When The Clocks Stopped

by Vaysh11

A catastrophe has hit the world: all the clocks stopped, time has come to a halt. Harry Potter's curse-breaking team is part of the quickly formed Order of the Hummingbird. They need the expertise of the Time Master who is no other than Draco Malfoy.

1. Chapter 1

When The Clocks Stopped

* * *

It happened on the sixth day of June, thirteen years after the infamous Harry Potter had vanquished evil Lord Voldemort in Hogwarts' Great Hall.

In one of the castle's ground-level rooms, Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank reached for the small carriage clock that was standing on her mantelpiece. It was square-shaped, made from chased brass, and so small that it fit completely into her sturdy hands. The clock had belonged to Alastor Moody once. After the old Auror's untimely death, it had been passed on to the school's current teacher of Care for Magical Creatures. Not many people knew that Wilhelmina had been with the Aurors in her younger days. Moody had been her teacher at the Ministry. Perhaps this was why he'd felt she was a deserving choice for the odd trinket. Or more likely, he'd been reminded of Wilhelmina's Austrian heritage when he'd read the fine engraving on the bottom of the clock, Zoller & Oldenburg, Wien.

As Wilhelmina caught the clock by its brass handle to take it with her as she packed her trunk to move to number twelve, Grimmauld Place, for the summer, she felt the mainspring snap and the well-oiled oscillator slow down. Moody's old carriage clock came to a sudden and unexpected halt.

oOo

Almost a quarter after nine, Molly Weasley stepped into the living room of the Burrow, the dishes from dinner all cleaned, dried and stacked away. It was only Arthur and her living here now. Molly looked at the old grandfather clock in the corner. Its eight hands pointed in various directions -- the shed, the living room, Shell Cottage, Carpathian Dragon Research Centre, the Ministry of Magic (Level Five), Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes (backroom), down-under.

Molly smiled when she thought about her dragon-taming son and her only daughter, the international Quidditch star. It had taken her years to accept that two of her children were gay, especially Ginny who'd always been such a distant girl. Molly had hoped to get closer to her when Ginny became a mother herself. Now she was further away than any of her other children, playing for the Thundalarra Thunderers in Australia as one of the best Chasers of the world.

Molly opened the large window, to let the evening breeze into the room. Arthur's dark figure appeared from the shed and she called out, "Come on in!" As she watched him walk towards the Burrow, the grandfather clock gave a low chime, a sound she'd never heard before. Molly turned around to a frantic whir, then a screeching sound, like metal torn and scraping. She stepped closer, quick but carefully, to look at the clock, just as Arthur came in through the front door. He was at her side moments after Molly's startled scream.

The eight hands of the clock had all slid into each other, crushing the fine brass points and shattering the porcelain inlays. They all pointed towards one direction. Molly shivered when she read the words, scribbled in her own flowery hand-writing, Charmed decades ago: the living room clock.

oOo

Sirius Black cast a glance at the old watch lying on the window-sill beside his desk. Eleven minutes after nine: time to wake Harry and get him ready for the job tonight. It was a simple busting, a cursed Muggle train stationed at King's Cross, with possibly an infestation of Chizpurfles sapping its magic. The Pest Division of the Ministry had been alarmed but they could not enter the train and Harry's curse-breaking team had been called.

Sirius looked over the houses of Grimmauld Place, absently stroking the worn leather band of the watch. The familiar pain in his right leg flared up and he shifted his weight. Pain in his crippled leg usually meant a change in the weather, as did the bright shades of red and purple in the sky over London. Harry would be lucky not to get drenched on the job, once the inevitable rain set in. Sirius thought about whom to send with Harry as back-up. Not Zakhar -- they had been fighting again, and it was never a good idea to send fighting lovers on a job. Especially not Harry, whose temper was explosive at the best of times. Bill then, even though he'd just returned home to his family. But he'd be good for the job, with his knowledge of Muggles and Muggle culture.

Not that Sirius expected any dealings with Muggles at King's Cross. But as Mad-Eye Moody had always said, Better to have all your goalposts covered. Thoughts of Moody brought him to thoughts of Lupin. At moments like this, when he was up alone in his room, the house all quiet, Sirius felt the dead of the war closing in on him. He knew he was brooding too much. Merlin, he'd even visited Lupin's grave while the team was gone. Sirius had wanted so desperately to fight -- and die -- with him, with all of them, in that last battle in Hogwarts' Great Hall against Voldemort. But of course, he'd been stuck in a small hospital on the Solomon Islands, unable to walk more than a dozen steps, let alone fight in a battle of life and death. It was a wonder, he reminded himself, that he'd recovered at all from Bellatrix' Curse. Long months of his life he'd spent in a coma, years in recovery. And yes, he should be grateful to the healers, to Harry -- for having made this life possible for him.

