Paddy




3. The Knowing of the Past

Harry woke up so fast as if someone had yelled in his ear.
He didn’t looked round, but rethought of his dream he had.
It had been such a nice one.
He had seen his parents. His real parents and Sirius… He had heard and seen Sirius again. 
After remembering the whole dream, Harry finally putted on his glasses and screamed when he saw where he was.
A young lady came in, forced him down on his pillows.
‘You’re going to wake the whole castle!’
She hissed to him and Harry looked at the lady.
‘Miss… You’re the schoolnurse!’
She nodded.
‘I know I am.’
‘But…’
Harry didn’t understood.
‘I… It… It was real?’
The nurse didn’t knew what Harry meant, but nodded.
Harry’s head turned and he fell back on his pillow.
He didn’t fainted, but was close to it.
His dream was real. So that meant that he had attacked Sirius?
Harry starting shaking when realising this and he swallowed.
‘Am I still in Hogwarts?’
The nurse nodded.
‘And… Is Dumbledore here?’
‘Of course he is. He is the headmaster.’
Harry immediately stood up and said he had to speak him.
‘You can’t go. You’re to weak.’
‘I’m not!’ 
Harry yelled and he started running, grabbing his wand of the cupboard.
He ran three or four floors up and ran to the statue who concealed the entrance of Dumbledore’s office.
‘OPEN!!’
Harry screamed and starting punching and pushing on the statue, to make it move. He was out of himself of anger and suddenly someone struck him from behind. Harry fell on the floor, immobilised.
His eyes were turning wildly and he tried to see who had attacked him from behind. He didn’t believe who he saw.
The person, who Harry followed with his eyes, opened the stairway by saying the password.
He made Harry to float and to follow him upstairs.
‘Albus?’ The person knocked on the door and opened it.
Dumbledore was sitting on his chair, near his desk.
‘Ah… Alastor, how are you?’
Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody went closer to Dumbledore, causing Harry to almost hit a Dark-detector.
‘I found him getting all mad and acting foolish on your door. I struck him, and to be sure, I brought him to you to see…’
Dumbledore nodded and he looked at the boy, Harry, who was now on the floor.
Floating some inches of it, his hands hung limp next to him, touching the rug.
Dumbledore gasped breath.
‘Harry?!’
Mad-Eye looked at Dumbledore.
‘Harry? No, James. James Potter.’
Dumbledore shook his head.
‘No, Alastor. It isn’t him.’
‘Not him? An impostor then?’
He rose his wand and Dumbledore shook his head.
‘No… It’s his son.’
Alastor didn’t say a thing until…
‘What?!’ He laughed loudly.
‘Dumbledore, are you taking the mickey?’
Dumbledore shook his head again.
‘No… I wish I was, but he proved his yesterday.. But how he got here from the future, I don’t know…’
Mad-Eye himself, stood motionless and looked at Harry, whose eyes were raging.
‘Well… I’ll immobilise him…’
Alastor Moody went on in a whispering tone and Dumbledore nodded.
‘If you really want a prove, do it.’
Harry heard everything, but what where they going to do?
The last few words he hadn’t heard and he didn’t liked the look on Mad-Eye’s face. Suddenly Mad-Eye made two movements with his wand and Harry could move again, but before even the thought of grabbing his wand, he, again, was struck by a spell. A Forbidden Spell even.
‘Imperio!’
Harry felt how his head was light and how his body was “flying”.
‘Who are you?’ A voice asked demanding.
Harry wanted to answer, but another, louder voice said he had to be silent.
Harry didn’t say a thing.
‘Who are you?!’ The first voice asked again.
Harry didn’t answer.
‘Fine… Albus?’
‘Harry… What Prophecy are you talking about?’
Mad-Eye looked at Dumbledore, but he shook his head and looked back at Harry.
‘The Prophecy?’
Dumbledore nodded and suddenly Harry was pulled back from the spell by the bigger voice and opened his eyes again.
‘Leave me alone!’
Harry yelled and he grabbed his wand and screamed “Stupefy!”.
Alastor was struck by the spell, before he even got over the surprise that Harry could resist his Forbidden Spell.
Dumbledore grabbed his wand and said to Harry to be calm.
‘No! You’re all in the plot!’
‘What plot?’
‘I know who you are!’
Harry yelled and he backed away, searching after the doorhandle.
‘Who am I?’
