I was the first to wake up the next morning. The transition was abrupt, like when you’re underwater and swimming towards the light, and suddenly you hit the surface and everything molds itself into something else, like the bursting of a bubble. My eyelids fluttered and I pressed them shut, breathing in the fresh morning air that breezed through the dorm window. It was morning, had to be, but I looked within myself, just to be sure.  

My head spun all of a sudden, my heart beating madly as my laboured breaths echoed in the quiet over the deep breathing of my sleeping dorm-mates. I squeezed my eyelids shut further, trying to deal with my head splitting like a bloody plow without making a sound. The pain stabbed savagely once, twice, as if punishing me for some transgression, I thought, then receded, leaving a grim sense of warning behind. My hands clenched on the bed sheet, the sound of tearing cloth loud in the silent room.

I lay there, unmoving, as flecks of dust swirled over my head in the sunlight flitting through the window curtains. My breathing eased gradually, but my mind did not. This was going to be a problem.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d failed at this Sun ritual. For someone concerned with the traffic of time, the paths the stars travel holds importance beyond the mere physical world. Time is inherent in the universe, but for a being it only matters according to what sentience is there to shape it. Time is how we perceive it. For someone like me, the perception needs to be very sharp indeed.

 I could remember when the knack had manifested first. In that cave in Albania, trapped in a cave for days. Sitting in the pitch black darkness, my heartbeats slowly settling down, slower and slower, each beat a reassurance, till it had become my entire world. I had realized, after a time, that I could tell what day was passing, could look up at the blackness and know where the sun rested in the sky.

 That was when it all started. A nightmare that had lasted for decades, till I’d become so used to my life that loss itself had stopped having any meaning to me.

 Still… I’d become used to my inner sense. I’d… adapted.

 It hurt to be without it. I hadn’t considered that when I’d come back to the past I might’ve left something in me behind. And if that, what else had I missing? Would I stumble in a duel trying to cast a familiar spell? How could I know what I had left, when I couldn’t even remember how I had started this impossible journey….

 I had to know, I thought, it seemed for the hundredth time in a span of days. I had to understand. And there was only one way I could see that might conceivably unlock whatever barrier that sealed my memories, without costing weeks that I did not have. And I had no pensieve, and no chance to get one any time soon.

 I grimaced, laying a palm on the torn sheet. It mended itself as I got up. No point in leaving traces of my unstable mind for Albus’ interpretations… especially when he might stumble onto something right by mistake.

 I contemplated the scene before my eyes. All the boys sleeping peacefully… not knowing what’s coming. Not even suspecting. I couldn’t blame them, but still I felt out of my depth, suddenly – not sure at all that I’d be able to do what I needed to do. And if the history strayed too much from what I knew – knowledge is a burden, some say, and at that moment I knew what they meant. I had the means to act. That also implied an obligation that I had to.

 That’s me, I suppose. That’s my saving people thing.

 For someone not a little mad, I supposed it could’ve been worse.

 ***

 The Astronomy Tower was one of the highest spires of Hogwarts. On most days, it was even the highest – nobody could really be certain about the castle, old and saturated with magic as it was, and even though the places the students visited usually were stable enough, much of the sentient magic often manifested itself into rooms that came and went, and stairways that went upwards and stopped at the same floor, not to mention some of the older wings that shifted from floor to floor on their whim – and the towers were prone to stretch and contract with such regularity that Dumbledore himself had once been heard to remark that it was as if parts of the old school were at war.

 This was perhaps truer than what most people thought, I reflected as I watched the grounds from the terrific height. I could see the mountains in the distance, a wall that separated the ancient school from the outside world. The forbidden forest stretched all around the clear grounds, becoming a blur at the foot of the distant hills.

The school was, in essence, divided. The Houses, while they promoted competition, have become entrenched in the tradition of rivalry and enmity. Any magical scholar worth his wand agrees to a degree of consciousness in the magic we employ, if not in itself then due to the taint of the caster’s mind reflected in the spells. And in a place where magic has been employed with malice unto others aforethought for a thousand years, a schism is almost woven into the magic’s fabric.

 An idealist would have said that uniting the Houses would have been the way to harness all the potential inherent in the best institution of magical education in Britain. I hadn’t been an idealist for a very long time. Division had its own power, and was often far more efficient.

 I shook my head in disgust. I had experience, and my instincts were better than any wizard or witch I had ever known – but to win I needed to know my opponent, and I didn’t even know who I was fighting for.

