Here We Go

chapter 11

pter 11: Bedtime Stories

NB: One thing I probably should explain here, in this world, all of the obliviations and memory charms that were used on Harry and Hermione's other selves to make them forget events in the other timeline were removed when they were sent back, so they now remember everything that happened in that timeline. They also brought back the magic they had when they died, so they are much more powerful now. (This story is in my sand box and I make the rules there ;^)
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sual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale. There will provably be changes in the first hour or so as I find things that didn't come out the way I wanted.
When Harry went into his trunk flat to get changed into something more comfortable than the robes he was wearing, he saw that someone (almost certainly Efa or Emyr) had mounted the crossed swords of Gryffindor and Slytherin on a shield emblazoned with the quartered coats of arms of the Houses Potter, Peverell, Gryffindor and Slytherin, the four Druid Lord Houses he controlled. He had to admit that it made a nice display.
Once everyone had done what they wanted and settled down again, Harry picked up the story. Most of them were in more comfortable clothes and had a drink in their hand, butterbeer for the younger ones and whiskey or whatever for the older ones.
"Where were we? Oh yeah….. So Lockhart grabbed me for a photo op and made a big thing of presenting me with the entire set of his books. All Riddle's diary needed to get its hooks into Ginny was to have her write in it and pay attention to what he was sending back, so she was pretty much under its control by Halloween. Hermione, Ron and I went to Sir Nicholas' five hundredth death day party that night and when we started to head back to the Great Hall for the Halloween Feast I started hearing a voice but Hermione and Ron couldn't hear what it was saying because they aren't parseltongues…."
The others started at him and he laughed. "Did I forget to mention that? Yeah, I'm a parseltongue, Heir of Slytherin remember?"
When Hermione giggled at that Harry swore. "Shit! I am, aren't I?" he looked back at the others and growled. "I'll explain that later."
"Anyway I insisted on following the voice and Hermione stuck with me of course, so did the walking stomach because as we now know he was being paid to pretend to be my best mate and spy on me. We ended up in front of Myrtle's bathroom and the floor was covered in water because Peeves had upset Myrtle again. There was red writing on the wall… 'The chamber of secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir…. beware' and Filch's cat had been petrified and was hanging off a torch bracket beside it. The writing was probably in chicken blood because Riddle made Ginny kill Hagrid's roosters as roosters crowing are reportedly able to kill a basilisk."
"So Filch turned up and started wailing about his moggy and blaming me and then everyone else turned up and Draco started taunting Hermione about being next. Everyone was trying to find out what the Chamber of Secrets was and someone got the story out of Binns, so then they all started talking about the Heir of Slytherin and Slytherin's monster. The first student to get petrified was a Muggleborn who starts next year by the name of Colin Creevey…. He was camera and Harry Potter mad, so he was always taking pictures, and all too often they were of me. I was in the infirmary when they brought Colin's petrified body in because Lockhart had vanished the bones in my arm after I was hit by a bludger, so I had to take Skelegro to grow them back…. Dumbledore almost broke Colin's fingers off when he ripped his camera out of his hand but when he opened it, the film had been vaporised and he said something about the Chamber being opened again, but of course he wouldn't explain beyond that a student had been killed when it was opened and that the student who opened it had been expelled, but we now know that that was a lie because Hagrid was framed by Riddle for opening the chamber and expelled, even though his pet Acromantula couldn't have been the one who killed Myrtle Warren, Moaning Myrtle that is…."
He paused "I have to say this before I forget again Hagrid. You have to get Aragog to agree to take Mosag and all their children and be relocated to an island somewhere so that they are no longer a threat to humans and other magical creatures or we'll have to burn them all out, having thousands of Acromantulas here on the mainland, and especially right next to Hogwarts is just too much of a risk, we had to fight them in the final battle and they killed a lot of us. Maybe if you hadn't found Aragog a mate he would have moved on ages ago…."
Hagrid shook his head. "I get what your sayin' Harry and I'll talk t Aragog for sure, but it weren't me who found Mosag, it were Dumbledore! For some reason he implanted the memory that I hunted her down and set them up in the forbidden forest but it weren't me."
"Shit, sorry Hagrid! Anyway, what I'm saying is that Aragog couldn't have killed Myrtle because she said that she just saw some big yellow eyes and died, and if it had been him she would have had puncture marks from his fangs…. but Riddle managed to set up Hagrid for it and got him expelled because no-one would believe a half-giant creature over a prefect... Dumbledore obviously still had plans for Hagrid though because he bound his intellect and magic to that of a slow witted Squib and got him a job here as an apprentice Gameskeeper…. I don't have any proof of this Hagrid, but I wouldn't put it past Dumbledore to have had something to do with your father's death the previous year, because as I found out, he likes having orphans to mould into suitable tools for his plans…."
