Theorizing that one could time-travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett led an elite group of scientists into the desert, to develop a top-secret project known as Quantum Leap. Pressured to prove his theories or lose funding, Dr. Beckett prematurely stepped into the project accelerator, and vanished...

He awoke to find himself in the past, suffering from partial amnesia and facing a mirror image that was not his own. Fortunately, contact with his own time was maintained through brain-wave transmissions with Al, the project observer, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Dr. Beckett can see and hear. Trapped in the past, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, putting things right that once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next Leap will be the Leap home.



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Spring, 1998



Sometimes when you leap, it's easy to get your bearings. A calendar on the wall, wallet on the nightstand, and maybe a handy mirror to look into as the smell of coffee wafts through the air.

And sometimes you just leap right into the thick of things.

"RUN!"

Now, I wasn't sure who had shouted, but the big guy in front of me didn't seem to have listened, and the fire leaping around seemed to make running a good idea.

"Oh, boy!"

The heat was intense, and Sam lost track of where the others were, all except the big kid with black hair that he was pushing ahead of him. "Al! Al! Where are you?"

A large snout snapped over the holographic door as Al stepped out, looking around at the flames, which were taking on the forms of fantastic mythical beasts. "Ain't that a kick in the pants."

On noting Sam's disbelieving glare, Al flinched a bit and said, "Look, Sam, you gotta get out of this - the door's over that way... Jeez, talk about a death trap. Don't these people have fire marshals or something to keep the junk from piling up like this?"

"What kind of fire is this?" Sam yelled over the noise of the roaring flames, still pushing the near-catatonic dark haired boy. "Is it fireworks?"

"Well, you see..." Sam kept pushing, but had to stop and change direction when a giant snake made of fire hissed and swirled around them. "Ziggy thinks it's magic!"

"Magic?" Sam exclaimed, just as the snake fully encircled them, and the boy Sam had been pushing let out a thin, piteous scream before fainting. Staggering from the considerable dead weight that had landed on him, Sam wrapped his arms around the boy and looked around desperately for a way out.

Salvation seemed at hand, as something was flying through the air. It was a boy, wearing some sort of dress and riding a broomstick. Sam wasn't about to quibble, and he held up his hand, but the boy was going by too fast and his own hand was slippery with sweat from the encroaching heat.

"IF WE DIE FOR THEM, I'LL KILL YOU, HARRY!" someone roared, and Sam looked up in time to see two more kids on a broom swoop in just ahead of some flames shaped like a lion's head on a goat's body. The two kids picked up the unconscious boy and flew away, and Sam scrambled to climb onto the other broom.

"The door, get to the door, the door!" he shouted, pointing the way Al had guided them. The smoke was thick around them, and all that Sam could see through the inferno was destruction.

Then they turned in mid-air, gravity making a serious bid to pull Sam down into the fire as they turned, and he screamed, "What are you doing, what are you doing, the door's that way!"

The boy in front of him - Harry - grabbed something out of the air, then made another hairpin turn to get away from a snake of fire that was lunging at them. Sam clutched him as tightly as he could against the feeling that he'd fall off, and the dizziness from the motion and the smoke inhalation.

After an eternity, they went through a door and hit a wall, and Sam rolled with the fall, coughing and trying not to lose whatever lunch this boy had eaten, which didn't seem like much. "You okay, Sam?"

He used his physical distress as a cover to turn his head and hiss, "No!"

"Look, the other kid, Lobster - lobster?" Al hit the side of his hand unit and then said, "Crabbe, his name was Crabbe. Did you get him out?"

"C-Crabbe," Sam managed to choke out. Still unsure who that was, he tried again, "C-Crabbe..."

"He's dead," the red-headed boy spat out.

"Uh oh," said Al, and Sam rolled over so he could collapse onto his back in despair. "Look, Vincent Crabbe was the one that stayed in there, the one next to you is... Gregory Goyle. Ziggy thought you were supposed to save Crabbe, but she doesn't have a lot of information yet, so she could be wrong. We thought it was a cult, with all the abracadabra mumbo jumbo, but with the flying and the dragons and--"

The walls shook with crashes and bangs from somewhere close by, and a stream of translucent men on horseback galloped past in a blur of silver. Al shrugged. "And those. Ghosts, no less. I... I don't know what to tell you, Sam."

Any attempt to answer discreetly was cut off by Harry shouting, "Where's Ginny? She was here. She was supposed to be going back into the Room of Requirement."

"Room of Requirement?" Sam mouthed to Al, who shrugged and pointed at the blank spot of wall where there had been a door to a room on fire.

"Blimey, d'you reckon it'll still work after that fire?" said the redhead. "Shall we split up and look--"

"No," said the other kid, who was a girl with singed bushy hair. Sam stayed down, grimacing at Al over the slumped body of the boy mountain, still unidentified. "Let's stick together. I say we go-- Harry, what's that on your arm?"

"What? Oh yeah--" Harry held up what might've been a tiara once, before it started oozing what looked like tar.

Sam didn't bother to be subtle as he hissed, "Al!" but luckily no one was paying attention.

"Hang on, hang on." Al was concentrating on typing something on the hand unit. "Fiend... Fire... Says it has nothing - wait, it thinks fire is with a y. And I thought I had trouble spelling..."

"But don't you realize?" the girl whispered, nowhere near softly enough not to be heard. "This means, if we can just get the snake--"

"More snakes?" Sam groaned, but then the noises of fighting moved closer. Four men were fighting, two of them with red hair, but the other two were wearing the same kind of black dresses that Sam and the unconscious Goyle were wearing. "Who're the good guys?"

