There was a long moment of silence, as Helena seemed to struggle to understand his words.“You...invented...?” she asked him. Then, she looked Harry over, and then Ron, frowning, and then turned a puzzled glance at Hermione, whom she seemed to view as a piece that did not fit in the puzzle she was currently working on.“You can’t be...” she said, turning to Harry. “...Uncle Sal...?”It seemed pretty incredible if you, as everyone else did, knew that Harry Potter was a gryffindor, the champion of the light, the supposed Chosen One, etc., etc.. But, Helena had known Slytherin personally, and didn’t seem to find that quite as much of a stumbling block as would most people. She’d come to the conclusion with alarming speed.Silence reigned again. The door vanished from behind them, leaving no way for a human being to enter or exit. Probably, it was responding to a silent wish from Harry that no one else hear this exchange. Ron thought about the hubbub surrounding second year, and sighed. He honestly couldn’t blame Harry.“I’m really, really, sorry,” said Harry, now, staring down at the floor.“But...but how?” asked Helena. Harry rubbed at the infamous curse scar, as Ron had seen him do occasionally before when under pressure.“It’s complicated,” Harry said. “Short answer: time travel.”Helena’s eyes filled with tears, and it was clear that she was refraining from launching herself at him and throwing herself into his arms not for the sake of decorum, but rather owing to her intangibility that rendered such a basic interaction impossible. Harry was living, and she was dead, and, even in this moment of reunion, she could not forget that. It made the whole affair rather bittersweet, even for an onlooker.Ron resisted the urge to fill the silence with inane chatter, and instead shrank into the sofa, trying to pretend that he wasn’t even in the room. This was a very private moment, he thought.“Oh! I—well, I thought I’d never see you again.”“Understandable,” Harry agreed, nodding.“And you’re Harry Potter, the ‘Boy-Who-Lived’! This is incredible. I wish Mum could be here—and Aunt Helga, and Uncle Ric....”“You and me both,” said Harry, turning to look away. Helena came over, and hesitantly wrapped her arms around (and partway through) him. It was a very tentative hug, and Ron could see Harry valiantly suppress a shiver at the frigid cold that ghosts naturally carried with them.Helena gave a decidedly mournful sigh, and stepped back. There was another pause, and then:“Oh! I almost forgot! Uncle Ric had a secret room he wanted me to show you, ‘if you ever returned’. Ooh! I suppose he knew.”Harry said nothing, and Helena stomped her foot, again. It would almost have been amusing, how childish the distinguished ghost of the stuffy Ravenclaw House was behaving, were it not so poignantly tragic. Ron couldn’t imagine how she was feeling, but he was certain Hermione could. She seemed to understand these things better than he or Harry.“Get rid of them, and I’ll show you Uncle Ric’s secret room!” she said, sounding eager to the point of buoyancy.Harry frowned, and folded his arms. “No. They’re my best friends. We go through everything together. I’m not willingly going anywhere they can’t. I couldn’t help being sent back in time, but this? I’ve gone four years without seeing the room. I don’t need it now.”Ron’s heart clenched like a fist. Don’t think about us, Harry! he wanted to shout. Do something selfish, for once, you noble prat!There was a haggard, weary set to his face as Harry turned to face them, turning his back on Helena to trudge back over to them. She floated there, looking rather stunned, and Ron wanted to stand up, turn Harry around, and shove him back towards the ghost girl. But...it was his choice.“Oh...fine, alright. They can come, too. But, no one else!” Helena cried, cutting through the drama of the scene. Ron realised he’d been holding his breath only upon the relief that came of exhaling and breathing in again.“Well? Are you coming?” asked Helena, already at the place where the door to the Room should be. Harry frowned, and the door shimmered back into existence.“Oh! I have so much else besides I want to talk to you about, and to show you.... But, first things first, I’ll show you Ric’s secret room! Follow me!”With that, she shot out of the Room, and the other three hurried after her. Ron wondered what the ravenclaws thought of their house ghost, zipping through the halls like an excited puppy, tailed by the three trouble magnet gryffindors. It must be a truly strange sight to behold, for anyone who knew how reserved the house ghost usually was.