So Lupin's watch would go to Teddy when Sirius died, no matter that he looked so much like his mother. But he was a nice enough kid and Harry loved him.

Harry ... Sometimes, when he looked at his godson, Sirius felt his chest expand with pride and love -- and it made up for all the pointless longing for someone he could never have now. He ran his fingertips over the glass of Lupin's watch, marvelled at the tiny planets circling the edge of the clock-face. Softly the seconds ticked away, each stroke moving the coloured spheres a bit further. Sirius took the watch in his hand, letting its regular pulse calm him. As dusk settled over Grimmauld Place, the ticking abruptly stopped, like the beating of a heart, stilled forever by the Killing Curse.

oOo

All Harry Potter could see in the dark were the two luminous hands of his old Muggle alarm clock. Without his glasses he could not tell what time it was, he just saw the pale green shimmer which told him where to reach for to bring the clock closer to his face. Thirteen minutes after nine. The room seemed too dark for it to be that early in the evening. Harry put the alarm clock down and got up to step towards the windows. Then he remembered that he'd pulled the heavy curtains closed when he'd lain down for a nap this afternoon.

The team had only returned home this morning. They'd spent the last ten days in a small wizarding village in Siberia where astonishingly well-preserved human bodies had been discovered in the deep ice. A Contact Curse had been spreading like wildfire. The journey back to London by several Portkeys had been exhausting, but Sirius had another job lined up for him tonight.

Harry opened the curtains and looked out onto Grimmauld Place. The dark blue sky was streaked with the last beams of a fiery sunset low on the horizon. Harry quickly walked over to the nightstand, grabbed his wand and ignited the candles. In half an hour the team would gather for the briefing, fortified with steaming mugs of coffee. Over the years Sirius' huge upstairs room had become the home base of Harry's team, much like the kitchen had once been the base of the Order of the Phoenix. Sirius kept all the paper work up there in an enormous filing cabinet, and from his large desk, cluttered with books and parchments, he painstakingly planned out every one of their curse-breaking missions.

Sirius better not team him up with Zak tonight, Harry thought as he pulled his trousers on. For a moment, he stared at the leaping Chimaeras and burning serpents that seemed to slither up and down his arms. He'd met Zak two years ago in a Polish tattoo parlour, where Harry had obtained the last of his tattoos. Zakhar Karkaroff, son of the former headmaster of Durmstrang, had joined the team shortly after he'd been invited into Harry's bed. Not the best of his choices, Harry had long since realised. No matter that Zak was a powerful wizard whose expertise in potions the team had badly needed at the time. But he was too young, too bloody ambitious. Too much in love, a voice niggled in Harry's head, and God, yes, Zak was too infatuated with Harry, when all Harry could give him was a cock up his arse. If Sirius wanted him to work with Zak tonight, Harry would have to tell him that he had broken up with Zak in the Siberian steppe. Bad timing, but Harry would not drag this thing out until it interfered with his work. The team came first.

He smoothed the sweater over his chest, then looked at the old alarm clock again. It still said thirteen minutes after nine. Odd. For all these years the clock had been working, ever since he'd used magic to replace the Muggle battery. Harry picked it up and held it to his ear, listening for the quiet vibration that usually came every four seconds. Nothing. The bloody thing had to be broken. Harry was reminded of his childhood when repairing the alarm clock had been one of his annual summer chores, with no magic allowed to him outside of Hogwarts.

He put the clock down and opened the door, wondering if someone had started up the old coffee-maker in the kitchen. Just then Sirius' voice called from above.

oOo

A couple of oddly clad tramps -- one pointing with a crooked stick into the station's rafters -- first noted that the huge round clock above the entrance of platform number one of King's Cross station had come to a halt at exactly thirteen minutes after nine. The shorter of the two cast-irons hands had stopped two markers before the old-fashioned III, whereas the longer hand remained immovable at a place a bit above the red-lettered 21 (or the black IX, depending on how you looked at it).

