22A/N: Yes it's been longer than a week. I was busy and not even always near enough to electricity to continue work. Not to mention that this story is quickly growing very complicated. But more on that later.
This is a portkey that can travel in time. Take it and our lack of personnel as a gesture of good faith. We never intended to harm you, though it appears you were far more prepared for our search party than we had any reason to suspect.
You see, we are a secretive organization that specializes in obscure branches of magic such as time travel, and we aren't the only one. We have been watching and following you for some time now for reasons that are too complex and important to write down on any piece of paper. We are also aware of a competing and very similar organization that has been doing the same. They are the ones who precipitated your current predicament, though even their actions did not end in the desired result, as you no doubt suspect by now. They likely intended to secret you away to their headquarters and either interrogate you or attempt to form you into a pawn for their nefarious purposes.
Our subsequent search party has yet to report back, despite their ability to handpick their temporal destination. This indicates only one truly likely scenario; you have captured them successfully despite all the odds and will only return them with communication from us. The only other possible explanation is even less likely, as the party was formed of our most experienced travelers, people who could find their way home even if they were shunted into the void per the traditional temporal interference law. To this end, we have provided you with a temporal portkey which will send at least six people from 31 July 1939 to 31 July 2027. If you choose not to travel with our party, we would appreciate some form of communication from you, so that we may attempt to proceed from there.
The dates of travel are designed primarily to ensure that our package reaches you before its built in departure, and to keep your aging on a fixed yearly cycle. We have exercised extreme caution because while we do have evidence that you are setting up to be a professor at Hogwarts, we needed to be sure that someone had a chance to call you professor before the departure date, as you personally being called a professor triggered the arrival of this package. Once we had exercised as much caution as we reasonably could, there was little point in bringing you back before a full year had transpired.
We dearly hope that you will receive this letter in good spirit and heed its words.
-Consortium
Harry could hardly comprehend everything that had just been dropped on him. It made a whole lot of sense, and confirmed several suspicions he'd barely even thought to himself, but seeing it all written out still stunned him. And then there was the middle bit, which made absolutely no sense from what little he could work out. All the 'captives' he'd managed to subdue with help from the Hogwarts staff had promptly disappeared. Where they still out there somewhere? And why hadn't they reported back, if they could choose a temporal destination?
Hearing a cleared throat from the direction of the professors, Harry turned. He saw Albus looking at him with questions clear in his eyes. "I…I don't think you should see the contents of this box, for the very reasons you feared," he began, "and I also think that my contract will need some slight re-negotiating. I just got…a ticket out of here, you might say, that's good in a year."
Even from a distance, Harry could see the bare shock in Albus's eyes, and even Dippet's to an extent. For a moment no one knew what to say. Then Dippet spoke.
"So…this ticket…you intend to take it? When exactly does it…well when will you be leaving?"
Harry glanced instinctively down at his watch. The stellar bodies swirling around told him that it was 2:37 + 35 seconds in the afternoon. He knew it was correct, having cast a few spells to realign it with local time the day before. He also knew that it was useless to look at his watch; he'd merely looked out of habit when the topic of time was mentioned. And yet, the time reached 40 past the minute, Dippet called out in alarm.
"Someone has just entered the wards! They just walked right in, and they appear to have something with a very subtle enchantment with them. We need to get to the gate, and quickly!"
All other thoughts forgotten, the four of them rushed to the gate as quickly as they could. It took approximately three minutes to get there, and they really weren't sure to make of what they found there.
Just as they got into spell range, they noticed that the banner floating over the single intruder's head read, in large friendly letters, "I COME IN PEACE."
Wasting no time heeding the advice of a curmudgeonly old man, Harry silently disarmed the man before anyone else thought to get a spell off. The sign floated to the ground, but that was when he knew that something was truly off about the situation. The man had been loosely holding his wand in one hand over his head, part of his 'hands up in surrender' act. But when Harry reached out and caught the wand, he was holding it by the tip. Expelliarmous, being magic designed by a rather intelligent person, was designed to land the opponent's wand in your hand so that it could immediately be used. In other words, handle first. Harry was intimately familiar with this mechanic of the spell, and knew from experimentation that the mechanism behind this merely flipped the wand 180º in the air. So the man had been holding his wand by the tip, a position that left one horribly vulnerable to your opponent in a fight.