***Such thoughts occupied him until they reached their destination, in a darkened dead-end hallway (on the third floor, if he’d kept track correctly). Harry frowned. “It wasn’t here before—”“Mum did say that Hogwarts was built on a place of power. The building has a mind of its own...rooms change and rearrange themselves. It makes sense that the room might have moved after over a millennium.“But, I always know where it is. Which is just as well—whatever defences Uncle Ric put up, not even ghosts can get through. I’ve oft wondered what lies beyond this door. I’m sure if a living person opened the door, I’d be able to pass through there. Until then.... Oh, and there’s a password, of course!” she said, beaming, her words arresting Harry’s hand as it reached for the knob. He shook his head, and let his hand fall back to his side.“Just tap the handle with your wand, and say the password. He assured me it would be something obvious, and that only you would know.”Oh, no. Please say he didn’t, Harry’s expression begged as he turned back to face them.Sure seems that way, doesn’t it? Ron thought in response, fighting back a snicker.Harry sighed, and visibly steeled himself, slowly straightening up. “Harryzar,” he said, rapping the handle with the holly wand. He barely touched the doorknob before drawing back with a hiss. Apparently the password was wrong. (Could it be coded in parseltongue, then? Nah, Gryffindor couldn’t speak it; he wouldn’t have been able to create a parseltongue password, and besides, he must have had some way of entering, himself.)Harry was not to be defeated, and it was more or less coincidental that Harry was whacking the handle with greater force than strictly necessary, when Ron said,“Nah, that’s just half a name, Harry. Everyone knows your full name is Harryzar Potterin.”Helena looked at him again, askance as if considering something, as the handle unlatched with an audible click.“...But—!” Ron protested. Harry twisted the handle and strode in before the door could change its mind, and Hermione and Ron were swift to follow Helena inside. (She’d zipped in as soon as the handle turned and the door opened.)“Oh, honestly,” said Harry. “I should have known. Of course he’d make that the password. Bleeding nuisance, he was.”But, he was smiling.***Ron looked around a small, cluttered room, in not just red and gold, but all the colours of fire, with plenty of bright and burnt oranges thrown in amongst the reds and yellows. There was a desk in the centre, and bookshelves ranged the walls. There was a chandelier overhead, all brass with red candles, which flared into life as Harry entered.The room, though cluttered, was cluttered in a homey way that recalled to mind The Burrow, an organised mess, with papers on the desk, and an unlit candle in its holder, and a book bound in red leather open and written in almost to its last page, with black ink nearly covering the yellowing paper.But, the book was in surprisingly good repair—anyone would have expected it to have decayed, moulded and mildewed, turned brittle and broken into tiny pieces. But, it hadn’t. It looked...not brand new, but not a thousand years old. If you made a book in the same way in the modern age, and put it in an airtight container for ten years, and then came back to it, it might look as this one did.Hermione being Hermione, she wasted no time in nearly bowling him over to get to the manuscript, written as it was by one of the Four Founders himself. It must be Godric Gryffindor’s private diary.Hermione came around the side of the desk, and her eyes flicked down to the page before her. She began to read avidly...or, perhaps not. A frown appeared, her forehead wrinkled, and she took a step back.“Oh, no!” she said in dismay. “I forgot that they didn’t speak English back then. I suppose I hoped he’d put some sort of spell on it to translate it into modern English, or whatever language his audience spoke as their native language (some people did that even then, which helped their works to survive, and really, it’s just common courtesy), but I suppose he thought that if Harry could understand him, they must still speak the same language. How disappointing. I was really hoping—”Hermione prattled on, Harry glancing at the manuscript, before trudging away in defeat, to observe the terracotta figurines of long-haired wild women wielding various different weapons standing at attention in the corners of the desk. Helena seemed to be turning something over in her mind.