Future Imperfect

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J.K. Rowling. This story was written for fun, not profit.

Future Imperfect
Prologue

"Imagine there's no heaven.
It's easy if you try."
-- John Lennon, "Imagine"

the future

It was Colin Creevey who had come up with the idea, although he was long dead by the time it came to fruition. At the time it had been a throwaway comment, little more than a joke. That was a long time ago, when the good and decent people had outnumbered the men in black hoods and masks when those same people had still believed that Harry Potter and his allies would somehow defeat the Dark Lord, and prove that hope was stronger than any other force in the world.

They were wrong. Hope wasn't so strong after all.

While Harry fought, rallied and fought on, eventually forgetting a time when hope had existed at all, his wife Hermione remembered Colin's idea. It was insane, of course -- both illegal and very dangerous -- but Hermione had long ago stopped being afraid of insanity, illegality or danger. She attacked her new project with a fervor that in less dire circumstances might have been obsessive.

It wasn't that she failed to understand the consequences. She understood them all too well. She ignored the part of her that was still an academic, that screamed silently that she didn't even know if the project would work, that she was risking far more by embarking on it than by leaving things as they were. After so much pain and fear, academia seemed to be something very far away.

Besides, had she bothered to be honest, she would have admitted that despite the risks, she was fascinated. What she was attempting had never been done before. She would accomplish what others had only dreamed of, and no one would ever know.

If she was successful, Hermione, her world, and everyone and everything she had ever known would simply cease to exist.

The work took years, and it came to consume her. Others fed and clothed Hermione and her daughter, and protected them from the Dark Lord's forces. Dean Thomas, who ran the safe house where her laboratory was hidden away, made sure she was supplied with what she needed. Sometimes he also brought her news about Harry, but Hermione just nodded absently and kept working. She had no time for her husband, or for anything except her project.

When news came one April morning that Harry had been killed, she just calmly handed Dean a list of three spellbooks she needed. She had no time for grief either.

Two months later, the safe house was discovered and Dean Thomas was killed. Hermione escaped. Carrying her daughter under one arm and a tiny silver hourglass in her free hand, she made her way from one questionable refuge to the next, always a half-step ahead of the pursuing Death Eaters. Luck and determination eventually brought her and her precious burdens to the rundown farmhouse where the scattered remnants of Harry's fighting force had taken refuge.

The battered wizards and witches there found supplies for Hermione while she used her considerable skill to put the finishing touches on her project. Hermione never asked where these supplies had come from, or who had died to get them. It was better not to know.

Almost a year after her husband had died, Hermione held the tiny silver hourglass up to the light of a candle and smiled a weary, humorless smile. It was such a simple object, just as Colin's original idea had been so deceptively simple.

"Too bad we can't warn ourselves, huh Harry?"

It was against a hundred unspoken rules, to change what had been. As far as most people were concerned, it was impossible.

Hermione was a tired, beaten woman. She was sick of impossibilities, and she was determined to give her fellow fighters something they had lost a long time ago.

For the first time in years, the men and women fighting against the Dark Lord had a reason to hope for a better future even if it wasn't their own. They were willing to take the risks the project entailed, because this faint scrap of hope was better than no hope at all.

Madam Rosmerta the bartender knew none of these things. All she knew was that on Christmas Eve in the winter of Harry Potter's seventh year, a bushy-haired woman and two small children entered the Three Broomsticks. The woman was haggard and very thin, but she carried herself proudly and wore a strange silver hourglass around her neck.

Her name, she told Rosmerta, was Helen Grandin. She was looking for work.

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.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J.K. Rowling. This story was written for fun, not profit.

Author's Note: Thank you for the kind reviews. I'm having a lot of fun writing this story, and I'm glad you're liking this as much as I am. This is my first longish Trio story, so I hope I'm getting the characterizations right. :)

Future Imperfect
Chapter Two

"I don't need to fight
To prove I'm right.
I don't need to be forgiven."
-- The Who, "Baba O'Riley"

the present

"What do you mean they're gone?"

Neville Longbottom took a quick step back -- a perfectly understandable reaction when faced with a furious Ginny Weasley. "I mean they're missing," he managed, holding up his hands as if to ward off an attack. Given Ginny's mood at the moment, that might not have been far from the truth. "If Ron's with Harry, I'm sure he's fine. Please calm down?" What was supposed to be a request came out as a plea. If he'd had any delusions of staying cool and collected, they were rapidly vanishing.

"I'm worried about Harry too, you idiot!" Ginny bellowed. Although they were crammed into the Great Hall with the rest of Hogwarts's student body, she made no move to lower her voice. On the contrary, the audience seemed to make her louder and more volatile than ever. Arms rigid at her side, hands clenched into quivering fists, she stood on her tiptoes in an effort to scowl down at him.

Since Neville was used to this tactic, it did little good. He just leaned away from her and met her glare as calmly as he could. "Ginny, this isn't helping anybody -- "

Ginny's face turned a shade of red previously unknown to man. "And I'm worried about Hermione and Natalie and everyone else who's missing!"

"You think I'm not?" Neville snapped. He wasn't one to raise his voice, but he was anxious and more than a little hurt by her insinuations, and under such circumstances he wasn't inclined to put up with a lot.

"We're all worried," Luna Lovegood said from her perch on a bench near Neville and Ginny. The blonde Ravenclaw didn't sound worried, to be sure, but she wasn't staring off into space. That was enough to tell Neville that she was terrified for their friends' safety too.

Ginny finally stopped pacing and glared at them, her arms folded across her chest. Then, very abruptly, she seemed to wilt. She collapsed onto the bench next to Luna and put her head in her hands. Her shoulders shook as if she was trying very hard not to break down.

Suppressing the urge to join Ginny and Luna on the bench, Neville stuffed his hands in the pockets of his trousers and surveyed the Great Hall, grimly tallying up how many people were still missing. The rumors flying around suggested that twelve people had definitely died, a fact that he refused to think about because it hurt too much. One of the limp bodies he had seen sprawled on the floor of the Three Broomsticks had belonged to his housemate and fellow seventh year Parvati Patil. He knew that the sight of her twin sister Padma sliding to the floor of the Great Hall, eyes blank and staring as her friends tried to comfort her, would stay with him for the rest of his life.

His gaze skimmed past the shocked, disbelieving Gryffindors, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs before finally coming to rest on the knots of Slytherins huddled far away from everyone else. Draco Malfoy, the pale, pinch-faced Seeker and Quidditch captain, had gathered his fellow seventh years around him and was speaking in a low voice, gray eyes darting furtively around the Great Hall. For a moment he caught Neville's eye. His lip curled into a mocking smile until, disgusted, Neville turned away and took stock of the rest of the Slytherins. Here and there were little groups that seemed to be in as much shock as the others, and occasionally he caught sight of a green and silver scarf as a Slytherin moved to comfort a friend in another House, but for the most part none of them seemed terribly upset -- or surprised.

"Bastards," Ginny hissed behind him. He looked back at her in time to see her scowling at the Slytherins, her hands still balled into white-knuckled fists. The famed Weasley temper, never very contained in her case, seemed ready to erupt all over again. "Bloody bastards. I bet they knew and thought it would make a great joke!" She started to get louder, only subsiding when one of the Aurors guarding the entrance shot her a stern look. Even then she kept swearing under her breath. Neville stopped trying to keep her quiet. He had the feeling that if she didn't stay angry, she would start to cry.

He shivered, hugging himself and peering through the ranks of Gryffindors. He didn't see sixth year Colin Creevey or fourth year Natalie McDonald anywhere. Lavender Brown was sobbing into Seamus Finnigan's shoulder and Dean Thomas was just staring straight ahead, looking very grim indeed. There was an empty space too, right where Harry, Ron and Hermione usually sat. It was as if despite the chaos, everyone had instinctively left a place for the three friends. They were supposed to save the day, after all. They were supposed to come back. They had to come back.

A treacherous little voice rose up in a bleak corner of his mind. What if they don't?

Neville glanced at Ginny and Luna, an unpleasant weight settling on his chest. He remembered Harry explaining Professor Trelawney's prophecy to him at the beginning of their sixth year -- the one that told him that but for You-Know-Who's choice, he could have been the Boy Who Lived. He had felt the weight then, because he had looked at Harry and known, in a way that had nothing to do with learning and everything to do with instinct, that if Harry failed somehow, he was the next in line.

Which meant that if Harry didn't come back, something intangible and very important would pass to him. And knowing his luck, he would mess it up.

