PRIORI INCANTATEM

2. Minister's Rants

Harry felt himself slam into the ground; his face was pressed into the grass; the small of it filled its nostrils. He kept his eyes closed. He did not move. All the breath seemed to been knocked out of him; his head was swimming so badly he felt as though the ground beneath him were swaying like a deck of a ship.

He felt a soft hand on his shoulder, his mother's hand. He shut his eyes even more tightly, as though on opening them he would find his parents and Cedric gone.

A torrent of sound deafened and confused him; there were voices everywhere, footsteps. . . .

"Harry! Harry!" It was Hermione. "Harry, why are there two of you?"

"Hello Professor Dumbledore. I think you might be able to recognize me even after a long time of being dead!" he heard his father saying.

"James?" Dumbledore was dumbfounded.

"He's back," Harry shouted. "He's back. Voldemort."

"What's going on? What's happened?"

The face of Cornelius Fudge appeared upside down over Harry, it looked white, appalled.

"My God — James — Lily!" it whispered. "Dumbledore — they're supposed to be dead!"

The words repeated, the shadowy figures pressing in on them gasped it to those around them . . . and then others shouted it — screeched it — into the night — "Potters are alive!" "They're alive!" "James and Lily! Alive!"

"Bertha Jorkins?" Fudge asked.

"You-Know-Who's back!" she whispered.

"Harry will need to go to the hospital wing!" Fudge was saying loudly as Dumbledore was talking to James and Lily.

"I'll take Harry, Dumbledore, I'll take him —"

"No, I would prefer —"

"Harry, stay here —" he heard Dumbledore say.

(A/N: I will prefer not to repeat the scene where Moody takes him to the office, and then reveals the truth under Veritaserum, so to the time Dumbledore is taking Harry back to his office!)

"I want you to come up to my office, Harry," he said quietly as they headed up the passageway. "Sirius and the rest are waiting for us there."

Harry nodded.

Dumbledore helped him to reach the stone gargoyle. Dumbledore gave the password, it sprang aside, and he and Harry went up the moving spiral staircase to the oak door. Dumbledore pushed it open. Sirius was standing there, his face white and gaunt.

"Harry, are you all right? I knew it — I knew something like this — what happened?"

His hands shook as he helped Harry into a chair in front of the desk.

"Sirius, I want you to meet some people, who, under some strange circumstances, have been restored to life. Harry here will explain later, what exactly happened."

As if on cue, James and Lily entered the room from the door leading to Headmaster's private quarters.

"Prongs?" a surprised Sirius asked as happiness flooded through his eyes for a splitting second. The moment passed. "Who the hell are you? Thinking it is funny to —"

"Padfoot! It's really us!" James said.

"Turn into Prongs, if you even know what I mean," Sirius stated.