White Rabbit
"Well, we're all mad here and that's a good excuse to go to hell in a teapot, but not to forget what you have seen."
The Mad Hatter, Alice Madness Returns
1982, summer
Gemma was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Gemma, 'withoutpictures or conversations?'
They were outside because Lindsay wanted to read a while in the garden, under the big fruit tree, but Gemma was starting to get very bored. Lindsay was talking about spells, counter spells, curses and potions. Gemma wasn't ready to go to Hogwarts yet, but she couldn't help thinking all that magic sound terribly boring.
She closed her eyes for a moment, but her sister's screechy voice prevented her from falling completely asleep and, finale, in despair, she looked at the book. It was too early for they to head home at tea time. She was surprised to find a handwritten note in one of the margins of the book and, even though she couldn't understand the calligraphy very much, she put his finger above it, interrupting her sister.
"What does it says here?"
Lindsay frowned.
"It's just a stupid note," she answered. "Follow the White Rabbit," she read, turning the book a little to the left. "It was already there when I bought the book and nobody has erased it."
Gemma smiles and repeated the words for herself.
Follow the White Rabbit.
1987, summer
"Gemma, stay quiet there!" Her mother, with her two brothers at her sider was losing her temper. "Where is Lindsay? She's supposed to look after the twins. Lindsay!" she shouted, raising her head. She didn't see her oldest daughter anywhere and sighed. "Very well, very well…" She pulled the twins and indicated Gemma with a gesture that she had to look after them. "I'm going to buy your books. Stay here!"
Gemma, overwhelmed by her mother's mood, didn't argue. She took the twins who were like two little demons and didn't release them. They didn't argue either, because they were tired and just wanted to go home to take a nap. Gemma frowned and stayed there, standing outside Flourish & Blotts.
However, a man with a pipe and a big hat caught her attention, just a metres far. He had a deck of cards and he was revolving them. The people ignored him completely.
"The fortune?" asked Gemma.
"Depend in what you believe," the man answered. "You've got a knut?"
"No, I'm sorry."
"Then just one card," the man said. He raised the deck, urging her to pick up a card.
She picked up one with one of her hands, without losing the twins. The man flipped the card she had chosen.
"How weird!" the man exclaimed, looking the card. "I didn't quite remember this!" Although his voice sounded jovial, he wasn't smiling and in fact, it could be glimpsed a worried rictus.
Gemma inclined to look better at the card. It was a White Rabbit with a clock. It seemed stupid to her. White Rabbits didn't carry clocks.
"What does it mean?" she asked. She was counteracted. Only her get such a stupid card with the fortune tellers.
"I have no idea," the man confessed, picking up the card. "Do you are afraid of the Big White Rabbit?"
1989, autumn
"What are you drawing?" They were in the library, but, as always, Marcus was doing nothing. He sometimes told Gemma everything his professors taught him was useless, but her only roll her eyes and asked why him get grades that were so bad. That day, while she was making her homework for Herbology, she was drawing.
"Nothing, nonsense." Marcus tried to hide the parchment, but she saw something that caught her attention and pull it.
"What this is supposed to be?"
"I don't know, something."
Gemma frowned, putting her fingerprint in the drawing. It was a running White Rabbit with a clock.
"Rabbits don't have clocks."
1992, autumn
It wasn't a party. It was more like a clandestine reunion in the fourth year boys' room. Adrian had stolen a pipe to his father and all of them were testing it. Marcus had convinced Gemma to go although they were both on the sixth year already and, as Gemma used to say, they didn't have the time for those nonsenses. Terence was wearing an enormous and ridiculous hat; he had declared he was the Great Erudite of Timbuktu and invited them to ask him whatever question that come to their minds. Most of the question were incredibly stupid; for example, the boys asked if any girl―of second or third year―would like to go out with Montague sometime or if Draco Malfoy was the Stlytherin heir.
"Cheers!" shouted Terence, when there was already too much mead in his system.
They all raised their cups, but Gemma dared to ask another question.
"What are we toasting for?"
"For the Great White Rabbit!"