That left him with Ginny and Luna. Right now the three of them were the only students in the Great Hall who had ever fought Death Eaters. They had been hexed and cursed too, and although they weren't Ron or Hermione, they were still closer to Harry than anyone else. If Harry, Ron and Hermione didn't come back, someone had to take their places. There had to be three, although he couldn't have said why. It wasn't something from a prophecy. It was just that there had always been three students performing some kind of heroics. The trio were a symbol of sorts, and if there was one thing Neville had come to realize over the past couple of years, it was the importance of symbols. There had to be someone who could recreate that trio, because the rest of the students would need it.

He just wished the task could have fallen to somebody -- anybody -- else.

"Ginny?" he said softly.

She jerked her attention away from the Slytherins. "What?"

He opened his mouth to explain everything to her -- and couldn't. The words just wouldn't come. Yet again, his courage completely failed him. Some Gryffindor he was.

"Maybe we should go look for them?" he said instead.

"Finally!" As if she had been waiting for this very suggestion, Ginny scrambled to her feet and began peering at the Aurors, obviously hunting for ways to get around them. After a moment, Luna stood up too and scanned the crowded Great Hall. Neville had no idea what she was looking for, and, to be perfectly honest, he wasn't about to ask.

Ginny made a noise that was half growl, half exasperated sigh. "I don't have any Dungbombs with me," she muttered, running her fingers through her tangled hair. "How are we supposed to avoid the Aurors? Marching up to them and telling them we're on a rescue mission doesn't strike me as the best idea."

"We could use the Slytherins," Luna said idly.

Neville and Ginny exchanged glances and, as one, turned to the Slytherin table.

Just in time to see one of the other seventh years throw an impressive hex at Draco Malfoy's head.

For a moment there was utter silence as the entire Great Hall gaped. Neville was no different from the other students. He wracked his brain, but couldn't remember a single time when one Slytherin had outright attacked another in front of everybody. It was as if whoever was in charge of the world had decided to mess up everything all at once.

Then one of Malfoy's troll-like bodyguards threw a punch at the bizarre attacker and all hell broke loose.

"You'd think they could've picked a better day to have a civil war!" Ginny muttered as she, Neville and Luna all sidestepped the mass of jittery students trying to get away from any kind of hostile magic. Neville just tried to peek over the sea of heads. He saw flashing lights and lots of splintering wood as curses flew everywhere. The Aurors who had been standing guard were calling for order and wading through the panicked students in an attempt to reach the Slytherin table.

"The doors are clear!" Ginny hissed and grabbed him by an arm. He reached out blindly and caught Luna's sleeve. Fighting against the crowd, the three friends began to elbow their way toward the unguarded exit. Neville risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that the Slytherins seemed to have divided themselves into two unequal teams -- Malfoy's, and a much smaller clump of older students, including some from the less wealthy, less pureblooded families.

Ginny had been right, he realized belatedly. On top of everything else, the attack in Hogsmeade had apparently triggered a Slytherin civil war.

The doorway was still clear when they reached it. Taking one last look around the Great Hall, the trio slipped around a few gaping first years and ran for the exit. Neville had no idea how they were going to get to Hogsmeade, much less find Harry and his friends. He just knew that this attack was the beginning of something, and he had to act.

Unnoticed, someone else dodged through the doorway and chased after him.

~~

Helen Grandin's tiny apartment was above a dingy-looking, boarded-up shop just outside of Hogsmeade. Between the roundabout route she took and her insistence on dodging every other wizard and witch in the village, it took the unlikely group almost fifteen minutes to reach their questionable sanctuary. By that time Hogsmeade was crawling with Aurors and Harry, at first willing to trust the waitress who had probably saved all their lives, was beginning to grow suspicious.

Ron was more vocal than he was. "Hermione's hurt," he snapped suddenly as Helen led them through a narrow alley, her wand held in front of her as if she was expecting an attack at any moment. "I don't see why we're following you."

"Because Potter could die if you don't. Now shut up." Helen stopped halfway down the alley and tapped an unremarkable brick three times with the tip of her wand. At this cue, a wooden staircase descended from somewhere above and touched down neatly on the ground. Helen climbed the first two steps before stopping and frowning down at the three friends. Her voice was soft and dangerous.

"I want you to listen very carefully," she said. "I'm not an enemy. I'm not going to hurt you. Right now there is still at least one more Death Eater out there somewhere, and I am the only person who can protect you. If the Ministry tries to take custody of you, I guarantee that all three of you will be dead by tomorrow morning. Do you understand me?"

Harry tightened his grip on his own wand. He hadn't put it away after the attack on the Three Broomsticks. Ron was scowling up at Helen, and even Hermione, who was by far the most groggy of the trio, seemed to tense up as if waiting for a fight. She was the one who spoke first. "Why do you think we won't be safe at the Ministry?"

"Because Cornelius Fudge is under Imperius," Helen said simply, and led them up the rickety staircase to her apartment.

There were two children in the single room, both on a narrow cot covered with a coarse-looking green blanket. One was a squirming baby with a shock of strawberry-blond hair and a toothless smile. The other was a little girl, no more than five or six years old. She was kneeling over the baby as if she had been watching it, but when Helen led her companions into the room she looked up sharply. Her eyes were a bright leaf-green and her black hair was even messier than Harry's.

Helen didn't seem to acknowledge either child's presence. She just slammed the door behind her and tapped another brick with her wand, probably to retract the staircase. Without waiting for her instructions, Harry and Ron steered Hermione over to the cot and set her down next to the two children. The little girl peered at her intently for a moment before pressing her lips into a strange, disapproving line and turning away.

"What do you mean the Minister's under Imperius?" Ron carefully untangled his limbs from Hermione's, kissing the top of her head before he marched over to Helen. Harry realized with a start that despite his best friend's stature, the waitress was almost as tall as he was -- much taller than Hermione or Harry himself. She was thinner than he had originally thought, with a face that seemed to be all planes and angles. Every inch of visible skin seemed to be covered with pale, almost unnoticeable scars. Despite her shabby home and her plain, utilitarian clothing, he saw two chains running around her neck and disappearing under the color of her tunic. One was silver, and the other looked like some kind of burnished gold.

Ron was still scowling at her, but although he was tall enough to intimidate most people, Helen didn't back down. She did, however, look away very quickly. "I can't prove it," she said, brushing past Ron as she moved to examine the room's single window with a critical eye. When she was apparently satisfied that she wasn't being spied on, she closed the faded blue curtain and lit a few candles with a wave of her wand. After a moment's thought, she corrected herself. "Actually, I can prove it, but I don't want to."

"Why not?" Harry demanded from his perch on the cot. He would have stormed over to Helen too, but Hermione was leaning on him and he didn't want to leave her.

Helen gave him a sharp look. "Who would replace Fudge if I removed him? Weasley's father? Shacklebolt? Another member of your Order of the Phoenix?" She let out a strange, cold laugh that made Harry shiver. "Even under Imperius, Fudge is still an idiot. You'll have worse later, so don't bother to play the hero."

Harry bristled. That was a phrase he hadn't wanted to hear again, especially from a stranger. "What do you want?"

"Besides to save your hides?" She looked between Harry and Hermione, her eyes narrowing to thoughtful slits. "I'm going to tell you a story, Potter, and you're going to learn from it. Maybe it will tell you something of what I want."

She sat down on one of the few pieces of furniture in the room -- one of two rickety chairs set around a small table. Ron took the other chair, earning a startled glance from the waitress. A moment later, she had recovered and was looking right at Harry.

"My name is Helen Grandin," she began. "I already told you this. I'm a fighter. It's what I do, and I'm good at it." She flicked her wand from side to side as if picking her next words from a list. "I've been fighting the Dark Lord for years. At the moment I'm the best chance anyone has of beating him."

"I thought that was Harry's job," Ron muttered. Hermione threw him a sour look.

Helen ignored them. "Potter is dead where -- or perhaps I should say when -- I come from. The Order of the Phoenix has been destroyed. Most of our fighters are gone. The ones who are left are thinking about surrendering. The only way to win the war is to change things, and that's what I'm here to do."

"What do you mean, you're going to change things? When you come from?" Hermione sat up very straight and propped herself on her arms, peering at Helen as if she wanted to interrogate her. "You're talking about..." She sat back suddenly, like she had been struck. "You have a Time Turner."

In answer, Helen just pulled the silver chain out from under her tunic. A tiny silver hourglass caught the light oddly, as if it was reflecting the flickers of candlelight a few seconds before they actually happened. "I'm from the future," she said. "This brought me get here."

"Time Turners can only be used to go back a few hours. I don't believe you."

"Of course not. Because you only believe what you can see with your own eyes. Right, Granger?" Helen's expression was almost a sneer. "I'm sorry I can't demonstrate it for your benefit, but I don't want to call the Dark Lord's attention to myself. I'm running enough risks as it is."

Harry grimaced and exchanged dark glances with Ron, while Hermione just held him tighter. "We've already got Voldemort's attention," he said, ignoring Ron and Helen when they both cringed at the name. "He must have attacked Hogsmeade for a reason."

