Future Imperfect
Chapter One
"I've seen the future, brother.
It is murder."
-- Leonard Cohen, "The Future"
the present
Harry Potter was in a very awkward situation. Again. A lot of this had to do with the fact that one of his best friends had just performed spectacularly on the Quidditch pitch and his other best friend was rewarding him with a kiss. This would have been perfectly acceptable, except that it was taking a long time and he was anxious to get to Hogsmeade.
"Ron? Hermione? Are you done yet?"
Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger broke apart, looking quite embarrassed. They had been dating since October and got along spectacularly when they weren't trying to kill each other. This seemed to be one of the former cases. It wasn't that Harry begrudged them a chance to lock lips. He just wished they would be quicker about it.
"Sorry, Harry." Hermione flushed and quickly detached from Ron, who suddenly found the handle of his Cleansweep very interesting. There was a moment of awkward silence before the Head Girl rallied. "So. Hogsmeade it is?"
"About time," someone muttered at Harry's shoulder. It was Natalie McDonald, a fourth year and one of Gryffindor's three Chasers. The other two, sixth years Ginny Weasley and Lucy Spooner, had given up on their teammates and were drifting off the Quidditch pitch with the rest of their ecstatic House.
They had reason to be happy. Despite numerous injuries and a Keeper perpetually occupied with Head Boy duties, Gryffindor had managed to soundly trounce Slytherin and put themselves in the running for this year's Quidditch Cup. Harry was the captain this year and was very pleased with Gryffindor's performance. Over the past two years he had built his House team into a force to be reckoned with, aided in no small part by Ron, Ginny and Natalie. It had been a lot of work, especially with N.E.W.T.s to worry about, but together his fledging team had outdone the other Houses.
"You look happy," Hermione said as she fell into step next to him. Ron was a few steps behind; he had been doing loop-de-loops with the Beaters and still had to put his broom away. Harry didn't mind. He spent less time with Hermione than he would have liked nowadays, and treasured the chances he got to talk with her.
Which was why he just grinned. "I am happy." And he was. Things had been quiet for almost two years now, from the end of his fifth year on. There had been no Death Eater attacks, no dreams, no need to rush out and save the world. For the past two years he had been allowed to be a mostly normal teenage boy. It was wonderful.
Hermione gave him a sidelong look, her brown eyes sparkling. It was unusually warm for the middle of March, so she was wearing a cardigan and a scoop-necked blue shirt instead of her usual sweater and scarf. Her bushy brown hair was twisted up into a messy bun. "Do you want to come to the Three Broomsticks with me?" she asked.
"Ron's not coming with you?"
She shook her head. "He and Seamus are going to Zonko's." Her brow furrowed. While visiting the joke shop was apparently a fine activity for normal students, she obviously didn't think the Head Boy had any business going there. Harry was of the opinion that a Head Boy would be in the perfect position to smuggle choice goods back without risking Filch's wrath, but he knew better than to say so.
Privately Harry suspected that Hermione and Ron were behind the scheduling of a Quidditch match and a trip to Hogsmeade on the same Saturday, although how they had managed to accomplish this was a mystery for the ages. Both had vehemently denied being involved in the decision when he had questioned them. Not that he blamed them. Matches with Slytherin inevitably turned into nasty, brutal affairs, and he could imagine Hermione suggesting the Hogsmeade trip as a distraction for the rest of the school. She had arrived at Hogwarts in September determined to put a stop to the practice of betting on the number of injuries each team would receive and who would get a player thrown off the pitch first.
The ploy seemed to have worked. Today's match had been remarkably civil -- a fact that Harry knew had a lot to do with the fact that he had caught the Snitch very quickly, before anyone on either team could get violent. The skirmishes that usually followed such quick victories hadn't happened, though. The prospect of a visit to Hogsmeade on such an unseasonably warm day was far more appealing than turning someone into a turnip.
Besides, it gave him a chance to spend time with Hermione, and he wasn't going to argue with that.
