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World in Pieces	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 16431 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
- 11
- 12
- 13
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Chapter Twelve—Meet the Allies

            The letter that Severus had crafted to the Weasleys was a masterpiece of indirection and insinuation, but then, he had had much practice at that as a teacher who had to keep his complaints about students less vitriolic than the words that first came to mind. He was confident it would keep Molly Weasley’s interest and hint that her son had participated in something she would consider morally wrong—which was certainly true—while also convincing her not to respond to Dumbledore’s invitations or reveal the information to him.

            He went to the Owlery, not to post that particular letter, but to post one he had written as a cover for Dumbledore to intercept. His real letter would travel by other means.

            And it was on his way back from the Owlery that Draco found him. Severus stepped around a corner to find the boy standing there with arms folded, staring at him in a way that made it perfectly obvious he was being accused of something. Severus came to a stop and slightly bowed his head, a courteous gesture that also allowed him to scan the corridor up and down looking for ambushers. If Draco had not brought them, someone might well have followed him; the boy was too emotionally distraught to notice.

            “Good evening, Draco,” Severus said. “Was there something you wanted?”

            “I want to know why you’re keeping Harry caged up.” Draco faced him with trembling fists and his head tilted back as if he thought it only bravery to offer Severus a chance at his jugular.

            “I am not,” Severus said quietly. “Would you like to come with me and ask if he wishes to talk to you? If he does not, then I will not force him.”

            Draco’s mouth snapped shut, and he stared at Severus as if he had never expected that response. Well, of course he had not, if it was listening to Albus’s nonsense that had filled his brain with such froth, Severus thought tolerantly. This was most likely another of Albus’s attempts to either distract Harry or lure him into staying in this world, as Albus might think he would if he could form a romance with Draco.

            Severus had never seen a more unlikely pair than the grief-stricken boy in front of him and the madly determined one staying in his quarters, but he need only interfere if the Imperius Curse or something else was used. And he thought Harry able to resist that well enough.

            “I—you’ve probably fed him a potion that will make him say he doesn’t want to talk to me,” Draco said, fast sinking back into the depths of rebellious bravado.

            “You know spells that will reveal the presence of such a potion in the bloodstream,” Severus pointed out, with iron control holding him back from a sigh. Merlin save me from melodramatic teenagers. He knew that he had not been much better himself at that age, with all his pining over Lily, but he did not dig up the memories and rejoice in them. That was something to be suppressed if at all possible. “Come with me, and speak to him. If he will.”

            Draco stood there as if trying to think of more objections, but in the end he followed Severus down the corridor towards his quarters. Severus rapped his knuckles on the door and waited until he heard the stir of movement within. He smiled when Harry said, in a completely neutral tone, “What is it?” He knew Severus would have no reason to knock if he had come back alone, the way he had set out.

            “Mr. Malfoy would like to make your acquaintance, if you are willing,” Severus said, examining the pattern of the stitching on his sleeve. “And make sure that I haven’t chopped you up for Potions ingredients.”

            Harry snorted and opened the door. “The only thing of value that he’d get out of me is probably my blood. I know I have more than enough of that, after years of seeing it spilled everywhere.”

            Draco went still and looked back and forth between Severus and Harry. Severus looked back at him, and said nothing, playing with the edge of his sleeve as if he were bored. Draco might draw his own conclusions, especially if he would report them to Albus later; Severus was more interested in not giving him anything that would destroy the story he had spun for Albus.

            “What do you want, then?” Harry asked Malfoy, folding his arms and leaning against the door. “I haven’t got all day.”

            Draco licked his lips, hesitated once more, and then tipped off some invisible lip of his own courage. “I want to know that you’re all right,” he said. “I want to know that you haven’t been hurt.” He turned and stared at Severus in a way that made Severus note that there was actual suspicion there, not only hurt that Severus had been keeping Harry “for himself.” “I want—I want to know if you’ll come flying with me, the way you did when the falcon attacked.”

            “I would, if you just wanted to practice flying,” Harry said. “But you want to convince me to be your boyfriend. And I can’t. Malfoy, I’m not him.”

            Draco shook his head. “You’re him from another world. And I think that counts.”