"He was trying to terrorize you. If your headless chicken impressions were anything to judge by, it worked splendidly." Helen stood up quickly and began pacing back and forth, arms folded in front of her. "The Dark Lord is a megalomaniac. He is also very intelligent. He's bided his time and now, when all of you were stupid enough to feel secure, he's starting his war again." Her hard, cold stare found Harry's. "You are the Boy Who Lived. How could you be selfish enough to think you could have a normal life?"

"Leave him alone!" Ron yelled, climbing to his feet so quickly that he overturned his chair. Hermione pushed off Harry and struggled upright as well, silent but practically radiating fury. Harry couldn't bring himself to do the same. Helen's words, however harsh, had stabbed through him. Hadn't he been happy to be worrying about Quidditch and his best friends' relationship instead of saving the world? He had heard Trelawney's prophecy. He had known that he was the one Voldemort wanted to destroy more than anyone else in the world. Why hadn't he spent the past two years making preparations, instead of trying to hide from reality?

He was as much to blame for the dead and injured in the Three Broomsticks as the Death Eaters were. He should have done something.

"Stop it!" the little girl yelled suddenly, displaying a more impressive set of lungs than Ron and Hermione combined. Harry turned to see that she was standing on the bed next to the whimpering baby. Her hands were balled into fists and her jaw was set, as if she was preparing to do battle with someone. She was glaring right at Helen.

Their unlikely host, in turn, seemed taken aback by this newest protest. She stopped mid-motion, staring at the little girl as if she had never seen him before. "Sit down."

"Stop being mean!" the little girl retorted.

"Sit down, Samantha!" When the little girl settled beside the baby and lapsed into silence, Helen rubbed the bridge of her nose and glared at Ron and Hermione. "It's very chivalrous of you to defend Potter. It's also pointless. I'm telling the truth and he knows it. Are there any objections, or can I continue my story?"

Ron opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something else, but Harry and Hermione's simultaneous headshakes stopped him before he could make a sound. Instead he righted the chair he had overturned and moved to stand next to his girlfriend. The little girl stared at him as if she had never seen anything like him before.

None of this seemed to faze Helen, who had regained her composure. "As I was saying," she said acidly, settling herself back in her chair. "Granger is correct. Normal Time Turners only allow a person to move a few hours backwards or forwards. They also don't allow you to change what has happened. You can't use a normal Time Turner to alter the past, just to make sure what must happen actually does. Potter and Granger's adventure with Black and the hippogriff should be proof of that."

"How do you know about that?" Harry asked warily.

Helen just shook her head. "That's not important. My point is that if one wanted to change history, an ordinary Time Turner would be useless. My little toy is different." She smiled -- a terrible, chilling smile reminiscent of a wolf's. "If the theories are correct, I should be able not just to witness history, but rewrite it."

None of this seemed to sit well with Hermione. Despite her injuries, the Head Girl had looked dubious from the beginning of Helen's story. Now she exploded. "That's impossible! If you already know what's going to be in the future, it has to have already happened! Otherwise you wouldn't have known to come here!"

"My head hurts," Ron muttered under his breath. Harry and the little girl both nodded their fervent agreement.

Hermione wasn't done arguing with Helen yet. "You still haven't told us what you're supposed to change! Assuming you're who you say you are and that Time Turner can do what you think it can, that still doesn't mean you can actually change anything! There's no single event you can change right now to stop Voldemort from coming back! And another thing!" she began, and then stopped when she caught the look on Helen's face. The waitress was very pale, and her mouth was set in a bloodless line. When Hermione spoke again, her voice was much quieter than before. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine!" Helen snapped, although she didn't sound anything of the sort. "And if you must know, Granger, there is one event I can change. I can give Potter the means to defend himself and tell him what to expect. That's what I'm here to do."

Hermione's mouth opened and closed, but whatever she had been planning to say seemed to disappear under Helen's stare. The witch from the future had a terrible light in her eyes and was holding herself straight and proud. She looked far more dangerous than most of the Death Eaters she was apparently fighting against, and just then Harry was quite sure that in many ways, she perfectly capable of the same ruthlessness and cruelty Voldemort's followers had displayed. The only difference was which side she was on.

Ron's voice brought the tense silence. "Why did you bring the kids?"

"What?" The question seemed to catch Helen off guard, just like almost everything Ron did or said. When his words registered, she blinked once or twice and nodded to the wriggling baby. "That's your nephew, Weasley -- your little sister's son. I didn't have the option of leaving him behind."

"He's Ginny's son?" Ron stared at the baby as if he had never seen anything like him. The little girl displayed a truly impressive snarl and planted herself between them. For a moment Ron seemed about to protest, but then he tilted his head to one side and peered at her. She scowled right back at him.

Harry stared at her too, taking in her flyaway hair and green eyes, and even the way she carried herself. A suspicion formed in his head, one that was impossible and made his heart hurt. "She looks like me," he managed to say.

There was utter silence for a long time, as Helen looked from him to Hermione to the children -- indeed, as she seemed to look anywhere but at Ron. When she did speak again, her voice was soft and very sad.

"She's your daughter, Potter." Her eyes flickered to the floor. "She's yours and Granger's."

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J.K. Rowling. This story was written for fun, not profit.

Future Imperfect
Chapter Three

"You can bury your dead,
But don't leave a trace.
Hate your next door neighbor,
But don't forget to say Grace."
-- Barry McGuire, "Eve of Destruction"

the present

Neville, Ginny and Luna made it to Hogwarts' entry before one of the Aurors caught up with them. Halfway to the doors, a hand closed on Neville's shoulder and he found himself spun around to face a glowering man in plain work robes.

"Where do you think you're going?" the Auror snapped.

"Outside," Neville stammered. He didn't see any point in lying.

The Auror's scowl deepened. "You four know you're not supposed to leave the Great Hall. Come along." He grabbed Neville by his collar and unceremoniously dragged him back the way he had come. Two other Aurors emerged as if from thin air, toting Ginny, Luna and --

Neville did a double take as he saw the other girl being manhandled with them. Padma?

They were shoved back into the Great Hall without further ado. Huddled together, they stood awkwardly by the entrance as the doors slammed shut behind them. At the far end of the Great Hall was what was left of the Slytherin table. Several Aurors and professors were clustered around the students who had been involved in the brawl. Malfoy was cradling one arm with the other and glaring at a few of his Housemates -- a dark-skinned, dark-haired boy Neville recognized as Blaise Zabini, and a sixth year girl with dark curly hair and an angular face. Neville thought she might have been one of the Notts, but he wasn't sure.

In any event, he had more pressing things to worry about -- namely the fact that he was stuck in the Great Hall again and that he had apparently been followed. He turned back to Ginny and Luna, who were watching the remaining Patil twin with some mix of distrust and sympathy.

Padma, for her part, just lifted her chin and frowned at Neville. "You were going to look for Harry, weren't you?"

"That's right," Neville said, fidgeting under the scrutiny. Something about Padma's stare made her seem much older than she was. "Why were you following us?"

"Because I'm not going to sit here and do nothing after what happened to my sister!" Padma's voice caught and she crumpled for a moment before catching herself. "I was part of the DA too, Neville. I'm going to help you, like it or not."

"I don't even know what I'm going to do yet!" Neville protested.

Padma folded her arms and scowled. She was petite, but in her singed jumper and skirt she seemed to radiate as much authority as Professor McGonagall. "At least you were doing something," she said. "And if I don't help I think I'll go mad."

"Then there's no use sticking with us," Ginny muttered, throwing a scowl at the doorway and the Aurors standing guard. "They know we're trying to sneak out now."

"We'll just have to wait," Luna added. "Maybe we should find out what happened over there." She pointed to the scattered Slytherins. Crabbe and Goyle, Malfoy's goons, still sported bright purple boils, and Tracey Davis was cursing and limping.

Padma's jaw worked for a moment as if she was trying to come up with an argument. After a moment she just grimaced and nodded. Neville could tell that she was trying to do something -- anything -- instead of think about what had happened to Parvati. He couldn't blame her at all.

"Do you know what's going on?" he asked her.

"I don't know," Padma said after a moment's thought. She pointed to Blaise, Tracey, and a few other Slytherins. "I'm not surprised that they got angry with Draco Malfoy, though. He doesn't have as many friends as he did, but he's still better than any of them."

"Because their blood isn't quite as pure." Ginny made a face.

Padma nodded. "Or they're blood traitors. That's probably what's happening with Nott." She pointed to the girl with the dark, curly hair. "That's Theodore Nott's little sister Theresa. I think she was acting as Blaise's second."

That bit of news caught Neville by surprise. "Against Malfoy?"

"And her brother. It wouldn't surprise me." Padma glanced at him and raised an eyebrow. "Do you really think every single Slytherin supports You-Know-Who?"

