ACT5CH23 - TIME

There were times when Harry’s natural inclination towards cynicism served some larger, more enduring toxicity — a vast, chronic paranoia. Any rare glimpses of optimism were swiftly dealt with, a virus his mind and body leapt to attack, and thus, were ultimately beaten into submission. Feelings of hope? Cancerous. There was a constant sensation for Harry that if things seemed to be going well, half of him was sure he was in the process of being mightily tricked. 

A trait he had inculcated from his years toiling at the Dursley household, and one that the wizarding world had repeatedly emphasized over the years.

Find out that his parents weren’t dead drunkards? They were killed by a dark lord.

Magic was real? So were life threats that came his way several times a year.

He was the Peverell Vessel? Turns out he really wasn’t.

He told he’d never accept the Deathstick. The battle with Ekrizdis made him summon it.

Even when he had gotten a godfather, Destiny had snatched him away after barely half a year of living together. Maybe it would’ve been better if he hadn’t accepted Sirius’s offer and stayed at the Dursleys. If nothing else, Sirius wouldn’t have had any reason to take up the Black Lordship and be twisted by the Lar.

Even the Gate — the one that earned him the Gatekeeper mantle, a role he had taken by his own choice after peering through endless possibilities — turns out Tezcatlipoca was the hand in the shadows manipulating him. 

The only thing he had managed to truly accomplish so far, was to get Daphne rid of her malediction. But given the way things had happened in his life, maybe that was Summer’s plan all along from the very moment it trickled into him in the Prison of Possibilities.

So yes, when Amelia Bones had commented about the correctness of whatever he was seeing through his Death Vision, it made Harry flinch inwardly.

What if she was right? What if he truly was overestimating things? Albus Dumbledore had already given away his Chief Warlock and Supreme Mugwump position just to stand on his side. Just like Sirius had. How far long until he too decided that Harry was in the wrong? How far until Daphne did so too?

The energy still pulsed above the crib like a wound pretending to be healed. Its particles drifted in the air, suspended in slow orbit—a microcosmic star in the ashes of a child's cradle. Sure, only he could see it. For now. 

Dumbledore and Akingbade couldn’t, but they were prepared to stabilize it the moment he extracted it. Amelia Bones too would provide whatever help was necessary. And Daphne could provide whatever energy the others needed. Or help them in ways she had trained herself for years. And —

Oh.

Oh.

So that’s what was truly troubling him.

This was the first time he was tackling a dangerous situation while being part of a group. 

He had been through a lot of death-defying adventures over the years. Yes, he had help — sometimes it was Ron and Hermione, Fleur too as of recently, and Daphne — even the Headmaster himself had partnered with him in the Prison of Possibilities. Amelia Bones and her entire staff had been with him when they had gone for Azkaban.

But it was equally true that when shit truly hit the fan, when he was facing the endgame, it had always been himself — alone against the enemy, against overwhelming odds.

Himself — against Quirrell possessed by Voldemort.

Himself — wandless with a bloody sword, against Riddle and the blind basilisk.

Himself — surviving against the hundred dementors.

Himself — against the dragon. Under the lake. In the maze. At the cemetery. Facing Voldemort and Death Eaters alike.

Himself — against the doxies and Walburga Black’s wraith. In the Anima. The Prison of Possibilities. St. Mungo’s. Ekrzidis — the list went on and on. 

This was truly the one time when he was not only facing a potentially delicate and dangerous situation, but also had competent help to boot.

It should’ve made him feel better.

Instead, it elevated his self-doubt. Amelia Bones’s words, while based on neutral fact, had triggered that part of him — part that told him that he would screw this up, like he had screwed up everything else in his life. Yes, his skill was unique, and all skills became more refined when they were properly trained, and since his power was either unidentifiable or misclassified, there was no saying if he had truly explored the true spectrum of his abilities, or was simply floundering.

It was difficult to explain, which was why he hadn’t. 

It was the conflict of the thing; the tension. The difficulty of seeing one thing and knowing another. What they were attempting to do all hinged on one basic, undeniable fact — Harry could see what others couldn’t.

No, that wasn’t right. 

A lot of wizards and witches developed the power of Sight — a way to truly see something, beyond all illusion, in its entirety. But Harry’s Sight wasn’t a function of his empathy, his magic, or even his will. It was... a product of absence. He didn’t see more than others. He saw what remained when everything else had been stripped away.

But the question had to be asked —

Could any of them see something beyond Magic? 

That was the crux of the issue. People saw things based on their own experiences, or how they were wired. An empath would view things differently than a psychopath would. A veela would not appreciate the worldview of a necromancer. Even Luna Lovegood, dunamantist, whose subconscious self was the Avatar of Destiny, would not see things without the effect of magic interweaving between Fate and Destiny and what not.