‘You’re Malfoy! Or Snape! Or Voldemort himself!’
Harry knew this for sure.
They had taken some Polyjuice, made by Snape or so and tried to kill him again.
But he wasn’t to let it happen.
He found the doorhandle, trew a Stunning-spell to Dumbledore and ran of the stairs. He made sure he was going to be far out of Voldemort’s reach.
He wasn’t going to get killed.
While Harry was running, he suddenly thought of something so horrible, it grabbed his breath.
He had almost told him the Prophecy!
How stupid could he have been?!
He could have ruined the whole world he knew, by only saying those few words!
Now he realised what had happened in the library.
Someone had Stun him and kidnapped him and when he woke up, made him believe he saw his parents and so on, while he really was talking to Deatheaters!
How stupid had he been?! What had he told them all?
Had he told them a part of the Prophecy?
Harry’s scar hurted again, while thoughts kept crossing his mind.
Some even darker then the last ones. 
Suddenly, somewhere in the far distance, a bell rang.
A schoolbell and Harry hid behind a huge statue, the same where Ron had stood. 
People where suddenly coming from everywhere and Harry felt how scared he got. Those were all Deatheaters?!
He didn’t knew any solution or a way to get him out of here alive!
Or even letting Ron and Hermione know where he was.
Harry heard someone passing him by. He looked who it was and saw it was Lily and James.
‘Do you think that he told the truth?’
Harry saw on James face he didn’t needed to ask about whom Lily was talking about.
‘I don’t know… All I do know, is that he had to go trough a lot… Did you see him react on Sirius? I mean…’
‘I know what you mean… He has lived a bad life… But…’
James looked at Lily.
‘What?’
‘But.. I’m just wondering… Who has taken care for him then? I mean.. If we were, or are his parents… Who has taken care for him after that we died?’
James didn’t knew it.
‘I doubt my parents..’
Lily nodded and hugged James.
‘I’m sorry, James. I didn’t meant to point that out.’
James just nodded too and looked to the statue where Harry was hidden behind.
‘I just still can’t believe it… My dad… Cancer.’
Harry gasped breath.
His grandparents died too?
Suddenly he was struck by a thought.
How come he never knew his grandparents? Or never wondered who they were?
They were, after all, his ancestors.
‘I wonder where that boy, Harry I mean, is now?’
And James looked around, as if he would see Harry jump from behind something.
What Harry did too. ‘I am here.’
He said quietly, but they didn’t hear him.
‘Well… Let’s go and ask professor Dumbledore.’
James nodded and said they first needed to go to Sirius and Remus to tell them what they were going to do.
Lily and James left and Harry hit himself on the hit.
Yet again, he had almost given out a secret.
Now he had almost given out his hiding place to those Deatheaters.
But… While Harry was thinking that, a nagging doubt came in his mind.
Were they really Deatheaters? Wasn’t he just so paranoid that he questioned everything and everyone?
Harry shook his head and sat down. What did he needed to do now?
He didn’t knew what to do or to say anymore.
All he knew was that he wanted to get back to Ron and Hermione and forget everything. 
In an instant, Harry just jumped up and started running to where ever his legs were taking him. It didn’t interested him anymore.
He just wanted to know the truth whether or not they were his parents or if they were impostors.
Harry ran to the Tower of Gryffindor and he knocked really hard on the Fat Lady’s portrait. She woke up and screamed.
‘BOY!’ She yelled.
‘What’s the matter with you?!’
 He unclenched his fists and said loudly he demanded to get in.
‘TO GET IN?’ She screamed angry.
‘LET ME IN!’
Harry started punching again and finally someone had heard him.
Some student opened the portrait from inside and let him in.
‘Here you are.’ Harry heard Remus say and he felt how the person, who had let him in, pushed him in front of him.
‘Harry?’ James asked. Harry looked at his father.
‘Yes, dad?’
James looked livid with that one word. Apparently he still wasn’t used to the thought.
There was a moment of complete silence, you could hear a needle fall.
Then… Finally, after five minutes or so…
‘Could you please tell us everything?’
Harry nodded and Sirius pushed him in a seat.
‘What happened in your life? How did you get here?’
Harry’s eyes started to get wet, but he didn’t cry, nor let he notice it.
‘I don’t know… I was reading a book in the Forbidden Section and suddenly I was hear… I don’t know what happened.’
‘A book?’ Sirius asked.
