Disclaimer: Harry Potteris the property of J. K. Rowling. This story was written for fun, not profit.
Author's Note: I'm very sorry about the long wait. I'm finishing up my junior year of college and it can get hectic sometimes. For anybody's who still reading, thank you so much for your patience. :)
Future Imperfect
Chapter Five
"Someone told me long ago
There's a calm before the storm.
I know, it's been coming for some time."
-- Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?"
the present
Despite the urgency of the situation, Helen insisted on following a roundabout path to the Shrieking Shack. Every time Harry, Ron, or Hermione tried to set a more direct course, the young woman would snarl at them and pull them through alleys or down narrow side streets. Something about the way she held herself -- about the way she checked every doorway or window as if looking for an ambush -- made Harry wonder if this was some kind of horrible nightmare.
"How long have you been fighting?" Ron asked. His voice sounded strange and loud in the unnatural stillness that seemed to pervade Hogsmeade.
Helen turned to glare at him. She was standing in the vaulted entrance to an alley, silhouetted against the red and orange of the setting sun like some starved and beaten champion. "Does it matter?" she snapped.
Hermione scowled at Ron. "No, it doesn't." She grabbed Harry's arm and tugged him past Helen. After a moment, Ron hurried to keep up with them. Harry was the only one who looked back, and so he alone saw the strange blend of grief and fury that crossed Helen's face, come and gone in a heartbeat.
A strange new kind of trepidation began to nag at Harry, even as he concentrated on getting to the Shrieking Shack as quickly as possible. Helen didn't look that much older than he was, so he had assumed that she was around his age in this time -- maybe even someone he knew. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized he was making a lot of assumptions. Helen had never revealed what year she had originally come from, much less why she had volunteered for or been coerced into her trip through time. He would have bet almost anything that Helen Grandin wasn't her real name, and that she had left off much more than she had told him.
It was entirely possible that she was one of the giggling Hufflepuff first years he had tripped over this morning on his way to breakfast, or that she was still a little girl, perhaps even a Muggleborn who hadn't discovered her magic yet. For all the information Helen had provided about how horrible her time was, she had revealed nothing about herself.
How long had she been fighting, anyway? How far in the future had she really come from?
He would have to worry about those things later. All that mattered now was getting to the Shrieking Shack and stopping Voldemort. He could think about everything else -- about Helen and Samantha and Hermione -- when he didn't have hundreds of people to save.
"There!" Hermione called suddenly. She clutched Harry's arm and pointed to the Shrieking Shack, standing isolated and abandoned. There was no one from Hogsmeade or from the Ministry in sight.
Helen stopped short and stared at the Shack, obviously confused. "That building doesn't exist in my time. It's all rubble." She frowned at Harry. "Are you sure there's a secret passage?"
"Why would we lie to you?" Harry demanded. He was anxious to get back to Hogwarts and Helen's twisting, turning path had taken up far too much precious time.
The waitress was silent, as if it his question was really something she had to stop and consider. Then she nodded. "Follow me," she said. "Don't do anything stupid, and get ready to run if I tell you to."
Together the little group began to pick their way to the Shrieking Shack, always on the lookout for signs that someone had spotted them. No one said anything, and it seemed like even the two children were trying to remain as silent as possible. Despite the unseasonably warm weather, Harry was starting to shiver. He knew it was nerves, but he could almost imagine that he was seeing his breath in the air. A glance at Hermione, hurrying along beside him, told him that he wasn't the only one in such a state. His friend was holding her wand in a white-knuckled grip, and her pale face stood in stark contrast to the dried blood on her temple and cheek.
"Are you still hurt?" he asked her the second they had all slipped inside the shack.
She just stared at him for a moment. Clearly she wasn't okay, not with everything Helen had told them. The faint light filtering through the dusty windows made her features seem stark and unflattering, and her eyes were shadowed with worry and fatigue.
If he had had more time, he might have been worried by the thought that flashed through his mind, under the most unlikely of conditions.
Hermione was very pretty.
"Where's this stupid passage of yours?" Helen snapped.