            “I don’t,” Harry said very flatly, stepping forwards and looking as if he might rush Draco and headbutt him. Severus moved a single smooth step nearer to guard Draco in case that happened. Draco was the one he needed to worry about in this confrontation. “Don’t I get an opinion?”

            Draco swallowed. “Of course. But you haven’t given it a chance, Harry. You’ve just gone down here and studied with Professor Snape, or whatever it is you’re really doing.” Severus checked a sigh at the title; leaving it off would have been a good reason to punish Draco for his insolence. “You might like it if—”

            “Draco, this isn’t home.”

            The single word made Draco fall silent and stare at Harry as if trying to learn. Harry had taken a weary step forwards, and now he moved his arm in a half-circle sweep that Severus knew was meant to encompass all of Hogwarts and the world beyond that, not merely Severus’s quarters and not merely this corridor.

            “I don’t want to stay here because of that,” Harry went on, his voice lowering. “I want the people I grew up with. I want my friends, who fought the same war I did and know what it’s like to live with those scars. I want even the dead—Sirius is dead there, Draco, and I still think it’s better than staying here where he’s alive.” For a moment, his eyes flickered to Severus, and Severus held himself still, in curiosity where Harry would also differentiate between the living and the dead where he was concerned.

            But Harry simply turned away and faced Draco. “You might be a fine boyfriend for another one of me from some other world. But I have too many bad memories of you, and even if I didn’t—this isn’t home. That’s what I want, to go home. Sure, I can fight Voldemort and so on while I’m here, but I want my friends and my home most of all. The people whose memories match with mine.”

            In the silence that followed, Draco blinked and reached up to tug the collar of his robe away from his neck. Severus considered the words Harry had spoken and was not displeased. No matter what Draco reported to Albus—if he did—there was a way to make those words fit in with the story Severus and Harry were weaving for the old man.

            “You don’t want to stay here with me and make new memories,” Draco whispered.

            Harry shook his head. Severus saw his jaw clench for a moment as though he wanted to say more, but was restraining himself. Severus understood the impulse. Draco was beyond trying when he was like this. Severus would have liked the grief to clear so that Draco could again by the more than half-arrogant boy he knew, one who had more than offer than tears and whimpered pleas.

            Among other things, a truly prodigious Potions talent.

            “You don’t want to tell me about your home?” Now Draco was lifting his head, a ghost of a smile on his face. “You could tell me, and that way I could share your memories, and it would be like being with…”

            He let his voice trail off, and abruptly turned his back, although he didn’t leave. This time, it was Draco’s gesture Severus understood. The pity on Harry’s face was also hard to take, in some measure.

            “I don’t want you,” Harry said. “I’m just tired to death of being here, already, and I want to concentrate on ways to get home. Professor Snape can help me do that. I just want—go away, Malfoy. Grow up. I’m sorry he’s dead. I know how horrible it is to lose someone like that, suddenly, and too young. And I promised you I could help with that, and I still have that intention. But not the way you’d like me to help. I’m not him. I’m still alive. And you’re not the Malfoy back in my world. He did horrible things during the war that you didn’t. You can still make something of yourself, something better than he ever will, because he’ll have to live with the memories of his cowardice. So do it.”

            Draco fell back a step, his eyes wide as he stared at Harry. He looked at Severus, but whatever his face appeared like to Draco—and Severus didn’t think that it was very sympathetic—he didn’t find support there, either. He eventually turned around and began to walk back towards the stairs. Severus watched him go, shifting his body so he could screen Harry from a sudden hex.

            “You don’t need to do that,” Harry hissed at him. “I’m perfectly able to take care of myself.”

            “Against a hex that you do not see coming?” Severus turned back towards Harry and shook his head. “I think that you should save your strength for the battles you wish to fight. Like the one that you just fought with Mr. Malfoy, most impressively.”

            Harry blinked at him, then snorted and turned away. “Whatever,” he muttered, but Severus could see that his lips had twitched for a moment as though suppressing a smile. Then he shook his head in turn and returned to the young man Severus was more familiar with. “What do you think the odds are that he was a spy?”

