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“-. October 1, 1992 .-“
The Fidelius Charm was the ultimate way to hide things. Unfortunately, it was also the ultimate way to get away with murder if the single documented use of the charm was anything to go by.
“This spell sounds amazing, Harry, how did you find out about it?” Hermione excitedly asked as they finished going over their findings during what would probably be their last picnic, the days were getting cold. “Are there any other powerful spells you haven’t shared with us? When are you going to explain how you cast the Patronus charm last year? Are you ever going to teach us? I’ve looked it up you know, it’s a spell you’re only taught at NEWT level, and even then it’s rare to be able to cast it, let alone master it! And now this? Harry, the Fidelius Charm is old magic, really old, and really powerful. It literally makes any location invisible, intangible, unplottable, and soundproof, all with a single spell! You’re absolutely sure this is the magic that was protecting your parents’ house?”
“Wow, Hermione,” Ron said in fake amazement as he fed Scabbers his fifteenth nut of the afternoon. “Why don’t you call me a liar too while you’re at it?”
“Honestly, Ron, have you listened to a word I said? It doesn’t make sense, tell him, Harry. Harry, are you listening?”
Harry wasn’t, in fact, listening. He was watching Ron’s rat, trying and failing to figure out why it gave him the biggest feeling of déjà vu of all only until its self-imposed quest to chew apart the few books and numerous newspapers stacked haphazardly on the blanket. Harry had had to camp in the forbidden section under his cloak and cast geminio for hours. If Scabbers didn’t lay off, Harry might be forced to do something he wouldn’t regret.
Ron scowled. “Maybe he would if you actually explained anything.”
Right, he was being talked about as if he were an inanimate rock again.
“Fine,” Hermione huffed. “It doesn’t make sense because the entire Magical World knows where Potter Cottage is now, it's actually a national monument! That should be impossible because the secret keeper is still alive.”
That sparked an entire argument over the spell’s nature, purpose, and whether or not it even mattered now that nobody lives there anymore so there’s no secret to keep, Hermione, duh. Which sparked an entirely new argument over the spell’s wording and how it wouldn’t matter if everyone died if the secret was about the place rather than the people living in it, Ronald, obviously.
“It must have come out at his trial,” Hermione concluded, smoothing out her skirt ever so primly. “Everyone would have tuned into the Wizarding Wireless to listen, Sirius Black was You-Know-Who’s right-hand man after all.”
The déjà vu came back.
“Hey Harry,” Ron said suddenly. “Didn’t you say Hagrid was the one who found you?”
“… Yes,” Harry agreed slowly, seeing the problem now that it had been pointed out. “On Dumbledore’s orders…”
“Who shouldn’t have been able to do it!” Ron said triumphantly, not realising this had no bearing on the point being argued over.
“But that would mean…” Hermione trailed off.
“That the secret keeper had to have already died.” But as soon as he said it, Harry knew it was the wrong conclusion.
“But he wasn’t,” Hermione said what they were all thinking. “… Was he? What are we missing?”
Harry couldn’t contain his frustration anymore. “None of this makes any sense!”
They laid around on the grass until they started shivering from the evening chill.
“I’ll ask dad to find out what he can about Black’s trial,” Ron announced.
Harry was grateful. He was doubly grateful Ron volunteered without Harry having to ask him.
Hermione averted her eyes and began collecting her – was she blushing? “We should take this to Professor Lockhart.”
Harry made a face. “I am not giving that ponce the opportunity to put me on display outside of classes too.”
“Hear hear,” Ron agreed.
“You are both ridiculous.”
“Right back atcha.”
Nicolas was going to grade him a Troll.
Harry wrote his haphazard essay and sent it anyway.
Eudaimon found him two days later during his cooldown walk after Quidditch practice. It was one of several habits he’d added to his routine that he did alone, precisely to give the owl a reliable window to drop by without questions asked. He’d only been intruded upon twice. The first time at the end of the first week, when Neville marched up and punched him for ‘accidentally’ stomping his wand to splinters when Ron ‘accidentally’ knocked it out of his hand down the stairs. The second time was at the end of the second week, when Neville marched up and apologised for overreacting to what was clearly a favour in hindsight and could Harry please take his money back, what do you mean no?