Maybe there was no reality. Only entangled perspectives. Only illusions stacked atop illusions, until the last one standing was the one that hurt the least to believe. What everyone else was seeing—illusions, perceptions, interpretations—were not an objective form of reality at all, which meant that, conversely, what Harry could see… was. 

He could see, in some sense, reality itself —  a true, unbiased state of it. Beyond the illusions. Beyond duality. Beyond Magic. 

But the closer he looked, the fuzzier it got. 

And that was what told him that his mother Lily had performed some kind of Sanctum Invocation employing a Ritual Circle that very night. That she had attempted to summon something from the Anima to defeat the undefeatable foe that was Voldemort. 

Harry didn’t know whether to call her genius for attempting something so unconventional, or just stupid for trying something that would have horribly murdered, twisted and mutilated their very souls if things went just a bit wrong. Though, in her defence, Voldemort had already killed James Potter, and would have killed her and baby Harry.

She was desperate, and in her desperation, she treaded into a territory that even she didn’t fully understand.

How? Time to find out.

He drew in a deep breath and extended his right hand.

“Here goes nothing.”

A deep purple circular band formed around his fist. The outer rim spun counter-clockwise, engraved with Aztec glyphs that twisted like shackles being unfastened. The inner rings rotated in layered precision, each bearing geometric chains, hexagrammatic locks, and recursive sigils that seemed to bend space into themselves.

His relationship with Binding was a curious one. Death had come to him first — it had chosen him, and from the very moment, asserted its finality, its authority on everything, and Harry himself was no exception. It had taken him months of dedicated effort, exhaustion, and nightmares to get past his crippling limitations to become the hyperspecialized warlock he was. Summer had taken advantage of the thinned barriers inside the Prison of Possibilities and trickled into him, and surged at the most inopportune moments.

But Binding was different. 

Much like plunging his hand into a pit of mirrors and pulling out the one reflection that shouldn’t exist, he reached at it. No diagrams, no incantations, no specific mindsets. Only shapes his mind made in the dark, and the eerie certainty that when he acted, the world would bend, twist, or fracture to make it true.

That was the horror of it. And the beauty.

Harry touched the purple band, and pulled it up his arm, and much to everyone’s surprise, the band obeyed, expanding all the way until it was covering all the way to his elbow. It pulsed, and the nursery room was inundated in white.

Harry Potter was the Gatekeeper, one who had become one with the Animus Eternum and stared directly into the heart of the Abyss and returned. And so, he was genuinely shocked to find the light that erupted in the tiny nursery was painful to look at in its absolute brilliance.

For this was Truth. Magic, in its purest form.

He stared at it anyway, because it was not in him to shrink from pain. The pain roared through every nerve, and he smiled and accepted it as the natural price of viewing a miracle.

....

....

It was a testament to their experience that Albus and the others reacted right on time as Harry Potter did the impossible.

Babajide was quick to whip out a runic shield, while Albus cast his most potent Protego. Amelia was quickly fortifying their defences to make it equivalent to a half a foot thick lead skeleton cloaking them, blocking majority of the dazzling brilliance that illuminated the entire room. And even then, they had to squint their eyes just to see what stood before them.

Gone was the dilapidated nursery, and in its place was…

A Star.

Millions, or perhaps, billions of lumens — coalesced into a small, quasi-solid core, hovering above the crib, where Reality had folded on itself to birth a paradox.

And Harry Potter was just standing there, exposing himself and looking at it directly.

With naked eyes.

Just what are you, Harry? Albus wondered. And what are you becoming? Do you even know that?

“This is…” Babajide began.

“Impossible, yes,” continued Albus Dumbledore, both of their eyes never leaving the room all around them. “But look at it. It’s magnificent.”

“I don’t understand!” said Amelia in a tone closest to a sulk. “How are we even standing here? The bloody house should be vaporized.”

“Because as much as it hurts to admit it, the boy is right,” said Akingbade distastefully. “The power has indeed been present here, trapped in a ritual circle no less. Though how British spellcasters got their hands on magic forbidden even by the Librum Bellum... well, that’s a question Albus will have to answer.”

“Librum Bellum?” asked Harry Potter.

“Something for another time, Harry,” said Albus. “More importantly, are you absolutely certain you can manipulate this without vaporizing all of us, and the entire village in the process?”

“He bloody better be,” yelled Daphne. “I didn’t just get cured from the blood curse to get roasted before the day was over.”

Harry snorted. “Never change, Daphne.”

“No promises,” she said, grinning like a shark. “But seriously Harry, think you can get this right?”

Ah, young love, Albus thought. Maybe it was the sudden de-shackling from all his roles and mantles that was making him feel so upbeat. Or perhaps it was because he knew that Harry’s actions, no matter how destructive, had brought about a drastic paradigm shift in their world. Or… he mused, because he was finally about to witness the revealing of the mystery that had plagued him since that night in 1981.