“Well, it might take longer, but perhaps I might—”Ron ignored her, coming around the desk, unable to ignore his curiosity any longer. Curiosity was somewhat of a shared trait amongst the trio, although they weren’t all curious about the same things. But, Ron did wonder what Old English looked like. The consensus seemed to be that it was so different that you’d never recognise it for English, at all.He came around the desk, and bent over the manuscript, forgoing the chair pulled up to the desk, as Hermione and Harry had, no matter how inviting it looked. He glanced down at the book, at the writing on the book. Glanced back up, surreptitiously, at Harry and the still-fuming Hermione. Glanced back down to see if something had changed. Nope. He looked up again. Looked down again.“...What are you talking about?” he had to say, at last. “It’s written in plain old ordinary English, as far as I can tell. Bit of fancy lettering, though....”Harry, Hermione, and Helena all turned to him, stopping whatever they’d been saying, whatever he’d interrupted.Hermione frowned, and seemed to prefer to believe that he was pulling her leg rather than that he was able to read a book that she could not. “Oh, really,” she scoffed. “What does it say, then?”Ron glanced back down at the page, silently accepting the challenge. “—the defences of Hogwarts are quite strong, I fear that this might be my final entry. Fancy that! Well, I’m not as young as I used to be. But see here: if this is my final day in this world, then I have thoroughly kept the promise I made to you, and—”Hermione bounded back over to the table, crying “Let me see that!”, she snatched up the book, and Ron resisted the overpowering urge to sulk. Her eyes flicked rapidly over the words of the page, and the frown reappeared. She glowered at the book, as if to set it on fire.“That’s a cheap trick, Ron, when you know how much Harry wanted to be able to—”“Now, look here!” cried Ron, taking the book back from her with such violence that Hermione snatched her fingers away, seeming to try to shove her whole left hand into her mouth. He realised that he must have given her a papercut or three, but quashed the stubborn guilt and concern that wanted to surface as a result. Just listen to what she’d dared to imply about him.“Oh, you think I’m such a bad person that I’ll make this all up, just, what, to make myself look better?” he asked, coldly. “I don’t believe you. Anything to sustain your own pride, isn’t it? You just don’t like being bad at something for a change—”Harry stepped between them, holding out a hand to either side. Ron felt quite a bit guiltier about the way Harry winced as if physically pained by the volume of their argument, or something.“Look, you two. I’ve enough problems between Dumbledore ignoring me, and Umbridge, and Voldemort, without the two of you always going at each other. Hermione, I’m sure Ron for whatever reason can read the book. No matter what else you might think, he does have a brain, and he does have tact. I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth. But hey, if you doubt him, why not try another part of the book, where the message is less ‘obvious’?”Hermione huffed, but set the book down on the desk, closing it, and then opening it again, grabbing a bunch of pages at once and flipping it open to another page at random.Ron took her backing away as his silent cue to approach. He hoped that this worked, now that he’d managed it once, and got Harry’s hopes up.He sat down behind the desk (this might turn out to be a more time-consuming task than previously assumed), and stared down at the open page. The handwriting was neater, easier to read, but the language was still undeniably modern English. There wasn’t even a Shakespearean tang to it. Once again, the page began midsentence.“—I think I told you about them before. I haven’t seen them around here before—it reminds me of the sirens with the gryphon, you know? It makes me wonder whether something is happening in the Greek magical world, to cause such a migration. I wasn’t sure if they were supposed to be here, in the forest, but Helga refused to interfere, one way or the other, and I couldn’t ask you.... I suppose if I’ve changed time, then you won’t know it either. Was that your modus operandi? It is somewhat liberating, I must confess.