"Hello, Mr. Hauter. It's good to see that you're safe; even if I was informed you would be intact upon my arrival. I've been informed that you have just received a package from the Consortium, something we believe to be a trap, and was instructed to arrive at precisely the time you glanced down at your watch exactly," he glance up at his own timepiece, "three minutes and seventeen seconds ago. I fully surrender myself to you in the hope that I can tell you how to leave here without the aid of that package, and also in an effort to create a cordial relationship with the…oh for love of Merlin, with you, because the organization I represent is extremely interested in you." The man stopped and took a large breath. "So…may I proceed? I must warn you that only Mr. Hauter can hear what I have to say, lest I be ejected into limbo like those before me."
Harry glanced back at the other professors. They seemed to be looking to him for guidance. "He…he's not openly hostile. We may as well listen." No one relaxed, although it was clear their tension had eased slightly.
Waving the man to follow them, Harry turned and led the way back to the castle, his mind racing the whole time. This messenger hadn't mentioned the box, so he probably wasn't with the…Consortium, did they call themselves? Yet he had behaved docilely, even to the point of practically offering his wand up to the enemy. Was this a trap? Was this a legitimate offer of peace? If so, the note from the Consortium was at best a biased interpretation of a conflict that was more shades of grey than anything. At worst, it was an outright lie. Harry stayed far away from politics, but as an auror he got plenty of tastes of the inner machinations of conflicts as they were perceived from the political sphere. The realization that Voldemort was rare in his true and unarguable evil had been a stunning one, though the days when he was young and naïve were mostly gone. He still did his best, but he'd long ago realized just how difficult and complicated that was.
So what was this new conflict he'd found himself immersed in? And why was he of all people the one who got caught up in it? He checked regularly, and he'd been nothing more than an ordinary auror for nearly 30 years. So why else would the hero of the Second British Wizard Uprising be important? So far as he knew, Hermione would be a better choice; she always understood the complicated nitty-gritty details that flew over his head. She understood how house elves apparated of all things. Harry still couldn't get much further than 'they use less dimensions instead of more' before becoming massively confused. So why would he get pulled into a temporal conflict?
Coming to no meaningful conclusion before they reached the castle, Harry was shaken out of his thoughts by the messenger speaking again. "We will need some privacy, if you please. I can discuss very little without being ejected back into limbo, and I would prefer to stay in this time until my designated exit window."
Deciding to get the biggest logical problem out of the way first, Harry asked, "And why haven't I been ejected? I've said plenty about who I am and how I got here." At this, the man's eyes grew very wide indeed.
"But that would mean…you're already experiencing…oh dear." The man cleared his throat before continuing. "Well, one thing now makes much more sense to me. I was nearly told…something before my departure. I now know what it was. Suffice to say, Mr. Hauter, that you are not even remotely average anymore. You have done a fine job of holding back all these years, but now the…pressure has become too much. I cannot discuss this more in present company," he gestured to the professors who had yet to leave.
"And can you prove yourself?" Harry demanded.
The man leaned close to Harry and whispered into his ear, "You are Harry James Potter, the Chosen One, the Head Auror, and proud father of three, in no particular order. As for proof of my goodwill, in three seconds you will need to duck, roll to your left, and stay balled up for one second before standing."
Harry was confused for most of three seconds, before realization struck at the exact right time. He ducked, rolled to his left, and nearly stood up before remembering the final piece of advice. He heard something irritably pass over his head before hesitantly standing. What he saw was chaos. In front of him he saw a niffler with a fishing rod-like device attached to its head. On the end of the line was something very shiny that swung back and forth at random intervals. This had apparently been thrown from behind him. Turning, he saw first the messenger, standing well out of the niffler's way, then Albus, Galatea, and Dippet behind a shield, looking shocked. And then when he looked the direction the niffler had come from, he saw…the man from the hospital wing the day before. George. The man had a niffler in one hand, a wand in the other, and looked wilder than most magical beasts Harry had tangled with.
"Um…hi," said Harry nervously, "what are you doing here?"
"There's an intruder! That man behind you is an intruder, get out of the way!"
Harry suddenly realized the messenger was standing precisely behind him. Whirling, he demanded, "How did you know?"
"I cannot say in present company, but you of all people should know the answer to that, Mr. Hauter."
"You…you knew it was coming because you heard about it in the future? But the only person who'd be able to tell you that if what you say is true would be…"
The man smiled. "And now you see why I came in peace. I desperately need to tell you what you are, and why you are here. You need to know, and because we failed to bring you peacefully to our headquarters and as a result you thought we had attacked you. But if you give me a chance to explain in good faith, I can hopefully clear up that misunderstanding!" He was almost pleading as he finished.
