Disclaimer:
Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
Chapter 5: Study Time!
"Yes!" Harry yelled as he flew around the castle, dodging the towers and passing under the arcs.
He then flew all over the Quidditch field.
"I missed this so much!."
After getting a bit tired, he stood floating in the air over the field, looking at the castle.
While doing so, an idea came to his mind.
"Of course, why didn't I think of that before."
Harry flew towards the Gryffindor tower and started to look through the windows until he found the room that he was looking for.
After unlocking the window, he went in and started to look around his room, not really surprised to find it empty, but it was still disappointing.
He found his old trunk in the same place he had left it.
"Well, at least I can change clothes now."
He decided to take a shower and go to sleep since he was feeling very tired after the long day.
<><><><><><><>
The next morning, Harry went directly to the castle kitchens, using the secret entrance behind the fruit painting.
"Good thing that Fred and George told me about this. Otherwise, it would be a pain to find something to eat."
As Harry went through the newly opened door, he realized something and turned around to look at the entrance.
But then he stopped, as he just realized something weird. "Wait…why did that entrance work, but the one at the Gryffindor room didn't?"
Harry felt that he was missing some piece of information. There must be a difference between the painting of the 'bowl of fruit' and the one of the 'Fat Lady.'
"Is it because the painting of the 'Fat Lady' is a living painting?..."
He then shrugged and decided to forget about it for now. He already had way too many questions, but not a lot of answers. So for now, he just wanted to have some breakfast.
Harry was very impressed by the amount of food that was stored in the kitchen.
There were cabinets containing hundreds of pounds of meat and shelves with boxes of vegetables and fruits of all kinds.
"If the preserving charms still work, I have enough food here to last me a century." Harry chuckled at the ridiculous thought of being stuck in this empty world for that long.
He decided to prepare some sausages and fried eggs. Once the meal was ready, he sat down at one of the kitchen tables and started to eat.
A deep frown appeared on his face as he took the first bite of sausage.
"I was hoping this would be better…"
The meal he had just prepared had the same problem as the sandwiches and snacks he had eaten the previous days. There was barely any flavor there, but he made sure to season the food properly, and he remembered these sausages being delicious in the past.
After his...once again, disappointing meal, Harry went to visit the owlery.
He did anticipate it to be empty, but not this empty. Not only were the owls missing, but the place was completely clean of any mess the owls had made.
"There isn't even a single feather here."
It was like there had never been an animal in here. And like the rest of the castle, there was a characteristic lack of smell in the place.
Harry looked towards the spot where his owl usually rested.
"Hedwig…I hope you are doing fine, wherever you are."
<><><><><><><><><>
A few days had passed after his arrival, and Harry hadn't made much progress, much to his dismay.
He had gone over all of the books that even mentioned time travel or time turners, but they had nothing that could explain his situation.
Harry turned his gaze towards the forbidden section of the library.
"Well…it's not like anyone can stop me now."
This section of the library was very small and only contained around one hundred tomes.
After an exhaustive search, Harry only found a single book on the relevant matter, but he also found a book about Occlumency called "The Mind Arts."
"This is what Snape was trying to teach me, if you can call that teaching. Maybe I'll just learn it on my own. That would show him!" Harry chuckled and went back to his table.
<><><><><><><><>
The next day, Harry was walking around the seventh floor.
The book that he found in the forbidden section had a very detailed report about a time travel experiment conducted during the 20s.
A woman named Penelope Lothart had managed to travel almost three hundred years into the past and came back to tell the tale.
However, soon after her return, she started to suffer the side effects of time travel.
She was perfectly fine during her trip to the past, but after coming back, her skin started to wrinkle and her hair turned gray. She was aging at an accelerated pace. The woman only lasted three days, and the other researchers came to the conclusion that when someone comes back to the present, that person would age the total number of years that he/she had just traveled.
In the case of Penelope, she had aged three hundred years in a period of three days, turning her into a corpse.
After that day, the Time Department of the Ministry declared that the maximum amount of time one was allowed to travel was one week, and later on, it was changed to one day.
Harry found the story interesting, but he found no connection with what happened to him.
Whatever the time turners did to him, they did not send him back in time. This was neither the past nor the future.
Instead, it was more like a place frozen in time, and Harry was its only inhabitant.
He stopped in front of the gargoyle that led to the Headmaster's office and pulled his wand.
During these last few days, Harry had been learning more than just time travel theory. He had also been looking for one particular spell that would give him access to Dumbledore's office.
With his wand properly aimed at his target, Harry cast the spell. "Bombarda!"