            “A witting one? Not high. But if Albus drew him out to talk about his problems, there is no reason why he would not. The boy loves attention.” Severus shut the door carefully behind himself and nodded at Harry. “Stand still. I wish to create a glamour of you that I can send to Spinner’s End in case the Headmaster should check up on us, and it must be more complex than most, since it will need to be able to move about and speak.”

            Harry extended his arms and posed, stiffly, like a model. Severus snorted. “No. Let your arms fall to your sides. It is easier to begin from a relaxed posture and work outwards from there.”

            “Fine,” Harry said, but there were deep frown lines around his mouth as he watched Severus work. Of course there would be, Severus thought, concealing any amusement he could feel trembling in the depths of his being, for he knew how Harry would react to it. Of course Harry would not like someone else pointing a wand at him when he did not have his own drawn.

            Finally the spell was complete, and Severus cast the complementary one on himself quickly; he had done it before. Two images appeared before him, a glassy-eyed boy and a man who was more open than Severus knew himself to be, and they tottered towards the fireplace and disappeared upon command. Should the Headmaster check, he would find that there had indeed been a Floo connection with Spinner’s End that morning.

            “Now,” Harry said, and looked at Severus with slightly narrowed eyes. “You’re ready to show me this special house that you don’t want Dumbledore to find out about?”

            Severus nodded, and extended his hand. Harry stepped forwards to clasp it, and then Severus touched the top button of his robes and closed his eyes. In the right hands, a spell to change something into an undetectable Portkey was a good thing.

            He felt the pull begin, softer and weaker than the pull of a traditional Portkey; what drew him was not the destination so much as the wards on that destination, which were linked to the house’s owner. Then they whirled through space, once, a single sharp spin that Severus found much less undignified than the way one traveled by Floo. He stepped away from the boy and nodded to him; Harry had his eyes closed, his brow furrowed.

            “Welcome,” Severus said, “to Shaldon’s Garden.”

*

            Harry opened his eyes—sometimes he thought that stupid Portkey phobia would never leave him—and looked around. From Snape’s words, he had pictured a garden like the Dursleys’, absurdly, and already he wondered if he would meet the house-elves who probably kept it in line.

            There were no house-elves, but around him, greenery flowed and stretched. There were low bushes that Snape probably used for Potions ingredients, trailing tendrils, and saplings with vine-encircled trunks. Everything in sight, even the tree leaves, was an oddly fragile green, as if it were the beginning of spring here.

            Paths led here and there through the garden, paths with rounded curves and blurred edges, as if instead of being trimmed back the plants had simply agreed to grow so far and then no further. Harry couldn’t really see pots or beds; what he saw instead were glimpses of dirt, here and there, under the leaves, and some rocks that shone like quartz.

            In the middle of the garden was a fountain, vine-draped like the trees, and splashing with water that hit the stones on the bottom of the basin with a light ringing sound. Next to it was the back of what might be a chair sunken in the ground, and a few bright herbs or flowers, the only things in the garden that weren’t green. Harry took a deep breath of the scented air and then let it out again.

            “This would be a good place to relax,” he muttered.

            Snape nodded and turned, leading him down one of the paths that meandered away from the fountain as though it had nowhere in particular to go. Harry watched for signs of more civilization as they walked, including a house, but could see nothing. He did notice that a few of the vines on the trees twitched towards them as they walked, and each time the leaves fell back with a sighing sound.

            “What’s that?” he asked Snape, nodding to the vines.

            Snape’s lips twitched as he looked at them, in the way Harry thought they might if he was ever actually pleased about something. “That is part of the garden’s defenses,” he said quietly. “The second line, beyond the wards. They reach for the presence of the owner, and judge his state of mind. If he is here because of anything besides his own free will, then no one with him will ever reach the house.”

            “So it doesn’t matter if you’re under the Imperius Curse, or someone is forcing you to do this with a threat?” Harry eyed the plants. He wondered if he could get Neville back in his own world—or even in this one—to look into this and create plants that would tell him if someone tried to manipulate him mentally.

            “No,” Severus said. “And they will sense the slightest unwillingness. Thus, one cannot betray the house to someone—say, a friend or member of the Order of the Phoenix—that one wishes to trust, but cannot completely.” He laid his hand on what appeared to be empty air and glanced back at Harry. “I am trusting you by bringing you here, Harry.”