1993, winter
She hated being here, with all the cold weather. She had already tried with all the thermic spells she knew, but there was some magic in the office that prevented them from working. The Department of Mysteries seemed like a dismal place, it always has looked like that for her. However, she was there, doing paperwork. She had to study a few years in order to become into an unspeakeable, so the only thing she could do was to sit in that office, six hours per day, study whatever book had been given to her, classify a lot of reports and present the exams.
She drank from the cup of tea she has on the table and took a dossier in order to reviewing it. Generally, most of the dossiers didn't catch her attention. She wanted to specialise in prophecies' studies, not time―to complicated―not death―to frightening, even for that Department―not love.
However, she noticed that someone has shaped with the nails two words in her desk's wood.
White Rabbit.
1995, winter
Every person who wanted to become into unspeakable had to pass that test. Touch with a bare hand the Time Clock and wait for an answer. There were ones who never obtained it. Other ones had their answer almost immediately. Gemma had waited five minutes, with her hand in the clock when an image appeared in the surface and moved across the Time Clock.
A white rabbit, dressed in a suit, running all along the glass.
Gemma frowned, like she did every time that signal appeared in her life.
"What does it mean?" she asked.
The unspeakable who have taken her there just shrugged before answering the question.
"The sand of time does not lie."
1997, spring
They were on The Leaky Cauldron, drinking some glasses of firewhiskey. That time, Marcus and Montague weren't there. It was just Adrian and Terence and, of course, Gemma. They weren't talking that much because the atmosphere didn't let them. Things have gotten a lot worse in the magical world. Terence said Miles had news from Hogwarts, because of his brother and he assures all was well there. The Ministry was still resisting, but Gemma didn't know how long it would take the war to explode in their faces.
"A toast?" Adrian proposed. "For the present."
They all raised their firewhiskey glasses.
"Cheers."
Then, Gemma saw a poster behind the bar, just in front of her, where Tom is serving the drinks.
Follow the White Rabbit.
1999, spring
At the beginning, she thought her specialization was going to be prophecies. Casualties. However, in that moment, standing in front of that door, she saw the lock attentively. The door of the Room of Time.
It had a white rabbit painted in it.
She sighed and, for the very first time in her life, she followed the instructions she had been seeing since her childhood.
Follow the White Rabbit.
Humpty Dumpty sate [sic] on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty [sic] had a great fall;
Threescore men and threescore more,
Cannot place Humpty dumpty as he was before
September 11th, 2004, in the morning
Since the battle which had taken place in the Department of Mysteries, seven years ago, nobody without the proper authorisation had stolen―or even had gotten in―anything from the Room of Time until that morning. When Gemma arrived, she found out the disaster already in her office, with a hysterical intern who sworn she didn't knew what had happened and an asleep guard in front of the Room of Time. Nobody had been able to wake him up.
Gemma sighed before asking what the hell had happened, but the hysterical intern wasn't being able of explaining her anything at all. It took Gemma three cups of tea to understand something.
"The Time Egg is broken, completely broken!" her intern explained before starting to cry again. "Broken! And what if someone want to accuse me? I was the last person who saw it and I swear: it didn't have the slightest break!"
"Just that?" asked Gemma. That could be easily fixed. It would take months, bit it could be fixed. They had been trying to develop time-turners again for the last four years; they had lost all of them more of less nine years ago. The Time Egg has born because of that project.
If it was just broken―. It would take months. But the Time Egg could be rebuilt. That was the greatest project Gemma had had in all the years she had been there. That project had made her won a Honour Mention when she had become unspeakable. That was her project.
However, Gemma saw her greatest fears turn into the truth when the intern shook her head.
"They took the sand," she answered. "All the sand of time."
She practically jump from her chair and, ignoring the poor intern, she left their little office―the same one as always―with her desk and her chair and the things she had put there in all her years in the Department. Gemma head down to the Room of Time and found the door slightly opened and, before entering the room, she touched the lock. The white rabbit was still there and had been there day after day. She barely noticed it anymore.
She opened the door and look directly at the disaster.
The Time Clock was just in the entrance, like always. It never stopped. Gemma had seen the white rabbit running through the glass there many years ago. The time bell was still there―somewhere around. And, at the far end of the room, just where the time-turners used to be, there was the Time Egg. Broken. Without a single grain of sand in it.
"Ah, Unspeakable Farley." There was men waiting for her. Four unspeakables. "We were waiting for you."