"It's not like they've done much to convince us otherwise," Ginny grumbled.

"Not that you've tried talking to them. I didn't see any of them in the D.A."

"Because they're sneaks and would've ratted us out! Or did you miss that most of Umbridge's goons were Slytherins?"

Neville fought the urge to groan. He forced his way between the two girls and glared at them. "Maybe we can fight after we figure out a way to find Harry?"

"She started it!" Ginny muttered, but fell silent. Padma just frowned and opened her mouth to make some kind of cutting remark that was probably going to get them all in trouble again --

"They separated themselves."

Luna's comment nipped the argument in the bud. As one, Neville, Ginny and Padma turned to stare at her.

"What?" Ginny demanded, although she didn't look like she needed any clarification.

Luna provided it anyway. "All of the Slytherins who were fighting are by themselves now. Everyone knows who they are."

"So they'll be easier to pick out," Padma murmured. Her brow furrowed as she peered in the direction of the Slytherins. "Neville, tell me if I'm seeing things."

Neville stared at her for a moment and began to scan the length of the Great Hall. The Slytherins had indeed divided themselves into two groups -- and the ones most isolated from the rest of the school were people like Malfoy, who supported the Death Eaters in some fashion or another. They were watching, he realized. More than that, a lot of them seemed to be waiting for something.

"Do you think there's going to be another attack?" Ginny asked quietly. "Is that what they're waiting for?"

"What, right here at Hogwarts?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Neville felt an icy pit open up in his stomach. Some of the isolated Slytherins looked confused or just nervous, huddling with their peers out of habit. But some of them...

They looked hungry, he realized. Expectant. Maybe even amused. He remembered the way the Death Eaters in the Ministry had carried themselves two years ago, especially before everyone had begun fighting back. Despite the fact that an all-out brawl had broken out, they didn't seem worried or angry at all.

"They know something," Padma breathed. She threw Neville an anxious look. "But the Death Eaters wouldn't attack Hogwarts -- not with the Headmaster and all the Aurors here. Right?"

Neville wished he could answer. He stared at the Slytherins for a moment longer, and then glanced at his allies. He wondered if it was allowed to have four people trying to do something instead of three. Harry would have come up with something right away, but Harry wasn't here -- and if Hogwarts was in danger, it all fell to him.

"Come on," he said with more bravery than he felt. "We need to talk to the Slytherins."

"What about finding my brother and Harry and Hermione?" Ginny said, gesturing to the still-guarded doorway.

He looked back at her and held her stare until she looked away. "This is more important," he said quietly, and started toward the Slytherins with Luna and Padma. After a moment, Ginny threw one last look at the doors and followed them.

~~

Helen's words hung in the air. The entire room had gone completely silent -- so still that Harry could hear his heart crashing against his ribs. Ron seemed frozen and Hermione was staring at the waitress and shaking her head, growing panic flashing across her face. At least they were reacting. Harry couldn't seem to think, much less respond. He had never thought of Hermione like that, not even once...

"She's yours and Granger's."

Those simple, matter-of-fact words made the little girl watching him all the more real. It was possible that Helen was lying. He knew that on some level. But the girl's flyaway hair and the anxious, protective manner in which she hovered over the baby made that very unlikely. Helen might not have been telling the whole truth, but she hadn't lied about this.

She's mine and Hermione's.

I'm going to have a daughter.

He tore his gaze away from the girl and looked back at Hermione, who had turned sheet-white. Her hands were pressed over her mouth. She held his stare for a moment, eyes wide, before slowly turning to Ron and shaking her head again. "I don't think of Harry like that!" she said frantically. "I swear I don't, I swear -- "

Ron just shook his head too. His hands curled into fists as, very slowly, he stood up and loomed over Helen again. "What kind of games are you playing? Who the hell do you think you are?"

"It's not important who I am!" Helen snapped, taking a step away from the furious Head Boy.

"Of course it's important!" Hermione shot to her feet suddenly, arms held rigidly at her sides as she stalked over to Ron. He put an arm around her and she leaned against him as if to steady herself. "Why should we believe you? We don't know anything about you! We have no idea who you are!"

"And you never will if I can help it!" Helen snarled, rounding on Hermione with her hand flung back as if to strike her. Harry was beside her instantly, and it was all she could do to hold both him and Ron back as they both lunged at Helen. For a moment the three friends formed a tableau, presenting their united front to their strange, frightening rescuer. Despite the situation, Harry felt a small thrill of pride. If this was some stupid trick or a misguided attempt to divide him from his best friends, it was failing miserably.

The standoff was interrupted by the little girl, who hurried between the trio and Helen. She was wearing a dress that looked like it had been made out of an old sack, and there was something in her eyes that was far too old. Those eyes found Harry's quickly, but instead of speaking she just peered at him, gaze flickering from one feature to another as if she was trying to catalogue them. She touched her own face -- snub nose, round cheeks, cleft chin -- before she seemed to be satisfied.

"You are my papa," she said at last. Then, matter-of-factly, "I don't remember you. Voldemort killed you."

Helen flinched. When she spoke, her voice was strained. "Don't say that name, Samantha."

"It's a name," Samantha said, sounding exactly like a tiny version of Hermione. "It's not gonna hurt anybody."

This did not seem to sit well with Helen at all. The young woman shifted her weight from one foot to the other, engaged in a battle of wills with a little girl. She didn't seem to know how to deal with her or even what to say to her. "Shut up," she growled at last. "I didn't have to bring you along, did I?"

Samantha's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Yes you did! You're supposed to take care of me!"

"Shut up!" Helen yelled. Lines appeared around her mouth, as if worry and hardship had aged her prematurely, and a light flared in her eyes for the first time. Harry was half-aware of Hermione squeezing his arm. Just then Helen reminded him of Sirius in the Shrieking Shack -- dangerous and far too willing to let rage overwhelm all other emotions. But Helen wasn't facing down a Death Eater. She was yelling at the child she had apparently been given charge of.

In that moment Harry realized that Helen Grandin wasn't just desperate. She was almost insane.

Then Samantha cringed back against Harry, clutching his trousers, and whatever change had come over Helen simply vanished. She shrank in on herself and tore away from the aborted confrontation. Without another word, she stalked over to the window and began to check the alley outside again. Her hands were bunched in her skirt and she was trembling very slightly.

Almost before she turned away, Hermione let out a shaky breath and detached from Harry and Ron. She slid into a crouch in front of Samantha. "It's okay," she said softly. "She's not going to hurt you."

Samantha blinked. Apparently this thought had never occurred to her. Indeed, the little girl seemed to have recovered from Helen's outburst faster than anyone else. "It's okay," she said with a shrug. "She does that all the time. Me and Julian got used to it."

"Julian?" Ron asked. He was watching Helen, as if he expected her to spin around and attack them all.

Samantha pointed to the baby on the bed. "He's Julian."

"That's a nice name." Hermione hesitated and glanced at Ron. Harry could see the indecision written on her face. She wanted to help the little girl and talk to her, but given whose child this was...

After a moment Ron sighed and joined her on the floor. He gave the girl a small smile. "Do you remember Hermione?"

Samantha nodded. "She's gonna be my mama."

Hermione made a soft, choked sound, as if she wanted to speak, but couldn't find words. "I guess I am," she managed at last, and reached out to pat down a stray lock of hair. At this oddly maternal gesture, Harry felt something inside him knot up. He looked away before he could puzzle out what it meant.

The frightening bit was that he believed Helen. He didn't want to, but every instinct was telling him that the waitress meant every word she said. She was from a future where everything had been lost, where he had failed and Voldemort had won. He was dead, Ron and Hermione were probably dead -- and the only hope they had rested with a young woman who mocked with casual cruelty and carried herself like an unsheathed knife.

He glanced over at her, taking in the dark hair and the angular face and the height. She looked a lot like Hermione, he realized belatedly. It was as if someone had been given a description of his friend and had tried to recreate her without understanding any of the little things that made Hermione so special. If there had once been anything charming or unique about Helen Grandin, it had been scoured away by the war she had lived through. He wondered how old she was in his time, or if she had any inkling of the future that lay before her.

As if sensing his eyes on her, she looked up quickly and tilted her head. He turned away. Meeting her eyes was like trying to stare down a corpse.

He shivered and crossed the room to stand next to her. "Is it really that bad?"

"Where I'm from?" Helen sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, and then nodded. "Yes, it's that bad. The Dark Lord unleashed things that even he couldn't control. Every myth and legend, every monster Muggles use to scare children in fairy tales -- he brought them here. Or at least he will, very soon." She gave him a sidelong look. "The Time Turner I have creates possibilities, Potter. Theoretically, the moment I came here I made a new possibility -- a branch in time where I warned you and your friends, and managed to prevent the Dark Lord from becoming so powerful. My home and my past and future still exist. I can't save my time, but I can save yours."

