In the Times of the Butterfly*
Lady Owl
Standard disclaimer applies. Italics are direct quotations from canon. Further, see Notes at bottom.
Summary: The Battle at the Department of Mysteries, as featuring Harry, Hermione, Neville, Time, the Existence of the Universe, and a Butterfly. One-shot. AU.
###
There was no time to argue the point; Harry could hear more footsteps growing louder from the Hall of Prophecy and knew, too late, that he ought not to have shouted and given away their position.
"Come on!" Harry yelled, and grabbed Neville's arm to pull him towards the door at the end of the hallway.
"Wait, Harry, Here!" cried Hermione. He released Neville just in time to catch something small and sparkling flying through the air. Hermione stumbled in towards the two boys, just as Harry unravelled the golden chain. He pulled the chain over their three heads, and twisted the time turner.
The scene blurred, just as the green flash of Avada Kedavra appeared in their sights.
###
The new scene clarified into the startled face of a blond, bespectacled woman.
"Stupefy" hissed Neville, and grabbed the collapsing body.
Hermione picked up the body's feet. Together they shuffled the woman under one of the oak desks, and ducked in together to wait.
The room was well lit now, although the source of the lighting was not obvious. The room's mystical sparkling was gone. In the bright light, the various metal and glass surfaces more reflected a laboratory than a dim jewellery vault.
The three – well, four, counting the unconscious – crouched, waited, and heard nothing but their own breathes and heartbeats.
Harry made eye contact with Hermione and Neville. He indicated the two of them, and made a patting motion at the body, before pointing to himself and around the room. Neville gave a shrug. Hermione scowled and jammed her index finger up against her lips. Harry nodded, with a twisted smile.
He ran, crouched over, towards the door that Hermione had previously locked. The door, now, was open. He was about to put his head around the door-frame, when a dazed half-memory made him pause. He turned his head to the right, and looked quickly over the contents of the shelves.
On the edge of the middle-shelf, closest to the door, jammed between a small brass alarm clock and an old wooden clock with two iron-pine-cone weights, lay a small make-up compact. He stifled the weights with his left hand, and pulled the compact out from between the two clocks. The compact was made of white- and red-lacquered wood, and – inside the clam-shell - contained lip-gloss and a mirror.
Harry used the mirror to survey the prophecy-room from behind the door-frame. Empty. As far as he could see, anyway.
He crossed the room carefully, staying behind the shelves when possible. There were five doorways – other than the clock-doorway - off of the prophecy-room. Each further room appeared empty, as well.
Harry started to walk back towards the clock-room, when a voice called out. He dived to the floor, and crawled back into the room where Hermione and Neville – and the unconscious woman – were hiding.
"I'm off, Huxley. Don't stay too late."
Harry's eyes met Hermione's eyes. She mouthed something – Harry couldn't quite tell – and he shook his head back.
She stretched her sleeve over her mouth and call back "Bye!"
Neville's knuckles were white on his wand. He aimed towards the door.
The three waited for a bit more, but no-one investigated.
Finally, Harry whispered, "what where you trying to ask?"
"You mean that was luck? Oh Merlin." Neville looked green.
"Ok," Hermione breathed. "Ok... Quick glossary – yes" [Hermione raised her hand with a thumb up], "no" [a raised hand with a thumb down], "is there anyone else here?" [she pointed with her index finger across the horizon in front of her], "Anything else we're missing?"
"Go, stop, left, and right?" asked Neville. His color was slowly returning from green to the normal pink, via a bruise-yellow and ghost-white.
"Ok. That's probably good for now..."
"At least we know what time it is," gestured Harry, towards all the clocks. 19:36.
"You only gave it one turn, right, Harry?" asked Hermione.
"Yeah... And we only got to the Ministry at about 9. So, tentative guess, we came back 2 hours?"
"Sounds fair."
"So, we have two hours-" "- no, less, because the Death Eaters must have already been here when we arrived, and we don't know how long they were waiting."
"Right. We know the earliest we can come back to – if we need to -" and here, Hermione hissed ("playing with time is dangerous, Harry!") at her two companions "is now, or Huxley wouldn't have been surprised to see us..."
"So, what do we have to do?"
"We need to get rid of Huxley."
"And the extra time-turners," commented Neville, pointing at the wall behind them. There, glistened a rack of time-turners, in various sizes, with a rainbow of sand colors. "They weren't here two hours ago."
"You're right. But, we didn't see any damage when we came in, last time. Do you think we hid them somewhere else? Or transfigured them into clocks?"