"My intern filled me in," Gemma said, noticing that she didn't recall the poor girl's name. "They took everything, didn't they?"
The man nodded.
"They weren't amateurs, the thieves. They knew what was needed to steal the sand of time," he said. "We're considering the possibility of having a mole."
Gemma nodded making clear she understand everything. She looked around. How the thieves had managed to carry all the sand of time without dying in the process? The sand was very powerful. It was obvious there was a mole. The situation wasn't anything she liked, because investigations like that always interfered in getting the jog done. There were interrogations, people fired and suspensions for all the suspects. Gemma, however, has only one concern.
"The project―it would continue?" she asked.
"We will decide that after the proper investigation, Unspeakable Farley," said the only woman among the other three. The Deputy Director of the Department: Inna Selwyn. "I'm afraid that you'll have to wait until the investigation is done to return to your position, as you were the manager of this project. You're suspended. With payment, of course."
Of course, Gemma thought, suspended with payment. They couldn't take the risk. But it was her first big project and it was completely destroyed. And worse, she was suspended. It was a disaster and she couldn't have been able of seeing it coming. The project had done perfectly until that day: they had found a lode of sand of time in Bristol and they had been able of taking the sand to the Ministry in order to start preparing it for the time-turners. It had been perfect. Until that day.
"No problem," Gemma said, but her face was telling them the contrary. What the hell would she do at home? That job was her life, the only one she knew and had.
"Ah, by the way…" said one man, extending his hand with a parchment in it. "The thieves left this behind Does it say something to you, Unspeakable Farley?"
Gemma took the parchment and she looked at it. It had a seal, and in the seal, there was a rabbit. The White Rabbit.
"No," she answered.
But it was a lie. The parchment was telling her many things, but she didn't want to tell the the White Rabbit story as it was, in a way, the story of her life. She had started to work in the Department of Mysteries because she didn't believe in coincidences and she had always believed the White Rabbit was part of something bigger―and she was, too, by extension. The White Rabbit was everywhere she looked at.
"We didn't find any magic seal in it," the man pointed. "Just a text written in invisible ink." He raised his wand and pronounced the spell: "Revelio."
Gemma hid her smile when she saw the text. Of course. It couldn't be any other words.
Follow the White Rabbit.
"Can I have it?" she asked, looking directly to Inna Selwyn, the boss.
"It didn't have any magic seal and we cannot track the thieves with it," she said. "You do want you want with her. Otherwise, make sure you have cleaned your desk in an hour. We want to make this business clear as soon as possible."
Gemma nodded and headed back to her office. The hysterical intern was still there, with a cup of tea in her hands.
"Everything okay, Unspeakable Farley?" she asked.
Gemma shook her head.
"Suspended with full payment," she said. "My project."
"I'm so sorry…"
Gemma didn't like any of it. That could ruin her entire career in the Department. They were the most independent department in the entire Ministry. They didn't even like the aurors in their investigations and in their rooms and halls. They had their own security forces and their particular ways of protecting their work.
"It doesn't matter," she said. It did matter. "What was your name?" she asked. "I'm sorry," she explained herself, "with all the confusion…"
"Ashley," said the intern. "Ashley Jones."
Gemma sighed.
"Good luck then, Ashley Jones," she wished. If it was true she was the last person in seeing the egg, she was going to need it.
September 11th, 2004, at night
"Bad day?" asked Adrian, raising his left eyebrow, just after serve her a second glass of firewhiskey.
Gemma was in Adrian Pucey's armchair, in his very big house, too big for a lonely person. That and a not deplorable amount of money was the only inheritance his parents had left him. He was an only spoiled child and Gemma had the firm belief that he didn't do anything in order to earn a living, except for throwing away his parents money.
"What do you think, seriously?" she asked. "A disaster."
"You could tell me."
"I work in the Department of Mysteries, Adrian," Gemma said and the she drank from her glass. "I cannot put more emphasis in this: I cannot tell you a fucking thing. And I'm suspended"
"Suspended!" screamed a voice behind them. "Well, the perfect prefect of Farley is suspended. Suspended." It was Terence Higgs, making a special―and annoying―emphasis in the last word.