The fleeting thought vanished almost before he noticed it. He tore his gaze away from Hermione, who was suddenly just his friend again. "This way," he said, and began to lead the way through the Shrieking Shack.
It seemed to take forever to find the passage, especially since Harry hadn't been inside the Shrieking Shack in years, and back in his third year he hadn't exactly been in a position to notice details anyway. After what felt like an eternity, but was probably only a few minutes, he yelled and waved an arm to draw the others' attention.
"Be quiet, idiot!" Helen moved as if she meant to smack the back of his head, but pulled back at the last moment and seemed to think better of it. Instead she led the way into the cramped passage, moving as quickly as caution allowed. Harry, Hermione, and Ron stumbled after her.
The passage was as long and dark and cramped as Harry remembered it -- moreso, now that he had had grown. After what seemed like forever, they finally emerged from the secret entryway hidden by the Whomping Willow. Harry reached over and touched the knot, temporarily stilling the tree's dangerous branches. "We need to get out of here before it wakes up."
Helen frowned up at the tree, oblivious to the fact that all three seventh years had already moved well out of harm's way. Instead she peered up at it, free hand planted on her hip, and tilted her head to one side as she examined the tree critically. "This really is quite clever," she said, and sounded so much like Hermione that Harry almost tripped over a tree root.
Ron didn't seem terribly impressed. If anything, Helen seemed to unnerve him as much as he unnerved her. "It's also bloody dangerous. Will you hurry up?"
The young woman shot him a dark look, but stepped nimbly away from the Whomping Willow just in time. The heavy limbs swung so close to her that strands of Samantha's dark hair rippled in its wake. Helen didn't even flinch. She just watched the tree for a moment, clearly fascinated by it, before she shook her head and began to cautiously take in the grounds. After a moment, Harry copied her.
The forest stretched off to his right, dark and foreboding, and still somehow familiar and comforting at the same time. The lake glimmered far to his left, and the castle itself loomed before him. In the dim light the many windows glowed invitingly. This was normal and safe. This was home.
And yet he could see the way Helen took it all in as if she had never set eyes on any of it. When he looked at her, Harry felt a cold pit open up in his stomach. It was almost as if he could see the foundations of his world crumbling, and in the center of it all was Helen, wreathed in flames and shrouded in smoke.
"Should we try to warn Professor Dumbledore?" Hermione asked nervously. She edged closer to Harry, as if her proximity could somehow protect him.
Helen hesitated, then shook her head. "There's no point in getting ourselves trapped, is there?" She began to edge toward the forest, still poised to attack anything that looked at her wrong. "Stay by the trees and follow me. And for Merlin's sake -- "
"Stay quiet," Ron finished. "We know, we know."
"Shut up," Helen snapped, and once again forged ahead of them. Harry followed slowly, wondering if they were better or worse off with the time-traveler on their side. Watching Helen pick her way over the grounds, Harry felt more and more uneasy. He had to trust her -- he couldn't risk Hogwarts -- but it was more and more apparently that Helen didn't know exactly what she was doing. He was beginning to wonder if something had gone wrong in her time, if she had gone on this trip without other people's knowledge or permission -- or if things were so bad that she was the best option left. That last thought filled him with slow, cold fury. He wouldn't let things get that desperate in his time. No matter what happened, he would change things for the better. He had to.
Hermione seemed to have picked up on the same feelings he had. She stepped between Harry and Ron and walked right up to Helen, so that she was almost keeping pace with her. "You have no idea what's going to happen, do you? We could be walking into a trap right now, for all we know!" She stopped short when Harry and Ron both turned to glare at her, not pleased with her choice of words or the memories of fifth year that they invoked, but she took a deep breath and seemed to rally, scowling at the back of Helen's head for all she was worth. "My point is that you don't seem to know your way around and we might be better off going ahead on our own."
"And do what?" Helen asked, neither stopping nor turning to look at Hermione. "Talk the Dark Lord to death? Maybe he'll have tea and biscuits while you three idiots argue in circles?"
"You're not helping," Harry said through gritted teeth. He was liking Helen less and less with each passing moment, and the knowledge that she probably wouldn't have been like this in a less bleak future didn't help at all. That just meant that her truly impressive ability to grate on his nerves was, like everything else directly or indirectly connected to Voldemort, somehow his fault.