"I don't remember what it looked like, but we can't put them somewhere where the Death Eaters will find them.
"You're right. Otherwise, they'd be here now too."
"I vote for transfiguring them into other clocks. But, Hermione, I think you should do them – you're the best of us at transfiguration, and this has to be done right..."
Hermione sent Neville a warm smile. "Thank you, but let's make sure we have enough time..."
"Before we do that: I think we should find a set of three. That way, we can turn quickly, without all being together, if we need to."
Harry passed Hermione the turner that he was still wearing, and she compared it to the racked mechanisms. She took down two other turners of approximately the same size, each with sand the color of an alpine lake. The three each put their time-turner on.
"What else do we need to do?"
"Transfigure the time-turners and get rid of Huxley. Somehow."
"Find places to hide when the Death Eaters get back."
"Figure out which doors go where, so that we don't get lost when we're looking for Ginny, Ron, and Luna."
"That's a good thought... Wait, if we think that we might need to turn back again, but we haven't seen the other us... We should keep track of where we are, when. Just in case."
"Yes. And we should do that now." She opened the desk drawers, and pulled out three pieces of paper. She followed with the protean charm to slave two of the papers to the third. Then, she drew onto the master-paper a schedule. "Let's leave from 9 onwards open, because none of us was looking at a watch then... From 7:36 to now – 7:55, HG, NL, and HP in clock-room. Harry, do you remember when you were in the prophecy room, checking?"
"No. sorry..."
"Ok. We'll put down the same time period."
"We're running out of time..." "I know."
"Hermione, can you make half-turns with the turner?"
"I'm not sure, but I don't think so... I think these turners only have two-dynamically stable directions, and it would be a... problem if they flipped the rest of the way accidentally."
"Do you think a smaller one might go back less far?"
"Mine was smaller, and it only went back one hour. But I only remember that the sand was pale, not red or green, like those..."
"Ok..." "Let's also take this small-one, then transfigure the rest."
"Alright. I think we may all need to work together, though. Hermione, can you take the middle two rows, I'll take the top row, and Neville'll take the bottom row?"
They had just finished transfiguring the remaining time-turners into various clocks, when they heard a strange wooshing sound from behind the door towards the circular room.
"It's them. Grab Huxley, let's go."
With a mobilicorpus, the three students – and one floating body – ran through through the clock room, across the prophecy room, and through the opposite door.
Neville, who was still holding the small time turner, threw the chain over their four heads, and turned the small turner back.
###
The room in which they were standing had two long lab tables and multiple glass tanks. The tanks were filled with various fluids, that were condensing, or swirling, or breaking in waves. One contained clouds of yellow droplets, floating between a pale blue liquid and air, emitting sparks down to a small amber plug. Another had a swirling tornado, that meandered through its volume. Still a third was dripping droplets of multi-colored liquid into a fluid that looked like liquid mercury.
The room was empty of people. They could hear a faint off-key humming, and the scratching of a quill from the adjacent office.
Harry signalled to the others to stay, and crept towards the door of the office. Again, using the make-up compact, he looked around the corner.
An elderly man, with a shock of white hair, was sitting at his desk. His back was towards the door from where Harry was watching. He was wearing a white over-robe over his normal robe, and Harry could see the sides of black spectacles extending over his ears.
"Stupefy," and the man collapsed quietly over his writing; "mobilicorpus," and there were two unconscious bodies with the three students.
"Harry, where did you get that mirror?" asked Hermione suddenly.
"It was jammed between one of those cheap metal alarm-clocks and a cuckoo-clock, next to the door of the clock-room. Why?"
"It looks like my mine. But, I didn't leave the compact there, before."
Neville moaned quietly. "Hermione, I think you did. I thought Huxley looked familiar."
"Ok. We can fix this. We'll go into the office while Harry explores. Then, one of you will call out to us that this man's going home – remember that's at 7:50 – then I'll go back and impersonate Huxley. Pass me what-ever-his-name's lab-robe, glasses, and the little turner." They complied.
She pulled her make-up compact out of her pocket, and glared into it. With short strokes, she cast a color-change charm onto her hair, then a hair-thinning charm. She pulled on the unnamed man's lab-robe and glasses.
Then, they sat in silence. The blond Hermione-impersonating-Huxley, flipped through the notes on the desk, Neville pulled at the threads of his robe, Harry laid his head onto his arms, and the unconscious Huxley and unnamed man sat up against the corner of the room.
At the appropriate time, Neville muffled his voice in his sleeve, and yelled "I'm off, Huxley. Don't stay too late." They heard the answering goodbye, then Hermione disappeared.