The essay came back marked Acceptable.
> Dear Harry,
>
> Top points for thoroughness, half points for content analysis, minimum for presentation. I suggest taking a break and sleeping on it next time. The best ideas come out of nowhere after you’ve already thought yourself out. Of course, a borderline grade does mean that I still have concerns, but a deal is a deal.
>
> Since you beat the deadline, however, I’m offering you the opportunity for extra credit. Solve the following puzzle.
>
> Halloween is not on Halloween.
>
> ~Nicolas
>
> P.S. The Pottery is, indeed, located in the woods eight miles off the stone circle. I did not intrude.
Harry felt like something had punched all the air out of him. Eudaimon did live up to his name.
> Dear Sir,
>
> Thank you. You didn’t have to.
>
> ~Harry
Harry had gotten help on the Fidelius research because he hadn’t known how significant it would be to him personally, and Mr. Flamel hadn’t told him it couldn’t be a group project. He’d even manage to hedge around the topic of why he was interested to begin with. This time, though, it felt wrong to cheat, so he didn’t tell Ron and Hermione anything. Even though he may as well be beating his head against the walls for all the progress he made on his own.
Nicolas turned out to be right, though, as always. The best ideas do come out of nowhere after you’ve thought yourself out.
It happened during astronomy class.
“Lunar calendars!”
He lost two House points for disturbing the class, but he didn’t care. He wrote the letter that very night and snuck out of the tower under his Cloak to send it immediately.
> Dear Professor Flamel,
>
> It’s the calendars, right? The modern Calendar is Solar. The Solar Calendar puts Halloween at the midpoint between the fall equinox and the winter solstice, but even if that’s true, it still wouldn’t fall on October 31st. But Halloween comes from when we still used the Lunar Calendar. And I tried to figure out where that would go by the old calendar and I don’t know, wasn’t Samhain New Year’s?
>
> I’m missing something, aren’t I?
>
> Harry James Clueless
Hopefully he wasn’t missing too much because Nearly Headless Nick’s deathday party was on the 31st. He hadn’t been thinking when he said yes, just wanting Mr. Filch to leave him alone, and he’d skip if he had to, but he’d promised.
“Harry, mate,” Ron told him the next day the moment he sat next to him at breakfast. “Hermione is worried about you. Now, because she’s a girl and therefore has no clue about us blokes-“
“Ron.”
“-I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. What’s up?”
“… I think I’m ready to teach you the Patronus.”
Ron and Hermione stopped. Ron even paused mid-shoveling food into his mouth, always a remarkable achievement.
“Correction. I’ll try to teach you the Patronus charm. I bet you one galleon that you can’t do it.”
“You’re on!” Ron said, breadcrumbs flying out of his mouth with the force of his offense. “Can’t be that hard if you can do it, can it?”
“Oh, we have a gambler.” He couldn’t believe that distraction worked, could he make it better? “Alright, I bet you five galleons you can’t even get mist to come out, and a further ten that you won’t manage the corporeal version.”
Ron paused mid-shoveling food into his mouth. Always a remarkable achievement. “You know, I can tell that you’re just distracting me, but I’ll take it.”
“Ron!”
“Oh look, Harry, Hermione isn’t interested, that means we get to spend all the time on it just the two of us.”
Hermione sputtered in outrage. “That… You are the most childish, churlish, insensitive, pigheaded – and yes, Ronald, I can also tell that you’re distracting me but I’ll take it also, so there!”
“Damn, Harry, she’s onto us, look at her hair standing all on end, it must be magic!”
It was the first déjà vu in months that didn’t feel unnerving. Almost like their talk after the Third Floor Mystery that Failed to Beckon. They talked around Harry back then too, until Ron remembered Tom Riddle’s name from the trophy room back during the Midnight Duel that Never Was, and Hermione realised that asking about the Patronus really wasn’t going to earn her an answer more believable than ‘I learned it in a dream.’