"Anyway, back to our Second Year. Lockhart somehow convinced Dumbledore to let him run a mandatory duelling club to teach the students how to defend themselves, and I ended up duelling Malfoy. Draco conjured a venomous snake because he was losing and thanks to Lockhart it ended upon the floor right in front of one of the Muggleborn students. It was about to attack him, but it stopped and looked at me when I told it to stop in parseltongue. That gave Snape a chance to get rid of it but of course everyone was convinced that I was the Heir of Slytherin then which…. as I mentioned earlier, I actually was, even if I didn't know that at the time. For that matter, Riddle always told everyone that he was the Heir of the great Salazar Slytherin but he wasn't, he was actually descended from one of Salazar's sisters!"
"Of course, when that student was the next to turn up petrified everyone was convinced that I'd set the monster on him, just like I supposedly set the snake on him. So, we had a cat and two Muggleborn First Years petrified, and while most of the school were terrified the Pureblood bigots like Malfoy were gloating because they were sure that they were safe due to their blood status. Hermione and I eventually agreed with Ron that Draco was most likely suspect to be the Heir of Slytherin and Hermione used Myrtle's bathroom to brew Polyjuice so we could get into the Slytherin common room to ask him about it because Myrtle had scared most of the girls off…."
The adults were all staring at Hermione now. "You taught yourself to brew polyjuice in your Second Year?"
Harry smirked at her. "Three months into her Second Year, yeah, have I mentioned that my Hermione is the brightest witch of our age? But she did learn something very important about polyjuice potions, that you need to be certain that what you're using in the potion is actually from the person you're trying to impersonate!"
Hermione blushed and hid her face in her hands. She obviously wasn't going to explain so Minerva asked. "What do you mean Harry?"
"Ron and I took Crabbe and Goyle's hair for the potions after we used Hermione's knockout potions in cakes to get them out of the way so we could use their identities, but Hermione took some hairs from Millicent Bustrode's robes, and apparently Millicent had a cat…."
Poppy was looking horrified, but most of the adults were trying not to laugh. "Oh no! How long did it take you to change back?"
Hermione had composed herself enough by then to answer. "About six weeks, but luckily it happened just before we broke for Christmas so I came up with an excuse to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas and was ready to go back to class by the end of January."
"We found a diary from the Forties with Riddle's name on it in Myrtle's bathroom after she flooded it again as she was upset because someone had thrown it right through her when they tried to get rid of it in her toilet. We found out that T.M. Riddle was Tom Riddle, he'd been a prefect and Head Boy and won a prize for special services to the school in Forty Three. Hermione tried to make the diary reveal whatever was written in it, but someone ransacked my dorm room and stole it back before we could find out anything. Everyone was too scared to look me in the eye for fear of being the next one the monster came after, they only stopped running away from me after this one" giving Hermione another squeeze "was the next to be petrified, along with a Muggleborn Sixth Year Ravenclaw Prefect by the name of Penelope Clearwater…. Penny probably dodged a bullet actually because she somehow became Percy's girlfriend sometime in the next few years... actually with Percy's personality and Molly's track record with potions, I expect that that relationship was probably the result of potions as well.… so I think she needs to be checked for charms and potions." he added that last to Poppy, Minerva and Amelia and they nodded grimly.
"Anyway, everyone knew how much I cared about Hermione so they finally started to accept that it wasn't me directing the monster when she became petrified… Hermione had worked out that it was a basilisk though, that was why she and Penny were using a mirror to look around the corner and were petrified rather than killed. She had a page torn out of a book that described basilisks clenched in her hand that had 'pipes' written on it, that told us what we were looking for and how she thought it was getting around the castle, because we didn't know about all the secret passageways in the castle or how big it was at that point…. Just after Hermione and Penny were petrified, Lucius got Fudge to throw Hagrid into Azkaban without a trial or anything because 'the Ministry had to be seen to be doing something', much like what happened to Uncle Siri. Of course Dumbledore didn't even try to do anything to stop it, get him a hearing in front of the Wizengamot or anything, he just came out with his usual empty platitudes and let Fudge's lackeys drag Hagrid off!"