"So you saved me to gain my trust?"
"Yes!"
"And why should I believe that you didn't simply know George was coming by natural means?"
"Actually, I made very sure that this man had no idea that I summoned George. No one except me could have known he was coming." Albus put in as he almost casually severed the rope holding the shiny object away from the niffler, calming the beast,
Harry looked questioningly at Albus, but the man seemed very sure and truthful.
"Well," he said at last, "I guess I'll listen to your story. But I have plenty of reason to doubt you, so no funny business."
"Of course," the man replied gratefully.
Harry looked at Albus, once again trying to communicate with his eyes. Albus probably got the gist it, and quietly spoke to Dippet and Galatea before turning and walking toward George. Harry turned, gesturing for the messenger to go in front of him. As they walked away, Harry felt a variation of a very familiar spell hit his back. Aurors often had need of something similar to a muggle wire, and yet every criminal meeting of any significance in his time required full submission to an extensive scan before entry. Once upon a time, a subtle confundus would have sufficed, but no longer. So a spell had been developed around the turn of the century which could be activated by the wizard who had been hit, allowing full audio transmission to the caster. The only real development had been the severe dampening of the magical signature pre-activation, allowing the spell to foil scans. So Albus's version would do for Harry's purposes. It would prevent listeners unless he needed them.
Thus equipped, Harry was almost entirely unsurprised to find himself once more standing in front of the Room of Requirement. "I suppose you would know about a place like this, as well informed as you are," he commented.
The man laughed, "Well yes, it is one of the things we didn't need your input on. It's actually one of the entry requirements for our organization, or at least the English section. Any applicant must have discovered and understood, in at least some capacity, Rowena Ravenclaw's forgotten ballroom."
"Wait what?" Harry spluttered, "This was a ballroom?"
"Yes, Rowena didn't do anything halfway…she had a class of perhaps 40 students who she knew well enough to write letters to personally, yet she instead created a book and quill capable of tracking them down anywhere in the world they might end up after one of them was on a vacation she hadn't heard of. This ballroom is another example of that desire for increased functionality. Her additions to this school, especially the ones that the other founders helped with in one way or another, are quite impressive."
"I…see…" Harry managed. He decided to change the subject. "So which configuration should we use? I've known this room to create anything magic can manage, and stretch the limits of geometrical probability. What else haven't I heard of that it can do?"
"Well, it can create a passage nearly anywhere in the world, thanks to the school's ley lines."
"No, I was wondering about things that aren't documented knowledge."
"Oh, right…you're from after the battle. Well it does do a rather nice chaise lounge I've grown fond of, how about that?"
"That works, I suppose. But did you just forget that I'm from after the Battle of Hogwarts?"
"I was born in the year 1673, Mr. Potter. It's quite an easy mistake to make."
"Oh…"
As they talked, the man had been pacing in front of the stretch of wall that typically created an entrance. He finished, and this time the portal was a nondescript wooden door with a fine finish that smelled of cherries. As the man led Harry inside, he saw a small room with a few couches, cushioned armchairs, and a small table in the middle. Harry also felt the unfriendly prickling of a ward as he began to pass through the door. Noticing Harry's hesitation, the man said, "It keeps the house elves out. And it will also keep any temporal travelers from intruding. It's only a small improvement on the ward you fashioned for the school, actually. You did an outstanding job when you designed it."
Harry performed a brief scan of the ward and found that it did indeed resemble the ward Hermione had designed against house elves, as well as the one he'd helped create the day before. "Thanks…I guess." As he pulled the door closed behind him, Harry tried to ignore the feeling that he was in a cage. He was hardly any more helpless inside than out; he couldn't have traveled through the dimensions that were blocked anyway.
He still felt trapped.
The man began speaking, almost as if he were trying to ease Harry's discomfort, "My name is Bartholomew Charles, in modern English vernacular. As I said, I was born in 1673, and lived in my own time until 1697, when I vague hints I had discovered led me to the organization I now serve."
"What is your organization, exactly, and how do they relate to the Consortium?" Harry interrupted. The man-or Bartholomew-suddenly grew pale.
"The only reason you could know that name…"
"Yes. They got a message through first. I imagine that's the one improvement to the wards you were going to suggest? Something to keep out anyone but you?"
"Where is this message now?"
"It was left behind in the chaos when you arrived."
"And what did it say?"
"There was a portkey for traveling through time, and a rather revealing note. They mentioned your organization quite a bit, actually."