“They gave me some advice, warned me of a Danish advance through Northumbria (from out of Cornwall; they’re marching north), but I—”Hermione peered over his shoulder. Harry stood back, secure in his conviction that if Hermione couldn’t read it, neither could he.But, Ron was not paying any attention to what he was reading. He could almost picture it, this delegation of centaurs, later to take up residence in the Forbidden Forest (in part their Forest, as allowed by treaty), Ric suddenly eager to find any lens forward, to the future.Ron ran his hand down the page, and pressed his other hand against his head again. It was starting to throb—it was too painful to keep reading, right now.He cast his eyes further afield, noticed markings on the desk for the first time. Some of them graven in, some filled in with pigments, inlays, blood....He followed Hermione’s lead, and grabbed a handful of pages, turning to one at random. He wasn’t reading, but there was too much at stake to stop.Why was his head throbbing so badly? He wished they were elsewhere, spending their free time relaxing. Then, he would ask Harry for help. But, as it was, that seemed selfish, when his friend was suffering, and this was his first connection backwards to his old friends that he’d found. This room, this book, and Helena, who had led them both hither.He was staring at the runes in the desk. Faint knowledge stirred at the back of his mind, and he knew what the runes were for. Runes, most of them Futhark, for protection, endurance, warding off accidents, damage, sabotage, wear. He thought he could see more of them glowing around the room, if he looked out of the corner of his eyes.He could read them. He could read them.Could he read anything, now, or was his knowledge limited to just this book, and just these runes? If he left the room, would he still be able to read the book?Why did his head hurt so very much?In his mind’s eye, he saw that cluttered mental room that had been utterly devastated by the odd temporal distortion that had occurred when Harry had returned to the future. Peering at the wall before him, he saw that the red door was open—not much, only enough to show that it was the sort of door that swung outward, so that the stuff piled up in the room had served as an obstacle to its opening. But, you could tell that just from looking at the hinges. The door wasn’t open that far, now—only a quarter of the way, or so, but enough to be noticeable. Is that where it came from, then? The ability to read Gryffindor’s book? The ability to read the Futhark, when he’d never taken Ancient Runes?He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and opened them on the outside world.“Ron, are you okay?” asked Hermione, finally setting her pride aside. “Do you need the nurse?”“Just another headache. Merlin’s beard, I have no idea how Harry handles his scar aching....” He sensed Harry approach, more than saw him. The world seemed to be fading out into bright light. “Harry,” it seemed vitally important to say, “Harry, the red door opened. And...and I can read this stuff. Not just the book, I—I can read the runes, too.”“But, that’s impossible,” Hermione said, huffing and folding her arms again. “You’ve never taken an Ancient Runes class.”“Maybe I’m wrong, then,” Ron said with a strained smile, in too much pain, and too weary, to put up too much of a fuss about her attitude. “Give me some runes—Futhark, though. I don’t think I can read anything else...at least not yet....”He frowned, trying to make sense of any of it. They come here, to Gryffindor’s private study, but only Ron could read his book, and now Ron could read some ancient runes? It didn’t make sense.Unless....“Hermione,” he begged. He knew her well enough to know that she was frowning, but the runes scattered across the desk held his attention. He was identifying the meaning and use of more and more. Sometimes, they formed words, added power to creating a spell with the same request woven in several different ways—but here and there, there was a single rune.A piece of parchment appeared in his line of sight, as if it had spontaneously come into existence at his command.No, he was humouring too many ridiculous thoughts. He knew it was Hermione’s doing.“That’s...protection-secrecy-war. Good for hideouts, and safe havens. Hogwarts has that a few times on the walls, outside.”He didn’t know that. He hadn’t just said that, had he...? He put his head in his hands, and tried to pretend its pulsing didn’t remind him of a howler readying to explode. First the pressure builds, and builds, and then....He closed his eyes, and bowed his head. “Ugh.”“How...?” asked Harry, obviously at a loss for words.“....Uncle Ric?” asked Helena, and it was only a guess, but it was filled with too much insanity for this already insane day.“I think we’ve done enough here for the day. Please,” he said. He couldn’t focus enough to form a response to Hermione or Helena. He didn’t have the presence of mind to speak to Harry, either.The red door beckoned him, but he dragged himself back to the outside world. The combined stresses of recent events were too much. He hated to fail Harry, but he felt as if he were going mad. He suddenly remembered that his mental well-being was already rather frail. “I think, maybe, we should come back another day.”He stood, and, without another word, strode out of Ric’s study.