"I'm ashamed to say that I didn't put two and two together and realise that as the only Hogwarts ghost who appeared as a student, Myrtle must be the student who was killed by the monster until after another message appeared on the wall, something about 'Her skeleton will lay in the chamber forever', and when they checked the students to see who that referred to, Ginny was missing. I knew that Myrtle would probably be the only one who could help us, but Ron insisted that we get Lockhart to come with us, he still insisted that the big, strong Professor come with us after I had to disarm the coward because he tried to obliviate us when he realised that he'd admitted that he'd never done any of the heroic feats he wrote about in his books, he just got the story from the ones who actually did them and then obliviated them so he could pass them off as his own daring adventures…. Ron was probably hoping that his Mummy wouldn't blame him quite as much when something went wrong if the marvellous Gilderoy couldn't handle it."
"Anyway, when we went to Myrtle's bathroom and I asked her how she died, she pointed to where she saw the 'big, yellow eyes' just before she died and I found a snake scratched into a tap there, so I said 'open' in parseltongue and a section of the wall sunk into the floor to show a big pipe going down. Lockhart lunged at us then and I hit him with a disarming charm, because that was all I knew how to do, but it knocked him into the hole. At least we had an audible indicator of what was in front of us then because Lockhart screamed all the way down…. I won't say screamed like a girl because that would just be insulting you lot…." That got him another kiss from Hermione and a bit of a laugh out of Ginny, which was encouraging.
"We sat down and pushed off to slide down feet first, I went first because I was the one with a functioning wand, and Ron could hardly cast spells when his wand worked anyway. I heard Lockhart's scream cut off just before there was a big 'thump' and guessed that he'd fainted when he saw the end, so when the pipe suddenly levelled off I quickly cast a cushioning charm ahead of us so we had a soft landing. Ron's wand was still good enough for a Lumos, so I got him to give us some light and we kicked Lockhart awake. We could see tracks in one direction on the floor of the tunnel so we headed that way. We all pretty well shat ourselves when we saw something at the edge of the light, but it wasn't moving so we crept up to it and luckily found that it was just a cast off skin…. Just, the bloody thing must have been at least thirty to forty feet long!"
"Ron was too busy staring at the skin and pissing himself to pay any attention to anything else and Lockhart snatched his wand off of him. Lockhart thought he had the situation under control then so he was gloating about how he was going to do this... he'd take some of the skin back to sell the story about how we'd been too late to save Ginny and the horror of what had been done to her had destroyed our fragile young minds, but obviously he'd never paid attention to what happened whenever Ron tried to cast spells with that wand because he tried to cast a strong obliviate and it just exploded. He was obviously much more powerful than Ron and it had completely overloaded the wand. Unfortunately, that explosion was enough to bring the roof of the tunnel down and I only avoided being crushed by throwing myself further up the tunnel, thanking the gods for Seeker reflexes. Anyway, I called out to Ron, telling him to try and clear a way through so Ginny and I could get out because I was going on for her, and headed off down the tunnel when he called back to say that he would. Not too far down I came to some big doors which seemed to be made of Goblin silver and they had snakes with emerald eyes for locking bars, they slithered out of the way and the doors opened when I said 'open' in parseltongue again, it was a bit creepy actually. Inside the Chamber it was even creepier, because there were snake carvings everywhere, and the flickering torchlight made it look like they were moving."
"I headed through the chamber, jumping whenever I thought I heard something, and at the other end there was an enormous bust of Salazar Slytherin, it must be at least thirty feet tall. I saw a small figure in school robes laying in front of the bust and it was you Ginny, but you weren't moving and I couldn't get you to wake up. That was when Riddle's shade told me that there was no point trying to wake you because you were fading away so that he could get stronger and he stole my wand. He was only half returned so he couldn't use it, but he was solid enough to take it while I was concentrating on you. Then we had a fun discussion about how brilliant and powerful he thought he was and how he'd managed to frame Hagrid for opening the Chamber and Myrtle's death, he showed me that trick with his name and we had an argument about the fact that he wasn't the greatest wizard ever, and somewhere around there Fawkes appeared and dropped Merlin into my hands. I have to admit that I wasn't too appreciative at the time, because I was desperate for something to fight Riddle with, and I couldn't see how a bloody talking hat could help with that, then Riddle called the basilisk forth. The bottom half of the bust's mouth moved down to show a pipe and the basilisk came out, it looked twice as big as that cast off skin, and it came after me when Riddle told it to kill me. I just closed my eyes and ran away, trying to feel my way with my hands, but the basilisk's hissing changed to pain and fury and it wasn't getting any closer to me so I risked a peek. Fawkes had attacked its eyes until it was blinded so it couldn't kill with a look any more, but then Riddle reminded it that it had other senses to find me with and sent it after me again."
