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Harry Potter and the Ritual of Love's Memory | ||||||
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Category: Post-HBP Characters:All Genres: Action/Adventure, General, Romance Warnings: Death, Mild Language, Mild Sexual Situations, Violence Rating: PG-13 Reviews: 259 Summary: After the horcrux hunt implodes leaving most of those Harry loves dead, he starts a new life with a few fellow survivors far away from wizarding Britain. But the discovery of an ancient ritual that promises to send a single memory back in time sparks hope that maybe things can change. Dark ending to DH followed by a tweaked retelling of GoF through DH. Harry/Ginny. Friday updates. Original Timeline Voldemort's Victory - Chapter 1-5 (Feel free to skip if you don't like major character deaths) Tenochtitlán - Chapter 6-9 New Timeline Harry's 4th Year - Chapter 10-28 Harry's 5th Year - Chapter 29-68 Harry's 6th Year - Chapter 69-Current Hitcount: Story Total: 169424; Chapter Total: 1454 Awards: View Trophy Room |
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Being a sixth year had its perks. From his position fairly close to the front of the Gryffindor table, Harry was able to watch the nervous First Years milling about just beyond a set of open double doors. They looked even tinier than he remembered. His mind flew back to his near terror while waiting to be sorted all those years ago, Malfoy's offer of friendship at the expense of Ron (which he couldn't be happier that he'd turned down), and the desperate argument with the Sorting Hat to ensure he wasn't placed in Slytherin. He tried to give an encouraging smile with a wave of his hand to a small brown-haired girl with glasses, who reminded him a bit of Hermione, but she didn't see his gesture. Professor McGonagall called for the first of the new students to come be sorted, Adaine Abernant, who was quickly placed into Ravenclaw. Harry watched the gaggle of First Years as they released a tiny bit of their tension. He wondered how many wild ideas of what sorting would entail were melting away as the second student approached the Sorting Hat. Harry's attention shifted from the group of First Years over to the staff table, making sure not to make eye contact with the headmaster. He hadn't spoken to Professor Dumbledore since the explosive meeting after the Gringotts break-in. This was mostly because the aged man had not come back to Grimmauld Place in the month since that fateful night, though the distance between them felt almost more now that they were in the same room. The sound of Kingsley's quiet fury and the look of misery on Remus' face had been burned into Harry's mind, and he struggled to push the thought of them away, despite the general excitement of the Welcome Feast. Several new faces peered out across the students from the staff table, including one Harry recognized immediately. Bill sat between Professor Sprout and Hagrid, whispering conspiratorially with the gamekeeper and causing the large man to stifle a laugh behind his hand. Ginny had given her eldest brother a long, exasperated look from her spot next to Harry, but Bill had simply nodded to her politely before returning to his conversation. Near the end of the staff table sat two people Harry didn't recognize, but both of whom looked more elderly than anyone he'd ever beheld. There was a wizard whose head was completely bald, other than a small strip of short, ghostly white hair that extended from behind his ear around the back of his head to his other ear. He was slight in build and somehow made Dumbledore look like a strapping young man in comparison. Next to him sat a witch who looked every bit as old as the man sitting next to her. Her wispy, white hair draped down over her shoulders. Harry could see her dark eyes shone with intensity despite her advanced years. Instead of a highbacked chair like the other professors, the woman was seated in a wheelchair. She and the man to her left spoke to each other in hushed whispers as the last of the first years were sorted. Before Harry could spend too much time considering the mysterious new staff members, Dumbledore had risen to address the Great Hall. "It will not do to stand between such excellent students and such a delectable feast. I invite each of you to tuck in!" Though Harry knew what to expect from a Welcome Feast at Hogwarts, the gasps of tiny first years combined with the overwhelming scent of the delicious food spread before him were enough to leave him awash in good feelings. A savory aroma wafted up from the massive ham that Ron went for first, but Harry began with a piping hot stew and bread that must have come out of the oven moments before it appeared on the table. Soon, the Great Hall descended into an excited murmur of clinking silverware and muffled conversations being conducted impolitely by a ravenous student body excited to reconnect with each other. The cacophony gave Harry a feeling of home. Once the meal was wrapping up, the headmaster again stood and attempted to reclaim the attention of the students. Harry noticed that Ron was not the only one attempting to finish the last remnants off his plate before the feast disappeared. "Welcome to another year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry! Now that you have been well filled with food and drink, let us discuss the plans to fill your minds with knowledge." Dumbledore gestured grandly to both sides of the table and smiled broadly. "Three new professors sit amongst our number to take up the mantles of three who have moved on to different opportunities." The headmaster waited a moment as a burst of excited conversations bubbled up from speculative