‘In the Forbidden Section?’ Remus asked.
‘Did you had permission?’ Remus sounded so much as his usual self, Harry had to grin.
‘Yes… I am permitted for my studies.’
‘Your studies?’ Lily asked.
Harry noticed they were really interested and he was ashamed of his actions he had done against them and Dumbledore, ever since he was here.
‘Yeah… I’m… I was studying to become an Auror. Me, Ron Weasley and Hermione.’
‘Weasley? That’s an-‘
‘That’s family of you, I know, Sirius. You told me in the Headquarters.’
‘Headquarters?’ Sirius asked astonished.
‘Of the Order of the Phoenix. They saved me from the Dursleys and then I had to go to an inquiry with the Wizengamot.’
Harry knew this must have sounded as if he was a real criminal, but apparently they didn’t knew what the Wizengamot was.
Only Remus nodded. ‘Why did you needed to go?’
He clearly didn’t understood Harry’s story, but he was interested.
‘I had used magic out of school.’
‘Why did you use magic?’
‘Because… Two Dementors had attacked me and my cousin, Dudley.’
‘Who’s Dudley?’ Lily asked.
‘The son of your sister, Petunia Evans.’
Lily gasped and putted her hands to her mouth.
‘You were raised by her?!’
She asked shocked.
Harry nodded. 
‘Yes, I was. That was to make the spell complete that Dumbledore had done.’
‘What spell?’ Remus asked.
Harry told him everything about the spell.
That it would only have worked when he was raised by a blood-relative and when he could call that house his home, he would be protected from Voldemort.
‘And who is that Voldemort?’
‘His real name is Tom Marvolo Riddle… He opened the Chamber Of Secrets. He is the Heir of Slytherin.’
The five people who were listening gasped.
‘He did what?’
Harry was, again, in some kind of trance and just kept telling, although he was not under a spell.
‘He opened the Chamber. I discovered that Hagrid hadn’t done it, that was thanks to Hermione and Aragorg.’
Harry didn’t even needed to hear their question.
‘Aragorg is an Acramantula. He attacked me in the Forbidden Forest and after that I told him I had been send by Hagrid, he told me everything… Only not what monster there was in Hogwarts. He was to scared to speak out its name.’
The four were nodding and Remus asked what Harry had done then.
Harry told them his whole second year. That Ginny Weasley had discovered a diary, and which when she wrote, it wrote back.
‘She was taken in possession by Voldemort and he made her speak Parseltongue and kill roosters. A Basilisk can’t stand the sound of a rooster, so the Heir of Slytherin made sure no one could attack his monster. Voldemort’s task was to kill all mudbloods… Even the Gryffindor ghost was attacked and Stoned.’
James nodded and urged Harry on.
‘And then?’
Harry told them his fight with the Basilisk. Told them that Fawkes suddenly came from nowhere and that he had brought the Sorting Hat and picked the Snake his eyes out, so Harry couldn’t be killed by that.
‘And when I putted the Hat on, the Sword of Godric Gryffindor fell out and with that I killed the Basilisk.’
Remus looked astonished. ‘You killed a Basilisk? With only a sword?’
Harry nodded.
‘And you were twelve?’
Harry nodded again.
‘How many times did you needed to concur Voldemort?’
‘Five times.’ Harry told them.
‘Five?!’ James said loudly. Harry nodded again.
Now Harry was in complete trance, as if he was under the ‘Imperiusspell’ and he had to tell them this. As if he was forced to tell them this.
He didn’t even blink his eyes anymore.
‘When did you needed to concur that guy then?’ Peter suddenly asked.
Because Harry hadn’t heard that voice before ever since he started telling, he blinked, but he still was in trance.
‘In my first year, second and fourth and my fifth. And at Halloween when I was one year old…’
‘Your first?’
Harry nodded and no one had to ask him to tell everything. He had already started telling.
‘He had been only a ghost, a spirit and had been looking for the Philosopher’s Stone ever since Hagrid and I got him in Gringotts… There he had tried to steal it, but only we had gone there earlier…’
He told them about the things he and his friends had discovered about Nicholas Flamel and about Fluffy.
‘So… You decided to go after Voldemort himself? Alone?’
Harry had just told them about the potions and that Hermione had returned to warn Dumbledore and save Ron.
Harry nodded and went on.