The station's electrician suspected a glitch in the old clock's wiring, but after an entire night of futile repairs -- of all the clocks, even the tower clock on top of King's Cross -- he and his colleagues gave up.

By then, the news was out. Every clock, watch and timepiece in the city of London, and indeed all over Britain, had simply stopped moving forward. After a secret emergency memorandum from the Prime Minister's office was leaked to the press, the unthinkable was announced in the morning news: a full decade after the start of this new millennium, a computer bug, similar to but not the same as the much-feared Y2K, had finally hit the world.

* * *

A shadow was moving silently through the murky street, and for a moment Harry was reminded of the night years ago in Little Whinging when he had mistaken Sirius for the Grim. There was no mistaking this shadow, though. Wolves had returned to Britain, appeared out of nowhere, and they had brought with them an icy cold which turned the gentle London rain to snow. Snow in June!

He cast a quick glance at Sirius who'd put on his pin-striped maroon robes. He looked elegant in them, with his long curls bound with a black silk ribbon and tucked underneath the collar. Even the black-lacquered walking stick seemed more like a symbol of power than the clutch it was.

"The visitor's entrance is down this street," Harry said, trying not to hurry. Sirius couldn't walk much faster. It was bad enough that they had to enter the Ministry of Magic through the red telephone box. But the Floo network had been shut down shortly after the Day The Clocks Stopped, when increasingly people ended up in fireplaces miles away from where they intended to go. Or disappeared entirely. Portkeying had become wonky, too, and the Ministry had even banned Apparating into and within the building.

"Let's get there quick," Sirius said, as he took longer strides, leaning heavily on his cane. "I don't like the look of that wolf pack over there."

Harry turned to where Sirius'd gestured. The shadow had materialised into a majestic grey wolf, followed by three smaller ones. Their eyes glittered in the dim daylight. "Do you think they're werewolves?" he asked.

Sirius shook his head. "Just wolves. But they will attack us if we don't get off the street soon. They smell hungry." He sniffed into the cold air. Harry was reminded of Padfoot. Sirius hadn't been able to Transfigure himself since he'd been injured, but he hadn't lost the dog's keen senses.

By now, they should have reached the corner of the small street leading to the telephone box. But as much as Harry kept looking out for the red front of the pub and the sign with the feisty Admiral on it, all he could see were small, deserted buildings. Finally he turned at a corner that seemed familiar enough, even if there was no pub.

The Prophet was running long articles about how magic offered protection against the changes that had befallen the world. Which was just bollocks, as far as Harry was concerned. The catastrophe affected all of them, the wizarding and the Muggle world. Rumours had it that the Minister for Magic met daily with Britain's Prime Minister. Sirius had the entire curse-breaking team working night and day on disappearances and on simple spells gone horribly wrong. But one thing Harry knew for certain: they were not fighting a curse.

Which was why he didn't understand why the Minister had asked him for this meeting. It was not like Harry Potter could save the wizarding world with a simple Expelliarmus this time around. It was barely thirty-six hours since the clocks stopped. By now everybody knew that they were up against something much more powerful, much more insidious than Voldemort's Dark magic.

Sirius had talked Harry into going to at least listen to what the Minister had to say. They had one half of the team come back from Geneva. Angelina, Bill and Zak stayed in Switzerland with the international rescue mission, trying to contain the Large Hadron Collider with the combined power of magic and Muggle physics. The machine had started up the Day The Clocks Stopped, without any human intervention, sending high-energy proton beams both clockwise and counter-clockwise into the underground circuit. The enormous machine should have shut down automatically, but it hadn't. Wild theories abounded about what would happen if they didn't get it under control. Most popular was the one where a huge black hole opened up and sucked the world away into a cosmic vacuum cleaner. Muggles were still fed the story about a computer virus doing all the damage, but that lie was rapidly growing thin. None of the Muggle scientists that Harry'd talked to in Geneva had believed it. Instead, they talked about time itself being fractured, about the fourth dimension collapsing into the thee-dimensional world. They talked about the end of life as we know it. Some had left. There were rumours of suicides.

"Is that the telephone box you were talking about?" Sirius halted, panting heavily. The short walk had clearly exhausted him.