 Was Voldemort my enemy here? Perhaps. Certainly the ones around me faced a threat from him and his. But I didn’t know why I was here, or how – and where exactly my past self was. Would I go back to my own time, given the chance? I honestly didn’t know, surprisingly… once the shock of seeing all the old faces again had faded, the tiredness had crept back, inch by inch. The old life had been the awful boredom of getting up every morning to the same scenery, the same work, and the only pleasure had been in the kills, careful and meticulous. The thrilling silence of the hunt.

 Here… here it was all too dangerous. Here… it suffocated.

 Added to that was the uncertainty of victory. All my Hogwarts life had been a script, thoughtfully made, a Master’s best work. I had been Dumbledore’s legacy. I had picked up after him. I had fought the good fight.

 And all the advantages he had given me, I no longer possessed. The Wand he still had, of course. The horcruxes were still waiting, peacefully, sinister shadows that edged darkly along my hopes and plans. The Ring… I still remembered what it had done to me, the last time I had tried to use it. The scar it had made had vanished with this body, but the memory was still clear.

 I was no longer the man I had been. I was no longer the man that had been victorious over perhaps the most dangerous Dark Wizard in magical history.

 What an Avada Kedavra would do to me now, I didn’t know. I was in no particular hurry to find out.

 There were definite advantages, of course. I had knowledge on my side this time – but foreknowledge rarely worked the way you wanted it, and it was damned dangerous to all who messed with it. Prophecies, for example; there were damned good reasons why only a select few of the Unspeakables ever got to handle the knowledge. Fate didn’t like people who wished to cheat it.

 And power, I reminded myself. I’d learned enough secrets on my quest for the reason of it all. Enough, maybe, to sink this whole damned island with enough time. But to take on Voldemort himself… that wasn’t going to be easy, especially now that I could no longer trust the magic that had helped me all these years. Ignorance can be an armour, too, and Dumbledore had taken pains to ensure that I had had it. If I had known all the things that had been going on, I might have acted differently, very differently – and the war might’ve taken a very different course. I’d been foolish. I’d been ignorant. I’d been a pawn, even though the comparison seemed foolish and a bit too whiny for my tastes.

 But even a pawn can mate a King, if the player is wise enough to pave its way.

 The Harry Potter I had displaced – he would have won in my stead. He would have won because that was what Albus had planned for. But even Albus Dumbledore didn’t know – couldn’t know – that the Harry Potter he needed wasn’t there anymore. And love or sacrifice were concepts I had left behind a long time ago.

 To kill Voldemort was still possible, of course. I knew that. But powerful as I had been in my time, feared as I had been, I had never been tested against someone of Voldemort’s caliber. My power had been far above the others I’d faced or helped, but I just couldn’t be sure that it was enough to face the full might of Lord Voldemort.

 A war isn’t won on just power alone. I knew that. To fight – and fight I would have to, unless I found a way to bring the Harry of this time back in my place – I would have to know the stakes. Ignorance can save you sometimes, and knowledge is always an advantage… but knowing things halfway is just asking for trouble. And I didn’t want trouble I could possibly avoid.

 The start would have to be my own mind, I decided. And I had no way to get my hands on a pensieve any time soon. But there were other devices to unlock the mind, and one of them resided in the school itself. I was pretty sure that however I had come here, it had been of my own will. It hadn’t been a damned accident, and it hadn’t been somebody else – I knew it, somehow.  The question remained – just what the hell had I hoped to accomplish? To mess all of it up – to jeopardize the certainty that Voldemort would have been defeated – what goal would have been worth it? And all that boiled down to one thing: buried under the locked memories of the recent past, what did I want?

 All that aside, I was damned curious. It’d been forty-some years, after all, since I’d last gazed on the Mirror of Erised.

 ***

 “Morning, Harry,” Hermione said without looking up from the Daily Prophet as I arrived at the Gryffindor table. “Mawnin’,” Ron agreed, his mouth full of bacon. I sat beside him, taking some bacon from the plate as Hermione finally looked up from the paper. She was biting her lip. Both she and Ron looked a bit furtive, and I frowned at them both.

 “What’s happened?” I asked, though I was pretty sure of the answer. I took a look at the paper, and saw what I’d expected. SIRIUS BLACK SIGHTED IN LONDON, the headline screamed, and the filthy gaunt face snarling from the photograph was soothingly familiar. Some things were still the same, I thought. The timeline hasn’t been disturbed that much. Hopefully. Hopefully.