students, raising his hand for quiet before continuing. "First of all, Professor Septima Vector has stepped away from Hogwarts to pursue her interest in Theoretical Arithmancy in Germany. While her students will no doubt miss her, our school is fortunate to have found a replacement who has utilized practical Arithmancy in his former career as a curse breaker. Please join me in welcoming Professor Bill Weasley!" The Gryffindor table cheered loudest at Bill's introduction, but Harry noticed a number of other students giving the young and rather handsome new professor approving looks. Bill waved politely to the four tables but gave a roguish grin and wink to his siblings. Ginny looked positively gobsmacked that her certainty that he would teach Defense had been misplaced. "Additionally, Professor Binns made the difficult decision to move on from his position teaching the History of Magic. In his stead, an old friend of mine has agreed to lend his considerable experience and expertise to the subject for this school year. I am greatly pleased to introduce Professor Nicolas Flamel!" A polite smattering of applause rose from the students as the old man gave a quick nod and raised his hand in recognition. Flashes of Harry's first year rapidly whirled through his brain. Spending months scouring the library for any hint of who Nicolas Flamel was. The realization that the man had created the Philosopher's Stone and had been alive over 600 years, Dumbledore's assurance that the stone would be destroyed to prevent it from falling into Voldemort's hands, and that Nicolas and his wife would die soon thereafter. The color drained from Hermione's face as she stared at Professor Flamel, while Ron had an expression as if someone had struck him with a beater's bat in the back of the head. The three of them gazed toward the staff table in disbelief as the headmaster began to introduce the last of the new professors. "After the educational experience during Professor Umbridge's tenure at Hogwarts, I knew it was imperative to bring in someone with both experience in Defense Against the Dark Arts and the will to teach you well. For that reason, it gives me great pleasure to present Professor Perenelle Flamel!" More applause sounded for the second Professor Flamel, possibly because she was replacing such a universally loathed figure in Umbridge. Her husband joined in excitedly clapping for her before raising her hand in his to the students. Dumbledore resolutely continued with notices and admonishments, including a note from Filch that any product from Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes was strictly prohibited, but Harry was too flabbergasted by the two professors to pay any attention. Questions swirled in his head as he peered at the new Defense and History professors. Suddenly, the Great Hall sprung into motion as the students began standing up and heading toward their common rooms, chattering excitedly as the swaths of people gradually began to clear out. Harry tried to catch Hermione's attention in hopes that she would have some answers about the Flamels, but she was already moving to help herd a pack of first years toward an enchanted staircase. With a wide-eyed glance over her shoulder at Harry and Ginny, she called out, "Tonight in the common room!" before hurrying with Ron to attend to their prefect duties. "Arithmancy?!" exclaimed Ginny in a frustrated huff. "I should have thought of that! Come on, Harry. Let's go have a chat with Bill…" He felt a tug on his elbow as Ginny pulled him to his feet and toward the staff table, where the professors were milling about while chatting with each other and the few students who'd stepped over to say hello to them. "Why, hello students!" greeted Bill with a mischievous smile. "Ms. Weasley and Mr. Potter, I presume?" "None of that, Bill! I've got half a mind to show you how strong my Bat Bogey Hex has gotten since you taught it to me." Ginny's hands were on her hips, which reminded Harry of a smaller version of Mrs. Weasley preparing to upbraid one of her offspring. "I thought I had it all worked out that you were taking over the Defense post, only to find that you've been holding out on us about your job teaching Arithmancy?" "What can I say, Ginevra?" "Don't you call me that, especially when I'm mad at you!" interrupted Ginny, her brown eyes flashing dangerously. "Why couldn't you have let your favorite sister in on it?" "Sorry, but Professor Dumbledore swore me to secrecy," he replied, a charming grin growing on his lips. "But if I could've told you, you know I would have." Harry thought that his girlfriend still appeared frustrated, but she hugged her brother nonetheless. As she released Bill, Harry barely heard her whisper, "You're going to pay for that, William." A positively devious smile was plastered across her face as she strode back to take Harry's hand, and the confident look on Bill's face faltered slightly. "I understand I won't get to have you in class, Harry. That's a shame since I've heard some of the other professors tell some fairly interesting tales about you as a student. Got a bit of a scoop from Remus during the party, and it seems like you've been known to keep your professors on their toes." The three chatted amiably for several minutes. Despite how much Bill had loved curse-breaking, he seemed genuinely thrilled about becoming a professor. He relayed how an apologetic Dumbledore had approached him about the position soon after news of Bill's and Fleur's dismissal had become known. It was unsurprising to Harry that the headmaster had sought to mend fences by offering Bill a job and speaking to a few of his connections at the Ministry about what a fine addition to their team that