Harry nodded uncertainly. It was the same red telephone box but the grey wall behind it had none of the colourful graffiti that he remembered. The box itself looked new, as if it had been erected just days ago. The glass panes were intact and shining, and when Harry and Sirius stood squashed together inside the box, he found the telephone apparatus firmly attached to the wall. The whole thing looked as if they were the first wizards to ever use the Ministry's visitors' entrance. Harry reached for the receiver, dialled the M.A.G.I.C. number. To his relief it was the same cool female voice greeting them.

Emergency meeting with the Minister, it said on the silver badges coming out of the chute. Once they'd pinned them to their robes, the lift took them down into the Ministry, away from the roaming wolves and the snow.

* * *

Gawain Robards seemed a rather unremarkable wizard, considering he'd headed the Auror Division for more than a decade before he became Minister for Magic. His boyish features and small pot-belly made him look like a scholar and the gold-rimmed glasses, which he sported since he'd come to office, rather emphasised the Minister's aura of well-meaning incompetence. Harry had learned the hard way that those innocent looks were deceiving. Robards was a Slytherin through and through. If he wanted something, he'd use whatever means at his disposal to get it. It was their luck, really, that he did it all for the good of wizarding Britain and not for some megalomaniac Dark wizard dabbling in pure-blood supremacy. Twice now Robards had talked Sirius into taking on an assignment that he knew Harry would hate, and both times it had to do with cleaning up messes that Magical Law Enforcement had left behind.

A stern, red-robed Auror had lead Sirius and Harry down into the Department of Mysteries. Harry stepped cautiously into the sparkling light. He had to squint as he looked over the clocks hanging everywhere on the walls, over the rows and rows of desks full of timepieces of every imaginable colour and form. For a moment he wondered what was wrong, then it hit him: a hushed silence lay over the room. Not one of the thousands of clocks was ticking. No chimes, no bells, nothing. As he followed Sirius down the narrow aisle between the desks, the light grew dimmer. It was not much, nothing that would require a Lumos, but the diamond-sparkling brightness darkened as if a shadow had fallen over the room.

Harry looked ahead to the bell jar. A group of Ministry officials stood around it, Robards among them. Back towards the wall, four Unspeakables were whispering amongst themselves. The lone figure of a tall witch in blue robes leaned against one of the desks. Then the Minister saw them.

"Mr Black, Mr Potter," he called out, "do join us." He waved them closer.

"I'm glad you could make it, Mr Potter," he said and shook hands, first with Sirius, then with Harry. Sirius was in charge of new jobs and deal negotiations for the team, so Harry stood back, letting him do the talking. It was a role he'd grown accustomed to. Sirius simply was the best at what he was doing.

Harry recognised Gemynd Radford, the current Ministry Obliviator. She worked closely with Hermione at St. Mungo's, and he'd met her on several occasions. He greeted her with a nod, which seemed to startle the black-haired witch out of her contemplation of the bell jar. She turned towards him, her blue eyes wide with fear. Harry gave her a questioning look, but she responded only with a slight shake of her head.

"I know you have little time," the Minister said. "But I wanted you to see this before we talk." Robards, who usually commanded chatter and small-talk with enviable ease, didn't say another word as he pointed towards the bell jar.

Harry stepped towards Sirius' side and looked into the glittering winds. At first, it seemed like he remembered it -- the tiny egg shimmered a brilliant white as it rose, carried by the upwardly spiralling currents. Then it cracked and a long beak protruded through the shell. Within seconds a hummingbird hatched, its feathers emerald green, its breast a mottled grey, its wings and tail tipped with red. It soared towards the top of the jar, and there, as the bird was just about to start on the downward current, Harry noticed that something was wrong.

Those green wings were flapping too slowly, nothing like a hummingbird's rapid flutter, and the bird almost tumbled against the soap-bubble glass of the jar. One of its tiny feet was clubfooted, a bunched-up mass of skin and claw. Then Harry saw its eyes -- they were opaque, as if covered by translucent skin. The bird was blind. Sirius gasped at Harry's side, he must have noticed it, too. They watched as the hummingbird's feathers grew soft and bedraggled on the downward cycle, and it once more turned into an egg. But the egg looked different than before. Red veins formed on the white shell, as if blood threatened to seep from it. It had hardly formed when it cracked open again already, releasing the hummingbird, but naked still and too weak to move. Its head leaned heavily against the cracked shell, as it sprouted feathers of a dull brownish colour. It was painful to see the tiny bird struggle to spread its wings, trying to complete another cycle. Gemynd Radford and a bearded Ministry official turned away, unable to watch the torturous re-birthing of the hummingbird.