 “At least they didn’t catch him,” I said tightly, giving her the paper back. “Huh, I knew Lucius recognized him at the platform.”

 “You didn’t tell us – ” Hermione began, and I stopped her with a short wave of my hand. “No point,” I replied. “Ah, what is this… what?”

 They bent closer to see what I was reading. The piece I was looking at was small, barely a couple of inches, right at the bottom of the paper. It was headlined:

 ACCIDENTAL DEATH AT MINISTRY MYSTIFIES OFFICIALS

Sturgis Podmore, 38, from Laburnum Gardens, Clapham, was found dead last night  after an unfortunate accident at the Ministry. Mr. Podmore was found by Ministry of Magic watchwizard Eric Munch, who found him dead near a top-security door at three O’clock in the morning. An internal investigation is in progress, and all evidence points to an unfortunate flux in the wards protecting the ‘top-secret Ministry wing’, pinpointed at about one a.m. last night. A statement issued by a Ministry of Magic spokesperson said that Mr. Podmore had been simply ‘at the wrong place at the wrong time’.

 No reason of his presence near the ‘top-secret’ wing at that time in the night seems to be forthcoming.

 The Ministry maintains that the relatives of the unfortunate Mr. Podmore will be properly recompensed. Mr. Podmore is survived by his wife and their young daughter.

 “Sturgis Podmore,” Ron said slowly as he sat back. “He’s the bloke who looks like his head’s been thatched, remember, ’Mione? Blimey – he’s dead?”

 “What was he doing there at night?” Hermione whispered. She looked almost as shocked as I felt.

 I’d been too easy on myself. Things weren’t going as planned. Sturgis wasn’t supposed to die – not yet. And yet the lines were there on the paper, glaring at me.

 “How do you think he died?” I whispered at last, my mind awhirl with speculations.

 “They said the wards – ” Ron frowned.

 “They,” I hissed, “say a lot of things. They say I’m mad, for example. You sure you want to believe that, too?” Paranoid and harsh. But maybe some good could still come of this.

 Hermione frowned. “Harry, I know the Ministry – lies,” she visibly struggled with the word, “sometimes, but about a death? Don’t you think that’s a little overboard?”

 “Is it?” I asked harshly, taking care to keep my voice a whisper. “What’s the absolute limit the Ministry would go to keep Dumbledore away, do you think? C’mon, Hermione – think about it for once – now that Fudge knows that Dumbledore believes me about Voldemort – stop flinching, damnit – and what won’t he do to stop people from believing in us instead of his lies? Sturgis was Dumbledore’s man, so maybe they lured him to the Ministry – maybe there was a fight, and they probably didn’t mean to kill him – but you see how it could’ve happened, don’t you? What else could he have been doing at the Minitsry at night, anyway?”

 “An awful lot of maybe’s, Harry,” Hermione shook her head, agitated. Ron was looking from one of us to the other, his mouth open. I made sure that nobody else was observing us too closely, then bent my head closer to her. They both leaned forward to catch my words.

 “There were Death Eaters last time who just vanished after Voldemort’s fall,” I whispered. “And some got caught. But there were a lot of people who were set free by the Wizengamot, mainly on the Imperius defense. People working at the Ministry, too. I’m not saying Fudge arranged for Sturgis’ death, Hermione. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t – all I’m saying is that we can’t trust the Ministry at all. Not just Fudge or Umbridge – we can’t trust any Mnistry official except those we personally know. And even then we have to be careful for polyjuice or illusions – there’s nothing Voldemort won’t do to see me dead.”

 “You’re saying that there’re Death Eaters among the Ministry Officials. You’re saying – sabotage.” Hermione was looking pale.

 “Yes.” I agreed. “The Ministry is… infiltrated. We can’t suppose that they’re just too stupid to know better. This,” I tapped the newspaper spread on the table, “this is too much of a coincidence to be real. We have to assume that the Ministry from now on is – ”

 “Actively hostile,” Hermione finished. I inclined my head.

 “We need to know more,” Ron said suddenly. “If there’re Death Eaters within the Ministry –”

 “Shh, Ron!”

 “Yeah, well,” he looked abashed, lowering his voice. “If there really are You-Know-Who’s followers in the Ministry – we’re in danger. Real danger.” He and Hermione looked at each other. “I think – I think it’s time we should ask him.”

 “Ask me what?” I asked in a curious voice.

 “You remember the talk we had about the… DADA club?” Hermione asked.