Eudaimon didn’t show up until October 12, but it made up for the delay with Nicolas’ longest letter to date, as well as the first package in addition to the transfigured treats that Nicolas had ever sent over.
“Trolldom,” Harry sounded the title. It was a grimoire. “By Johann Bjorngard.”
It was the letter that really made Harry’s schoolwork seem paltry.
> My dear student,
>
> By the old reckoning, today would be the time to hold the harvest festival. This was a time of celebration, where you gathered your harvest, made offerings to appease the spirits, and then got together with everyone within your rooster’s screaming distance and feasted like swine for a week to meet the upcoming lean times as fat as possible. This event, Samhain, was bright, crowded, long and worldly. The exact opposite of the conditions necessary for meditating, meeting and communing with the beings of other realms. Put bluntly, no spirits are going to make themselves seen or heard over the whole village partying loud enough to wake the dead. Granted, waking the dead was the whole point, but it also had the risk of a disgruntled draugr or troll coming out from the nearest burial mound or bridge to smash your roof in. Finally, Samhain happened in the week leading up to the last Full Moon of the year, the most auspicious time for large workings of human magic.
>
> All Hallow’s Eve is New Year’s Eve, the first New Moon after Samhain, the time of endings and beginnings, when summer gives way to winter, when a year dies and the next is born, when the Oak King dies and the Holly King takes his place. No amount of messing with calendars will ever change the fact that the true end of a year is the death and torpor of living things ushered in by winter. Mystically, it goes far beyond symbolism. It is no small thing for countless planes of same, lower and higher nature to all mirror each other so exactingly and regularly since the dawn of time. The synchronicity of the same recurring transition on such a scale is why we know of the similarity principle to begin with. The ripples caused defy world borders as easily as they defy description.
>
> The Night of Hallows is also the time when people stay home and observe the passing of the year with their close ones, then rest after their revelry. At most there will be one last bonfire and no travel beyond the village bounds. Only the odd mystic goes out looking for visions and revelations. This has the convenient result that magical beings and creatures can cross over and meet for a revel of their own without pesky humans to crowd them out. Conversely, this is also the time when they are in the best mood of the entire year thanks to gorging on all those aforementioned Samhain offerings. Incidentally, nights of the new moon are the darkest and quietest, and it's a well-known fact that sensory deprivation causes 'hallucinations.'
>
> The last full moon by the old reckoning falls this year on the twelfth of October. The first new moon of the upcoming New Year falls on October twenty-fifth.
>
> My deadline was chosen so you have time to prepare for the Yearly Walk. If you decide to undergo this ritual and succeed, you will take the first step on the diviner’s path and have your first glimpse of many things, even the future.
>
> The book accompanying this letter details the instructions. I cannot emphasise enough how important it is to follow all the instructions exactly. I would hate for you to go mad or have your face frozen in a rictus for the rest of your life. One can be fixed, the other not so much. Even more troublesome will be if you get cursed or abducted for being such a darling child.
>
> You have no Beowulf on hand to rip Grendel’s arm off, so I advise caution.
>
> But I believe you can do it.
>
> ~Nicolas.
Secret magic wasn’t the only thing that defied description. Another thing was Harry’s mess of feelings at finally getting everything he ever dreamed of and more from an adult.
Harry’s relationship with the seethingly jealous Hedwig experienced a miraculous recovery due to how much mail-ordering he had her do for the next two weeks. He was less decisive about finding a way out of Hogwarts, mainly because he had no clue where to start. Fortunately, he didn’t have to fall back on his last resort of climbing over the walls because the problem solved itself. Fred and George managed to ‘accidentally’ overhear them talking about the Patronus spell practice. And by overhear, he meant that they heard the name ‘Prongs’, which culminated in a spirited third-person argument with the Marauders in a certain Map. Knowing an opportunity when he saw one, Harry didn’t immediately ask for the return of his Dad’s property. Fred and George repaid their ‘debt’ by informing the Trio of the passage to the Shrieking Shack. Grudgingly, but he’d take it.