Harry understood her reasoning, even if he didn't know if it was possible. If her theory worked the way it was supposed to, somewhere out there was another Harry and another Hogwarts and another attack on the Three Broomsticks -- one where Helen wasn't there to help. It made sense, in a way. Still, he could almost sense the qualifier hanging in the air -- the unspoken problems with the theory.

"But?" he prompted.

Helen sighed. "But if the theory is wrong, and I didn't create another branch..." She twisted the two chains around her fingers, silver and gold intertwining with each other. "If I didn't, then this is my past, and somehow I'm helping make a nice little Hell on Earth."

"And you're willing to risk it."

It wasn't a question, and Helen didn't take it as one. She just smiled -- a tiny, sad smile that made her too-thin face look like a skull. "Wouldn't you?"

He had no answer for that. He wasn't sure he ever would.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked after a moment.

Helen folded her arms across her chest and hunched slightly, staring out the window at something only she could see. "Tonight the Dark Lord is going to attack Hogwarts and kill Albus Dumbledore. Hundreds of people will die, and the school will be destroyed. He will absorb the magic used to defend the school and make himself almost indestructible. After that there's no way to defeat him."

She spoke simply and matter-of-factly, as if she was reciting dry facts instead of recounting what might as well have been the end of the world. Harry just stared at her with growing horror and tried not to be sick. "So how do we stop him? What do we do?"

"You don't understand, do you?" Helen's grip on the two chains tightened until her hand shook. She released both of them abruptly and looked over at him, and the expression on her face reminded him of a lost child.

He shifted uneasily under the mercurial woman's scrutiny. "What is it?"

Helen's voice was the barest whisper. "I don't know how to stop him."

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J. K. Rowling. This story was written for fun, not profit.

Future Imperfect
Chapter Four

"Now maybe there's a God above,
But all I've ever learned from love
Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you."
-- Leonard Cohen, "Hallelujah"

the present

A few of the Slytherins looked up as Neville approached them, but they didn't tell him to leave or insult him -- facts that told him he had found the group he had been looking for. Blaise Zabini and Tracey Davis reminded him of wary, cornered animals, while Theresa Nott had lifted her chin and was glaring right at him. He sidestepped the tall, dark-haired girl, preferring to deal with Blaise's slightly more friendly face.

"What do you want?" Tracey asked. She had blond hair and clear blue eyes, and her hand was stuffed in her pocket as if she was clutching her wand.

Neville glanced at the three girls standing with him. They just watched him, even Padma. He was the spokesperson, apparently. "We wanted to see if you were okay."

"Why should you care?" Theresa snapped. "You couldn't be bothered with us before, could you?"

"Stop it," Blaise said quietly, silencing Theresa with a glance. When she just glowered at him, he turned back to Neville. He looked tired and worried, like someone who had had an unexpected weight passed to him -- and in that moment Neville realized that he might have found another person who understood exactly how he felt. "Why areyou here?" he asked. He didn't exactly sound friendly, but at least he wasn't being hostile.

Neville took a deep breath and plunged on. "We wanted to know why all this happened. Now, I mean."

"You mean right after the attack." It wasn't a question, and he didn't give Neville a chance to answer anyway. "Theresa said she thought it was strange that all the...the dead students were either members of the D.A. -- "

"You know about the D.A.?" Ginny interrupted, scowling at Blaise.

He glared at her. "I'm a Slytherin, not an idiot." When she fell silent for the moment, he sighed and kept talking. All the anger seemed to drain out of him in a heartbeat. "Like I was saying, the dead students were all either members of the D.A. or Muggleborns. When Theresa pointed that out, her brother Theodore and Draco started saying things."

"'Better them than us,'" Tracey said, shivering. "That's what they kept saying. So of course Blaise and I told them to stop it, because we both have a Muggleborn parent."

"And they wouldn't stop," Blaise added. He looked more angry than traumatized. "I don't think they understood what they were really saying."

"Oh, they understood just fine," Theresa said. "I got sick of it and hexed Draco, and he tried to hex me back -- and everybody picked one side or the other." She gave the three Gryffindors and Padma a challenging look, as if daring them to question this account.

Neville didn't bother, at least not in her presence. He trusted Blaise and Tracey a little bit, but he had no idea what to do with Theresa -- not if she was a Nott. There was at least one Death Eater from that family, and her brother Theodore had always delighted in tormenting the Gryffindors.

"I'm sorry about your sister," Tracey said suddenly, breaking the awkward silence. She was looking at Padma, and Neville could hear the genuine sympathy in her voice.

The remaining Patil twin closed her eyes for a moment and let out a shaky breath. "Thank you," she managed at last. While her voice was quiet, it was even. "I have to worry about Parvati later. We...." She trailed off, as if she was afraid to say what they all suspected.

Luna filled in for her. Whatever else she was, the sixth year was hardly shy about saying what she thought. "We think that the Death Eaters are going to attack Hogwarts soon." She pointed at the larger group of Slytherins. "They probably know about it."

"And now they know who's safe the kill," Blaise finished with a grimace. He put an arm around Tracey, who looked horrified and started to shake.

Neville shook his head as a new resolve filled him. "No one else is going to die," he said, wishing he felt half as sure as he sounded. "There's still members of the D.A. left. We'll have them talk to whoever they can, and try to get people ready in case something does happen."

"We have to get everyone out of the Great Hall somehow," Padma said. "They'll be easy targets otherwise."

Ginny started scouting the Great Hall again, the color draining from her face as she took in the hundreds of students all crammed together. "How do we get the Aurors to let them out? They won't believe us -- not if we already tried getting out once."

Neville shook his hread. "I don't think we canget out," he said softly.

He half-expected a protest, but there was none. There was nothing any of them could say, and nothing to do but hope they were wrong.

~~

Hermione prided herself on her analytical side. It was let her look at things objectively in a crisis, or at least that was what she liked she think. She was good at planning ahead and seeing through things, even if it made other people hate her. Someone had to do the job, and if it kept Harry and Ron safe, so be it.

The drawback to this kind of approach was that when confronted with a split-second decision, without any time to rationalize, she tended to panic. And right now she was simply trying to remember how to breathe.

Samantha was a foot from her. She had Harry's coloring, but the curious tilt of her head, the way she kept her hands clasped in front of her, the way she rocked from foot to foot as she clearly puzzled over something -- those were Hermione's mannerisms. This was her little girl. That thought made her head hurt. She had never imagined even having children -- had never thought that far ahead....

"Can I hug you?"

She forced down panic and stared at Samantha. "What?"

The little girl worried her lower lip. "Can I hug you?" she repeated. And then, more softly, "Please?"

Hermione nodded and opened her arms. Almost before she had moved, Samantha tumbled into her and clung to her. Her tiny body began to shake as she hid her face in Hermione's shoulder, and her breath began to come in hitching gasps and sobs. She clung to her future mother as if she was a lifeline and began to cry brokenly. Through her shock, a detached part of Hermione's mind noticed that she seemed to be very good at staying quiet, even in a situation like this.

Harry looked over, worried, and Ron reached out to smooth Samantha's flyaway hair. But Helen never even glanced up from her musings. Hermione scowled at her and tightened her grip on the little girl. She didn't feel inclined to like Helen at all.

"What do I do?" she hissed at Ron. Samantha wouldn't stop crying, and although her whimpers were muffled by Hermione's shoulder, it was still possible to make out "mama."

Ron's hand stilled on Samantha's hair. For a moment he just looked at Hermione with a strange, blank expression. She hugged her would-be daughter tighter and waited for him to say this was her problem -- or worse, hers and Harry's. Then she would be able to get angry with him and they would have one of their rows, and eventually they would make up and everything would be okay.

But all he did was sigh and shake his head. "Maybe you should try rocking her or something?"

She did, jerking back and forth in awkward motions until Samantha quieted. Part of her had hoped that Ron would do something irrational and selfish, although she wasn't sure why. Maybe it would have made it easier to accept Samantha's existence if she was mad at him.

Doubts were beginning to creep into her mind, and she hated them. She liked solid facts and she liked being sure of things. This kind of situation permitted neither of them.

"She looks a little like you."

Hermione's hand stilled in Samantha's hair. She didn't want to look at Ron, but she made herself twist around and glance up at him. "Do you think so?"

"She's got your expressions," Ron said. He smiled, although she could tell it was forced. "I'll bet she bosses people around too."

"Probably because her friends have no common sense and would get themselves killed without her." The familiar, back-and-forth banter made her feel a little better, although it didn't slow her racing thoughts. She cuddled Samantha closer and leaned against Ron. The way the little girl fit so perfectly in her arms was alarming.