###
The unnamed man was startled to see her appear.
"Confundo" she whispered, crossing her fingers that she'd performed the spell correctly. He started again, and looked strangely around, as though he couldn't remember where he was.
"You were writing up a report; only you and Huxley are here."
"Yes... My report..." he said slowly, looking at his notes with incomprehension. He shivered, and began to hum.
"How are the viscosity tests coming, Jeffrey?" called Huxley from the other room. Hermione crept towards the doorway to the prophecy-room.
"Jeffrey? Are you all right in there?" called Huxley again. Footsteps sounded, crossing the prophecy room.
Hermione hid behind the door-frame, and waited. When Huxley entered the room, Hermione stunned her.
A quick, "petrificus totalus," and "silencio" on the body, then Hermione lifted up the ceiling panel of the weather room, and levitated the body inside. She replaced the panel, and ran towards the time-room.
She just jammed her make-up compact into the clock-case in time to see three bodies appear.
"Stupefy"
###
As soon as Hermione had time-turned back, Harry enervated the body of the unconscious Hermione – who was now the Hermione-impersonating-Huxley.
She gasped, as she woke. "Huxley's in the ceiling panel of the weather-room. We have fifteen minutes before we arrive there."
"Ok." She returned Jeffrey's jacket and glasses, then petrified, silenced, and stored him in the ceiling next to the true Huxley.
"Harry, Neville: we didn't leave ourselves the time-turner to get back here, in the first place. I thought about it, when I put the compact back, but then the Death-Eaters might have seen it and taken it."
Neville said, "If we can't put it back before the Death Eaters arrive, and it has to be there when we try to get out, and we probably won't be able to pass around while the Death Eaters are settling in, so... I suppose we'll have to go quickly while they're threatening us in the prophecy room."
"Yes, and we have to find ourselves a new place to hide before we come into the weather room at 8:15."
"So, where can we go, now, where we'll be able to sneak into the time-room easily and quietly, without being seen by the Death Eaters, then?"
"Let's check the two rooms next to the clock-room. I remember one with maps and one with something red."
The room that Harry remembered as red turned out to have walls, floor, and ceiling of a beating heart. There was no furniture.
The map room had a ticking abacus on one wall, and a large plotter drawing some sort of spiralling, never-repeating curve in the center of the room. The other walls had maps of the British coastline, in various scales.
"Here, behind the abacus."
"Wait, I have a thought. I remember reading about a charm... Let's see: chamelo" she said, and tapped herself on the head. A faintly squishy feeling poured over her head, as though an egg were dripping down.
"Brilliant, Hermione! What is that?" "The disillusionment charm. But I wasn't sure I'd get it right. Lucky. Remember, it doesn't work while moving." She tapped Neville and Harry both. "Now, quickly, behind the abacus."
They stored themselves away, and waited.
Barely five minutes later, they heard the faint sounds of themselves running into the weather-room. Then, quiet. Then, the laughter and deep voices of adult men mixed with the crackling voice of Bellatrix Black-Lestrange.
They stored themselves away, standing straight and still. Fear kept them on their feet, despite fatigue. And gravity kept their hands still, even as nerves would have otherwise driven them to quaking.
It was worst when a silver-masked figure opened the door, and wandered into the room. He ducked under the printer, and ran his hands along the front of the maps and the abacus.
But, he left the room, and called out, "Room two-center clear, Malfoy!"
They listened further to the Death Eater's gossip, jokes and power-struggles. Until a voice called out "Proximity ward's tripped. Nox!"
There was the brief sound of a scramble as the lights went off. The three time travelers heard nothing but the tick of the abacus, then:
"This way!" in the past-Harry's voice, and past-Hermione's "I . . . I don't think Sirius is here." and "Harry, I don't think you should touch it."
Then came Malfoy's arrogant drawl: "Very good, Potter."
The present-Hermione tapped the arms of the present-Harry and present-Neville, and pointed out from behind the abacus. They couldn't see her well, in the dark, but the meaning was clear. Slowly and quietly, they extricated themselves from behind the abacus, and crept behind the door-frame of the map-room.
In the faint light, they could see the Death Eaters chortle at Bellatrix's mockery. ("The little baby woke up fwightened and fort what it dweamed was twoo") And, slowly, slowly, they crawled across the corner of the prophecy-room, to the door of the time-room. Molasses dripped, and ice melted and glaciers abraded cliffs into rolling hills.