Suspicions abounded of course, including from Ron and Hermione, especially when he pretended a lack of appetite all day on the fated Sunday. The way he tried to avoid looking at fire before giving it up as a bad job didn’t help matters. But he didn’t tell anyone what he was doing. It was the rules.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Now how did that recipe for flushing potions go again?
“-.October 25, 1992 .-“
At midnight on October 25 of 1992, Harry James Potter snuck invisibly out of Hogwarts, hoped that he hadn’t hallucinated the barefoot Ravenclaw girl that skipped around the corner towards the lake, went to the Whomping Willow, pressed the knot near the base to immobilise it, and took the passage to the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade while his mind constantly repeated the same chant. Don’t speak, don’t smile, don’t laugh, don’t look back. He took off the Cloak and stuffed it in his pocket, checked to make sure his wand was in its holster where nothing could see it, and struck with a fire steel and flint in front of himself to disclaim any connection to the flame of civilization that he’d failed to escape throughout the day. Then he slapped his cheeks, took a few deep breaths, set his face in the blandest mask of everything’s fine, and stepped out.
He had his resolve almost immediately ruined when he saw a man standing in the only spot that the distant Hogsmeade lights reached.
Tall. Blond hair. Long beard. Robes of gold and purple that made him look like a king. Large pointed blue hat and cloak. The caduceus hung from a silver chain around his neck. Holly staff in one hand. And at his waist hung a stick of black wood, covered in glowing runes.
What was-
Nicolas Flamel turned his head towards the Forbidden Forest, acting like he didn’t know Harry was standing there about to gasp in happiness and fail the night before it began.
The disappointment was crushing.
Then Harry remembered the rules, schooled his expression and began walking.
He was hard-pressed not to throw himself at the man and hug the night away when Harry passed by and Nicolas automatically turned to match his pace without giving any impression that he even realized Harry was there.
Barely one minute into the ritual and Harry’s mask already wanted to crack with joy, but he wouldn’t let it. He wouldn’t! He needed this, he was determined to do it, and he’d had years of practice at keeping a straight face at the home of his proverbial evil stepmother, and now look! Mr. Flamel just happened to be in the area! Performing a ritual he hadn’t need to bother with for over five hundred years. Going in the same direction that Harry was going without even a hint that he was actually leading the way. He couldn't disappoint him.
Entering the Forbidden Forest was like crossing into another world. First year’s detention may as well have happened on a different planet. The wind stopped, sounds faded, the last lights from the sleepy village and Hogwarts beyond disappeared. Soon the only thing Harry had to navigate by were Nicolas’ footsteps, and even those seemed to be fading without actually drifting away at all. With every step, the ground beneath his feet seemed to swallow sound. The trees around him looked like giants tearing at the world with their long gangly arms. With every breath the air felt more and more like weavings made of water and the world around seemed to shiver with some secret magic.
He’d thought he was brave, but the soul-deep, horrible terror that took hold of him almost proved that wrong when the last natural sounds disappeared, his determination to see this through warring with the existential fear of a lurking predator. With heart-stopping fear he realized that he could no longer hear Nicolas’ footsteps. Then he realized he wasn’t even hearing his own steps, could barely even feel his own body anymore, like he was dreaming but worse, an out of the body experience with no legs or arms or mouth or eyes and he was going to-
Nicolas’ robe brushed his hand.
Harry didn’t scream.