Fleur would be. Harry didn't think he knew Bill well enough to be certain, but he seemed to have put the animosity and frustration from the summer behind him. None of the other professors remained by the time Bill said goodnight to Harry and Ginny as the two made their way to Gryffindor Tower. Harry would have liked to speak with the Flamels, but supposed that it was best to wait for Hermione and Ron before beginning working through the litany of questions that were certain to spring to their minds. Harry and Ginny waited as patiently as they could for Ron and Hermione to return from their duties. They chatted with housemates and introduced themselves to some of the new Gryffindors, many of whom looked awestruck to be meeting "the real-life Harry Potter!" Their exuberance about his fame wasn't unexpected, but he looked forward to inevitably becoming just another fixture in the common room over the next few weeks. Katie Bell talked with the two of them for several minutes about quidditch, her Captain's badge pinned to her chest. After losing more than half of the starters that had finished the previous season undefeated, her nervousness about tryouts was understandable. Despite the challenges ahead, all three felt relatively positive about some of the options available to fill in the holes in the lineup. With Katie and Ginny returning to the team and Demelza's impressive showing during the matches at the Burrow, the starting chaser positions were looking relatively strong. Despite failing to capture the snitch in the final match, Katie assured Harry that his position as seeker was not in jeopardy. Katie wanted to bring on a reserve to prepare for the spot she would be vacating after this year, and who might be able to help out in the event Harry missed a match and Ginny had to switch back to seeker. All of those challenges paled in comparison to replacing Fred and George. The two of them had played in every Gryffindor match since they'd taken over the beater positions midway through their second year and had been the backbone of their team. Jimmy Peakes looked to be a decent fill-in, but Harry didn't know of anyone to pair with him. Thankfully, Katie already had thought through an option. Frobisher had been a decent enough keeper prospect but had yet to get onto the pitch due to how well Ron had been playing. Instead of leaving her as Ron's backup, Katie had convinced the seventh year to slot into the second beater spot alongside Peakes. The two communicated well from a year of practicing together as reserves and they'd both run some of the beater drills against the twins. All in all, Harry thought it was just about as smooth a transition as one could hope for on a team losing four starters. Katie planned to hold tryouts within two weeks to determine who would end up as the reserves and she was quick to remind Harry that she wanted all the starters available, so he had better stay out of detention. His mind flitted back to serving his first detentions with Umbridge the previous fall and hoped that none of this year's professors would have it out for him. Neville joined them not too long before Ron and Hermione bustled through the portrait hole a few minutes after curfew alongside two guilty-looking third years. Hermione, who had clearly been in the middle of a stern monologue about following the rules while escorting the students back to the common room, finished with the two of them while Ron hurried over to the couch. "How're prefect duties?" asked Harry as Ron flung himself into an armchair, who groaned in frustration as he glanced over his shoulder at the two third years scampering up the stairs to their dormitory. "That bad?" "I don't know," hedged Ron, making sure Hermione wasn't within earshot. "It's got decent enough parts, like the prefect's washroom and getting to be out in the halls later. I just didn't really know how much of it would be making people follow the rules. Sometimes, it feels a little too Percy-ish for me." Ginny laughed, shifting closer to Harry to make room for Hermione on the couch. "I don't think you have to worry about becoming too much like him. Can't imagine you swooning over reading through cauldron thickness or the details hidden in a bunch of Wizengamot legislation. Did you get the third years sorted out?" Hermione rolled her eyes. "There were so many students out roaming the halls right up to curfew! We caught several couples 'getting reacquainted with each other' right there in the corridors. It was such an absolute disaster that I've barely had time to properly think through what's happening with the new professors!" Harry chose not to bring up the fact that he and Ginny had taken a circuitous route back to Gryffindor Tower after their conversation with Bill, instead choosing to stealthily squeeze Ginny's hand before responding. "I've been trying to think of everything Professor Dumbledore said about the Flamels at the end of our first year, but it's been so long that everything's kind of fuzzy. Still, I do remember him saying that the stone was going to be destroyed and that the Flamels were going to die." With a nod of her head, Hermione picked up where he left off. "Yes, that's what you told us afterward in the hospital wing. Their being alive doesn't make any sense… If the stone really has been destroyed, how could they have stayed alive all this time? It's been more than four years!" "I don't know, but I'm kind of hopeful about both their classes now," interjected Ginny. "They've got to be upgrades over the professors they replaced!" "Not exactly a hard bar to clear," added Ron with a rueful chuckle. "You might end up missing Binns if History of Magic ends up requiring more essays and you can't nap