Ron was silent for a long time. When he did speak, his voice was the barest whisper. "Do you think of Harry like that?"

She looked away from him and shook her head, lips pressed into a stern line. "We already went through this."

"You can tell me if you do." He sounded like someone braced for a blow.

Hermione opened her mouth and then closed it again, because what she had been about to say wasn't true. "I don't think of him like that now," she said, and wondered if she meant it. "But I did, in fifth and sixth year."

For some reason that seemed to make things worse. Ron just sighed and held her as if she were a lifeline, hiding his face in her hair. She clutched at him with her free hand, but couldn't hold on to him as much as either of them wanted. Samantha was in the way.

~~

"What do you mean, you don't know how?"

"I don't," Helen hissed, and spun away from him to stare at the floor. "It's been years since this happened, and I wasn't there. If I had been maybe I could figure out what kind of magic the Dark Lord used, but -- "

Harry fought down a hot surge of anger. "Where were you, then?"

Helen's shoulders tensed, and he backed away in case she started screaming again. But she didn't. After a moment she hunched like someone expecting a blow. "I can't tell you, Potter. You wouldn't believe me."

"You can't tell us a lot of things, can you? If you're trying to change the future -- "

Helen finally turned to face him again. There was a familiar expression on her face, a blend of worry and outrage that didn't quite fit her features. It belonged to someone besides this tall, beaten almost-version of Hermione, and he felt that he should have known who else had worn it. Her identity was there, he realized. It was in front of him, etched across her face, and all he had to do was reach out and take it from her.

Her voice was soft and proud. "Do you know who I am, Potter?"

For a few seconds he considered lying to her, and then decided against it. "No, I don't."

She nodded and fell silent, the golden chain twining around her thin fingers. He wondered if another Time Turner hung from it. "If I tell you why I wasn't there," she said at last, "then you'll try to protect me. I don't have time for chivalry."

"I don't have time to sit around arguing with you, either." He marched over to the table and pushed the few odds and ends on it into a rough square. "This is Hogwarts, okay? And here's the entrance. Where's Voldemort going to appear?"

Helen flinched at the name, but pointed to a spot right outside the entrance. "Here. He'll have a portkey."

"Great," Harry muttered. "Do you know where he got it?"

"Probably Malfoy," Ron muttered as he and Hermione climbed to their feet. Hermione carried Samantha back to the bed and laid her next to baby Julian before she hurried over to the others.

"Draco Malfoy?" Helen's lip curved into a snarl. "I wouldn't put it past the bastard. I don't know how much he was told about the plan -- not with his father in Azkaban."

Harry shook his head. "Never mind that. We have to find a way to get back to Hogwarts before Voldemort gets there, and we have to do it without a portkey."

"And if we get there too early, we'll be trapped with everybody else." Ron grimaced and glanced at Hermione. "I don't suppose you can make a portkey?"

"I wish I could." Hermione ran her fingers through her hair, still sticky with dried blood. "What about the tunnel under the Whomping Willow?"

"That could work, if it's not guarded." Harry looked up from his makeshift battle plan and turned to Helen. "It's not guarded, is it?"

The waitress looked genuinely confused. "What's not guarded?"

"There's a tunnel from the Shrieking Shack to the Whomping Willow," Hermione said. "Not many people know about it."

Helen shook her head. "Then I can't imagine the Dark Lord does. I've never heard of it."

"We'll try that, then." Harry checked his pocket to make sure his wand was still there. "We should start moving, then. There's going to be Aurors all over Hogsmeade and I don't think we have time to explain to them." He looked at Hermione as he spoke, waiting for her to argue, but she just sighed and nodded.

"What do we do with them?" Ron asked, pointing to Samantha and Julian. "I don't want to leave them here."

"I didn't plan to," Helen said and marched over to scoop up the half-asleep baby, whom she thrust at Ron. "Here. Make his blanket into a sling. I'll carry Samantha."

Hermione's jaw dropped. "You can't take them with us!"

"Why not?" Helen snapped. "It's safer than where they came from." She waited impatiently until Ron had fashioned a sling for Julian, and then tapped one of the bricks with her wand to make the staircase reappear.

Harry risked a glance at the sky as he followed Helen down the stairs and felt a pit open up in his stomach. The sun was already beginning to set.

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.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J.K. Rowling. This story was written for fun, not profit.

Future Imperfect
Chapter Six

��Cause the weak will seek the weaker
�Til they�ve broken them.
Could you get it back again?
Would it be the same?�
-- Lifehouse, �Simon�

the present

The first clue Neville had that something was wrong was when Harry Potter burst through the doors, stopped at the edge of the Great Hall, and yelled for everyone to follow him.

The second clue was the explosion that shook the entire castle.

�Get down!� Ginny yelled, throwing herself on top of him and bearing them both to the ground. Something heavy splintered the table they had been standing by and mortar dust showered both of them. Choking and coughing, Neville grabbed Ginny and hauled her out of the way, frantically trying to find Luna or Padma in the chaos. After a few seconds a pair of strong arms tugged him to his feet and he found himself face-to-face with an ashen-faced Blaise.

�What the hell was that?� the Slytherin demanded, apparently unconcerned by the flood of panicked students running for the exit. Under the circumstances Neville was inclined to do the same. Hogwarts was supposed to be the safest magical building in Europe, even more well-protected than the Ministry. What could possibly have made it shake like that?

No time to worry about that now. �Come on!� he yelled, and began to fight his way through the crowd toward where he had last seen Harry. When Blaise gaped at him as if he was insane, he just turned and glared at him. �Find anybody who can fight! We�ve got to get the first and second years out of here!�

Blaise nodded and disappeared into a knot of wide-eyed, pale Slytherins. Neville thought he saw some of the professors calling for calm and to follow them, but no one was listening anyway. Everyone was trying to get out, and the pleas for some sort of order fell on deaf ears.

�Up here!� Ginny called. Somehow she had found Luna, and now the two of them each grabbed one of his hands and pulled him up onto a table. From this vantage point Neville could see Harry, Ron, and Hermione all trying to point the other students toward side exits. They seemed to be herding them at the forest, of all things - although given the state Hogwarts was in right now, maybe that wasn�t such a dangerous place after all. The two Aurors who had been guarding the doors had long since vanished, although the crowd made it impossible for Neville to get near an exit now.

Another tremor shook the castle, raining more dust on everyone. The enchanted ceiling quavered and shook, and then suddenly began to shrivel up and vanish like mist into the stones. For the first time Neville saw the arches and rafters that supported the Great Hall�s soaring roof. The sight made something in his gut twist.

�Where�s the magic going?� Luna asked in a loud whisper. She was staring up at the ceiling too, and was clutching her wand in a white-knuckled grip. Ginny followed her gaze and started to swear under her breath, but she didn�t seem to know what to do about it, either.

By now most of the younger students had been able to wedge their way out of the Great Hall, so that most of the people left were fifth, sixth, and seventh years. Among them were a number of DA members. Most of the Slytherins were gone, but Blaise, Tracey, and Theresa were all still there. So was Draco Malfoy, to Neville�s astonishment, although apparently not by choice - Theresa had managed to get to him and catch his robe, and was snarling something at him that probably wasn�t pleasant.

A third tremor, more powerful than the first two, almost knocked the last few first years off their feet. Something high above them came loose with an audible crack and plummeted, splintering chairs as it came down. With a sick jolt Neville remembered what Luna had asked, and realized it hadn�t just been a rhetorical question. Hogwarts was held together with magic. If something took that magic away�

Malfoy seemed to realize this at the same moment he did. �Potter! What the hell did you do? The ceiling�s about to come down!�

Harry paused mid-motion and turned wide eyes to the ceiling. Hermione clutched his arm and hissed something urgent at him, tugging at him and pointing toward the castle�s main entrance. Beside them, the few remaining professors had gone sheet-white.

�Go on!� Ron yelled, grabbing his two friends and shoving them toward the exit. �Figure out what You-Know-Who�s up to! We can finish getting them out!�

For a moment his two friends just stared at him, and then each of them reached over and clasped one of his hands. They held on for a moment as if the sheer force of their grip could somehow keep them all alive, and then suddenly Ron ripped away from them and dove into the Great Hall, all but grabbing the last few third years by their collars. Harry and Hermione turned and ran.

Neville scrambled off the table and imitated him, shoving everyone who came into reach ahead of him. Stones and mortar tumbled from the ceiling with each new tremor, which meant it was only a matter of time before the entire Great Hall caved in. It was as if they were all playing some kind of insane, deadly game of chance - and by deciding to act as a rear guard, he had thrown away whatever hope he had of winning.

But he remembered the Ministry and fifth year, and the prophecy that could have fit him if the world had gone differently. Most of all he remembered his parents. If they hadn�t run away when things got bad, he wasn�t about to either. He kept pushing people through the doors, all the while expecting to feel a curse slam into him or the ceiling come crashing down on top of him.