‘I think so,” said the boy. “But if we die or go insane, you have permission to hate me.”

“Wait!” said Babajide. “Potter… what does it look like to you?”

“It?” asked Harry.

“That coalesced power,” said Babajide. “For us, it’s like standing in the memory of a dying star — too bright to endure, yet already gone. All the light, but none of the heat. How does it appear to you?”

That took Albus by surprise. 

"The problem with seeing the world differently is, you stop trusting what you know. You see a fire, and sure, you think it's fire — heat, light, smoke, smell, pain. You’ve been told it’s fire. Taught it burns. Learned to stay the hell away. But what if that’s just the name someone gave it?”

“It’s not just the name,” said Amelia Bones. “It’s fire because it feels like fire. It burns. It cleanses. All of its properties match what we identify as fire.”

“Yes, but knowing a few of its attributes isn’t knowing the true thing,” said Babajide. “I imagine there would be little differences for elemental energies, but for complex things, like enchantments, rituals or perhaps, life — things might just be different. How does magic look, when you cast its cloak aside, and look at it from the universe’s point of view? What if Potter’s looking at something we can’t even name?”

And just like that,  marvelled Albus, he cuts to the issue. 

“If Potter’s vision indeed bypasses magic, how do you know it doesn’t bypass anything else?”

Albus narrowed his eyes. Akingbade was no longer talking about the anti-magic mechanics of Death, but its effect upon the natural world. It was akin to using a particular prismatic glass that only allowed a singular color, or colors, to pass through it, while absorbing the rest. So if Death energy could block or at least, interact with the world beyond Magic, then what else could it do?

Harry seemed to have gotten a hunch, for he gently twisted his wrist, and the massive glowing heart of a star dimmed, vanishing into apparent nothingness, leaving behind the nursery room exactly how they had seen it just a moment earlier. Had he not seen it happen, he himself would’ve been convinced that there hadn’t been anything else earlier.

Graduated over a hundred years, still feeling like my first day at Hogwarts.

“Harry does have an affinity for freezing charms, I’m told.”

Babajide nodded and turned to Harry himself, who nodded in affirmation. “It’s not exactly the freezing charm. I mean, it does create ice in general, but if I use it on a solid surface —”

“It disintegrates them?”

Harry blinked. “Yes.”

“Entropy reduction,” murmured the ICW newest Chief Warlock. “So, not only can his power negate magic, it can also negate entropy. With nothing but a flick of his hand, he’s able to break the laws of thermodynamics just like that.”

“I did say it’s a paradigm shift,” Albus suggested.

“Don’t start,” murmured Babajide. “Very well, I was rather skeptical about your wonder boy, but you have me convinced. I’ll withdraw my opposition at the ICW.”

“Wait, I thought—” Harry began.

“That I’m a power-seeking bastard that took advantage of Albus’s chink in the armor — that’s you— to bag the Supreme Mugump’s job that I’ve been supposedly eyeing for decades? Believe me, boy, when you’ve seen and lived as much as I have, you’ll learn to appreciate the freedom that the lack of official mantles can give you, as I’m certain Albus here can talk at length.”

Harry had the modesty to look away, blushing.

“Albus here approached me with your case, revealing his memories about your stunt at your Wizengamot. While your rashness concerns me, your actions, especially your defiance of the Black Family magic tells me that you have truly taken up the mantle of a protector. As a fellow protector, I can acknowledge that. Despite your tendency towards frivolity, immaturity and… should I say,” he gave a dirty glance at Amelia, “refusal to utterly decimate enemies despite knowing the risks, you have proven yourself capable to refute against them unbendingly. For that, I approve.”

“You cannot say he should’ve killed —” Amelia began hotly.

“I have made a cursory study of the people that raised a storm at your Wizengamot against the boy, Minister,” said Akingbade slowly, but no less sternly. “Trust me, had such a thing happened in Uganda, those very people would have been instantly captured, and fed to Kukulkan, by the Mambas themselves. As the Mamba commander for decades, I can assure you of that.”

“Feed them?” asked Amelia, horrified.

“Kukulkan?” asked Harry.

“A giant runespoor,” said Akingbade. “I believe it was your Britisher, Professor Scamander, that left her with us. I hadn’t believed it was possible for runespoors to get any bigger, but then Albus came and proved me wrong.”

Daphne snorted. “Harry was barely satisfied with its size. You should’ve seen how concerned he was for its safety.”

“That monster needs safety?” Amelia asked, a tick forming on her forehead.

“Yes!” Harry defended, just as strongly. “Those bloody Unspeakables ripped one of her heads to shreds!”