"How long has this been going on?" Sirius asked, his voiced scratchy.

Robards remained quiet. One of the Unspeakables, a small, elderly witch, replied, "Since the Day The --"

"Clocks Stopped," Harry interrupted.

The Unspeakable nodded. "We tried everything we could think of to keep the bird moving through its cycles. This is one of the Mysteries, you understand ..."

This is Time ... Harry recalled the awe in Hermione's voice as they'd been here before, on that ill-fated rescue mission for Sirius which had almost cost all of them their lives.

"... it's only a reflection of the world, a powerful magical reflection, but reflection nonetheless. Time moves in cyclical seasons. It is repetition, but it is also change. Like the hummingbird in the bell jar, who is always different when it hatches from its egg. Different colours, different shapes. There is no predicting what change time will bring, only that change will come. But this --" She pointed at the tiny brown bird who flapped helplessly in the glittering winds. "This is impossible, you see. It cannot be happening." Her voice was shaking and she took a deep breath to collect herself. "This is Time itself changing. And we have no idea what that means. But the Mystery's magic is falling apart. It's only a matter of ... of ..." She stopped, then closed her eyes.

"A matter of time," Robards finished her sentence with a firm voice. "And that's why we've called you." He was speaking to Sirius, but looking at Harry. "We need to act fast. The Department of Mysteries has done all they could. We need more people, wizards and witches with new ideas, with dedication." He quickly looked around. "Our plan is to form a new order. Something like the Order of the Phoenix, only this time it's not You-know-who whom we're fighting, but ... this." Robards pointed at the bell jar where the hummingbird was plunging to the bottom, to be enclosed into a bluish egg that seemed much too small for the half-way transformed bird. "This," the Minister repeated. "An order to fight the cause of this. An order to set Time right again. We can call it the Order of the Hummingbird or whatever strikes our fancy." He smiled, but it was a wistful smile that did not reach his pale blue eyes.

"And who all would be part of this ... order?" Sirius asked, voicing the very question that was on Harry's mind.

Robards made a gesture that encompassed all present. "Us here. Specialists on magical accidents and catastrophes, magical transportation experts, the head of Obliviators Headquarters, trained Time-Watchers from the Department of Mysteries." He nodded towards the Unspeakables. "And experts from outside the Ministry." He waved towards the blue-robed witch. "Liriel Potter, from Potter & Sons, the clock-makers." Then the Minister turned towards them. "And hopefully you. Harry Potter. And your team, of course."

Harry looked over to his namesake from the famous London clock-maker dynasty, and the witch winked at him. She seemed calmer than all the officials gathered here to form this strange order. Calmer and much more relaxed. Harry would have considered her for his team right away.

"And the Time Master," said a dark voice from where the Unspeakables stood. The voice seemed familiar to Harry. A tall man with fine red hair stepped towards the bell jar. For a moment Harry didn't recognise him, then he remembered his first Quidditch matches in Hogwarts. Higgs, Terence Higgs, the Slytherin Seeker at the time. Harry hadn't known that he had made it into the ranks of the Unspeakables.

"The Time Master, yes, yes." Robards' tone of voice had gone from calm to annoyed. "He hasn't been very cooperative so far."

"We need him." This came from Gemynd Radford.

"And who is this uncooperative Time Master?" Harry asked. Sirius glared at him for jumping into the conversation. Always afraid Harry would lose his temper, when Harry was just asking for information that everybody but him seemed to have. He put his hand soothingly on his godfather's arm.

"The young Malfoy, of course", the Minister said with a sigh. "Returned all our owls, wouldn't receive an official delegation from the Ministry. I went to Malfoy Manor in person, off the records, naturally. The bloody house-elf wouldn't even let me enter that crumbling mansion of theirs." He made a clucking noise with his tongue, the only sign of exasperation that Harry'd ever seen from Robards.

Last Harry'd heard Malfoy was off somewhere in Europe -- enjoying a life of luxury and ease on one of the Malfoy's many estates, for all that Harry knew. They hadn't spoken a word since the war trials, seen each other twice during the last years, both times at the Minister's Midwinter Ball, where everybody went. He'd had no idea that Malfoy was back in England permanently. And -- a Time Master? Malfoy?

"He's got himself quite the reputation with the Esteemed Society of Arithmancers," Robards said. "And my colleagues here seem to think he'd be an asset to our new order."