"So that's how…but it doesn't matter. I have lowered the house elf ward. You must bring that message here at once!"
"Straight to the enemy the message urged me never to trust?"
"You would trust a portkey that you couldn't possibly understand?"
Harry thought on that for several seconds. "Mipsy-no Mupsy!"
To his slight amusement, two house elves appeared in front of him. "Yes, Professor Hauter sir?"
Harry rubbed his forehead wearily. "Mupsy, could you retrieve that box I had you examine earlier please? And Mipsy…some tea would be very welcome right now."
"Yes, sir!" the two elves exclaimed in unison, both disappearing with their typical crack. Harry looked back at Bartholomew only to see his lips twitching.
"Oh, laugh it up! My friend once suggested that Goblin names were all the same, but that was before he really knew about house elves. I swear that whoever thought up their names wanted as much confusion as possible whenever a large population was present!"
Bartholomew finally let out a snicker. "Their names, assigned at birth, actually did originate from a similar purpose. When house elves were still independent enough to war amongst themselves it served a family well to have names to similar enough that no enemy could separate only one elf from a group by name. Most wizards were too lazy to do anything more difficult than separating the families. Here, there is a spell to counter the confusion the similar names are designed and enchanted to create. And even with that measure in place, you still managed to find two elves with such similar names…I must confess to a great deal of amusement."
Harry glared at the man.
The elves returned, one bearing the box, and the other a tea tray. Setting both on the table between Harry and Bartholomew, the two bowed and left.
Harry continued to glare.
Bartholomew poured some tea.
Harry continued to glare.
Bartholomew peered into the box. His mouth fell open in amazement.
Harry was intrigued enough to stop glaring.
"The note is probably stuffed down the side somewhere; I wasn't paying very much attention when I put it back." Bartholomew nodded, but continued looking.
"I don't think I really want to reach into that box. It is…a very familiar design created to cut off any unauthorized limbs attempting to exit it. If you would?"
Harry, slightly shocked, nonetheless obliged, getting out first the letter, then the portkey itself. Bartholomew stared in amazement at the portkey. Harry couldn't blame him really, the man was used to defined rules of time travel, and it sounded like those rules were being expanded. Harry could hardly believe it himself, and he barely understood the basics of the higher dimensions. What must it be like to someone who understood the intricacies? He'd have to ask Hermione, he supposed. Although that presented a problem.
"So, if you don't want me to trust this, how am I going to get back home? I presume your ride doesn't have any spare room."
The man shook himself out of his stupor. "You are quite correct. Normally I would be able to offer you a lift, but you are a rather unique case, it seems. The report from the team who attempted to transport you earlier is confused at best, because they lost you in limbo. Nothing much makes sense to a human mind in limbo. So we deliberated, and then you showed up on our doorstep with a suggestion; we tell you how to travel through limbo, and through time, and let you form a team of your own for the journey. That way you can have people you know and trust helping you, something that is surprisingly essential for the ritual."
"It's a ritual? What kind of ritual are we talking about? I tend to distrust rituals as a rule!" Harry had good reason, too. He understood that benign rituals existed, but he had come across too many malign rituals to trust any without serious investigation.
"It's quite a complex ritual, though the most harm that can come from it is missing your destination. The team you interfered with apparently ended up on a deserted island. They didn't bother to check the time period, but it is worth noting that they were aiming for our base, which exists in limbo."
"I thought you said that nothing makes sense in limbo? How could you build a base there?"
"We didn't. But someone did, and they also found a way to make the nonsensicality generally logical. As such, we currently have the upper hand in the conflict."
"You never did tell me who 'we' is."
"The name matters very little. We call ourselves the Thaumaturgi when we have need of a title, but what matters more is our purpose. We exist to study all of magical history, and to understand the things that many will never even think to wonder about. Currently, we have been presented with a mystery: you. So now we are going to great lengths to study you. I do apologize for the trouble we have caused you, and can do very little to right that wrong. The most I can offer you is that you are hardly the first historical figure we studied in this manner, and had no reason to believe you would be different until you disappeared into the ether. It was most distressing." Bartholomew paused to let that soak in.
"You…were trying to study me?" Harry asked.
"Yes. Had events gone according to plan, you would have woken up in our base, been questioned and possibly asked to perform some simple magic, then placed right back where we left you. We may even have left your memories, as the Consortium has taken an alarming interest in you. Then you confounded all of our expectations and vanished."
