Next Time Around

The Room

'Yeah mate me too. It's getting boring here.'

Well... boring would be an exaggeration, in Harry's opinion, but he did see where Ron was coming from.

'It does get rather repetitive after a couple of days huh?' Ron nodded.

'Yeah. And I don't really understand more that half of what they're actually saying, talking in scientific terms like that.' Harry grinned. He knew exactly what Ron was going on about. When Hermione started going into her advanced-lecture-mode, no one was safe from feeling like a complete idiot after listening to her for a couple of minutes.

Harry and Ron bantered on for a little while after that, then went back to routine. Nothing really happened until the next day, in the shack during the Order meeting when Hermione was about to explain how the ritual worked.

'So... now that everyone is here, let me tell you what I've found. After doing a fair amount of research in the runes, we have found that the slots are actually to place scrolls, books and such things. This way we can decide ourselves what Harry learns in there.'

'As I thought.' McGonagall said. 'It's logical. Now the question remains, what are we going to teach Potter?'

It seemed that one question was enough to completely set the Order against each other. There were basically two camps. Moody was adamant to give Harry dark magic to study (know thy enemy, he said) whilst Molly wanted that he have nothing to do with dark books. Most people were on Moody's side though. For how was Harry supposed to fight against it if he didn't know anything about it in the first place?

Molly remained stubbornly quiet for a while after the fight had calmed down. Since no one could really agree on what to give him, it was decided that any and all books they could get their hands on were to be used. Mostly, that meant many people would go out and risk their lives yet again trying to gather more and more obscure books. This was something Harry just couldn't help feeling uncomfortable with, as he felt they were risking their lives yet again for him.

That had lasted for only as long as Moody hadn't known. He had given Harry a rather stern taking to, in which he had basically said that the people would go for any other as well. He was nothing special at all in this. Though his ego had gotten quite a bruising, Harry had actually felt better about himself after that. After all, this time the Order was not specifically going on suicide missions for him, but rather for the idea that they could save the world by providing him with this knowledge.

Harry did notice that most people seemed to take this knowledge gathering way to serious. He had heard the most absurd plans. For example, Miss Smith has been going on about how they should definitely raid the Malfoy library, as well as Hogwarts. Honestly though. He had the entire Black library to his disposal as well as all of the other libraries the light purebloods had. Furthermore, people had gladly given their own personal book collections. And then the amount of the books had tripled once again when it was clear that they would get their books back after the ritual unharmed. That, together with all the other books stolen elsewhere, made for a huge quantity of books.

By now, there were piles upon piles of expanded trunks, all filled to the brim with books- light, gray and dark- stacked up in the temple. To be quite frankly honest Harry didn't really know what everything was, or what certain titles even meant, but he was taking all the hectics in stride. He himself had added to the book collection as well, by going out on a mission with Moody on Knockturn Alley. It had been... interesting to say the least. Knockturn had been very busy, thriving actually. Moody and Harry had, surprisingly, not done anything illegal at all. They had simply gone into some bookstores and bought some books they didn't have (with the use of a spell Hermione had found- a very useful one that told you if you had copies of something already. Multipliquerere was the incantation if Harry remembered correctly.), then gone away again. All under heavy glamours of course.

Harry had thought it to be slightly surreal how everyone just went on with life. In Knockturn Alley, it was like there was no war. Well, if you ignored the random patrols of Death-Eaters. It was clear that Voldemort had almost won. Though the ministry hadn't fallen yet, that was one of the only still standing strongholds of the Light. People were worried. Even some of the Death-Eaters they had captured had confessed -under veritaserum- that they did not completely agree with Voldemort on more that one standpoint.

Personally, Harry really didn't understand the man's motivations. He wanted all the muggles dead, even though there were more than two-thousand times more Muggles than wizards and witches. He wanted everyone to practice dark magics, even though it corrupted people to insanity. He wanted absolute power, but he knew that something like that had almost never worked out, especially in the magical world.

Ah well, Harry thought, it really didn't matter by now. He would be going to the past anyways.

As he walked to the temple he walked past Seamus, who was levitating some kind of fluid that way. There was going to be a test done to check if they understood the workings of the ritual. No sense in doing it if they didn't have the optimal amount of understanding about it.

Once there Harry prepared his ritual cleansing. He had to make sure there was no grime, dirt, sweat, loose hairs even, to make sure that the ritual didn't have any adverse side effects. Eventually, after some overpowered tergeo's and scourify's he finally felt good to go.

Whilst he had been changing and scrubbing himself, the last couple of adjustments had been made in the ritual room.

'Right. So Harry, you lay down here, yes like that...' Hermione said. She was directing the test.

'Ok. So for real, you would cut your wrist now and let the blood go through the runes, but we will just be doing it with water for now. Eventually, you will be on the brink of passing out. That is when you cut your other wrist, allowing the blood to stream back in. You will then have a full circuit of blood connecting each book to you. Then you will pass out and presumably learn the books- we suspect you will be at it for about a day to a week, we're not sure. After that you will wake again and proceed with life. Got it?'

'Yeah. I think so. It seems difficult though. I mean, do you think I will really be able to just slice my wrists?'

'Sure. There is no other way. If you don't, the magical world will fall. We will all be subjected to Voldemort. So if not for yourself you will at least do it for us.'

Harry gulped. 'Ok. I got it. I will.' (Try...) he thought immediately after. He took another look around the room. 'How long until we will do the ritual?'

'The only thing left to do is put the books on the correct places and we'll be good to go.'

Harry gulped again. 'Right...' he knew it was to late to back out of this now, but still. He was worried. Very worried. He had a feeling the ritual would not end up the way they thought it would.

Well, another chapter done. Hope you liked it. Please review, you know the deal. Next time around: ritual time! Gonna be loads of fun.

2009 words