Gemma turned around and faced a young blonde man that still had a teenage air. He was wearing his pyjamas, had an empty glass in his hand and was walking in his bare foot.
"Are you still living here?" Gemma asked him instead of saying hello.
"Of course," he answered. "You're going to invite me whisky, right?"
Adrian passed him the bottle and Terence sat aside Gemma.
"You two are good for nothing," she said.
They were. While Adrian could be a loafer and being without job, al least until his fortune disappeared, Terence was a loafer by vocation. His oldest brother has chosen to take the responsibilities and has find a respectable job. Her youngest sister was willing to do anything at all to catch a young―and morbidly rich―heir. Terence, however, was living with Adrian as a leech himself. Adrian wasn't bother by it, but maybe in the future he would be.
"We don't stress ourselves with it, Gemma," Adrian said. "I certainly can tell you about my day." He winked in her direction. "Terence and I went to an engagement party. Nor the fiancé nor the fiancée went."
Of course, they did have time to have a social life. She didn't. She spent all her free time in the Ministry and Adrian and Terence was all her social life. Sometimes Marcus, too.
"Who's the party was?"
"Guess," Terence said.
"I honestly have no idea," she said, drinking again from her glass of firewhiskey. She knew nothing about the social events at the time.
"Flint."
"Yes, Marcus Flint. Refused to attend to his party. He's thirty and his parents are desperate to get him a girlfriend." Adrian shook his head. "Although the girlfriend don't matter to them. They want the money she have. Do you know her? MacDougal."
"No. No idea."
Gemma was frowning. Marcus and she sent the other letters all the time and he hadn't mentioned anything about his parents throwing away his engagement party. She had never liked them; they had always been that kind of people who only cared about money and gold and galleons in Gringotts. So, Marcus was going to get married and she hadn't got the slightest idea. And he was supposed to be her best friend.
"If you don't quit that sad face, we will start to think we are at a funeral, Farley," Adrian said to her.
"Oi! I'm sorry." She put her glass on the table. "I just have to go to the―"
She wasn't mad about not knowing Marcus was engaged. She was mad about noticing she didn't had the faintest idea of what was going on with her friends. Job had been consuming her for the last two years.
She reached the restroom and entered. She was frozen by something she saw on the mirror. Two words, written in white. She knew the words perfectly.
White Rabbit.
"Adrian! Terence!" she shouted.
They appeared within two second because the alarmed tone of her voice. When they arrived, she pointed at the words in the mirror.
"Did any of you paint that?" she asked.
Both of them shook their head.
"Maybe…" Adrian started.
"… the last party," guessed Terence. "Perhaps…"
"Some drunk folk…"
"That words," Gemma murmured. "They follow me since I was a child."
"What do you mean?" asked Adrian.
"Do you believe fortuity, boys?" she asked.
September 24th, 2004, in the afternoon
As Gemma wasn't working―and receiving her full payment―Adrian and Terence seemed to believe they could spend the day in her home. Gemma, who wasn't used to seeing them every day, received kindly the first days, but the kindness ended soon and as soon as they appeared in her chimney, she wanted to throw them out as soon as she could. But Adrian and Terence, two years younger than she, and visibly more immature, didn't understand that Gemma sometimes wanted a little of quiet, not butterbeer bottles in every place of her house.
"Gemma! Do you have mead?" Adrian asked, screaming from the living room, while Gemma and Terence were in the kitchen.
She looked out the door.
"Contrary to what you believe, I'm no alcoholic, Pucey," she told him and then looked at Terence: "Did you finish cleaning the disaster? If you wanted a pie al least you could have asked how it was done. There's no house elf here."
"Neither at home," Terence answered.
"It isn't?" Gemma was surprised. "I thought the old one you had would remain faithfool until death."
"We can't maintain him." Terence hid his eyes, waiting Gemma looked at him her I've told you so face. She was a master of that face.
"So, you're finally in ruin and you're finally realising the disaster you've done," she said to him. "Only when it's too late."
"Adrian always said that superiority look was the very first thing people was taught to do in the Department of Mysteries." Terence said, pointing at Gemma's eyes. "I don't know what we are going to do."
"You know what you have to do, Terence," she told him. "You and Adrian."