That…changed things. Even if he was being lied to from both sides, Bartholomew still offered more opportunities to distrust him. In the long run, that might be useful. The enemy who invites investigation prepares for it, as the saying went. But something Harry had discovered was that most often they got touchy faster when you were on to something they didn't like, and he could use that. And Bartholomew also had a very good point about portkeys. Harry knew that lesson all too well from the Tournament.
Resolving to at trust Bartholomew and his organization of…Thaumaturgi? Harry simply said, "Well then. I happen to know several people who would be excellent at investigating mysteries. So let's get cracking with the explanations, and then maybe I can figure out a way to bring them back here."
Looking quite relieved, Bartholomew replied, "Thank you. You can't know how worried I was, even with the assurances of your future self. At any rate, you may want a piece of paper for this, it is by no means a simple matter to travel through the fifth dimension…"
And as Harry conjured paper and a pencil, Bartholomew began to describe the five man ritual that was supposed to be the only way to travel through time. Harry could hardly believe it, even as he wrote down the details. A participant designated to simply look for and correct mistakes? Another to oversee the whole ritual? And the language of incantation was just obtuse. It felt complex, powerful, and just…old. There were pieces that reminded him of Latin, and perhaps Greek, but he felt a very sudden need for Hermione's explanations. And then Bartholomew was done.
Standing, he said, "Now, I will leave the summoning of your friends to you, but I leave you with one last piece of advice. You should keep a copy of those notes hidden somewhere in this time, perhaps even in this very room, because many things can go wrong. But on that note, unless you have further questions, I must take my leave. I will be around until you leave, if you need me, but I must be cautious and stay away for the most part."
"You're just leaving? Just like that? You haven't even explained why I'm involved in this mess!" Harry wasn't going to let Bartholomew leave until he at least had an answer to that question.
"Harry, you know more than enough to work it out for yourself, though I urge you try not to. If you know before you leave this time, even we don't know what the consequences would be. When you told us to visit you, you wouldn't tell us."
Harry leapt out of his chair, "And what if knowing would help me avoid trouble? Albus Dumbledore in my time once said something very similar to me, and in the end I'm not convinced he was right!"
"Mr. Potter, I can tell you no more. If you must know, you will have to figure out the riddle yourself. But I have sworn an oath, and I will hold to it."
Harry slumped back into his chair. An oath wasn't necessarily binding, if one didn't use magic to bind it, but he wouldn't force a man to go against his word. Reaching into his pocket, Harry pulled out Bartholomew's wand.
"You were holding this backwards," he stated.
"I was," Bartholomew replied.
"Was that an instruction as well?"
"No. I did my own research on you, and discovered that you remain fond of disarming to this day. I decided there was no faster way to gain your trust, or at least your ear, than to give up my wand in a manner you would instantly understand."
Harry hummed to himself. "Well, thank you, I suppose. You've been a great help, no matter what you can't tell me."
"It gratifies me to hear that. You are most welcome,"
Harry flipped the wand, which he had been holding by the handle, and stood. Offering the handle end to Bartholomew, he looked the man straight in the eyes. As Bartholomew took his wand back, he maintained eye contact. Harry could detect no deceit or malice in those eyes. As Bartholomew left without another word, Harry wondered whether that really meant he could trust the man.
Whatever the case, he had work to do.
A/N: And here ends another chapter. I have perhaps one more chapter's content planned out, after which I'm going to have to start formally planning this story so that it maintains whatever cohesion I managed to put into it. The problem with that is that all of the things I could put in here are rather cliffhanger-y, and I would probably be taking a lengthy hiatus as I settle into college (again, because life is complicated) and plan the middle part of the story arc. So if I get a couple reviewers who really want another chapter, I can post it, but I probably won't if no one reviews (as per frikkin' usual) or people ask me not to post that chapter until closer to the cliffhangers getting resolved.
On a much brighter note, there will be another story coming out in the interim. I don't know whether I'll be able to schedule releases for it yet, but it's a Hogwarts years fic, so the structure and planning will be much easier. This means that even if my motivation drops, I'll have something to base the story off of, and many more places to look to renew my motivation. At any rate, the other story is (a very small) part of why this chapter was later than usual, so it will be posted right away. And before you all think that I worked on something else over this story, I did so because I needed time to think on exactly how much was going to happen in this chapter, and how much was going to be saved for later.
And also to think about how ReZero will end. I MEAN SHUT UP I WAS TOTALLY THINKING ABOUT OLDE RITUELS 24/7!
Anyway...I've said what I need to.
Best of wishes,
feauxen