 Ah. I sat back, satisfied, ready to start the round of haggling and protests that had to come before saying ‘yes’.

 Poor Sturgis, really. But at least he didn’t die for nothing.

 A pity, but that would have to do.

 ***

 The dusty trapdoor squeaked as I lowered myself to the passageway waiting beneath. I landed softly like a cat, taking care not to disturb the dust around me any more than I had to. I had no intention of leaving any sign of a visitor behind me when I left. I knew all the charms to do that, of course, and I wasn’t incautious enough not to use them, but it was mostly a matter of pride.

 The passage ended in the small room, as expected. I looked around. It seemed smaller than how I’d remembered it. There were no snitches hovering in the air, of course. The door was locked, too, but a simple silent Alohomora took care of it. The hinges creaked as it opened, showing the hall beyond.

 The chessboard still remained, but the colours have faded in places and even encroached at one another. The whole floor was a mosaic of white and black shapes, entangled in wild geometries. I paid no attention to them, passing the rooms with barely strained impatience. The room with the trolls passed, then the one where I had had to face the doorway lined with fire. The last door, finally gave way to what I sought.

 The Mirror of Erised stood tall and majestic, dominating the entire room. The room was otherwise bare, but the Mirror itself stood at its centre, drawing eyes away from everything else. The room was almost replete with the feeling of dormant power, powerful with age, focused into the lens of a single terrible purpose. I could feel the power waiting, watching, ready to rip away all my mind and soul, to reflect and to tempt, to torment and to bare all that I sought to bury within myself. Every single little thought was just another road to what I was within, every impulse a thread in the tapestry of human purpose.

 Sweat had broken out all over my body. My skin felt cold, and clammy with something that was only a part fear.

 Even eleven years old I held felt its pull, had felt the wish to stand before judgment and bare all I was within. But I hadn’t recognized what it had been. This was no human thing, this attraction – every single strand of the power that tried to move me forward was alien to every form of magic I had ever been a witness to. Thirty years of magic behind me, experienced in all the forms of control there ever was, I had no problem knowing the compulsion that slithered through my soul – revoltingly alien, and infinitely more complex than the spell I had used on the bitch just a day before. And even though I knew it was there, even though I hated to give away my actions under another’s control – I was angry enough to be disgusted at the mere thought of going back.

 The Mirror beckoned.

 I gritted my teeth, remembering the warning Albus had given me all those decades ago. I could see how the Mirror could become addictive – the compulsion was strong enough to enslave a weak mind, to condition it into coming back again and again and again. I suddenly had a mental picture of something waiting behind the surface, waiting, leeching your memories for sustenance and alien pleasure. I shivered, and wished I hadn’t come at all.

 I’d been complacent to think that I could use such an ancient device for my own purposes so easily. I’d been too busy being complacent this week, it seemed.

 A situation that I knew I would have to rectify, starting with the instant I went back to Gryffindor.

 But for the moment, oh gods, the mirror beckoned.

 I forced myself to move forward slowly, trying harder not to sprint with every step as the pull of the ancient device got stronger and stronger. Finally – finally! – I came to stand before the surface, which stood innocuous, showing only the room and me standing alone. Yet the feeling of power swirling all around me did not fade at all.

 The surface began to mist over, and I frowned as it turned the white of fog in a matter of moments. Then something dug a sharp spike in my head, and I couldn’t help but cry out with the sudden shock of pain. The power that I’d been feeling intensified, leaving a train of bleeding wounds through my mental shields. I tried to hang on, retreating deeper within myself, but the power was not human and it didn’t care what or how as it stripped shield after shield from me with ruthless abandon.

 And then, when it had taken away every single web of lie and deception that hid my mind from the world outside, when at last I was naked and without the power to even resist, it looked.

 There was nothing that could describe the experience properly, no words were enough – is enough – would be ever enough. It wasn’t the innocent Harry who had come to see with innocence and dreams and eyes shining with hope. It was Harry Potter this time, Harry Potter the Vanquisher, Harry Potter the mighty, Harry Potter the Syr, the judge and the murderer of those not worthy to live.

 Erised… Erised stra… The inscriptions engraved on the mirror shone with golden fire to my eyes, whispering their meaning into my ears.

 Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi

 I show not your face, but your heart’s desire.

 It was perhaps the most frightening experience I’ve ever had, bar one that had happened to me in the future and one that awaited me still.

 I didn’t know what the Mirror – whatever it was – saw, nor would I ever know. But the mist slowly faded, showing me standing alone in a room I recognized in an instant.