None of them had born in a family where a job was needed in order to earn a living. The Higgs and the Pucey lived managing their properties they had and, despite not being rich, they didn't were poor. Terence and his family had lost everything in the war and Adrian ha spent all his fortune little by little, wasting his entire inheritance. Now that they found they were bankrupt, Gemma knew that the single idea of getting a job didn't convince them but it was the only solution. In her family, however, this had never been easy. The inheritance had been divided in four children―and it had never been so much. Lindsay had gotten married a couple of years ago with an Irish bloke who was doing well. The twins had a store and she was Unspeakable. Getting the work done had never been a problem.
"I know," Terence nodded.
"Then lose you fucking pride and look for a job," Gemma said before getting back to the living room. "You two are going to keep drinking or you visit has another purpose?"
"Gemma, sometimes you are a bore," Adrian told her.
Gemma Farley asked why she had friends like that, idiots who were good for nothing. Sometimes even a little alcoholic. She was going to answer when someone knocked at the door and instead of following the discussion, she walked to the door.
There was nobody there, but there was a piece of paper in her post-box. Gemma took it while frowning. There was a sheet from a book she had never seen with an incomprehensible poem and a note in the margin.
The White Rabbit is on the Dragon's Grave.
She returned to the living room still looking at the piece of paper.
"The White Rabbit is on the Dragon's Grave…" she repeated just for herself. Adrian stared at her at the mention of the White Rabbit.
"That again?" he asked.
"Since always," she answered. It wasn't weird anymore. The White Rabbit always appeared in her life, since that time sitting by her sister side, thinking a book without illustrations was boring.
"You didn't mention it was so… frequent," Adrian said. "What does it mean the thing with the Dragon's Grave, for Merlin's sake?"
"I don't know. It's just… a poem. An incomprehensible poem."
She passed the piece of paper for them to see. Adrian only make a face showing his confusedness. Terence, with curiosity painted on his face, kept reading for minutes until her face become bright.
"Avalon," he simply said. "Avalon."
"Avalon?" Gemma asked; she didn't understand what she meant.
"The island," he explained. Of course they knew the island. The most magical island in all the United Kingdom―maybe the world. The muggles knew about it because there was legends and because they knew about Arthur Pendragon. "It means the White Rabbit is in Avalon."
"How in Salazar's sake do you know it?" Adrian asked.
"The poem comes from a muggle book written by a mad muggle. Well, the muggle wasn't mad," Terence explained to them. "The poem mentions the Jabberwocky. A dragon. Buried forever in Avalon."
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
September 28th, 2004, almost at noon
Gemma didn't quite know how she had let them convince her. Adrian and Terece had had something to do with it, true, but it had been Marcus who really had convinced her. Walking in that field, Gemma regretted not having somebody more reasonable as a friend. Marcus had never been a brainy boy and the only thing he was good for was playing Quidditch―he played it professionally. And, according to Gemma, Adrian and Terece had got the brain of an amoeba and where a pair of goods for nothing. She considered it a pity because they certainly were capable of doing something for their lives in order to not end in bankrupt.
But they were them, in the most magical island of all the continent―even the world. Avalon. In the muggles' minds it was just a legend, the place where Arthur Pendragon was buried; over time, they had forgotten that Avalon really existed and had made it into fairy-tale material. But witches and wizards who wished to see Excalibur visited Arthur's grave year after year; but not they. No. They were head to a more recent monument, the Dragon's Tower or the Dragon's Grave. Three hundred years ago, wizards and witches had buried a dragon there, one of the most powerful and dangerous dragons England had seen.
"I still don't understand how the dragon make into a muggle book," Adrian said. He was the last in the line. "A muggle book which does not talk about Avalon."
That was the two phases he had been repeating all the way there, since Terence had told them what he knew about the poem. Gemma stopped paying them attention the second time. She was much more worried about her job and the sand of time. Weeks had passes and she couldn't believe her work was ruined yet. She had been summoned from the Department of Mysteries of the Ministry a couple of times and she had been told she wasn't in danger of losing the job; that she could return to her office in the moment the investigation ended. However, nothing assured her that her project would be rebuilt―it costed too much, it consumed too many resources, and it had never been the most important project in the Department. And, if her project wasn't rebuilt, all her job would lose sense.