“Which grew back!” Amelia shot back, just as hotly. “And it destroyed their best maritime unit.”

“If Croaker loved his ship that bloody much, he shouldn’t have sent it loitering around where it shouldn’t have been.”

Albus’s eyes just twinkled madly.

“Enough of this ruckus,” said Akingbade. “Potter, you haven’t answered me. What does it look like to you?”

“Um, particles,” said the boy slowly, oblivious to the looks the others were giving him. “Shining particles, but particles. Everything feels grayscale and dimmed while I’m, well, like this. And… if I strain myself, I can maybe… see its trajectory, where it’s coming from, and where it’ll be in like, five seconds from now?”

Everyone, including Albus Dumbledore was gaping at him.

“You never told me you could see the future!” demanded Daphne hotly.

“I can’t,” Harry said, and Albus marvelled how a young man that had decimated Ekrizdis, saved the world, and drove the British Wizengamot to ruins was now backstepping before the wrath of his fiancee.

And here he thought that Harry wasn’t smart.

At Miss Greengrass’s dagger-like glare, and… he supposed, Amelia’s hawk-like stare, Harry defended himself. “Really, I can’t. Seeing a spell is simple. It’s just a particle, or a group of particles, travelling in a single line. Or maybe even a solid object, maybe something small. Like say, a snitch. But the most I can do is either get out of the way or do something to intercept them.”

“And humans?” asked the Minister.

“Too complex,” said Harry, frowning. “Too many factors, variables, emotions, magics… it’s one big mess. Disintegration’s my thing, not conjuration.”

“What if there are  multiple of these spells in motion?”

“I’d say their nature would reveal them.”

“And if they’re the same?”

Albus had the sneaking suspicion that Babajide was almost trying to lure Harry into a trick question… or an epiphany.

Harry frowned. “Then their trajectories will be different. Multiple spells cannot occupy the same space at the same time.”

Babajide didn’t move for a moment after Harry’s answer. He just studied the boy as though weighing him against something Albus couldn’t see. Then, with a flick of his staff, two balls appeared in his hand — one red, one green, the rubber faintly gleaming in the starlit haze still clinging to the nursery.

“Watch,” Akingbade said.

He dropped them.

The red and green spheres bounced across the cracked floorboards, the dull thunk-thunk-thunk echoing in the strange, muted light. On the third bounce, Babajide’s hand twitched. 

The balls froze mid-air.

Harry tilted his head, wary.

“Now,” the Ugandan said, “I shall reverse it.”

It was like someone had pressed a rewind charm on the world. The balls snapped backward — same arcs, same bounces, the same squeak of rubber against warped wood — until they landed neatly back in his palm. Not conjured back, not summoned. Simply undone.

Harry frowned. “Alright… what was I supposed to see?”

“Heat,” Babajide said, voice flat. “A stranger walking in now would see nothing — no change to the system at all. To those of us present, they bounced forward, then backward. But the truth? They transacted with the laws of energy twice. Once in motion, once in reversal. But you…” He pointed the red ball at Harry like a wand. “You can see more than just that, can’t you?”

“I already told you I can sense the energy trajectories —”

“Yes, but is there a difference?” demanded the Mamba Commander. “The balls halted at the third bounce, and started the same way, traced the same steps. But did their energies contain anything that they didn’t, the first time? Or perhaps… something more than what they contained the last time?”

“Just what are you looking for, Babajide?” asked Albus, curious.

“Time.”

This time it was him that everyone was gaping at.

“I can’t do Time magic,” said Harry.

“Can’t you?” challenged Babajide. “And here I thought you temporally insulted the Eternum suit that Ekrizdis was using for his great preparation. Sounds awfully like time magic to me.”

“Um, Mr. Akingbade,” Daphne Greengrass stepped in. “I don’t think the two are really the same thing. I mean, the balls aren’t exactly going back and forth in time, are they?”

“No, but the way back is the future self of the way forward, isn’t it? The balls were travelling back, so they must have reached there someway. And if they did that, then it has a temporal signature that’s different from say, the ones that are travelling back. And I want to know if your fiance can see the difference.”

“Even so, you said that the energy released would do business with thermodynamics, and this is… well, an open system. How is it even possible to measure anything like that?”

“But time-travel isn’t an open system, Daphne,” said Harry of all people, surprising them. “It’s a loop. At least, on the temporal side of things.”

“Yes,” said the Ugandan, smiling.

Albus met Babajide’s gaze. “Are you telling us that —”

“That it might be possible to actually revert time back to 1981,” said Harry, his voice shaking at his own revelation. “And reveal exactly what happened that night. If… if I can identify the differences in ‘time energy’ and recreate the moment. See exactly what transpired the night… Voldemort killed my parents and made me the Boy-Who-Lived.”