‘I didn’t knew it was Voldemort, I thought is was my Potions-teacher… But it was Quirrel who had been taken over by Voldemort. He possessed him. I fought him to save the Stone… Dumbledore killed him after I passed out… Dumbledore was scared that I was dead too… he told me…’
‘And in your thirth year?’ Sirius asked.
‘Sirius Black had escaped out of Azkaban. No one had ever done that… I didn’t knew he was my godfather and everyone thought and told me he had sold my parents out to Voldemort. That he had betrayed them… Professor Lupin know him to.. He told me he knew Sirius vaguely…’
Sirius and Remus and James looked at each other.
This was way to farfetched. They couldn’t believe it.
‘How did Sirius escape?’
‘He was so skinny and weak, he changed for the last time in a dog.. he’s an Animagus.. But no one knows.. My father is too and Peter too… They are a stag and a rat… Lupin isn’t.’
They all gasped breath. How did that boy know that?
Was it true then?
‘He escaped from the Dementors by getting passed them and swam across the sea to rescue me from Wormtail… He had seen his picture in the newspapers…’
Harry told them about the Weasley’s and how they had won the lottery and went to Egypt to visit their eldest son.
Harry told them that Sirius had recognised the traitor on the photo and had been muttering his name while he was sleeping.
The Dementors had reported that to the Minister and he warned Dumbledore, so Harry could have been saved.
‘When Buckbeak was about to be murdered, we went up to Hagrid’s cabin and tried to comfort him.’
‘Who’s Buckbeak?’
‘A Hippogreaf… Sirius fled with hem.’
Harry told them about how they found Scabbers / Peter back and how Scabbers ran of when Croockshanks, Hermione’s cat, had tried to attack him.
‘Ron trew the Invisibility cloak of and tried to catch Scabbers. Then me and Hermione saw a gigantic, black dog who I had seen trough out the year… Only I was told it was the Grim, who came to warn me for my death.’
Sirius grinned. ‘Really?’
Harry nodded.
‘I believed it, because every time I saw him, I almost got killed.’
Sirius stopped grinning.
‘What do you mean?’ He asked.
‘The first time I was almost hit by the bus and the second time I had seen him, hundreds of Dementors were under me, it was a Quidditch match, and made me remember the worst memory I had.. I fell of my broom from about 25 feet.’
‘Quidditch match?’
‘I’m the Seeker of Gryffindor. I was the youngest ever. In my first year, I was allowed of Dumbledore to play. That was the first game we ever lost.’
They all nodded. ‘What happened then?’
Harry told them about the Shrieking Shrack and about how they attacked Sirius together, and when Remus came to help them, he had helped Sirius instead.
‘He had seen Sirius’ name on the Marauders map.’
‘The Marauders map?!’ Remus asked loudly and amazed.
Harry nodded and went on.
‘He came in and saved Sirius, by taking our wands. I was angry with him and told him that they were traitors and got my parents killed. Then Sirius burst out in tears and nodded.’
Harry told them everything that had happen there until the moment that Snape had gone in.
‘Then the door opened and we looked, but no one was there. Only after a couple of minutes, Snape putted of the Invisibility Cloak which had been laying next to the Whomping Willow.’
‘SNAPE?!’ They all almost yelled.
Harry nodded.
‘Yes, he hated me ever since I set foot in Hogwarts. I didn’t knew when, until I had saved the Stone. That’s why I thought he wanted to kill me. He saved me in my first Quidditch match from Quirrel, but I didn’t knew it then.’
It had become really difficult, and Remus told him to proceed with the Shrieking Shack.
Harry did and told them how they had attacked Snape and how Sirius and Lupin had shown Harry that Scabbers was Peter.
Harry went on and after a couple of minutes he was finished.
It was quiet.
‘Peter?’ Sirius asked.
‘You would never do that, right?’ James asked.
Peter nodded. ‘Of course not!’
‘Then… Harry, why did Peter joined Voldemort?’
‘He said Voldemort was forcing him to say it, but Sirius said that he would have died before giving out his own friends. Then Peter said he had never been such a brave person like James and Sirius, but that he had always been the dumber one. Sirius tried to attack him of rage and Lupin stopped him, let Peter tell his story, he said. And Peter did… But I didn’t believed him and agreed with Lupin and Sirius to bring him up to the castle where Fudge, the minister, was.’
Harry went on and on and finally, James and the other boys looked amazed to Peter.


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