And then there were no more students left. It was just him and Ron, and Professor Sprout and Padma were both yelling for them to hurry up. Neville snagged Ron�s wrist and all but dragged him out of the Great Hall. It might have been his imagination, but he was sure he could hear the rumble of the ceiling caving in as they all ran pell-mell through the castle and out into the night.

~~

Harry saw shadows moving as he approached the front entrance. He grabbed Hermione and tugged her behind a statue, holding her so close that he could feel her heart hammering against his chest. A moment later two Aurors ran by, completely missing the two half-hidden seventh years. There was shouting nearby, along with the sounds of splintering stone and the occasional chilling, high-pitched scream. Hogwarts� trembling was almost constant now. If they didn�t do something fast, the entire castle would come down on all of them.

�It must be some kind of focusing charm,� Hermione whispered as they crept out of hiding and began creeping forward again. �Voldemort�s probably having other Death Eaters perform a modified draining spell. They must be channeling the magic to him instead of keeping it for themselves.�

Harry tried to imagine what Voldemort would do with that much magic, and then realized he didn�t have to. He just had to remember Helen, deadly and cold and probably insane, and Samantha, who thought this kind of destruction was normal. This had to stop.

But if Helen didn�t know what to do, how was he supposed to?

Hermione was still thinking out loud, as if spilling her words out for everyone to find would somehow make them more powerful. �We�ll have to attack him directly. There�s no point in going after any of the channeling Death Eaters, since there must be a lot of them and we can�t get them all at once.�

�And we can�t ask the Aurors to take care of it because they�ve got an army out there distracting them. Great.�

Hermione caught herself on a wall as the castle heaved. �So how to do we find Voldemort?�

�We just do.� He put his hand to his forehead for a moment. His scar was still burning, but the sharp pain from before had receded a little. �I�m pretty sure he�s not close anymore. He must be letting the Death Eaters do his dirty work.�

�Or he knows Professor Dumbledore is here.� Hermione peered around a corner and then quickly ducked back against Harry. �There are a couple of professors guarding the entrance.�

Harry frowned. There was no way they could get out without being seen. He gripped his wand and peeked around the corner, counting two professors before he stepped back out of sight. �It�s McGonagall and Hooch. The others must be outside.�

�So how do we get around them?� Hermione whispered.

Harry drew a deep breath. �We have to go back through the castle.�

�We what? We�ll be crushed!�

�Do you have a better idea?

She opened her mouth as if she intended to argue with him. Then squared her shoulders and tightened her grip on her wand. �All right,� she said, and there was a light in her eyes that he had never seen before. Despite the situation, he managed a small smile. Hermione might not have been as reckless as him or Ron, but he felt sorry for whoever got on her bad side when she looked like that.

The two of them picked their way back through the heaving castle, choking on dust and climbing over broken statues. Twice they had to duck out of sight as anxious ghosts flitted past - probably looking for stray students, he realized with a grim smile. His scar was starting to hurt more, and there was a strange tingling amusement spreading through him that he recognized as coming from Voldemort. The evil wizard probably hadn�t moved any closer, but he was definitely getting stronger by the moment.

As he and Hermione moved past the Great Hall, all thoughts of Voldemort vanished. The doorway was half-collapsed, but through a pile of cracked stone and splintered wooden beams it was possible to see that half of the ceiling had caved in. There was no sound save for the distant shouts and screams from the battle outside.

Hermione made a noise like a strange, strangled gasp and clutched at Harry�s hand, staring at what was left of the Great Hall with wide eyes. Harry felt something inside him lurch. Even as he tried to tell himself that Ron and the others must have gotten out, that they were probably outside waiting for him, he kept seeing the horrible specter in his mind of his best friend crushed beneath the stones - and what would he tell Mr. and Mrs. Weasley? Could he live with that?

I would, something inside him answered. Maybe living is all I�m really good at.

�He got out,� he heard himself say. With a great effort, he shook himself free of horrible what-ifs and squeezed Hermione�s hand.

After a moment, she squeezed back and pulled him past the Great Hall, stumbling with him through the rubble. The castle�s condition seemed to get better as they moved closer to one of the exits, and Harry felt his hopes raise with every step. He wasn�t going to let Voldemort win. Not this time.

Only when he was outside, covered in dust and gasping for breath, did he realize he hadn�t let go of Hermione�s hand.

~~

Samantha Potter carefully adjusted her grip on Julian, holding the baby with practiced ease as she watched the flashing lights and listened to the shouts of dying men. The expression on her face suggested a kind of bemused detachment, because this was nothing strange to her. Neither were the screams. She had seen Helen fight plenty of times, and it wasn�t as if the things the Death Eaters did were new to her, either.

She wished the pretty castle didn�t have to fall down, but that was the way things were supposed to go, wasn�t it? It was like watching a story. It never occurred to her that maybe the ending to her own little fairy tale wasn�t supposed to be quite so bleak. Stories with happy endings were a peculiar novelty and tended to be reserved for the children of Voldemort�s followers.

�Mama said the castle fell down before morning,� she said conversationally. This meant nothing to her. Mama had said a lot of things, often muttering to herself while she worked. Samantha had understood, in a childish sort of way, that she was of secondary importance until Mama�s big project was finished. Except Mama�s big project hadn�t worked out quite the way anybody had thought.

If it had gone right, why would anybody in their right mind have sent Helen?

A spark shot past her and slammed into the tree a few paces back, igniting it in a flash of red and gold. Samantha flinched and climbed to her feet, clamping her small hand over Julian�s mouth so he wouldn�t cry out.

Maybe it was time to find somewhere else to hide.

Disclaimer: I don�t own Harry Potter. This story was written for fun, not profit.

Future Imperfect
Chapter Seven

�I wish something would break
�Cause we�re running out of time.�
- Live, �Overcome�

the present

Ron was not happy. He was also injured, but that was of secondary importance at the moment. There were plenty things out there that could kill him, but a few cuts and scrapes weren�t among them.

As far as he could tell, the professors were having all the students make for the Forbidden Forest, although what kind of sanctuary that could possibly offer was beyond the worried Head Boy. As soon as he could, he hung back and started to scan the mass of Death Eaters and Aurors fighting each other right in front of the crumbling castle. There was no sign of He-Knew-Damned-Well-Who or of Dumbledore � and more importantly, there was no sign of Harry or Hermione.

But he knew that they would be there sooner or later. His best friend and his girlfriend would be right in the thick of things, and if he could possibly help it he had to be there with them.

He took a deep breath and started toward the battle.

�Are you insane?�

A small, surprisingly strong hand grabbed him and spun him around, so that he found himself face to face with a grimy, dust-coated Padma. She was glaring at him with that strange dignity she always seemed to have, even when everything was going to hell.

�Let me go!� He twisted free and started for the fight again. In the dark he couldn�t tell who was winning, or even which of the shadowy shapes were on his side.

Padma didn�t grab him again. She did, however, hurry after him and fall into step beside him. �Do you have some kind of death wish?�

Ron scowled at her, but didn�t answer. He might not have been book-smart like Hermione, but he wasn�t an idiot. Given the way Helen had talked to him and treated him � given the way she hadn�t seemed to know him the way she had half-known Harry and Hermione � it was very possible that he would be dead in a little while anyway. Or worse, of course. There was always a worse.

It was clear that Helen hated him, and that it went way beyond her standard paranoia. The only reason he could come up with was that he must have done something horrible in her past � his future � and that she still hadn�t forgiven him for it. She also hadn�t told him anything, which left him to wonder and come up with ever more horrifying possibilities. What if he made a mistake and people died? What if he did something terrible under the Imperius Curse?

What if, for some unfathomable reason, he wound up hurting Harry or Hermione?

In a lot of ways Ron had sympathized with Sirius Black, Harry�s godfather, because he understood exactly what it was like to be willing to die for someone, and what it meant to have a friend who was closer than a brother. But he was also afraid � not of the danger he found himself in, but of somehow failing Harry.

He knew Hermione felt that, too. He remembered when she had tried to explain Muggle mathematics to him. Most of it had seemed pretty worthless, but something had stuck with him in a way that Hermione probably hadn�t intended. A triangle had three points, and it was only a triangle if each of those points was connected to the other two. Almost unconsciously, he had understood that the two points that held the triangle to the ground were him and Hermione, and the one point held aloft was Harry. Failing him meant destroying the entire structure.

Maybe if Hermione or Ginny or someone else had been around, he could have articulated some of this. But there was just Padma, with her pride and her grief burning like a fuse, and she was something else entirely. He didn�t know what to do with her.