The two of them scrambled into a carriage, holding the door open for Ron and Seamus Finnigan so they could climb in too. Hermione immediately reached over and squeezed Ron's hand. When he smiled at her, Seamus made an exaggerated gagging noise and spent the rest of the trip rolling his eyes at Harry. The sandy-haired boy had taken over the role of Hogwarts's comedian after Ron's older brothers, Fred and George, had left the school in Harry's fifth year. He wasn't quite as destructive, but what he lacked in sheer inventive madness he made up for with the most comical gestures known to man.
All in all, it was a very pleasant ride indeed. Even if Hermione did scowl at Seamus halfway through and threaten to take points from Gryffindor.
"One of these days..." she muttered, frowning disapprovingly at Seamus as they all climbed out of the carriage. Her Housemate just beamed and ran for it, towing Ron behind him. With a "SeeyoulaterHermione!" Hogwarts's least strict Head Boy vanished into the milling crowd of students.
Hermione just shook her head and sighed. A moment later her irritation vanished. She glanced at Harry and nodded in the direction of the Three Broomsticks. "Shall we?"
"After you," Harry said, and grinned when Hermione linked her arm with his to tow him along.
The Three Broomsticks was crammed with Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, all merrily celebrating Gryffindor's victory. Harry found himself squashed against Hermione as an entire herd of third years squeezed past him to get a good look at what looked like an impromptu performance. Natalie the Chaser was standing on a chair, waving something shiny around and talking in a high-pitched, nasal voice. Harry couldn't quite make out what she was saying over the laughter, but it didn't sound very polite.
Hermione clapped her hand over her mouth. "Oh no. That's..." She trailed off, giggling helplessly and leaving Harry to wonder what 'that' was.
He didn't have to wonder long. Natalie had spotted him. "OY!" she bellowed. "CAPTAIN HARRY! Guess who I am!" And before anyone could stop her, she scrunched her face up as if she had smelled something revolting and began to jump up and down on the chair, still waving the shiny object around. In fact, now that Harry thought about it, it almost looked like...
It was. Through means best left unknown, Natalie had stolen the Slytherin Seeker's prefect badge. The jumping was her imitation of Draco Malfoy, the Amazing Bouncing Ferret.
"She shouldn't have that!" Hermione hmphed as Harry attempted to stifle his own laughter. It was a very half-hearted protest, though; she didn't like Malfoy any more than the rest of Gryffindor and she was grinning from ear to ear. More to the point, she was making no move to steal the badge back from Natalie.
Harry just shook his head, still laughing, and attempted to steer Hermione through the swarm of students. Even the handful of Slytherins in the crowd were in hysterics. Malfoy might have been a prefect and both Seeker and captain of the Slytherin team, but he no longer had the following he once did. His father, the Death Eater Lucius Malfoy, was in Azkaban prison. According to Parvati Patil -- who was very pureblooded and would know such things -- Malfoy and his stuck-up mother Narcissa had been universally shunned by the same well-to-do families they had once socialized with.
Normally thoughts about Death Eaters and Azkaban would have soured Harry's mood, but not today. It was hard to be gloomy when Natalie's impromptu skit had turned the Three Broomsticks into a sort of comedy club, and it was impossible when Hermione was sitting next to him, her eyes sparkling with mirth as she tried and failed to look stern. Even Madam Rosmerta, the familiar hostess of the Three Broomsticks, didn't seem to mind that Natalie was using one of her chairs as a stage. If she didn't know exactly what the jokes referred to, she at least enjoyed the bouncing ferret impression as much as everyone else.
The only person who wasn't laughing was one of the waitresses. Harry spotted her quickly, because of all the employees and patrons of the Three Broomsticks, she was the only one who was standing absolutely still. There was something very familiar about her. She was thin and a bit bony, and she wore her flyaway brown hair bound up in a tight braid. Although he couldn't be sure of her age, she looked as if she was twenty-two or twenty-three -- certainly no older than twenty-five. She stared at Harry for a moment with very clear, very adult brown eyes before she began scanning the crowd again. There was something in her stance that didn't belong in the Three Broomsticks, or anywhere in the world as it was at that moment.