"As the near misses were getting close I crammed the hat on my head and begged for help, I didn't expect anything to happen but I was desperate, and something suddenly hit me in the head from inside the hat so I pulled it off to see what it was, it was the Sword of Gryffindor! I still didn't give much for my chances because from what I could see I would hardly make a mouthful for that monster and I didn't have a clue about how to use it, but having the sword in my hands did make me feel better. Just then the basilisk struck true, I was sure I was dead but I was holding the sword up in front of me and it went up through the roof of its mouth, right through its brain and out the top of its head. That killed it, but I now had a broken fang sticking out of my arm and I could feel its venom burning its way through my body. I pulled the fang out of my arm and collapsed on the floor of the chamber…. everything was going fuzzy and dark as Fawkes landed next to me and I tried to thank her before I died, but all of a sudden I realised that I didn't feel like I was dying any more and everything was getting brighter and clearer! I looked at my arm and realised that Fawkes was crying on the wound where the fang had been, that's when I remembered that Dumbledore saying that phoenix tears are like a miracle cure. Riddle's shade obviously remembered that too, because he suddenly stopped taunting me about dying alone after all my friends had deserted me and tried to shoo Fawkes away."
"Fawkes did leave, but she came right back and dropped the diary on the floor beside the basilisk's fang. It didn't take much to get her message so I grabbed the fang and jammed it into the diary, it started fizzing around the fang and something foul and black started bubbling up out of the diary. Riddle's shade tried to stop me but luckily he still didn't have enough magical strength to cast any dangerous spells with my wand, Fawkes intercepted them and just shrugged them off when they hit her. As the basilisk venom ate a hole in the diary he started screaming and fading away until my wand fell to the floor because he couldn't hold it any more. When I felt up to moving I put the diary in my pocket because all that foul stuff seemed to have dried up and disappeared, but I left the fang there on the floor because I didn't want to prick myself again. I went to pick up my wand and then hobbled over to the basilisk to pull the Sword of Gryffindor out of its mouth. Standing there with the Hat in one hand and the sword in the other, I wondered whether the sword should go back where it came from and the Hat said 'Very good Mister Potter! That's exactly what you need to do, just feed the sword slowly back into me and I will send it back where it came from', so that's what I did, then I handed the Hat back to Fawkes."
"I could hear Ginny moving so I headed back over to her, she was confused and scared and neither of us knew what to do, so I just helped her to her feet and we were leaning on each other as we hobbled out of the Chamber, with the doors closing behind us as we left. We got to where the tunnel had caved in and tried calling out to Ron, but he didn't reply. I was starting to get angry about the fact that after beating both Riddle and the basilisk, we were going to die down there anyway! But then Fawkes appeared in a ball of fire and turned around to offer her tail to us, I remembered what Dumbledore had said about phoenix tails and wrapped my arm around Ginny then grabbed Fawkes' tail and we disappeared in a flash of flame, appearing on the other side of the cave in but no-one was there and it was obvious that nothing had been done to move any of the rocks. Fawkes made a sound that was rather disgusted and we flamed out again, to reappear where that pipe came out into the tunnel, I let go of Fawkes' tail and she settled on my shoulder away from Ginny as I cast a Lumos to light up the area. Ron was sitting in the pipe crying because he couldn't get out and now he was going to either get killed by a ruddy great snake or starve to death just because he'd been made to follow me into everything. When he finally realised that the area was lit up and we were standing there he rushed out, saying that he couldn't move the big rocks so he was trying to get help. I ignored the obvious lie and asked him where Lockhart was but he just shrugged, saying 'Under the rocks I guess', so I asked Fawkes if she could take us all and she nodded, taking off from my shoulder to swing around and offer her tail again. I wrapped my arm around Ginny and took hold like I had before and told Ron to take hold, as soon as he was touching her tail Fawkes flamed out and we reappeared in Myrtle's bathroom. I thanked Fawkes and Myrtle for their help, said 'close' in parseltongue to close the pipe entrance before I took Ginny to Auntie Minnie's office, with Ron trying to convince us of his story the whole way."
He looked at Ginny and the twins. "Your parents were there, and so was Dumbledore. Arthur was just glad to see that we were all alive and Ron was of course telling everyone how he'd just about single handedly saved Ginny but once Molly was satisfied that we were going to live she started going on and on about how we were obviously meant to be together. Auntie Minnie was trying to get Ginny and me taken to Auntie Poppy but Dumbledore just brushed her off and demanded answers about what was in the chamber and what he needed to do to get to it. When I said how Fawkes had brought the hat to me he came out with a pile of shite about how I must have shown great loyalty to him for Fawkes to come to me and that the Sword of Gryffindor would come to those who needed it… both Merlin and the Sword are heirlooms of my Houses and as such they would only come to the Head or Heir of the house, so I'd say that Merlin asked Fawkes to bring him to me…."