 The reflection smiled at me, and I knew that smile, cruel and intoxicated with the thrill of a coming hunt. He inclined his head at me, and then turned his back to me to face another man at the other end of the room.

 The other man was indistinct in the shadows that shielded most of the room reflected in the Mirror’s surface. My reflection, for that was all I could think to call it, lifted his wand.

 A green flash lit up the room, and I could finally see what waited at the far end.

 Sharp crystals crowded on each other, their edges arranged in ways that suggested subtle geometries that escaped all closer observation. The green glinted off the mirroring surfaces, lighting this one and the other, a play of light and shadows that moved in a smooth ripple over the crystal faces.

 In the momentary green of death the Death Gate burned in my eyes, familiar and horrible with the familiarity. There was no beauty in its cruel edges, nothing human. The crystals arched, one built upon the other so that there was no end nor beginning, and for the littlest moment I thought I saw not a mass of crystals but the glint of waiting teeth.

 The curse passed over it, and as it passed, in its place crept back the veil of shadowy darkness.

 The indistinct figure was hit by the curse, and it lifted him in the air, the corpse following a graceful arc that ended in an abrupt collision with the wall behind him. The body hit the floor with no sound that I could hear this side of the Mirror, and even though I was too far to see his face, I knew the vacant eyes that would be on the dead face.

 His back still to me, his wand held aloft, my reflection began to laugh. The sound was keening, and high with gleeful malice. I could recognize the voice, almost – the note of wild joy struck a cord in me somewhere.

 The laughter stopped abruptly, and my reflection whirled back. His face was still set in the smile, but the eyes – in the eyes were nothing but darkness. Two black holes stared at me from a distance unimaginable.

 I knew those eyes. I’ve seen them, I knew – somewhere – somewhere – and for a moment it was as if another face was superimposed on his, a glint of glasses and a hint of a forgotten memory –

 My reflection help up is hand, empty now, one index finger held high and crooked. The finger moved from side to side, twice, a gesture of forbidding, the tone of warning in it unmistakable. The lips moved, and though no sound came forth, I could read them well enough.

 Not yet, Harry.

 The sound of thunder struck all around me, and the Mirror exploded. Tiny shards of glass burst outward, and I covered my face with my hands reflexively, waiting for the glass to hit.

 The sound stopped.

 I lowered my hands and looked around.

 The room was just as it had been before, dusty and old with neglect. The Mirror still stood, unharmed. I stared at the perfectly normal reflection that stood before me, grimacing as I grimaced myself. I looked around again, almost unbelieving, unsure what to believe.

 The power I had been sensing all around the room wasn’t there any longer. It had simply… vanished. I shook my head, refusing to believe it all as just a hallucination, and frowned with the effort of sensing the magic all around me even as all my instincts warned me not to.

 And it was there, not weak, but simply… dormant.

 Sated, came a suggestion.

 I shivered, looking at the perfectly innocent Mirror standing there, the nonsense inscriptions on it old and faded with age.

 I turned, and I ran, and I didn’t stop till I was out of the trapdoor.

 I stood there for some time, still tying to shrug off what had been done to me, building my shields again with care. I had done this to myself, I corrected. It had been my idea… and however disgusted at Albus for keeping a device like that within reach of others, what had happened was my responsibility.

 Still, I’d taken a risk… and exactly what it had earned me, I didn’t understand. The room had been the one I had spent a part of my life in, separated from my colleagues, observing and testing and theorizing about the oldest device our Ministry still possessed. Time’s Arch. And the way the opponent of my reflection had stood had been somehow very familiar.

 I had no answers, yet. But I should’ve expected that. In life, nothing is easy – and few things are harder than getting answers.

 I decided that I had to be more active with the war. Not in the lacklustre way I had acted till now, barging in full of self-confidence. I had to be more careful. And along with everything else, I had to find a way somehow to bring the Harry of this time back. He was far better equipped to handle this, for this was his own time, and this was the way Albus had once decided it was supposed to go.

 I had to make his plans succeed – and after that, I had to make sure what had happened to me after the war wouldn’t happen this time. And after that – I wasn’t sure there would be an after, if I managed to alter my past.

 It wasn’t going to be easy.

 Few things are.

 Then again, I thought with a bitter smile, it was entirely possible that I was going to fail, and utterly destroy what Albus had spent decades and his life to achieve.

 The worst things in the world, after all, start with the best of intentions.