            Harry inclined his head solemnly. If he had a sanctuary like this, he didn’t know that he would ever bring anyone but Ron and Hermione into it.

            “How did you get this place, anyway?” he asked, as Snape tilted his hand forwards, and a thin crack appeared in the air, pivoting on its hinges like a door to show a glimpse of light beyond.

            Snape gave him a thin smile over his shoulder and said, “I killed a man in such a way that his ancestral house gave itself to me. This place can be conquered and possessed, its affections seduced from its original owner, in much the same way that one can steal the loyalty of another wizard’s wand. It was bloodline-linked, but he had no relatives when he lost to me.”

            Harry just nodded. He wanted to ask a little more about the circumstances of the duel, but he didn’t see that he could. Snape had told him as much as he probably wanted him to know.

            Snape stepped towards the crack, and Harry followed him. He felt a brief, sickening jolt that made him grit his teeth and reach down to the Elder Wand in his pocket. Of course, he recognized it as an Apparition from place to place, but that still made it irritating.

            But Snape didn’t look back to see if he was following. He was walking along the grass of a different garden, this one small and with dusty paths laid in the middle of flowerbeds and vegetable beds, towards a cottage. Harry followed, squinting at this garden. Of course it wasn’t the same as the other one, but it seemed familiar anyway.

            He got it when he realized that the dusty paths in the grass curved the same way. “This is like another—layer of that other place, isn’t it?” he asked quietly as Snape moved his hand in a vague pass in front of the cottage and then opened the front door.

            Snape glanced back at him with no expression on his face. “Very good, Mr. Potter. It is indeed. One layer of reality beyond the wards, where one can walk through the location of Shaldon’s Garden and feel nothing. A second reality beyond that, in the shape of the garden from which the place takes its names. And another here, a separate place again, but still following the general shape of the first garden. The cottage is a fourth layer, much larger inside than outside.” He moved another step forwards, added, “It has to do with folded wizardspace,” and vanished.

            Harry followed, on the theory that nothing had hurt him during the first two transitions, and found himself standing in what was probably the nicest house that he’d ever seen. He didn’t really count Malfoy Manor, since they’d barely spent any time there and were running for their lives or captive when they did.

            The walls were wooden, and looked like someone had scraped and smoothed and polished them until they forgot the trees they came from—they were all pale with large, welling golden spots in them, and silky when Harry touched them. On two walls of the enormous room he’d stepped into blazed equally enormous fireplaces; Harry thought he saw the flames in the nearest one swallowing a whole log. Iron dogs stood on either side of the granite hearths. Harry wondered if they could come to life to attack intruders, and then snorted. Of course they could. Why was that a question?

            High up on the walls, shining where the light from huge windows struck them, were tapestries that rivaled in color and beauty any of the ones Harry had ever seen at Hogwarts. He could make out green and red and blue threads, and duel scenes between wizards, and what looked like a map of both gardens they’d come through. The smaller one, with the dusty paths, looked a lot more complex in those maps than it had seemed when they were walking through it, which surprised Harry not at all.

            Arched doorways led out of the hall at either end, and in the middle was a long skinny table, like the tables in the Great Hall but without the benches, made of more of the silky white-gold wood. Harry could see a stack of glittering cauldrons at one end, and plates of food at the other. The plates had whole stuffed birds on them, and pies, and wedges of yellow and white cheese, and strawberries that looked like they were just picked. Harry blinked and shook his head.

            “Do you have house-elves here?” he asked, turning to Snape, who had gone over to the cauldrons and was inspecting them critically. “Did you tell them you were coming?”

            Snape looked at him as if he were mad. “Dumbledore has a great camaraderie with house-elves,” he said, shaking his head. “No, the house itself remembers what meals I liked last time, stores the food, and has it prepared when I arrive.”

            Harry could only shake his head back. “But—why don’t you spend all your time here, then? It’s wonderful.”