He stopped as Merlin spoke to him over the link. "And Merlin has just confirmed that that is exactly what he would have done if the Head of the Houses of Emrys and Gryffindor was in mortal peril…... Anyway, eventually Auntie Minnie called Auntie Poppy to her office and the moment she saw us Auntie Poppy dragged us off to the infirmary, except for Ron, she sent him off to the Common room after she looked him over because there was nothing wrong with him. She wanted to send us to Saint Mungo's but Molly refused for Ginny after she got a signal from Dumbledore, because they obviously couldn't afford to have anyone examine her too closely and find out what had been done to her. Dumbledore refused to let me go for related but slightly different reasons…. but at least he went to the Wizengamot after that to get Hagrid released from Azkaban, with him being portrayed as his saviour of course!"
Once again, they showed their memories of the events. Hermione only showed the part where she worked out what the monster was, getting caught ripping a page out of a book in the library by Penny and then the two of them getting petrified when they used Penny's makeup mirror to look around a corner. Harry showed what a cute cat girl Hermione made (which got him hit of course), Hermione laying petrified in the infirmary and the trip to the Chamber. They all gasped when they saw the cast off skin and pointed out that Ron had as good as handed Lockhart his wand, so they wondered whether he had decided that he could recover from being obliviated, but not from being killed. Gringott confirmed that the doors of the Chamber were definitely made of goblin silver and therefore would be worth an absolute fortune, but aside from a few screams of terror at the basilisk, no-one said a word through the argument with Riddle and the fight with the basilisk. Gringott also pointed out that a basilisk carcass that size could have been worth almost as much as the goblin silver doors. After seeing the memory of where they stopped on the other side of the cave in, the goblins agreed that Ron hadn't touched a thing before he left, and that his only thought was probably to get away before the snake could get out. They all agreed with Harry's reading of why Molly and Dumbledore wouldn't allow them to be taken to St Mungo's, even though Ginny had been possessed by Riddle for most of the year and almost drained of her magical energy, and Harry had actually been subjected to basilisk venom.
"Our Third year was easier, but still dangerous. I spent half the summer at the Leaky Cauldron because I blew up my uncle's sister like a weather balloon when she was calling my mother a bitch with no breeding and the magic reversal squad had to fix her. You made the first unassisted escape from Azkaban in your animagus form Uncle Siri and there was a massive manhunt started. Fudge issued a kiss on sight order on you and send half of the dementors at Azkaban to Hogwarts to protect me, that was probably on Lucius' orders because they stopped the train and I almost got kissed before we got to Hogwarts but Uncle Remus drove the dementor off with his patronus…. I much preferred the first kiss I got in this timeline!..." Hermione blushed at that and the others chuckled.
"Snape was only just staying within the rules, giving Uncle Remus his Wolfsbane at the last minute most of the time, making everything about werewolves whenever he was covering his classes around the full moon, and then you, you idiot (glaring at Sirius) put everyone on alert at Halloween when you slashed up the Fat Lady's painting because she wouldn't let you into the Gryffindor Tower. If you'd just acted like an adult we probably would have captured Pettigrew and gotten you cleared, but because you and Snape couldn't get past your school yard brawls, Remus missed getting his Wolfsbane and changed without it, so Pettigrew got away, you were arrested and almost kissed, Hermione and I had to use her time turner…."
He was cut off there by half of the adults. "How in the seven hells did a fourteen year old girl get a time turner?"
Putting up his hands to stop them he said. "The story I got was that Auntie Minnie got it for her so she could fit in more classes, but Dumbledore knew about it and he set us up to use it to rescue Uncle Siri so he was probably behind the whole thing. We saved Buckbeak from Macnair's executioner's axe, I had to use a patronus to chase off some dementors off…."
She wasn't going to let it go at that. "Some? There were over a hundred of the bloody things swarming around us and we were fading fast when you chased them all off with one patronus!"
Remus asked to see that and Harry nodded, saying later!
"Anyway, Hermione and I got to fly Buckbeak together when we broke Sirius out of the tower, and then he and Buckbeak flew off to London to hide in the Black's London Townhouse. Thinking back, I'm sure that Dumbledore planned all this to make sure that Uncle Siri stayed a wanted man with a kiss on sight order hanging over his head so that he couldn't interfere with the grand plan for me to let myself be killed for the greater glory of Albus Bloody Dumbledore."