�They�re not putting up a real battle,� she said suddenly, frowning at the pattern of flashes and flares. �It looks almost like...� She stopped abruptly and looked up at Ron. �It�s a diversion.�

Ron was surprised Padma had noticed � and more than a little impressed. �I know. You-Know-Who�s stealing the magic from Hogwarts.�

�He�s what?�

�Long story.� Ron drew a deep breath and tried to take in the entire situation. If Padma had prevented him from running in blindly, the least he could do was stop and figure out the best way to approach things. It helped if he thought of all of this as a big chessboard � no easy task, since hundreds of people�s lives were at stake. But he had done this before, even though it had landed him in the hospital wing, and if he had to he could do it all over again. Almost unconsciously, he began to try and sort out patterns in the mess, using his vantage point to watch the way the Aurors, professors, and Death Eaters moved.

After a few moments he began to run, half-sliding down slippery grass slopes and scraping his hands on rocks and dirt. He had a good idea where You-Know-Who was, which meant that sooner or later Harry and Hermione would be there, too. The idea of actually being near the evil wizard made him feel strangely light-headed, as if this was all some kind of distant nightmare � or as if some part of him knew that running into danger really was going to get him killed this time. But he didn�t have a choice.

Padma reappeared beside him, even though it must have been hard for her to keep up with his long strides. The look she gave him, daring him to ask why he had more of a right to protect loved ones than she did, stopped whatever protests he might have had.

He was glad for the company. Even though he was in the middle of a small war, he had never felt more alone in his life.

~~

Guided more by the pain in his head than anything else, Harry slowly picked his way around the sprawling battle. Hermione stayed close beside him. Spells sizzled and crackled around them, and once a stunner passed so close that Harry was left blinking red spots out of his vision for long moments afterwards. Hermione clutched his arm and guided him, half-blind and stumbling, until he managed to reorient himself.

Something stepped in front of them, coated in blood and grime like undead an apparition, and it took Harry a moment to realize it was Helen. He noticed just in time, since that moment was the only warning he had before the full force of her glare hit him.

�Why aren�t you evacuating the students?� she snarled as she hunched over to catch her breath. Her gold chain had slipped free, revealing some kind of small, metallic pendant before she shoved it back under her collar.

Harry glared at her. His head hurt and his best friend could be dead at that moment, and he was in no mood to put up with Helen. �We already did,� he snapped. �And the castle�s coming down, in case you didn�t notice!�

Helen�s gaze flicked over to Hogwarts for half a second. Then the color drained from her face. She scrubbed her face, visibly attempting to pull herself together. �Damn it! I didn't expect the Dark Lord to retreat! That bastard�s always in the middle of things in my time!�

�This isn�t your time!� Hermione yelled, apparently heedless of the spells flying past her as she scowled up at the taller woman. �Why did you come here if you don�t know anything?�

Something murderous flashed across Helen�s face. �Because you told me to,� she hissed through clenched teeth.

�We don�t have time for this.� Harry tugged at Hermione�s arm until she got the message, and the two of them maneuvered around Helen and hurried on. After a moment, they heard their unsettling ally swear and follow them.

He never knew how they made it around the edge of the battle. Spells flashed between them, leaving craters in the ground in front of them. Twice he and Hermione had to stun someone cloaked all in black before either of them got hexed, and once someone with an Auror�s badge pinned to their chest screamed and pitched forward into their path, twitching and gurgling. The Death Eater who had cast the curse fell back a moment later, brought down by Helen�s precise, vicious spells. The young woman pushed between Harry and Hermione, planted a foot on the Death Eater�s chest, and ruthlessly made a slashing motion across his throat before she continued on her way. Behind her, already forgotten, the Death Eater shook violently and then went limp.

Hermione hid her face against Harry�s shoulder. �I�m going to be sick,� she choked out. Harry couldn�t do anything besides keep an arm around her to steady her. Despite the pain in his head, for a moment it felt like his legs wouldn�t support him.

But he had to keep going. He pulled himself together � later, I can be sick later � and began to stumble along again. Hermione let out a shaky breath and followed him, occasionally touching his arm as if to reassure herself that he was still there.

And then, so suddenly that he almost stumbled, they were all in the clear. The battle was behind them, and it was just Hermione and Helen and the darkness of the forest.

Harry pressed his palm against his scar, trying to dull the suddenly searing pain. �He�s in there somewhere. He�s hiding in the forest.�

�That�s where we left Samantha and Julian!� Hermione moved toward the looming trees, as if she could somehow single-handedly drive Voldemort away from the two children.

Before she had taken more than a few steps, Helen stalked over and grabbed her shoulder, hauling her back to where Harry stood. She tore free with something that was almost a snarl. For a moment it seemed that she would forgo her wand and simply slap the time-traveler across the face.

But she was Hermione, and she clearly felt the urgency of the situation as much as he did. She gave Helen one last glare and began to survey the forest again. �We have to disrupt Voldemort�s spell somehow. If I�m not completely wrong, he�ll be using his own magic to help direct and control what he�s stealing for Hogwarts.�

�You�ve been wrong before,� Helen growled. Hermione ignored her.

So, for the time being, did Harry. He held up his own wand. �Would this do? It blocked his curses during the Third Task.�

Hermione hesitated. �I don�t know,� she finally admitted reluctantly. Then she squared her shoulders and nodded. �But it�s the best chance we�ve got, isn�t it?�

Harry glanced back at the battle and the trembling castle, and then at Hermione. The expression on her face � determined and worried and trusting � made something catch in his throat.

�Right,� he said, squaring his shoulders, and set off into the forest. Hermione was a half-step behind him.

~~

Somehow Neville found the presence of mind to stop running. He wasn�t entirely clear on the hows or whys, just on the fact that somebody ought to stay and see what was happening and to look for stragglers. Besides, Harry and Hermione were still back there somewhere, and he didn�t want to leave his friends.

�Where the hell is Ron?� Ginny snapped as she stumbled over to him. She and Luna both looked rather the worse for wear, but they hadn�t followed the professors and the rest of the students into the forest. Neither had a few others. Dean and Colin were both still there, and so was Colin�s little brother Dennis � still searching, no doubt, for his missing friend Natalie McDonald.

But there was no sign of Ron, or of Padma Patil. Neville scanned the battle as he caught his breath, searching in vain for the missing seventh years. �Maybe they went ahead into the forest?�

It was a stupid guess and they all knew it, but Ginny nodded anyway. �Yeah,� she said, as if agreeing would make it true. Then she gave Neville a sort of savage half-smile. �So I guess we�re the rear guard?�

�Looks like.� He looked away from Ginny long enough to count who had stayed behind. To his surprise, most of the surviving members of the DA had straggled into view. So had Blaise, Tracey, and Theresa � the latter still twisting Malfoy�s arm behind his back.

The Slytherin prefect seemed to notice him watching. His eyes narrowed to gray slits and he began to struggle harder until Theresa got a better grip on his arm. Even that didn�t shut him up. ��There�s a war going on down there!" he hissed. "Why in hell are you staying behind?�

Neville expected one of Malfoy�s housemates to answer, but they didn�t. They just looked at him. He felt something strange and bright inside him, pride in the fact that he was being looked to and considered a leader. He didn�t even know how it had happened, but it was nice. Maybe this was what regular people felt all the time.

But he wasn�t a regular person, he realized immediately. He remembered what he had understood earlier � that there had to be a trio and a Harry Potter, even if the people were less important than the symbols. And now there was a crisis and Harry was missing, so of course the weight of that symbol had to fall on someone else. As prophecy and sheer bad luck would have it, that someone was him.

I don�t want this, he thought, quickly and fleetingly, and then the moment had come and gone. He drew himself to his full height and glared at Malfoy. �We�re staying behind because somebody has to,� he said, and then ignored the bully in favor of the other members of the DA. �Susan, Justin, I need you to get up in one of the bigger trees and pick off anybody suspicious at a distance. Hannah, Seamus, Dennis, you go back a ways and stun whoever gets past the rest of us. Theresa and Tracey, find out if Malfoy knows anything about this. And everybody else...�

He fell silent. Something like a heavy weight pressed on his heart. What he decided now would probably mean life or death for some of his friends and classmates, and he wasn�t sure he could do that.

Except somebody had to. �Everybody else find some kind of cover,� he finished softly, and looked away. There were dark shapes moving toward the forest now, no doubt aware of where the students had run to. Some of them were already shooting hexes blindly into the trees.

He sensed more than saw somebody move to stand beside him. When he turned his head toward the presence, he saw Ginny watching him with a strange, intense expression.

�You�d be a good leader,� she said. Her voice was so soft that he almost didn�t hear her.

But he did. He even risked a small smile. �Even if I don�t want to be?�

She reached over and squeezed his shoulder. He rested his hand on hers for a moment, strangely reassured by her presence, and waited for his own small battle to start.