            Snape snorted and cast off his cloak, whirling it towards the ceiling. Invisible fingers of air grabbed it and took it to a peg high up on the wall near a tapestry. Harry did the same thing with his own cloak, cautiously, and thought he felt a breeze against his back as it was taken to hang next to Snape’s. “I could hardly do so. I would betray the secret, if only in the existence of extensive new potions and my contentment when I came back. And it is too important a refuge to be betrayed like that.”

            Harry studied him, his head on one side. Snape had gone through three cauldrons and made notes about them on a stack of waiting parchment before he noticed. Then he gave Harry a single impatient glance over that beaky nose, eyebrows rising.

            “Yet you’ll volunteer this place for a meeting with the Weasleys,” Harry muttered. He felt dizzy.

            “Yes,” Snape said. “The wards will ensure that they cannot tell anyone about it. And the folded layers—well.” He shifted his shoulders up, then brought them down. “I have seen no evidence that even Albus knows spells that powerful. They were made for an old pure-blood family, using techniques that few people know or study anymore. Albus may have studied them, yes. But there are other defenses in place.”

            “That you shouldn’t tell me about in case he captures me,” Harry murmured, nodding. “But still…”

            Snape sighed and glanced back at the cauldrons as if they were going to occupy him all afternoon and he longed to be back at work. “Was there something else?”

            “You trusted me enough to volunteer this for me, but you don’t trust yourself enough not to betray that you’re living here,” Harry said. “If you do.” He hoped that sentence made sense.

            From the way that Snape’s face stiffened for a moment before he turned to look back at Harry, it probably did.

*

            Harry was impossible sometimes.

            Severus had thought out this decision, and if Harry had been unsure about whether he had, he should have asked him before this. Severus did not know what these hemming and hawing and hesitations meant. Harry appeared struck by the gesture of trust, but did he not know that Severus had his own reasons to distrust the Order?

            Shaldon’s Garden could never have helped him get revenge before this. Revenge and freedom both at once, if they managed to defeat the Dark Lord. For that dual purpose, Severus saw no reason not to volunteer his secret home.

            Harry still looked at him now, steadily, as though anticipating a reverse that would not happen. Severus decided quickly that the best way to treat matters was simply to act as if there was nothing important to the decision at all, and he nodded. “I trust you enough,” he said, and then turned his head to the side. The Garden could communicate with its owner in various ways, and at the moment, he was hearing a warning that rang through the wards on multiple levels. “Ah,” he murmured. “I think the Weasleys have arrived.”

            It was a fortunate coincidence that they had done so, none of his planning, but it was Severus’s ability to take advantage of such coincidences that had—in part—allowed him to continue living. This one thoroughly distracted Harry. He turned pale, and then nodded and reached up to touch his forehead, as though the curse scar had become a good luck charm. “All right. Where are we meeting them?”

            “A smaller, in-folded layer,” Severus said, and walked towards the arched doorway that stood nearer his end of the table. “One that many people think is the heart of the house, but which is only a part that can be sealed off, if it turns out that those coming into it are threats.”

            Harry exhaled slowly, his eyes locked on the arched doorway as though he assumed threats would come through it. “All right,” he said, and followed Severus. “I mean, it’s best to be paranoid around this until we know we can trust them.”

            “And even after,” Severus added. It sounded as though Harry was headed towards a fundamental misconception about the way that Severus intended to function around the Weasleys, and Severus would not allow it to persist.

            Harry glanced at him, then blinked and said, “Of course. You won’t let the Weasleys know much more about this place even if you think we can trust them.”

            Severus tilted his head in acknowledgment.

            “Is there anyone you trust completely?” Harry asked.

            “I have revealed the most to you.”

            Harry stared at him again. Severus sighed. “It is not because I want to make you dependent on me,” he said. “It is because Albus will take over your existence or kill you otherwise, and you are the best chance I have for escaping from the Dark Lord’s domination, and the Order of the Phoenix, and this endless war.” And the summoning of more versions of Harry Potter, to boot, but that was a more distant goal.

            “The last thing I would think,” Harry said, his voice lowered and emphatic for some reason, “if someone told me important secrets, was that they were trying to make me dependent on them.”

            “Ah, so that is the reason you were not Sorted into Slytherin,” Severus said, and turned with more determination towards the archway. Seeing the Weasleys, whom this Harry appeared to have been closer to than the one born in this world, was likely to affect Harry more than he realized at the moment. One of them must maintain his mental distance and not think about irrelevant things with the passing of every second.