Light and sound returned all at once, and it was all Harry could do not to jump or shriek, let alone keep a straight face. It came from above, like a roaring whistle through heaven. He didn’t miss a step, didn’t stumble despite not seeing where his feet went, and chanced a look. There was still no moon. There was an enormous sphere of crystal taking up half of the sky, and around it the starry black was replaced by a rainbow mist stretching from one horizon to the other, thick and rippling, seeping down through the canopy like vapor. Then Harry saw a meteor streaking like a bolt through where the stars should be, a trail of fire in its wake. It glanced off the sphere wall with nary a sound or flicker. Far behind from whence it came, there was chaos spitting pain out the universe’s tearducts. Up until a big grey hammer came out of a vortex and shot a spear right into the evil eye.
The distant shriek rattled Harry’s body that he didn’t otherwise feel. He blinked at the ruckus. He wondered if that meteor had really looked like one of those stasis pods from the Grangers’ sci fi. He must have imagined it. Because if he didn’t imagine it, he had to acknowledge that the hammer looked like a spaceship.
The crystal sphere rippled out of sight as if sinking into the rainbow ocean. The misty space dispersed along with the echo. For a moment Harry didn’t know if he was still walking or where he even was.
Then the woods went crazy. Pixies began flying every which way, shrieking. Scared and angry ghosts came charging through the trees, chased by the sound of hooves. Fairies dropped out of their path to hide inside flowers that shouldn't exist so late in Fall. The flowers closed around them and took their fairy light for their own. The path ahead became illuminated by hundreds of them, like little lamps, and swarms of fireflies looking for a chance to make his thoughts go fuzzy. Harry stomped on some because he had to look like he didn't notice any of it, even when the little winged ladies flew up to scold him. They scattered and gave him a wide, disdainful berth after the first few almost got knocked aside as if he didn't see them. Somehow he found a game trail, only instead of scared animals there were gnomes running around in a panic from a bunch of gremlin-dwarves. They were arguing over a pair of armored boots, wrestling and beating each other over the head with ridiculously inflated pig bladders wrapped inside their pointed hats while the rest jeered from the sidelines. The one with the bigger nose won the fight just as Harry passed by, prompting the crowd to cackle until fireballs started raining from the sky all over the forest. Sounds of shouts and gunfire, and cannons and falling wood came from the distant woods soon after, mixed with sharp blasts and warhorns cut too short.
Don’t think about it yet, don’t think about it.
The noises followed Harry as his feet brought him to a bog with a narrow hoofpath. The pink light of the flower buds reflected strangely in the little pools of water around him. He walked on, but even without looking he caught glimpses in them. A wide bowl filled with red jelly shaped like flowers. A tree with golden fruit hanging off its boughs. A hole in space with its edges colored like a rainbow’s watery reflection. A tunnel of light with stars streaking by.
A man suddenly burst from the undergrowth ahead of him, large and dressed in metal armor and swinging around a metal staff with lightning mouths at both ends. He saw Harry and opened his mouth, but whatever he wanted to say went to his grave because he was promptly ambushed by the gremlins from earlier. They bashed him over the head and beat him to death in the mud. With his last gasp the man crushed the throat of his killer, so the others laughed and ripped off the symbol on his forehead while their new chief stole the last chief’s boots and used his bare hands to pull the man’s belly open. A snake shot out of it straight into his mouth. The dwarf gasped and stumbled back with a golden flare in his bulging eyes. The others cried foul and beat him to death too, then ripped the snake from his neck and carried it off to make a belt out of.
Harry distantly wondered if this was all just a dream after all. He was sure he should have felt some queasiness at that, but he didn’t. Only the feeling like the world was a web bending and stretching forward as he walked and pushed through it, calm and collected and easier to keep a straight face with every passing step.
He passed by the body site without a second glance. A woosh of blue… something burst out from the perfectly round pool he floated face-down in, and then sunk back, leaving behind not a single trace that anything had happened.
Coming out of the Forbidden Forest was like walking through a curtain of rain onto open plains. The empty fields were swarming with small men carrying bundles of hay, the sounds of sickles and scythes ringing into stones, and mice carrying loads or grain and large cans of beer. Harry somehow managed to pay even them no mind, and Nicolas didn’t either. He was with him again, but had he ever been gone? Harry wasn’t sure.
