MINISTRY OF MAGIC, DEPARTMENT OF MYSTERIES, DEATH CHAMBER

We open on an immense room. It is cold, dark, and mostly empty. Stone benches and high steps surround a sunken pit, twenty feet in depth, at the center of which is a stone dais. Upon the dais are two distinctly noteworthy elements. The first is a freestanding archway, primitive in appearance, like a deteriorating fossil from another age. Clinging to it, a ragged black veil that rustles slightly, as if touched by a gentle wind. Beside this, lying flat on a dull stone slab, the body of HARRY POTTER.

The room is so still, so undisturbed. It is both perfectly tranquil and exquisitely unsettling.

HARRY sits up in the darkness, breathing deeply — his exhaustion palpable, his fear overwhelming. HARRY looks around, bewildered. What is this world — and what is he within it? Pause. He puts on a pair of familiar-looking glasses and looks around the room, trying to work out where he is. HARRY sees the veil. He stares at it with disbelieving desperation. He has been here before.

THEODORE NOTT enters from off. His long, silvery beard and echoing footsteps stand out in the bleak environment. HARRY looks up, then turns left, surprised to see NOTT has emerged behind him. HARRY gets to his feet and faces the Unspeakable, who approaches nonchalantly.

HARRY (soft): Theodore Nott.

NOTT: Mister Potter.

NOTT smiles at HARRY. He steps decisively away from the veil.

You were sleeping.

HARRY (astonished): I was? I thought... perhaps...

NOTT: Dead? No. Not today.

HARRY looks at NOTT, trying to regain awareness. He realizes something.

HARRY: He's still here, Nott.

NOTT: Who's still here?

HARRY (gravely): Voldemort. I saw Voldemort. He's alive.

NOTT thinks, and then nods, accepting this.

How am I alive? Do I have... ?

HARRY touches his forehead.

NOTT: Another scar? No, you do not. The result of casting a curse is hard to determine, wouldn't you agree? (beat, he glances at the veil momentarily) Magic can be rather lawless — chaotic. I've heard it said that curses are the purest form of magic... at its most stubborn. For reasons beyond our understanding, your body absorbed the Killing Curse as easily as it would a ray of sunshine — though the sun does not generally knock one unconscious.

HARRY: But how did I survive?

NOTT: That question is why you find yourself here — now — in the Death Chamber of the Department of Mysteries. The Unspeakables have been studying you, Potter. And we have come upon a remarkable theory. We believe that your ability to survive the Killing Curse exempted you from its effects.

HARRY: Are you saying... what I think you're saying?

NOTT: Indeed. You are immune to its magic, for all time. It could have been your exchange with Voldemort as a child. Perhaps the curse you received during the Battle of Hogwarts... when the Horcrux was destroyed.

HARRY: You know about that?

NOTT (dryly): I know everything there is to know. (beat) Almost everything.

HARRY: Has this sort of thing happened before?

NOTT: Yes, long ago. The individual remained conscious, so we were not granted the privilege to learn how the curse was absorbed. They feared we would poke and prod at them with frightening instruments, or kill them repeatedly to understand the magic. But, as you can see, they had nothing to fear. For here you are, Mister Potter, alive and well.

HARRY: I wouldn't say that I am well. My family... (beat) I am so confused.

HARRY lowers his head. Remembering hurts him.

NOTT: You inquired at our last meeting why the Unspeakables would allow me entry into their department after all I had done? It is because they had no say in the matter.

HARRY: What does that mean?

NOTT: Allow me to answer that question by reminding you of the mission upon which you have been spending most of your time.

HARRY: Voldemort's missing body.

NOTT (nodding): It was kept here — preserved — just as the second body is at present in the Sepulcher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. During our battle many years ago, when Lord Voldemort lured you to the Department of Mysteries, absconding with your prophecy was but one part of our purpose in being here. The main objective was to procure the cadaver of the Dark Lord — but it was protected by a very powerful spell. One that required a sacrifice. In order to leave the Ministry with the body, another had to stand in its place. As I was wounded, I was left behind to be that sacrifice.

HARRY: Why take the body? To worship it? Because what I faced on Diagon Alley was Voldemort. Living — breathing. Not a reanimated corpse. Inferi cannot speak or cast spells.

NOTT: Remember, Voldemort's aim at the time was to obtain eternal life. To make a final Horcrux with his own body. But he could not. The magic failed. What is dead, is dead.

HARRY: But why would he even attempt to do that? You can only split your soul into seven Horcruxes.

NOTT: That's because he was unaware that he had already done so. Lord Voldemort made you into a Horcrux by accident, Harry. When he made Nagini a Horcrux, he didn't realize that it was his seventh and final. Nagini was always meant as practice for the attempt to come. Voldemort's ultimate mission was to restore his soul to his own flesh and bone. But when he perished at the Battle of Hogwarts, his followers didn't know what to do with his body. They kept it safe until a solution to bring back the Dark Lord revealed itself.

HARRY: So, that was truly Voldemort. He lives — through some unknown magical means. (beat) And that's why the Unspeakables took you in and trained you... because you couldn't leave?

NOTT: Yes, at least not for longer than a few minutes. Which is why I took it upon myself to learn all I could about the magic of time travel. And from the ruin of the Time-Turners, I was able to fashion a new one and earned my freedom. My motives were nefarious at the start, but I quickly became something else — an observer, who learned to render voluntarily that which others have a right to claim — time. For it was in my exploitation of the Time-Turner that I discovered the sanctity and goodness of mankind through the surveillance of life and the constant condolence of death.

HARRY: That is until you decided it should pass to me. (he digests this) You've seen all of this. What has happened to my family? They were taken by the Tempest.

NOTT remains silent. His choice to let HARRY's question go unanswered is alarming. HARRY looks and sounds more despondent by the second.

Is something bad going to happen to my family? Will I use the Time-Turner to understand how to prevent it from happening?

NOTT: You will use the Time-Turner. But not yet.

HARRY (his voice rising): Tell me. Just tell me what I should do, and I'll do it!

There is a long and desperate pause.

NOTT: I can no longer intercede.

HARRY: Then I have to go.

HARRY makes to leave. He mounts the nearest aisle of steep steps. Then HARRY stops. He looks at NOTT cautiously. It is clear that the question on HARRY's mind haunts him.

Am I already too late?

NOTT: The future is yours to make.