Hermione first reached the clock room as Harry taunted Bellatrix about her master the half-blood ("Voldemort? Yeah, his mother was a witch but his dad was a Muggle - or has he been telling you lot he's pure-blood?"), and the last tip of Neville's leg entered the room as Harry discovered the set-up from the elder Malfoy ("Someone made a prophecy about Voldemort and me? ...And he's made me come and get it for him?").
Hermione, who still carried the small time-turner, removed her larger turner, and placed it where she'd found it. Then the three scooted into the small office off the clock-room. The door was faintly open, as it had been before the three past-selves barricaded themselves into the time-room, and looking out Hermione could see...
Wait. What was that? There, in the bell-jar with the hummingbird - that Ginny had admired, that they had all noticed, and remarked upon, as an obvious hummingbird – there was not a hummingbird, but a butterfly.
And, the butterfly was as beautifully jewel-colored and gleaming as the hummingbird had been – but it was a butterfly.
Hermione did not know how, or why, or when it had changed – but it had changed. And there was no way to change it back, before her past-self – who remembered distinctly a hummingbird! - would enter.
Because here came the shouted "RUN!" and the sound of crashing prophecy shelves, and the chanted-wave of overlapping prophecies from their shattering orbs. And, now the "colloportus" as the past-Hermione locked the door to the clock-room, and present-Hermione retreated into the shadow of the office, where present-Harry and present-Neville were ducked under the desks.
Then came the cry of "Avada Kedavra" that had barely missed before and an incredulous shout "They have time-turners! Spread out!"
And, Harry threw the chain of his time-turner over Hermione and Neville's necks, and turned it once.
###
It seemed subjectively to all three travellers, as though they hung in that sparkling space between one time and the next for longer this time-turn than they had before. But, soon, the new-old time reappeared before them. They could remember their past-selves crouched painfully behind a desk, but the office into which they'd arrived had no desks.
The present-Hermione made eye contact with the other two, and gently laid the chain of her smaller time-turner around their necks. One turn to the past. And, this turn they hung again for longer in the glittering void where time didn't exist.
###
As they hung in that time-less sparkling gap, they saw that the void was not empty. Instead there was a hummingbird, and a pair of disordered desks. And standing before them, was a figure that was vaguely female. She was indescribable, though made of the overlapping shapes of an infinite number of describable women.
The void of a time-turner journey was known to be infinitesimal; there was no gap between the past-future, and the future-past of backwards time travel. Hermione knew that this had been studied, tested, and measured during the centuries since the first time-turner was used.
And, each of the finite constituent women of the figure standing-floating-hanging before them was finite, as each was on the same scale as Harry, or Neville or Hermione was.
But, the figure before them – the divergent infinite sum of finite components – was itself infinite. Such, try as any of the travelers might, they could not break the figure down. At any given moment, with patience and a great deal of focus, though, they could make out flashes of the component women.
All were beautiful, and powerful, and – Hermione thought – more than a little frightening. One had skin as black as the night, wild hair, and four arms that held a tiger, a sword, and blue lotuses. Yet another was pale, with blond hair, and clothing made of spring flowers, and eyes that could see everything. Or a redhead with hair like the flames of a phoenix, and hands holding the sun, the moon, and the stars. One was crowned, and held nails in her hand. And where one had three-eyes on ten faces, and skin the color of lapis, with ten arms each holding ornaments, another was as white as bleached flax, with a single eye and carried only a long spindle.**
"STOP!" Came a command, reverberating through the time-less and infinitesimal space.***
And the timeless past-present-future-Harry, -Neville, and -Hermione couldn't help but stare.
"YOU FOOLS, UNRAVELERS OF ORDER, TEARERS OF THE THREAD, CREATORS OF ENTROPY! HAVE YOU NO SENSE OF THE DESTRUCTION YOU WRECK?"
The three travelers looked at one another, and in their exhausting could think of nothing to say. "What destruction?"
"YOU DISTURB THE NATURAL BALANCE WITH YOUR ABUSE OF TIME. DID YOU NOT SEE IT?"
"You mean, how the hummingbird became a butterfly, and the desks disappeared?" "But, we were fixing it..."
"THE BUTTERFLY, AND DESKS WERE WARNING SIGNS, LEADING TO A CHANGE YOU WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO FIX.
"AND YOU STRAIN THE THREAD OF TIME, SO THE FABRIC OF EXISTENCE IS TORN APART."
"Is this why they say time-travel is dangerous?"
"I thought that had to do with paradoxes, and grandfathers being killed, and past-selves being destroyed."