They reached the Hogsmeade cemetery. A man was coming out the iron gates, dressed like a yankey pauper with a backpack as raggedy as the rest of him. He smiled brightly and waved as they passed by. “Dun be so dull, everybody. Its more easy to make friends if you make pepul laff. I’m going to have lots of friends where I go. Please, if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard…”
The graveyard was empty, except for a hag digging graves, and there were no graves in the lone yard around the single crypt atop the hill when Harry passed by. He didn’t go looking for any headstones of Algernons.
He didn’t go off the beaten path on return, but even the village was eerily quiet, the lampposts dark and shutters pulled down on the windows. It was ironic that it was here that Harry almost strayed.
Nicolas broke off, turning his path closer to the edge of the street and knocked on the wall as he passed it. From inside came an answering laughter, then they were at the next and Nicolas knocked on that too. Then the next, and another, so Harry did the same on his side. Some were happy, some were grumpy, one produced the saddest wail Harry had heard all year. Each knock and answer left Harry feeling more like himself, though it seemed as if he’d never stopped, and the earth and air still felt like the world’s heartbeat beneath his feet and its breath cool down his neck.
I don’t sound like this, Harry thought, barely remembering not to frown. But I will? Or I did, in those dreams. The question very belatedly occurred to him. What does make-believe about growing up have to do with divination? With all… this?
Between one step and the next, Nicolas vanished.
Harry didn’t stumble, but only because his feet were moving on their own at this point. He was back at Hogwarts. He knocked on the gates and they opened silently and easily, welcoming back with open arms. It looked wonderful, sounded peaceful, smelled of dew and felt like home. Harry still didn’t see more than one foot in front of him, but somehow he knew exactly where everything was.
He was home again, but home seemed to want to show him some things too. It was very nice on its part, so Harry took the long way around. Hagrid’s house blasted him with a wave of despair when he knocked it in passing. The previously empty stables were filled with strange, skeletal horses with snake-like features and bat-like wings. Two strangely familiar and solid-looking ghosts paced in front of the Whomping Willow while arguing with each other and a third that wasn’t there. The lake was a window to some fantastical view of golden pyramids floating in space. He had no idea what to make of any of it anymore. Actually, he didn’t know what most of the other bizarre things meant either.
There’s going to be war next year, Harry thought absently as he finally allowed himself to think of everything he’d seen and heard and how Nicolas’ book explained it. But not here. Far away. The battle sounds were very far off into the forest. But then how did that… soldier make it to where I was? What did that mean? Who was he? What was he? What was that symbol on his forehead? What was that snake?
Really, what did any of it mean? What was the vision in the sky? The images in the water? Who was that man coming out of the graveyard, was he even a vision or just some random bloke? What did a stupid man who didn’t know where he was or where he was going even symbolise? It had to be Harry’s imagination, though he didn’t know his imagination was anywhere this creative, in a what the hell is wrong with him kind of way. Nicolas was going to laugh at him, Harry just knew it. And he’d do it all in private while teaching Harry the next useful thing because he was good and kind and went out of his way to make him feel like he mattered.
At least the rest of the stuff made sense. Battle noise in the forest meant war, busy fields meant good harvest, empty cemetery meant few deaths. Harry thought of that one house. Should he warn them? But he hadn't seen any Grim, did that mean he was wrong? Would it do any good? It had wailed in grief when he knocked on it in passing, that meant death in the family, didn't it? Within a year. Everything he saw would happen in the next year.
Harry blinked, only now realising he’d reached the doors and had come through the front gates instead of retracing his steps through the willow passage. What… How… Did it really happen?
The castle doors were ahead of him, open wide in welcome already. There was no Ron or Hermione fretting over his absence. There was no Professor McGonagall waiting with thinned lips to take away fifty points and give him detention. What there was… was the certainty that Harry was back in Hogwarts without feeling like the Forbidden Forest or graveyard or Hogsmeade or any of those other places had been left behind. No farther than the corner of his eye.