"Many magical things appear in muggle myths and legends," Terence explained to Adrian. "Sometimes there were smarter than they look like."
"That book had a talking egg, Terence," spitted Adrian. "They doesn't seem too smart for me."
"Excess of imagination?" suggested Marcus.
Gemma hadn't even cared about the book. She was there just to try to understand the chain of casualties of the White Rabbit. She had seen it since she was a kid and she had learnt to not grant the rabbit too much importance. However, the rabbit's image and the words followed her anywhere she went. Why the White Rabbit had something to do with the theft?
"It's just stupid," Adrian answered. "A talking egg. I've always said that muggles aren't got any brain."
"Your father's girlfriend is one," Terence said, "probably don't tell him that.
"Low blow," said Adrian.
"You've got a girlfriend?" Gemma asked. She hadn't heard anything about that and she was genuinely curious.
"She's not my girlfriend."
"But she's got him high." Terence just smiled.
"He only had dated her a couple of times," Marcus told. "There's nothing official, yet."
"Thanks, Marcus," Adrian said and the looked at his best friend. "I didn't know Gemma needed so many information about my private life, Terence." And then he looked at Gemma. "It's Tracey Davis," he said.
"Ah," she hadn't gotten more interest. "And you are going to get a job?"
"I don't know what that has to do with anything."
"Well, if she's going to be your girlfriend, you sure aren't planning telling her you're broken," Gemma said.
"Ah, Terence told you."
Adrian stayed silent, very very silent. Gemma supposed his silence meant a I'm still haven't got a job. She didn't insist more because it didn't seemed right to her doing it in that moment and that place. She didn't asked Marcus, either, all the things she wished to ask about his wedding because he was avoiding the topic.
"Oi!" Terence was smiling. "There it is! The Dragon's Grave." He looked very pleased of himself.
Adrian raised his head to look at the place and sighed. Marcus stayed a little behind and Gemma was first in reaching Terence. In front of them was what seemed to be stairs of a tower. Gemma could saw the same stairs going underground.
"Is this the grave?" Adrian seemed pretty much disappointed.
"What did you expect? Something like Arthur's?" asked Terence. "This is a forgotten dragon. The Jabberwocky, last of his kind, terror of the skies, only remembered in a muggle book."
September 29th, 2004, in the morning
They had rested all night, because Marcus had refused to get into the grave at night. So, they had built Flint's camping tent and they had spent there the night. Gemma hadn't said anything about the boys' persona hygiene. In the morning, they simply had picked up everything and they had decided to go down.
"Lumos Maxima!" Adrian exclaimed. They had walked down the stairs more or less twenty meters down. "This is getting darker."
"We must be close," Gemma said. "We walked too much already."
"Yeah, we must be close," Marcus said. He sounded like he was convincing himself about that.
They kept going, in silence, because they had drained every conversation topic the night before. Gemma was deep in her thoughts. She hated coincidences and her life was resulting to be a bunch of them. The White Rabbit, once again. And she always ignoring him, chasing him, trying to make sense of him. She hadn't accomplished any of that.
Suddenly, she heard a noise, like if something was breaking. Marcus was the first in responding.
"What the fuck was that?"
"I don't know―" Terence didn't look so sure of himself.
They heard it again.
"Run!" shouted Marcus.
Gemma didn't pay attention to anything else, just the sound of her steps, walking down as fast as she could. She was first in the line and she assumed everyone was following her so, when she saw a bifurcation in the stairs, she took the left in an instinct. She didn't notice the silence behind her until she found a big wood door with a very clear figure in it.
Of course, she told herself not without any surprise.
A Big White Rabbit.
Then, she turned around to see when the rest arrived, but she found herself alone.
"Adrian?" she asked. There was no answer. "Terence?!" she tried a little louder, but there was still no answer. "Marcus?" Just silence.
Damn it, they took the other side, she thought. She wasn't very pleased with it and she thought what to do. Her common sense was telling her go and get the others. But, on the other hand…
"What the hell," she said and pushed the door. It opened with no effort.
At the other side of the door there was a big squared room with eternal fire in the walls. There were engravings in them and Gemma could see the engraving told the story of a dragon. However, what caught her attention immediately was a receptacle in the centre of the room. It was made from a too clean glass and it was too recent to be there. And inside the receptacle, she found something she would recognise everywhere. The sand of time.