He wished he hadn't said anything when Helen laughed unpleasantly and threw a glance over her shoulder. "You're no ray of sunshine yourself, Potter. We'll see how friendly you are when things get bad."
"Things won't get bad," Ron said far too loudly, and then stopped and lowered his voice. "That's what we're going to stop, right? This terrible future of yours? Or are you just making this all up as you go?"
Helen stopped dead in her tracks. She spun around, clutching a terrified Samantha so tightly that it was a wonder the little girl could still breathe, and snarled with such ferocity that all three seventh years took a hasty step back. But it was Ron she glared at, as if he had committed some kind of grievous offense just by speaking to her, and it was Ron she spoke to in a voice that was almost a growl. "Could you do better, Weasley?"
Ron's jaw set. "I wouldn't stop every five minutes to have a bloody tantrum!"
"I'm doing the best I can!" Helen hissed, and then turned and forged on ahead of them without waiting for a reply.
They had none to give her. Harry merely exchanged glances with his friends and stayed with them, all too aware that the person who held the key to saving their future was very probably a madwoman.
An observant madwoman, Harry amended when Helen threw up an arm to stop them. She pointed further along the line of trees, to a point where it was just possible to see a cloaked, masked figure appear and look around. A heartbeat later other figures began to appear -- five, ten, twenty -- until at least thirty Death Eaters stood all around the grounds. And in the middle of them, tall and impossibly thin --
"That's him!" Harry whispered as something in his chest turned to ice and a burning pain lanced through his scar. There were only four of them, and both Helen and Ron were carrying children. How were they supposed to get through them and warn Dumbledore and the other professors?
Helen shivered for a moment and then set Samantha down. "Give her the baby, Weasley."
Ron stared at her. "What?"
"I said give her the baby!" She marched over and snatched Julian from Ron's arms, handing him to Samantha. The little girl took him with practiced ease and settled cross-legged at the base of a tree. Apparently this wasn't the first time she had been left in a dangerous situation.
Ron didn't look happy with Helen at all. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Not now!" Hermione pointed to the Death Eaters with her wand. "There's so many of them! What do we do?"
Helen remained still for a long moment, hardly even breathing. Then she turned and flashed them a horrible smile that made Harry's stomach turned. It was insane expression that belonged on someone like Bellatrix Lestrange, not on anybody who was on their side. "Find another way into Hogwarts and evacuate it. I'll distract them."
Somehow, Harry had a feeling she would do just that. He threw one last glance at his future daughter, still sitting calmly with her back against the tree, and somehow felt his resolve grow stronger. Maybe if things changed here, Samantha would never exist. But if there was even the slightest chance he could make things better for her, so that she actually got to grow up with a normal family and didn't take conversations about death in stride, then this was all worth it.
"Come on," he whispered to Ron and Hermione, and together the three friends began to edge around the shifting mass of Death Eaters. More seemed to be arriving with every passing moment. Harry had never imagined that Voldemort had so many followers, or that he would be brazen enough to risk this kind of attack.
He had to get the other students out. He had to at least change something.
There was a pop of displaced air somewhere behind him, and then a blinding flash of light. Shouts went up from inside the crowd of Death Eaters as smaller, red flashes began to appear everywhere. As Harry picked up his pace, running for one of the castle's smaller entries, he heard a high scream and a gurgle. Helen was being true to her word, apparently.
As the three friends finally reached the shelter of an arched doorway, red stunners began to fly from some of Hogwarts' windows. Someone inside the castle had noticed the commotion outside. Harry could only hope they had thought to call for reinforcements from the Ministry -- although if Fudge was really under Imperius, he had no idea what good that would do. Maybe none of this would do any good at all.
A heartbeat before they unlocked the door, Hermione reached over and squeezed his arm, looking very pale but very determined. Ron had already taken up a kind of rearguard position with his wand at ready. Despite the situation, Harry suddenly felt stronger than he had in a long time.
Whatever happened, the three of them would face it together.