Harry blinked, ignored the phantasms teasing at the edge of his vision and kept walking. And when he passed through the entrance and the doors closed behind him, he knocked on the wall just to see what would happen.
The Grand Staircase came to life with the light of torches.
“Students out of bed~ students out of bed down the entrance corridor – why, it's Potty Wee Potter!"
Harry knew the professors were all in their quarters. He knew the headmaster was sleeping. He knew Filch was moping in the Trophy Room. He knew the Trophy Room was currently on the other side of the castle on the third floor. It was like the Marauder’s Map was in his head, the footsteps and names floating here and there. He was one with Hogwarts and Hogwarts was with him.
"Oh, most think he's barking, the Potty wee lad, But some are more kindly and think he’s just sad, But Peevesy knows better and says that he's mad —"
Harry ignored Peeves all the way to the seventh floor.
“Oooh, Crackpot's feeling snotty. What is it this time, my fine Potty friend? Hearing voices? Seeing visions? Speaking in --- tongues.”
Ser Cadogan’s painting had changed to Harry and Malfoy dueling in front of the entire school. He passed it by just as Malfoy conjured a snake and Harry stupidly lowered his wand in favour of starting to hiss at it like a crazy person.
“You did it, you smartsed me, wee Potter's the one, and Peeves gone all angry, Ickle firstie Out Of BOUNDS PAST MIDNI-“
Prongs charged out of the wolfhound’s painting and gored Peeves right as the poltergeist was about to jump literally in Harry’s face.
"Nooo, you did it, you bashed me, wee Potter's the one, and Peeves gone mouldy, I just wanted some fuuu-”
Prongs drove Peeves across the hall and into the painting of roving animals that promptly chased Peeves outside the frame. Harry’s walk got him to the next painting just in time to see Lily Potter tie the poltergeist to the largest of the almond trees with conjured chains. Harry would have stopped and who knows what might have happened if not for the wolfhound barking from the other wall. He managed to keep going without stumbling.
The painting of the elephant showed Hagrid’s chicken coop full of dead roosters. The painting of the roaring tiger instead had Ginny Weasley finger-painting on a wall in weirdly thick red ink. The hippo painting was replaced by a young Hagrid pleading with the Head Boy for the life of his pet monster. The monkey in a cage instead showed Hagrid shivering inside, sniffling tearfully. The wolfhound was in the painting right next to it, whining in soundless sympathy. Sinister, gangly demons hovered around them both, the sight enough to make Harry feel like he was freezing. They were almost close enough to slip through Hagrid’s bars when Prongs swooped in again and chased them off with warm, brilliant light.
Then Prongs came out of the painting, landed in Harry’s path and shapeshifted into James Potter.
Harry stumbled to a halt with a gasp. He felt like his eyes were about to pop out of his head.
The world held its breath.
James Potter turned away and walked back and forth in front of the bare wall three times.
Harry breathed sharply as a door grew out of the stone.
His father’s spirit stood by the entrance, watching. Waiting.
Harry hesitated.
Then he walked forward like nothing was out of the ordinary and opened the door.
Dad fell into step like Nicolas had and led the way without leading the way into an endless maze. Old things, new things, trunks and chests and cabinets stacked high enough to disappear into the darkness far above.
On the first pass Harry was hard-pressed not to turn his head in every direction. On the second, a silk bag and a small silver chest were glowing with ectoplasmic traces of Dad’s passage. By the third, Dad’s steps had slowed, which meant Harry’s had slowed to just enough that he could snatch the items as he passed. Dad gave no sign that he noticed, but on the fourth pass veered down a completely different way than any before.
That was when Harry finally found out what it took to finally finish his Yearly Walk – the dreaded dead end.
There was a delicate faceless bust there, with a tiara sitting on its head. It was beautiful. So beautiful that Harry couldn’t resist the impulse to reach out and touch it.
Dad’s hand snapped out. It passed through his arm without any resistance, but the wash of cold snapped Harry out of it and made him stagger back, breathing hard, heart frantic with fear. What was that?