*

            The worst shock as Harry stepped into the large drawing room where the Weasleys waited, as Harry had known it would be, was seeing Fred, standing against the wall with his brother and talking in a low, earnest voice, as if he had never died.

            And he didn’t. Not here.

            Harry felt a savage longing, for the first time, for some aspects of this universe. If the war hadn’t been as bad here, if not as many people had died—

            Not as many people that I know. And I think that’s really the only difference.

            “Severus.” Mrs. Weasley had stood up when they came into the room, while Mr. Weasley stayed sitting in the bright blue chair beside her, looking back and forth from Snape to Harry. “What is this about?” Her eyes had more steely determination than the version of her Harry knew back home, and he changed his mind a little. Maybe the war had been worse here, at least in some ways, if she could look like that.

            Snape raised his eyebrows and looked at Mrs. Weasley like she was the only one in the room—which made everyone else lean forwards and listen. Harry had seen him use the same trick in Potions classes, and while he thought it was kind of a dirty trick, he had to admit that it worked really well. “Were you aware that your son was participating in a Dark ritual that involved summoning versions of Harry Potter from other universes, to replace the one that died here?” Snape asked.

            There was a moment of silence that hurt Harry’s ears, it pressed against them so long, and then almost everyone started talking at once. Ginny had bounced up on her feet and was looking back and forth between Snape and Harry, still stunned quiet, but Fred and George were trying to say something about a joke, and Mr. Weasley was saying, “Let’s be reasonable,” and Percy and Charlie talked in loud disbelieving voices, and Bill had wide eyes and a flapping tongue, and Mrs. Weasley—

            Mrs. Weasley cast Silencing Charms on everyone else with a sweeping motion of her arm that made Harry snicker in shock; it looked as though she had practiced it often. Then she turned back to Snape and Harry and said, “What?”

            “It’s true,” Harry said quietly. “I’m from a world where I was Sorted into Gryffindor, and things went a lot differently. I was best friends with Ron, Mrs. Weasley. I visited your house. I was—best friends with Hermione, too.” He took a deep breath and fisted his hands in his sleeves. He hadn’t seen how hard this would be, to say as well as to make them believe. “And I killed Voldemort then, too.”

            Mrs. Weasley put a hand over her heart, but her hard gaze didn’t waver. “What did you say, young man?” she demanded.

            “Voldemort’s name,” Harry said. “I’m not afraid of it. I’m not afraid of him. The one here is tougher, because I killed him in a different way back home, and that one was insane. But this one, I think I can kill, too. But I need your help against him, and I need to make sure that Dumbledore doesn’t summon any more of me here.”

            Mrs. Weasley stared some more at him, and then turned and looked at Snape. “Are you a Potions master or not?” she snapped, hard enough to make Harry want to laugh, although he bit down on his lips to make sure that wouldn’t happen. “Get some Veritaserum, and then let us see him take it.”

            Snape glanced at Harry. Harry nodded. He had already reckoned that this would be necessary, and if it hurt, well, that was the price of having allies. He would certainly rather convince the Weasleys this way than not have them with him.

            Snape frowned at him, as though their not having discussed this much was a reason Mrs. Weasley shouldn’t ask for it, but took the vial of potion out of his robe pocket—it surprised Harry not at all that this version of Snape would carry Veritaserum around—and handed it to Harry. Harry uncorked it and made sure that everyone could see that he was shaking three drops onto his tongue by holding his head back and the vial above his mouth. Mrs. Weasley craned her neck from the back, biting her lip. Harry smiled to her reassuringly, or as reassuringly as he could, before the dazed feeling of the potion overcame him.

            He was glad that there was a chair behind him, so he could sit. And he must have an impressive or at least not completely stupid expression on his face, because people blinked at him but didn’t laugh.

            Mrs. Weasley hesitated, then said, “Are you really Harry Potter from another universe?”

            “Yes,” Harry said, feeling the answers simply float out of him as though someone was calling them up with a Wingardium Leviosa charm. “A universe where I was Sorted Gryffindor and killed Voldemort.”