Once again, they showed the key memories of the events they'd talked about, and the adults insisted on watching Harry's patronus chasing off the horde of dementors a few times. Amelia made the younger ones watch Harry being saved from the dementor's kiss on the Hogwarts Express a few times too so that they could get an idea of what those things did to you.
"The Quidditch World Cup was held here the next summer and we got to go after I did my stint in Durzkaban, we had a Death Eater attack and a few hints about the Tri-Wizard Tournament there. If I'd known what Hermione was having to put up with I would have let Ron go when he tried to climb over the rail to get to the Bulgarian team's Veela mascots!" (Hermione just squeezed his arm and kissed him on the cheek) "When Dumbledore announced the Tournament at the Welcoming Feast, I just knew that they were going to find a way to make me go in it and sure enough, on Halloween I was announced as the Fourth Champion in a Tri-Wizard Tournament. I tried to refuse, saying that I didn't enter myself, I didn't want to compete and I was ineligible anyway because it was restricted to competitors who had reached their majority and I was only fourteen. It was all a waste of breath of course because they just kept bleating that it was a magical contract and I had to compete or lose my magic and I had just about everyone from all three schools attacking me for cheating to get into the Tournament, led by my own House and Ronald Bloody Weasley!"
"The only ones who never turned on me were Hermione and Luna, though the Twins, Nev, the girls and Lee only had a few short lapses and I really appreciated Nev magically locking all my stuff away in my trunk so it couldn't be stolen or destroyed, especially after Ron and his mates pissed all over my bed, not to mention the other things those bastards did! I had to get the elves to replace the bed and everything on it, but Dobby watched over my things after that so anyone who tried to do anything to them had an accident. There were many times that year that I wished that I'd just called their bluff and refused to compete, even if it wasn't a bluff I would have been fine without magic, after all I'd lived in the Muggle world most of my life."
"The First Task was to steal a golden egg from nesting dragon and of course they made sure that I drew the Hungarian Horntail!" The adults gasped in disbelief that they could have done that but Harry and Hermione nodded grimly. "The fact that I managed to do so without getting hurt pissed them off even more, and I think I must have been confounded because it didn't occur to me to try and talk to the damned dragon, not even once…. It also didn't occur to me to ask Hermione to be my date to the Yule Ball that I had to attend as a Champion before Victor Krum did. I'm pretty sure that Dumbledore interfered with Hermione and Krum to throw them together but as far as I know he didn't manage to overcome Hermione's innate integrity."
Hermione nodded grimly. "It was hard, I was having dreams about having wild sex with Krum every night and he certainly tried to make them a reality more than once, but it just felt wrong and I managed to keep him at arms' length… luckily he didn't have the potions to force me to give in to anything he wanted like Ronald did!" Ginny and the twins looked at her in horror, they'd heard about potions being used on them but not this! She nodded again. "Your mother was giving him potions to make me submit to just about anything he wanted from Third Year on. The only things I managed to refuse was being farmed out to his mates and other boys because the lust potions were keyed to him, luckily he would only have three ways with other girls and that wasn't as bad. Dumbledore used memory charms on me to make me forget most of those things so I wouldn't tell Harry or anyone else about them and also used them on Ron and the others to keep what they were doing quiet."
Harry hugged her again and went on. "The Second Task was to fight your way through just about everything living in Black Lake except for the giant squid to rescue what you would miss the most. That old bastard was so warped and twisted that he made Ron my bloody hostage! Myrtle guided me to the Merpeople's village so I was the first there. Fleur Delacour's hostage was her little sister Gabrielle and she was already bleeding quite a bit from the stab wounds where they'd been jabbing her with their tridents when I got there, because Veela and Merpeople are mortal enemies. They tried to stop me when I went to free her as well, so I cast a modified bubblehead charm around myself and stunned most of the village with overpowered cannon blasts..."
He stopped and smiled at Hermione. "Needless to say, Hermione found those when she was searching for things to help me with the task... then I took Hermione and Gabi and got out of there as quick as I could. Cedric Diggory heard the blasts and came to try and help, so he found the village and retrieved his hostage Cho Chang quicker. Krum had no interest in helping anyone else so by the time he eventually found the village, Ron was all that was left, he just left him there and went looking for whoever had taken his hostage! That made for a fun scene with him and his Death Eater Headmaster when he got back, but Fleur and her parents couldn't stop thanking me for rescuing Gabi because Fleur had been hurt so badly that she was forced to turn back and Dumbledore and the other officials wouldn't let anyone else go down for Gabi. Dumbledore just kept assuring them that she would be returned safely, even though it was obvious from the stab wounds that she already had that she wouldn't have left the lake alive if I hadn't recovered her."
