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 6: A Goal
The gargoyle exploded into a thousand pieces of debris that flew everywhere.
"Ha! Take that, for ignoring me!" Harry exclaimed with satisfaction at the inanimate object he had just destroyed.
However, his job was not yet done, as there was still a wall behind the statue that led to the stairs, and Harry needed two more uses of the Bombarda spell to break a hole big enough for him.
He then climbed the stairs and found himself inside the Headmaster's office.
"Finally!" He took a moment to relax. Just being in here was making him feel at peace.
Harry had been in this office during many important moments of his life during the last five years, and now, all of those memories were coming back to him as he observed the empty room.
He looked behind him, at the paintings of the previous Headmasters. In the past, he had talked with them a few times, but now, they seemed to be just normal paintings.
"I'm sorry about the invasion of privacy, Professor, but this is necessary."
Harry then started to go through every nook and cranny of the office, looking for anything that could be remotely useful to him.
He found the destroyed diary of Tom Riddle from his second year, a drawer filled with lemon candies, and another one containing some strange tools. There was a small device with a wheel mounted on a bronze structure that was constantly spinning. The other object was a sharp crystal with runes carved into it, a small red dot inside, and a rope tied around it.
"I wonder what that's for…" It appears that the Headmaster had been collecting strange artifacts for a very long time and kept them all inside his office.
Unfortunately, without a set of instructions, Harry had no clue what these things were for or how to use them.
A bit disappointed with his lack of progress, Harry finally turned towards the small library located in the furthest corner of the office.
Even a novice like him could tell that the tomes in that small library were all extremely rare.
"Okay...time to read." He never thought he would get excited about the idea of studying.
'If Ron were here, he would surely make fun of me.' Harry thought. 'But then again...Hermione would be proud.'
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The boy was comfortably seated on the Headmaster's chair, surrounded by books that had been divided into several piles. The small stack on the left contained the already-examined ones, and the large ones on the right were the ones he had yet to read.
He was taking his time going through them. He didn't want to risk missing anything important.
There were books about all sorts of subjects like alchemy, transfiguration, history… Harry even found several books that went into very detailed explanations on rituals and other forbidden magics, much to his surprise.
"I suppose you need to know about the Dark Arts in order to oppose them."
In total, it took him two weeks to go through all of the books in that small library, and he only did a surface reading of them. The contents of the books were very complicated, and his understanding of the subjects was still lacking.
He did, however, find one book that went into great depth on the topic of time travel and Time-Turners.
The book contained a description of how to make a Time-Turner, but it purposely omitted several steps and ingredients, claiming that only the Department of Time in the Ministry possessed the full instructions, guarded under the watchful eyes of the Unspeakables.
Harry also found another interesting thing in that book. There was a section containing warnings when handling the dust inside Time-Turners. It said that if someone came into direct contact with it, the effects could be unpredictable.
It described several examples of real incidents that occurred to Ministry personnel, like people jumping back or forward for short amounts of time.
But to Harry, the most interesting incident was one where a researcher was accidentally covered by the dust. The witnesses mentioned a small silver mist that appeared close to the researcher's face.
What they described next made Harry's blood run cold. After being touched by the mist, the researcher seemed to have been frozen like a statue for five seconds before disappearing.
Moments later, after this happened, a very rugged researcher entered the room and told his companions that he had spent an entire week in what seemed to be a world frozen in time, with no people or animals.
"A week?!… and he was only touched by a tiny amount of that mist. The one that hit me came from hundreds of broken Time-Turners. How long will I be here if I don't find another way?… a year?… a decade?… or maybe forever."
Harry decided that he didn't want to think about it. He needed to stay positive and believe that he would find a way to fix the problem.
"Right… the next step is to search the Ministry until I find what I need. If I can find a way to create another Time-Turner, I can probably use it to kick-start time or something… I know, it sounds ridiculous, but it's all I have, okay?" Harry spoke to no one in particular
Recently, he had started to pretend that he was talking to someone in order to ease his loneliness.
"That can wait until tomorrow. Tonight I'm going to make myself a 'tasty' meal and rest."
Harry smiled as he left the office. His situation may be dire, but at least now he has a clear goal in mind.
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