            “Who summoned you?” Charlie, who must have canceled the Silencing Charm on himself, demanded, taking a step forwards. “How did you get here?”

            “The Order of the Phoenix pulled me through time and space,” Harry said, and measured himself against the potion for a moment. It wouldn’t be easy, but he could choose what to keep back when it was an indirect question like this. He didn’t have to say that he wasn’t the first Harry who had come between the universes. “They used a ritual to look at my past, and then they pulled me out.”

            “Is there a way back for you?” Ginny had been waving her wand at her throat, and she shrank back as she spoke, unlike Charlie, but her voice didn’t shake.

            “Dumbledore said there wasn’t one, that I was stuck here until I defeated him,” Harry said. “Or died. But I made them promise they would work on a way back, and there are a few signs that they are.”

            This time, when he expected someone else to ask a question, everyone was silent. Harry finally looked where they were looking, towards Mrs. Weasley, who was making a low rumbling noise like a spacecraft about to take off.

            “They did what to you?” she demanded. “How could they force someone—a—a hero to come here and tell him he would have to do it all over again?”

            “They used the spell,” Harry said, and then grimaced a little. The Veritaserum had taken it literally when Mrs. Weasley asked him how they had forced him to come here. He shook his head and met her eyes, making his thoughts keep on track by sheer concentration. “They didn’t give me a choice. I just went to sleep in my own world, right after the battle where I killed him, and then I woke up and I was here.”

            Mrs. Weasley had a fanatic gleam in her eyes now, enough that Harry could guess her next question before she spoke. “And my son was a part of this Order?”

            “Yes, he was,” Harry said. “And he still is. He seems to think that just because he was friends with the Harry who used to be here, that means that I’m his friend, too.”

            There came a collective gasp from the other Weasley siblings, and Mr. Weasley shook his head. Mrs. Weasley looked at Harry and said in a very gentle voice, “You don’t need to be afraid, Harry, dear. We won’t hurt you.” She hesitated, then went on, “And the Harry Potter who belongs to this world is dead? Really and truly?”

            “Yes, he is,” Harry said. “He apparently committed suicide. Dumbledore thinks he did it out of fear of Voldemort.”

            Mrs. Weasley still flinched from the name, but absent-mindedly. Harry thought her mind was probably on Ron and his crime. “And—forgive me, but are you the first one that they brought through the gate?”

            “The third,” Harry said. “So the fourth Harry that they wanted to fight Voldemort.”

            Mrs. Weasley went still. And so did Bill and Charlie and Mr. Weasley, Harry saw from the corner of his eye. Fred and George had grim expressions on their faces. Percy was looking uncertainly from face to face as if he still wanted to disbelieve Harry but knew that he would find no support around him for that now.

            Ginny said, “We’ve got to help him win and get free, Mum.”

            Mrs. Weasley nodded, once, never taking her eyes from Harry’s face. “You will have no objection to that, Harry?”

            And Harry could smile and answer with the perfect force of his own glee as well as the Veritaserum, “Not at all.”

*

            unneeded: I don’t know that I would call Dumbledore darker than Voldemort. He’s willing to use one spell on one person not born to his world, but not to kill large numbers of people. I think the difference is the scale.

            But yes, you can definitely hope for something to happen to him!

            moodysavage: Thanks! I hope you continue to enjoy the story, although this one had less action happening in the chapter.

            Zaphen: I believe that it may be heading in that direction, but part of the reason Snape holds back is that he really wants to restrain some of Harry’s Gryffindor tendency to rush right into emotions, as it were.

            The reason that the prophecy boundaries renew when someone else comes in is also the reason that Dumbledore and company are only summoning versions of Harry who have killed their Voldemorts, rather than versions who are in the middle of their battles. Basically, a Harry who is free from one prophecy is also free to become subjected to another. Voldemort in this world Harry is now in is the same way. He escaped death at the hands of one Harry, but when another one shows up, that prophecy becomes incomplete once more, since there is now a new boy “born as the seventh month dies” to parents who have “thrice defied” Voldemort. It doesn’t say which Voldemort.

            As for the first Harry, you’ll find out more about his death later.
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World in Pieces