"The Third Task was to get through a maze to get the cup, the first one to reach the cup wins. Sounds simple enough right? Not when they filled the maze with five X creatures, lethal traps and an imperioused Krum who's job was to wipe out Fleur and Cedric to make sure that I got to the booby trapped cup. Anyway, I knocked out Krum to rescue Fleur but she'd already been hurt so bad that she was unable to go on so they were both extracted. Cedric and I both made it through the Maze and we agreed to share the victory, grabbing the cup together, only to be port keyed to a graveyard where we heard 'Kill the spare' and Cedric was hit with a killing curse. I woke up tied to a headstone and got used in a ritual to bring Riddle back. Then he summoned Malfoy, Nott, Avery, Macnair, Crabbe, Goyle and the rest of the faithful to watch him torture and then duel with me. I somehow got away, bringing back Cedric's body as his shade had asked me to, only to have his father and just about else accuse me of murdering him! Fudge had Couch Junior kissed by one of the dementors that he claimed were there as his 'bodyguards' before anyone could question him and told everyone that the stories about Riddle being back were all lies."
"After all that. Dumbledore sent me back to be locked up in Durzkaban like he did every summer and made sure that no-one contacted me. The Umbitch sent two dementors after me there, I managed to chase them off with a patronus, but after they changed the time and court room at the last minute in an attempt to try me in absentia I found that my underage magic hearing for casting a patronus in front of my muggle cousin, who already knew about magic, had been turned into a full Statutes of Secrecy violation trial as an adult with the intention of burying me in Azkaban. Luckily that didn't suit Dumbledore's plans so he got me off.
The pensieve sessions took longer this time. Most of the memories were Harry's for this year, as the First Task was the only one where Hermione had a better viewpoint than Harry, though what Dumbledore and his accomplices were saying before they realised that she was able to hear them as they were preparing the hostages for the Second Task was chilling, and the way she and the other helpless girls were being molested while they were held in body binds made them all vow retribution... No-one doubted that Harry was serious when he asked Olag whether he'd be interested in buggering a human Wizard or Squib.
They thought that there was probably a reason for Harry to include two summers' memories this time, and worked out what it was fairly quickly.
Hearing that the toad creature from Harry's trial was the Defence teacher in their Fifth Year filled them all with foreboding, and that was soon borne out. Minerva and the other teachers had to be reminded that Dumbledore had been controlling them all through this as they heard what was being done to the students, Harry in particular, and they weren't doing anything to stop it. Hearing about the mental torture that Dumbledore had Snape put Harry through under the pretence of Occlumency training had a few vows to return the favour being muttered through the group. Those who knew Muggle history drew parallels with Himmler and his Gestapo when they heard about the Umbitch's Inquisitorial Squad. The only thing positive that they heard was how well Harry and Hermione's alternative Defence training for 'Dumbledore's Army' worked out, though they did laugh when they heard what happened to the Umbitch when she tried to order the centaurs to obey her in their domain, after insulting them. Harry was full of self loathing and anger as he described their misguided rescue attempt and the battle of the Ministry.
"Even though Hermione was warning me that this was a trap, I insisted on going to save Uncle Siri, and Hermione, Ron, Nev, Luna and Ginny insisted on coming with me, though I know then that Ron was under orders to do so and the Ginny of that timeline was induced to. It was Luna's suggestion that we use thestrals to get there and it was an exhilarating if uncomfortable ride, especially for the three who couldn't see them. It was obvious that something was going on when the Ministry was empty when we got there but I still charged in. About the only injury I didn't feel guilty about was Ron with the brains, because that was caused by his own stubborn stupidity, but I almost died when I saw Dolohov hit Hermione with that curse. We were struggling of course, six students against a dozen of Riddle's worst Death Eaters and we weren't using anything worse than stunners because that was the 'right' thing to do, while they were using everything up to and including the unforgivables on us. I thought we were saved when the Order finally arrived…. Snape had held off on passing on the message for as long as he could, probably in hope of seeing me and the others killed and Riddle getting the prophecy…. only to see Bellatrix knock Uncle Siri through the veil of death because he was treating a duel with the world's most dangerous and psychotic witch as a game!" The look that he turned on Sirius at that had the man cowering back into his seat.