"YOUR CONCEPT OF TIME IS ONE THREAD OF MANY FIBERS THAT HOLD THIS UNIVERSE TOGETHER.
"YOU HAVE HEARD THAT TIME AND SPACE ARE RELATED.
"TIME IS THE BRITTLE FIBER THAT CARRIES THE UNIVERSES' LOADS. SPACE IS THE DUCTILE THREE-DIMENSIONAL MATRIX THAT HOLDS THE THREADS OF TIME TOGETHER.
"IF THIS FIBER OF TIME SNAPS, THE STRESS ON THE REMAINING FIBERS WILL INCREASE, UNTIL THE TOTAL UNIVERSE MAY DELAMINATE OR TEAR.
"AND THAT WILL BE THE DESTRUCTION OF YOU, YOUR PLANET, YOUR SOLAR SYSTEM AND GALAXY, AND EVERY EXISTANCE IMAGINABLE WITHIN YOUR UNIVERSE."
"Why are you telling us this now?"
"BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOT YET CAUSED IRREPARABLE DAMAGE; THE THREAD OF TIME IS AT THIS POINT STILL ONLY PLASTICALLY DEFORMED. BUT IF YOU DO NOT ALLOW THE THREAD TO SETTLE, IT WILL YET FRACTURE."
"How do we fix it?" "We keep trying to let it go."
"I ESTIMATE – WITH A REASONABLE SAFETY MARGIN – THAT YOU COULD MAKE ONE MORE TIME JUMP EACH, BEFORE REACHING THE THREAD'S YIELD STRENGTH.
"YOU MUST PLAN THAT ONE JUMP WISELY."
With that, the woman-figure shrunk in on her infinite self, until her potential multiple arms flared like gossamer wings around a thin, fuzzy body. She opened her butterfly wings, and faded into the golden timelessness.
###
Neville looked at the two travel-mates, then snuck towards the door of the office. Pushing only the tip of his wand out of the door-crack, he whispered, "somnium" at Huxley's back. The blond researcher put her head onto her desk, and gently fell asleep.
They transfigured two old books into two old oak boxes. Then, two old oak boxes into two heavy old oak desks. Then, a further book into a mass of papers, reports, folders, memos, and various other documents, and scattered these collaboration over the desks until the desk surfaces were maybe-hopefully as ill-organized as the original desk surfaces that neither Hermione, Harry, nor Neville really remembered.
The clocks of the time-room read 18:45. Fifteen minutes until Hermione turned-back to replace the make-up compact.
The three time-travelers ran across the time-room into a room filled with planets.
Once they were safely inside the planet-room, Hermione stuck her wand out the door-crack and whispered "enervate" at the sleeping Huxley.
"So: goals?" Hermione asked the other two. "Part 1: what do we do about the hummingbird, Part 2: find Ron, Ginny and Luna, Part 3: escape. With one time-turn."
"Well, the butterfly is already a butterfly, and then it was a hummingbird, then a butterfly, then a hummingbird. And, it never changed while we were there, but I have no idea how we'll get in to change it unseen in the few seconds between when we pass in and out of that room."
"Right. Hermione, how good are you at transfiguration from a distance?"
"From across the room? I'm glad you both think well of me, but that's a really small target. I'm about 80 percent sure that I can't do it. And 99 percent sure that if I could do it once, I couldn't do it three times more."
"Okay, next thought. Can you conjure a hummingbird?"
"Actually, good thinking. Then, switching spell?"
"We'll have to stay in this room for that to work. Until right before we time-turn the first time, because that's when you noticed the butterfly the first time."
"Okay. That's they notice that we have time-turners, too, though. And we have to find Ron, Ginny, and Luna."
"Right. We know that they ran in the direction of the door, but we know they didn't come into the clock-room. So, they can either have gone into the heart room or the map room."
"I propose: we split up. One of you goes to the heart room, one of you goes back to the map room, and I stay here to complete the switching spells on the bird. Then, we wait until they notice that we have time-turners. At that point, one or the other group of us will have met Ginny, Ron and Luna. We know that the time turners can take four, because we brought the me-Huxley with us once. So, when the call goes out, we turn back four hours, and stun-enervate Huxley, and leave together.
###
When the Ministry six met back in the spinning room, Hermione was still carrying her switched butterfly.
###
Notes:
* Name references an excellent book by Julia Alvarez
** See wiki for: Kali, the Horae, Aeternitas, Nortia, Mahakali, the Parcae.
*** This manner of speaking is copied from Terry Pratchett's Death.