in the class anymore…" "Neither of you decided to take the NEWT-level course for history, right?" asked Hermione. Both Harry and Ron shook their heads since neither had any desire to keep muddling through what had been one of the most useless classes they'd taken. "I had gone back and forth about it, but as a Muggle-born it's so important for me to understand magical history. I'm quite pleased to have chosen to continue with it now that Professor Flamel will be teaching. He's lived through so much of the history we'll be studying, so he should have some incredible insights!" "I'm more interested in what Defense is going to be like," relayed Harry, slight trepidation in his voice. "She's got to be better than Umbridge, but I'm a little worried that Defense Club might be more necessary than we'd hoped. With all the things we've learned about using mobility as an advantage from Moody and the others, she might be at a disadvantage teaching since she's, y'know, in a wheelchair." "Maybe she'll mostly go over spellwork in the regular class and Advanced Defense will cover what she can't do?" suggested Hermione with a shrug. "But Mad-Eye's always talking about how to use movement to even the playing field," countered Ron. "You'd think Dumbledore would want everyone to get a chance to get better at it, not just the advanced students…" "I don't know," hedged Neville, a little sheepish to be disagreeing. "My great-grandfather was supposed to be a really good duelist, and he was in a wheelchair. She might be better than we expect…" Ginny shrugged. "I guess we could get a feel for how the normal Defense class goes, then see what we need to change for the club to help fill in a gap?" The sixth years agreed with the sentiment. All of them talked and speculated about how the new term would go for a while longer before each retired to their own dormitories for some rest before their first day of classes. ~RLM~ This first week was quite different from what Harry had grown to expect over the previous five years. Instead of multiple packed classes in the morning and afternoon, usually populated by all of the Gryffindors and others from his year from one of the other three houses, now his classes were longer but more sparsely populated. When his NEWT Transfiguration class began on Monday after breakfast, he wondered where the rest of the students were only to realize that the class size had been nearly halved. The afternoon Charms class had a few more students present, but it was still a bit of an adjustment to have every house represented in class. Partway through the week, Dumbledore rose to address the students during lunch. He announced that an entrance exam for the Advanced Defense course would be held on Saturday morning, and any fifth year students or older wishing to attend needed to prove their mettle in the Defense Chamber. Harry wasn't too nervous about the tryout, but there was a nagging doubt in the back of his mind about how it would look if he wasn't able to pass the test. Harry was one of the few students who made it into Snape's NEWT Potions class. He sat between Hermione and Parvati, whom he had spent so much time studying for OWLs alongside. Susan Bones, Anthony Goldstein, Daphne Greengrass, and Terry Boot rounded out the smallest class Harry had ever attended. He relished that none out of Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle were present to make life more difficult. Snape's lesson regarding the Draught of Living Death was more detailed than how he presented to the lower years, and he generally sneered less and gave more helpful instructions during class. The professor still made a few snide remarks about Harry's brewing acumen when the steam rising from his potion was slightly yellowish instead of green, but when the class finished and Harry deposited his phial of potion on Snape's desk it looked remarkably similar to what his peers had turned in. It wasn't a particularly enjoyable class, by any means, but Harry felt as though he'd done well enough to merit decent marks and hadn't embarrassed himself. It occurred to Harry afterward that a major cause of his frustrations in Potions had been proximity to Malfoy and his cronies. With Snape turning a blind eye to anything the three of them did, the class used to be a combination of challenging work, tuning out goading insults, and protecting his potion from tampering from the Slytherins. With them excised from the class, it was much easier to focus on what he was doing. He didn't think he would ever be a potioneer prodigy, but his relative success in the first class back sparked hope that he might yet be able to pursue becoming an Auror. Despite a few whispers that Defense Against the Dark Arts had improved dramatically, Harry still approached the class with a nervous pessimism. After abysmal professors like Lockhart, Quirrell, and Umbridge, he couldn't help setting his expectations low for how much he would actually glean from the class. Lupin remained the shining example of how useful a Defense professor could be, even though the fake Moody had done a surprisingly decent job of teaching the subject matter. As he trudged to the classroom, he hoped to himself that the new professor would manage to at least clear the exceedingly low bar to end up in the top half of those who had taught defense. He was glad to see that the room was the most full out of any of his classes. Every student attending the class had been a member of the Defense Club, which filled Harry with a sense of pride. He settled into a seat at the back of the class amongst Ron, Hermione, Blaise, and Daphne, wondering what the new term in Defense had in store. |
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