It was as if she was waiting for something bad to happen -- which, Harry learned later, was exactly what she was doing.
~~
Everyone would know the story by heart later on, even the people who hadn't been there. The Three Broomsticks was where the war began.
In 1997, in the middle of March, seven Death Eaters had Apparated right into Hogsmeade and begun wreaking havoc. Three of them appeared in the middle of the Leaky Cauldron and killed twelve students. It was a well-known fact, because it had caught Voldemort's enemies completely flat-footed. They had been left scrambling, attempting to shore up defenses that hadn't been needed for two years. The Death Eaters had been counting on that.
If they had been counting on Helen Grandin, they gave no sign. The Death Eater who Apparated closest to her barely had time to register her presence before the waitress drove her elbow into his gut.
~~
"What the hell?" Harry muttered, half-rising from his seat as what looked like a brawl broke out at the other end of the Three Broomsticks. The waitress he had been watching spun on her heel, grabbed someone out of the confused, buzzing crowd and flipped him over her shoulder. A moment later she lifted her wand and shouted an unfamiliar spell. It sizzled over everyone's heads, striking down a second man. He flew into the air with a cry and landed right on the table next to Harry's.
By then Harry and Hermione had both scrambled to their feet, wands drawn. Somewhere in the crowd a deep voice shouted a curse. People were screaming and scrambling for the doors, shoving each other aside in their haste. Harry was vaguely aware of Hermione shouting for calm, but it was no use. They were going to get trampled. He grabbed her around the waist and heaved her up onto the table, pressing her down to the wood as a Stunning Spell sizzled over their heads.
"What's going on?!" Hermione hissed. In the stampede it was impossible to see what was happening, and with the spells flying around neither of them dared raise their heads. Suddenly the students near the door screamed and began to shove their way back into the Three Broomsticks. Harry raised his head a fraction of an inch and saw --
"Death Eaters!" someone screamed next to him. He didn't stop to wonder who it was. Still pinning a protesting Hermione to the table, he fired a Stunning Spell blindly at the door. As he readied another spell, Hermione hugged him to her with both arms and rolled, sending them both tumbling tumbling to the floor. A half-second later the tabletop splintered as a curse hit it, showering them both with sharp wood. With a cry, Hermione grabbed him by the front of his shirt and hauled them both under the table.
Harry didn't stop to think. They couldn't stay huddled under the half-destroyed table, but crawling into the screaming, panicked stampede meant getting trampled. He risked a quick glance at Hermione, who was clutching her wand in a white-knuckled grip and breathing hard. Blood ran down the side of her forehead and from her shoulder. She must have taken the brunt of the curse when it had hit.
"You okay?" he mouthed at her. She couldn't hear him over the flying curses, but she managed a nod. That was something at least.
They had to get out of there. He grabbed her wrist and crouched beside a table leg, trying to hear where the attacks were coming from. There were screams -- less than before, so some students must have escaped -- and what sounded like a fight happening somewhere close by. The waitress, he remembered belatedly. For reasons he couldn't explain, he didn't think she was an attacker. If anything, she was probably the reason some of the students were still alive. She was occupying at least one attacker, then.
That left two others for him and Hermione to deal with. He had to do something. He was Harry Potter, and as much as he hated it, the fact was that he couldn't stay safe when other people were in danger. He glanced at Hermione again, trying to silently convey what he wanted to do. She paled for a moment, but then set her jaw and nodded. She understood.
The two of them rolled out from under the table together, scrambling onto the remnants of the chairs and hastily scanning the panicked, slowly thinning crowd. It was still almost as bit as it had been before. Natalie was still on what was left of her makeshift stage, crouching behind the back of a ruined chair with her hands over her head. It was as if less than a minute had passed since the attack had begun.
Maybe there was still time, then.