She started walking to it.
"Don't go near it!" she heard a voice.
There was the voice of an old man in the end of the room. He has a hoodie and it was impossible to look at her face. However, Gemma stopped. She was prepared to defend herself if it was needed.
"Not a single step more!" the man told her again.
She frowned.
"Sand of time," she said. "You've got sand of time."
The man wasn't expecting that.
"Did you know it?" he asked.
Good, Gemma told herself, I can distract him. She just need to ask the proper questions, talk. If she noticed the danger making itself bigger, she just could run away from there.
"You stole it," she said. "Why?"
She knew that was the stolen sand of time. There was too many of it, there and the sand there seemed to be adjusted to the cyclic time, just as in the time-turners. A time paradox, repeated itself an infinite times, because nobody turn back the time unless he time was been turned back before. That was the only secure way of travelling in time.
"You're an intruder, I don't have to tell you anything," the man answered.
"Oh, Thorfinn, so… untrusting," said a voice at Gemma's back. The voice of a much younger man. Gemma knew the voice, she was sure. "She could help us with the final step. Didn't you recognise her? Gemma Farley, the director of the original project."
She couldn't place the voice. She could only see a second hooded man.
"I won't help you," she said.
"So soon and you're saying no already?" the younger man asked. "You don't even know what our problem is. We have everything! Everything! And, still, it doesn't work." He started walking to her. "A place changed itself with magic, like the Avalon. This isn't Arthur's Grave, where Excalibur is, but a dragon like this. The power a good wizard could have with this is infinite." The man didn't seemed to mind Gemma was pointing him with her wand. "The sand of time, to change the past. And still… it doesn't work! Why doesn't it work?!"
Gemma still couldn't place the voice but that was diluted into the background when the man said change the past. She had already guessed they weren't the common idiots, because they seemed to know what the heel they were doing with the sand of time and certainly knew a way of altering time.
"What do you want to change?" she asked, trying to win some time.
"The past, six years ago… The result of the war!" the man answered. "Why doesn't it work?" he asked again.
You reveal your secrets to easy, Gemma thought. She looked at everything there. She knew how time behaved, it was capricious and wizards couldn't tame it to do their will. Gemma, more than anybody, knew that nobody could know all the time secrets. But there they were, simple wizards, trying to alter the curse of time, to change the history, the war. Give the victory to a psychopath.
And while she was looking at their design, she discovered it. They had a power source: what was left of the dragon; they had the sand of time, crucial ingredient in all the recipe. And yet, something was missing. The most important.
She head to the receptacle.
"Not a single step more!" said the old man.
"I know what's missing," Gemma said, hiding perfectly all her emotions. "I can help."
She kept walking until she was almost touching the receptacle. She analysed everything with a single look.
"And well?" the young man insisted. "Do you know it?"
"Will you change the result of the war?" she asked. "Will you give the victory to the Dark Lord?"
"I will give the victory to the one who doesn't ally with blood traitors," he answered.
"Exactly what I was thinking," Gemma said. "You're missing the catalyst," she told them. "Without one, you'll never make this work."
"Catalyst?"
"There's a reason because men cannot go near the sand of time, a very good reason to the sand of time of being isolated," Gemma told.
"It kills you," was what the old man said.
"No," Gemma contradicted. "It makes you a catalyst," she corrected and she raised her wand. "Diffinido!"
The sand of time started to swirl around her, gold, bright, to feed up with her magic and her energy, to merge with Gemma. Nobody ever had absorbed so many of it and Gemma didn't knew what was going to happen, but she knew the theory. She could make timelines disappear in less than a second, she could change the destiny of those two men completely just to avoid they went there. So she did. She changed their destinies, their timelines, and their lives. She changed history just a little. Just to save the world.
The time wasn't a cause-effect system, it would never be. The time, in those circumstances was capricious, it could change and retract.
Gemma overwhelmed by all his power, fainted
Later
"Gemma!"
The scream woke her up in a moment and when she opened her eyes she found three very well knows faces looking at her: Adrian, Terence and Marcus.