"Hello, Minister!" shouted one of the redheads, and some light came from the stick in his hands to hit the man whose hood had slipped down.

Al talked over the shouting, nonchalantly stepping through one of the fighters. "Well, masks are usually bad, but Minister like Prime Minister means that guy's from the government, so..."

"They're fighting with a light show!" Sam whispered emphatically. "I think that's more-- Watch out!"

Without thinking, Sam tossed himself through the air and tackled the boy who was laughing, just as the air was torn apart by an explosion. Sharp rocks flew threw the air, tearing the cloth off Sam's back and leaving bleeding furrows in their wake.

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"Bloody hell," came a voice from somewhere around Sam's armpit. "Did I just get saved by a Malfoy?"

"Don't think you'll ever get over the shame," the red-headed boy from the fire said, but he didn't quite succeed in forcing a joking tone.

"Ron! This isn't the time to joke!" The other red-head, the one who had been fighting, pulled Sam off and pushed him aside. "Fred, are you all right? Fred?"

Putting a hand up weakly, the boy on the floor said, "Perce... Percy... Come closer... Closer... Ha!"

Percy reared back, spitting out the piece of candy that had been shoved into his mouth in a remarkably swift move by an obviously uninjured Fred. "You never change, do you?" he said huffily.

"Nah, why should I?" Fred replied, jumping to his feet only to throw himself to the ground again as a body flew through the hole in the wall.

"You're welcome," Sam said sourly, moving away from the lights that were coming through to hit the wall behind them. He moved his arm gingerly back and forth, trying to figure out how badly he'd hurt his shoulder in the tackle and roll maneuver.

No one paid the slightest attention to him, as they were busy screaming and looking at a giant spider crawling towards them. Harry and Ron pointed sticks and it and it fell back, but then Harry shouted, "It brought friends!"

"Gotta go," said Al, and he called up the door despite Sam's whispered expostulations. "Sorry, I just... I can't deal with giant spiders. I'll work with Ziggy, see what I can find out. Try to get one of those magic wands, if you can grab one. Maybe it'll help."

The unconscious Goyle groaned and showed signs of coming back to life, so Sam moved to help him sit up. By the time he turned to ask for help, the original three kids had disappeared, and the remaining two were fighting again, lights flying on all sides. "Come on, Goyle, get up, we need to get you somewhere safe."

"Draco... Vince, where's Vince, he needs to stop the fire--"

"He died in the fire," Sam said gently. "Come on, we have to move."

A suit of armor ran by, waving a sword in the air as it clanked along. Sam ducked and tried to pull the other boy aside, but he just stood his ground. The armor lost an elbow guard as it bumped Goyle, but still held together and kept going. Shaking his head, Sam muttered, "This place is insane."

An old woman was stampeding down a hallway, screaming in a Scottish accent at what looked to be a grouping of desks which then got up and obeyed her order to charge, and Goyle grabbed Sam and shoved him out of the way. "Hide! She'll kill you if she sees you!"

"What?" Sam tried to say, but his efforts were hindered by Goyle pressing him into a hidden corner.

"You know she's been out to get you for a year, and now she's got the perfect chance - it'd look like an accident!" Goyle shuddered. "Come on, we've got to find someone on our side!"

"Which is our side?" Sam muttered, finally free. "I don't even know who the good guys are."

A confused frown crept across the other boy's face. "But... Vince said... And our parents..."

He looked about to cry, and Sam didn't have the heart to send this boy out where all the fighting was going on. "Come on, let's just find a place to hide until things calm down."

"Good, Sam, keep him calm," said Al as he stepped back through the imaging chamber door. "Ziggy's still trying to find out what's going on, but the kid in the waiting room said that Goyle's bad in a fight and doesn't know how to look out for himself. He also said that the guys with the masks are the ones not trying to kill him, so that's probably the side you're on."

Goyle frowned. "Do you think we should floo home?"

Sam paused, trying to work out how the flu had become a verb, but decided to say cautiously, "Yes, home is probably-" there was a loud crash, a cackle from somewhere up high, and someone shouting about invisible people- "a good place to be right now."

Goyle nodded and ran, but someone with a mask held a stick up to his face. "Come on, little bratling, tell me where Potter is!"

"You're making a mistake," Sam said soothingly, looking for an opening. Someone was shouting on the stairs behind him, but he was focused on the stick, watching to see if any light came out of it. "I'm Draco..."

"Malfoy," supplied Al.

"Malfoy, I'm Draco," he said, shifting his weight slightly in preparation for a roundhouse kick. "I'm on your side?"

A red beam of light came out of nowhere, knocking the masked man unconscious, and Sam turned to find out where it came from, only to get sucker punched by thin air. He fell backwards and brought a hand up to touch the blood at the corner of his mouth while he stared at the disembodied feet walking past.

From above the feet, Ron's voice shouted, "That makes us even for Fred, you tosser, so don't try to go claiming a life debt later!"

"Yeah, thanks for nothing," Sam muttered. "Al, you've got to get me out of here! None of this makes any sense!"

"Let me talk to the Malfoy brat again," his observer said wearily. "If I can keep from wringing his neck, maybe he'll come across with some information."

"Great," Sam muttered as Al disappeared again. The masked man he was sitting on groaned, and Sam punched him before getting up. "Shut up."

He picked up the man's stick and moved it around, but no lights came out of it. Shrugging, he decided to walk in the direction Goyle had gone, but there were two problems. One, he didn't know which way that was, and two, random fights were spreading in all directions. This leap was not turning out to be one of the better ones; Sam's only comfort was that at least he wasn't wearing high heels.