"Fight back!" Harry yelled, and fired a Stunning Spell at a dark-haired, sneering man he didn't recognize -- a man the other students were trying desperately to get away from. The spell hit the floor instead. When the man rounded on him and started to shout a curse of his own, Hermione's bright red stunner flashed past Harry and struck the man squarely in the chest. He went down without a sound.
That left -- how many others? He tried to count even as he ducked curses. At least four, maybe five; he couldn't tell how many the strange waitress was duelling with. He and Hermione would be able to handle one of them and the waitress and the students from Dumbledore's Army would probably be able to take down another two, but that left at least one more to deal with...
"EXPELLIARMUS!" someone shouted over by the front entrance. It was Ron -- battered and mad as hell, but apparently unhurt. Seamus, Dean Thomas, and a few other seventh year boys were with him.
Harry had never been so happy to see his best friend in his life. "Get them out!" he yelled. Ron began grabbing younger students and shoving them through the front door. Beside him, a few other students smashed windows and threw jackets and cloaks over the jagged glass, all but throwing their classmates through the new escape routes and into the street. Ever so slowly, the Three Broomsticks began to empty.
Not fast enough, though. As the crowd cleared Harry could see students sprawled on the floor -- some groaning, some very still. He tore his horrified stare away from them and took aim at the remaining attackers. The waitress finally took one down and snatched up his wand. Holding one wand in each hand, she began to elbow her way through the crowd. She was coming right at Harry and Hermione, oblivious to the blood and grime covering her.
He couldn't stop to worry about her. Instead he scanned the crowd frantically, hunting for any more attackers. He and Hermione were both much higher up than the other students and very vunerable. If even one slipped past him...
"Get down, you idiot!" the waitress snapped as she closed the last few steps between them. Up close she looked more familiar than ever. When Harry scrambled to the floor, tugging Hermione with him, the strange woman began scanning the now half-empty Three Broomsticks as if searching for something. "There's supposed to be one more," she muttered. "I'm sure there's supposed to be one more..."
"One more what?" Hermione demanded. Her hand was pressed to her temple and she was leaning on Harry for support, wincing in pain.
The waitress gave her a withering look. "One more Death Eater. Who did you think these bastards were?" When Hermione opened her mouth to answer, she turned away abruptly. "Out the door. Now."
"We can't just -- " Harry began, but the waitress rounded on him and gave him such a terrible, furious glare that he fell silent.
"You are more important than any of them," she said harshly. "I don't care if anyone else dies as long as you stay alive. Understand, Potter?"
Harry glared at her. "No," he bit out. "I don't understand."
"You will." The waitress shifted on the balls of her feet. She reminded Harry of the Aurors, always ready for a fight. If anything, she seemed to be more of a fighter than any Auror he had ever seen. It was as if she had been in a war all her life, and this was the only way she knew how to be.
When she seemed satisfied that the coast was clear, she began herding Harry toward the door. He wrapped his arm around Hermione and helped her stagger across the Three Broomsticks. When they reached the doorway, Ron made a kind of hoarse strangled noise and managed to enfold both of them at once in a desperate hug. He and Hermione both looked about as bad as Harry felt.
The waitress watched them with a strange, distant expression for a moment before pocketing her extra wand and folding her arms across her chest. "We have to move," she said quietly. "There are a few things I need to get from my flat, and then we have to go."
"What do you mean, go?" Ron demanded, glowering at their strange ally with outright suspicion. "Who the hell are you?"
"Helen Grandin," the waitress said simply, "and at the moment I'm the only person who can keep Potter alive. You don't have any choice, Weasley."
Ron started to protest, but Hermione rested a gentle hand on his arm and shook her head. At the same time, Harry tightened his grip on his friends and tried to look Helen Grandin in the eye. Something about the way she looked at him, as if she half-knew him, made this very hard to do.
"All right," he said quietly. "We'll trust you."
Helen let out a short, humorless laugh. "I didn't ask for that, Potter. But it's a start." She glanced back at the Three Broomsticks, which was already being surrounded by professors and anxious-looking Ministry officials, and dragged the three friends toward the outskirts of Hogsmeade.