Dad stood in front of him now, watching him. Then he jumped into the diadem.
An unholy scream shattered the silence, a black cloud burst out of the coronet, and Harry fell to his knees when his scar erupted in the worst pain he had ever felt in his life. He felt like his brain was splitting open, like malice was a tangible thing slithering over his soul as the wraith dragged its way through the air right at him, looking into him to find everything he was afraid or ashamed of, all the way to that first memory he never remembered of his mother pleading and falling to a poison green light and Voldemort was in front of him, reaching-
The wraith pulled back with a shriek, away into the grip of James Potter with an arm around its neck, away from the golden glow on Harry’s skin and the white shimmer along his forearm where his wand glowed with the traces of Dad’s ghostly passage, same as the silk bag and silver chest scattered across the floor.
Harry blinked between one and the next, swaying woozily. “… Wingardium Leviosa.” The silk bag lifted off the floor and drunkenly swallowed the tiara. The wraith shrieked as it lost its form. “Wingardium Leviosa.” The diadem-in-a-bag dropped inside the lockbox, which he promptly snapped shut. The wraith vanished along with the fear and the darkness.
Harry collapsed to the floor, gasping for breath as his head pounded and something warm and wet dripped down his forehead to his eyes and nose until he tasted blood. He laid there until… he didn’t know. He didn’t know how long he was sprawled on the ground in that room that had grown out of the wall.
There was a chandelier on the ceiling now, dispelling the chamber’s gloom. The light was suddenly blocked by Dad learning over him. He didn’t look like a ghost at all.
Harry swallowed and struggled to sit up. Then he froze when he saw his wand held in his father's grasp. When had he dropped it? Wait, how was he holding it? Was... Was he...?
James Potter looked from his face to the wand and back, tapping it against his palm exactly like Harry imagined a Dad might do when he was about to take his kid’s stupidity out of his hide.
Then his hand moved almost too fast to see. A burst of light shot from the wand at Harry’s head. Harry flinched before he could realise he hadn’t felt anything. His head snapped back up to glare at Dad accusingly.
James Potter smirked down at him, dropped the wand to clatter on the floor and... vanished.
Hogwarts faded from Harry’s mind then, until he once more saw, heard, felt, smelled and touched no more than a boy could.
Harry scrambled for his wand and clutched it to his chest like someone who’d just escaped death. He was never going to drop his wand ever again until he was dead.
The Room of Hidden Things creaked around him with the sounds of a hundred swaying towers of boxes, trunks and chest full of lost and found spanning hundreds of years all the way back to the castle’s founding.
Harry returned his wand to its holster, wiped the blood off his face with a tea cosy, and spent a few minutes building up his courage to pick up the silver chest. He picked it up. Nothing happened. Suddenly he realized he was exhausted and would probably collapse where he stood if he stopped to think about it.
He set off back through the winding maze. He didn’t know where he was going, but the Room did. Soon he was back at the entrance. Then out of it. He clutched the silver box to his chest while looking around dazedly. The corridor was back to normal. The paintings were back to normal. Hogwarts was back to normal. Harry was back to normal.
There were no thoughts in his head. His mind was empty.
He stared down at the silver lockbox containing a silk bag containing a silver diadem containing… a Koschei the Deathless phylactery knockoff? What?
What the bloody hell was he supposed to do with any of this?
He stood there until his legs were about to give out.
Then he walked back and forth three times thinking I need a place to stash this thing until my brain starts working again.
A door grew out of the wall. There was a… set of rooms inside? He didn’t really look at any of it, just the glass case on the far wall. He dragged his feet over and locked the box inside before leaving.
Miraculously, he made it to his room without anyone, man, beast, portrait or vanished poltergeist being the wiser.
He stopped in the doorway, staring at Ron’s bed.
Then he blinked and pointedly went to bed. He was done trying to see things he hadn’t a hope of understanding anymore today.
He’d figure out why Ron’s rat was possessed by a ghost in the morning.