Out of Time and Memory

Chapter 13 – A Lost Soul

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/Sometimes
Slowly
Time brings revelation
Waiting
Softly
For someone to believe/

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Harry Potter walked though the empty halls in number twelve Grimmauld Place, hardly aware of anything but what was going on inside his mind. On and on he walked, rounding the corners, his hand tracing the dusty walls as he went, not entirely sure of his destination.

His memories, they all seemed so clear, and yet Harry found them hard to hold. He looked up and found himself in a part of the house that he hadn’t been in before. It was dusty and covered in cobwebs. The dust muffled the sounds of the creaking floorboards. There was only one door on that hall way, dark brown like all the others he had passed. But this one looked less neglected, like some one had dusted it. Harry turned the doorknob; inside the room was dark and bare. He opened the door wider and poked his head inside the room, and saw himself staring back.

“Ohh” he breathed, seeing himself reflected in a mirror. Harry then realized that it was the Mirror of Erised. The mirror seemed to show shadows all behind him, he turned around but saw no one, turning back he saw that the shadows

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/That the ghosts we’ve hidden or left to die
Have now arisen and will arrive
To say what has happened/

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Harry’s mind echoed a single thought. . .”What is happening to me. . .?”

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/Say what has happened
Say what has happened
To me/

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It was like a pleading throbbing in his mind, and the shadows became clearer taking the shapes of people, and he felt the desire to ask the shadows to explain to him what was happening. But all Harry could do was step up next to the glass, and see looking back at him the faces of everyone, everyone that had played a part in his life. The mirror flashed. . .an image of Malfoy standing by the Hogwarts Lake. He had a pensive but determined look on his face, as if he had just made the decision that would rule the rest of his life. As Harry saw a ghostly image of himself join Malfoy by the lake, he heard Malfoy’s voice as though it were commenting on the scene before his eyes, and listened in wonder as that voice echoed through his head. . .

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/“And who would have thought
That you’d be the one
That I would have found here waiting”/

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Flash. . .an image like the one before, but this time of Sirius looking through a window where Harry saw himself and Hermione on Buckbeak. Sirius’ voice echoed and spoke as if he too was reliving the memory. . .

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/ “Lost in this night
Until you arrived
And always too blind to see”/

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Flash. . .this time it was of Harry and Severus Snape, who was being supported by Harry, and like the other two voices, this one spoke in his head.

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/“And who would have thought
That after this time
That I’d be the one you’re saving”/

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Only this voice sounded deeper and kinder then Snape’s usual tone. So different and yet it seemed more like him somehow, like a real voice, that had been hidden too long.

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/“Now undisguised
The ghosts that survive
Now say what it was meant to be”/

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And Harry found himself talking to the images in his head telling what had been in his mind for ages, things he had never told anyone. . .

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/“I never wanted to give my life away
Who ever thought it would matter any way?
Wandering inside this night
Finding pieces of a life
Never sure I’d ever know what it means”/

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An image of Dudley beating on a young Harry came into focus in the glass as if illustrate his meaning, then it seemed to jump to another memory of Hagrid framed in a doorway the night he and Harry had met, and then to Dumbledore at his bedside in the hospital wing after his adventure with the Philosopher’s Stone. . .

He thought about how the past had slowly given him clues first to the fact that he was different from everyone because he was a wizard and then that he was different because he had lived. ‘And even still,’ he thought, ‘I probably don’t know who I am.’ His gaze fell back the mirror.

Harry then looked at the other figures that had appeared with the spectral Snape, Draco and Sirius. He looked first to Dumbledore, Hagrid, and Remus, who were standing with Sirius, and spoke to them as if they were really there. First were Arabella Figg, Hermione, Ron and the rest of the Weasley family, to whom he said. . .

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/“It\'s the strangers in your life
That you\'d never thought you\'d meet
It\'s the hand that picked you up
When you\'re laying in the street”/

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Then came Severus Snape, Draco, and Dobby, as he murmured. . .

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/“It\'s the hand that cut you down
It\'s the dream that someone shared”/

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At last he saw the ghostly form of Cedric, standing with his father, of his mother, and of Sirius. . .

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/“When you thought that all was lost
It\'s the friends that weren\'t there”/

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Harry smiled to himself as the images looked back at him. He saw in the mirror himself standing with all of them smiling at him as they replied to him. . .

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/“You can run from all the memory
But never get that far
For in the end they\'ll find you
For this is who you are
Change one note
Change one line
Nothing\'s going to be the same
Change one loss
Change one cut
Everything is re-arranged”/

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Harry thought about their words. He could wish his bad memories away, but they helped to make him who he was, then things would never have been the same. He would have made different friends, and the good times he had had, would not have happened. He looked at the people with him in the mirror. So much had come from everything they had done, be it for or against him.

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/“Every act
Cruel or kind
Lost inside our memory”/

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“Ours,” Harry said to them. “Ours because if I am part of all of you, just as you are all part of me.” He continued. . .

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/“If you look
There in time
You\'ll find it in”/

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His voice echoed around him as he looked at all of the faces taking them in. He reached his hand out, his reflection in the mirror doing the same. And the figures reached their hands out and Harry said as he felt them touch him,

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/“You\'ll find it in me”/

~fin~