"We lost you so we have to come looking for you and―" Marcus was talking too fast but Gemma raised his hand to make him shut the fuck up.
"What happened?" Adrian asked. "Why you fainted?"
"I saved the world," Gemma answered. She had lost her breath. She could feel the sand of time still moving inside her, making her at its will. "The war. They wanted to change… They wanted to bring him back," she explained, "the Dark Lord."
I saved the word, she thought. In five minutes. Or less. That deserved a record.
"What?" Terence frowned.
"It seems she's crazy," was Marcus opinion.
Gemma felt again the power of the sand of time inside her. It was going to make a big magic explosion within minutes and she didn't know how to stop it. It could change the essence of time itself. And saving the world was going to worth nothing if she didn't stop it. An explosion of that means would be incredibly dangerous.
It had to be a way of stopping it, of changing it. A little change in time―or changes―that didn't compromise the History with capital letter. It had to be a way.
And then, suddenly, she understood it.
"It's me. The White Rabbit. All the signals. It was… It's going to be me," she said.
"What?" Terence looked at her like she was mad.
"It'll be me, just to make sure I'm here in the right moment, the right second. Just to make sure I'm always coming here," she told them. "RUN!" she shouted.
"We can't leave you," Marcus said.
"You'll have to. Everything is going to explode… the sand of time inside me will cause a massive explosion within moments," she said. "You have to save your asses RUN! NOW!"
She closed her eyes, just to not look at them leaving.
"Gemma…" it was Adrian's voice.
"Now," she insisted.
And after that, she only heard the steps walking away.
Finally, she had understood it. It was her. All the signals of the White Rabbit was her doing, little changes in time all around her just to make sure she arrived to the Dragon's Grave. A route she'd had to follow since her childhood because nobody else was going to remember it or understand it. She had saved everyone. And she hadn't save anyone if it wasn't for the White Rabbit, the route she was going to draw for herself, the careful instructions she was going to paint in her past.
Follow the White Rabbit, Gemma Farley, she thought. The sand of time was inside her.
And then, everything exploded.
We're well. I swear it, Gemma. Five years have passed, five long years. I swear we're well. Adrian is still with Tracey Davis. They aren't going to marry, ever, but he's no longer poor. Not rich, either. Did you know he is narrator of Quidditch matches? I'm well, too. I've got married with Marcus' late fiancée. We manage her properties, we're good. I have a son (and a second in his/her way. If it's a girl we're naming her after you). Marcus is still playing professional Quidditch, richer than ever (more lonely, too). He's convinced me to come here. To left you this note in the grave's debris.
Really, we don't know if you die of you're still out there. Somewhere. In the air. We don't know what you did, exactly and I'm afraid we're never going to. But we're well. We did it in your honour. I swear for my mother's soul: we stopped being good for nothing in your honour.
Terence Higgs.
May 4th, 2009
6822 words with separators, pieces of poems, letter at the end and the epigraph which is a dialog form Alice Madness Returns. This is big.
I wrote it originally for a contest when we were given the start of a famous book. I've got Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll. But I didn't just use the phrase, I actually inspire in many elements of the book, just details. Here, nothing has to do anything with Alice in Wonderland (or her sequel) but we have a White Rabbit (sometimes with a clock) a dragon called the Jabberwocky and a broken egg. Ah, and I use Avalon, from the Arthur legends. Rowling use that mythology doing whatever she wanted so I guessed, why not me? The Avalon is a pretty big place and it certainly can have a Dragon's Grave.
All the things I wrote about time are based in all my reading about time paradoxes, with influences such as Back to the future, Doctor Who (remember the Bad Wolf arc?) and almost every movie, series or book with time travel. Don't try to make sense of it, you're only going to get a massive headache.
Last but not least, English isn't my mother tongue (it's Spanish, Mexican Spanish) and although Cambridge Certificates swear I deserve a C1 (I honestly still doubt it) sometimes my brain gets all wrong and puts everything in the wrong order when I'm writing (which ends up the right order… if I were writing in Spanish, which is never the case). So, if you found grammar, spell, whatever mistakes, feel very free to tell me.
Thank you for reading.
Andrea Poulain
Original: September 16th, 2015 (Viva México, cabrones)
Translation: May 18th, 2016.