"I was so enraged that I stooped to her level and tried to use the crucio curse on her when I duelled her but I wasn't good enough to stop her getting away so I ended up chasing her up to the Atrium. That was where things got interesting because Riddle turned up while I was duelling her, he was too much for me and managed to possess me for a while but Dumbledore decided to step in and duel Riddle, because he had a big audience for show he put on there, up until Riddle took Bellatrix and left. Fudge had to admit that Riddle was back then, because everyone who was in the Atrium had seen him, that was enough to get him kicked out but Scrimgeour wasn't much better, and of course, Dumbledore sent me back to Durzkaban for the summer, because obviously I hadn't suffered enough!"
There was no laughter as they watched the memories for this year, Hermione was holding Harry tight through most of it, Luna looked delighted at their flight on the thestrals and Sirius had the grace to look guilty about being stupid enough to treat duelling Bellatrix as a game and get killed for it. Alastor and Amelia did point out that Harry had done better against Bellatrix at fifteen than most adults could.
"Sixth year…. It was mainly machinations and politics, Dumbledore used me to coax Slughorn into returning and rewarded his pet Death Eater with the Defence position he'd always wanted. Dumbledore and I started going after the horcruxes and he was stupid enough to put a cursed ring on. Auntie Poppy stopped the spread of the curse with Snape's help but apparently the withering effect couldn't be reversed, I have to wonder whether it could have been reversed if it was Snape's master who'd been cursed. Snape swore an unbreakable vow to assist Draco in the task Riddle gave him, to get Death Eaters into Hogwarts and kill Dumbledore, but when that cumulated in a battle on the Astronomy Tower they failed because Dumbledore faked his death and ran away to hide. That was how I found out about Dumbledore's original wand, because he got me to help him swap it for the Elder Wand when he thought that the Elder Wand may be taken."
There wasn't much to see in the memories for that year, and then Harry went on to the final year.
"Hermione and I left to spend months on the road, hunting down the rest of the Horcruxes, and of course the walking stomach insisted on coming because Mummy and Dumbledore told him to, but he decided that it was too hard for him so he left us and went home to Mummy. It was good until Mummy made him come back to make sure that Hermione and I didn't give in to our natures without the potions to keep us apart. We were on the road when the Death Eaters took over and had Snape instated as Headmaster, so he put Death Eaters into most of the key positions. Nev, Luna and Ginny kept Dumbledore's Army going, but things had deteriorated to the point where most of them were hiding in the room of requirements by the time we'd dealt with all of the horcruxes except for me and Nagini and returned. That's when we had the final battle at Hogwarts. Most of us died, and far too many other innocents did as well. I threw Nev the Sword of Gryffindor when Nagini came at him, it was quite a sight to see her fall apart when he cut her head off and the horcrux was destroyed, and you looked every inch the hero you are Nev…." Nev blushed at that and everyone else chuckled.
"Of course, I was still stupidly believing all of the crap that Dumbledore had been feeding me, so I faced Riddle and let him kill me with the killing curse, he was rather surprised when I came back from the dead and that gave me the opportunity to destroy him while his guard was down. We were still trying to save those who were injured in the final battle and bury our dead when Dumbledore strolled in, using the power of the Elder Wand to heal people and make repairs. The sheep swallowed his shite about how the regrettable ruse of his death had been necessary because it was the only way to bring down Voldemort, and the way he was throwing money around to get people back on their feet… it was actually my money, but no-one bothered asking where it came from…. they welcomed him back like a conquering hero, their great saviour. They pretty much begged him to take back all the power those nasty Death Eaters had taken from him and bowed down to him as the 'Leader of the Light'. Hermione and I went back to Hogwarts to finish our education and get our NEWTs, and that's how we were roped into those marriages so that Molly and Dumbledore could get control of our Houses and fortunes."
When they'd gone through the memories for that period, Harry brought up what was really worrying him.
"I think the Fates are ensuring that everything balances out. We used Hermione's and my memories of what is to come to destroy Riddle and most of his Death Eaters in early September, but we still had trolls being released into the castle in the middle of the Halloween Feast. That's why I don't believe that eliminating the ones who created most of the problems in the other timeline will be enough to stop those problems occurring in this timeline. If I'm right, the same problems and even the same events will still occur, there will just be different players….. so as far as I can see, all we can do is try to limit the mayhem that is created by those problems."
They all looked at each other in dismay, because what he was saying made sense in a very disturbing way. After some debate, they agreed that they'd just have to adhere to Alastor's mantra of 'Constant Vigilance!' while they tried to drag Magical Britain out of the mire that it had descended into under the control of the Pureblood bigots.
With that, they went to bed.