"He would." Higgs surreptitiously glanced over to Gemynd Radford, which made Harry wonder how exactly Malfoy could help them with this mess.

"One moment," he said. Sirius shot him a glance that said loud and clear, Shut it, I do the talking, but Harry didn't care. "I won't have Draco Malfoy on any team or order or whatever that I'm supposed to be a part of. He's always been enamoured with the Dark. And we don't know what's behind this." Harry gestured towards the bell jar. "Even a Time Master is not beyond suspicion. I certainly don't have to remind you that even the Minister for Magic fell for Voldemort during the war?"

It was satisfying to see the older wizards and witches still twitch as he pronounced the name. Robards, however, was unimpressed. He stared at Harry for a long moment, then chuckled softly.

"I see what you mean, Terence, about it needing Harry Potter to lure Draco Malfoy out of hiding," he said.

Old anger stabbed through Harry. These people would not play their sly games with him. He felt Sirius' hand on his shoulder before he could take a threatening step towards the Minister.

"He's right about Malfoy, Harry." Sirius sounded calmer than Harry thought he could manage under the circumstances. And if he was not mistaken, there was a touch of amusement in his voice. Was Sirius in on this, too? And what the fuck did he know about Malfoy?

"I won't do this," he whispered. "I won't involve my team in something like this."

"Let's hear them out first, shall we?" Sirius pressed his hand down heavily, willing Harry to calm down. "And you should talk to Hermione about Malfoy. It's been years, Harry. People change."

They talked for an hour. Harry only spoke again when he was asked. He watched and listened. Watched Sirius -- who was seated on a stool that he'd Transfigured one of the clocks into -- smoothly negotiating the team's participation in the effort. Listened to Robards, and the longer Harry listened the clearer he could hear the Minister's despair underneath the composed façade. In the end, the new order was called the Order of the Hummingbird, as by the Minister's poetic suggestion. And Harry agreed -- reluctantly, mostly to show Sirius that he was above old schoolboys' grudges -- to try persuading Draco Malfoy to join them.

* * *

"What's a Time Master?"

Harry sat in the oval common room of the Janus Thickey Ward. On the seat before him, Hermione was busy operating a magically altered slide projector. At four in the afternoon the windows were charmed to show a moonless night. The room was dark but for the glimmering night-globes hovering just underneath the ceiling.

"You have been talking to the Minister, then?" Hermione leaned back, an amused tone in her voice.

Colourful slides flashed in rapid succession on the wall. Harry could barely recognise what was on the pictures. The sea, it seemed; a long sandy beach, with people walking on it. Green waves and an azure picture-book sky above them. Women in bathing suits. A little dark-skinned girl with a pink and yellow beach-ball. The same girl, older, dark curls in pigtails. The waves again, the slides changing so fast, it became a blur of blue and sand and green.

Hermione turned back towards Harry, so they could talk quietly without disturbing the patients in the room. "Will you do it?" she asked.

"Er ..." Apparently everybody had known about the secret meeting. And of course Hermione would have known. For all that Harry knew, it could have been her who'd suggested Harry's team to Robards. Or more likely she'd suggested them to Gemynd Radford, who then told the Minister. "Well, the team has joined the New Order."

"And will you get Malfoy to join, too?" She looked way too smug.

"Was that your brilliant idea, Hermione?" Harry felt anger rising within him. "To put Radford, or Higgs or whoever up to make me go out to Wiltshire and remind the bloody git that now would be a brilliant time to pay back the debts he owes to the wizarding world?"

Hermione shrugged, glancing over the patients who stared at the slides on the wall. "Gemynd told me about the Minister's plan to form an emergency task force. And as for Malfoy ..." In the blue flashes from the slides, her face look pale as she turned to Harry. "When I saw him last, I had a feeling he's done his share of paying back."

"When did you see Draco Malfoy?" And why had he never heard about it?

"He's been here."

In the chair next to Hermione sat a woman with eyes shining dark as blackberries. She kept throwing glances at them, while she rocked back and forth, clearly not interested in the pictures on the wall.

"Here at St. Mungo's, you mean?" Harry asked.

Hermione nodded. "I can't tell you much, because of confidentiality. But I talked to him, perhaps a year after his mother died."

Killed herself, Harry's mind readily provided. All the gory details had been revealed on the front pages of the Daily Prophet. "You never told me about this."

"It didn't seem important at the time. You were away that year, apprenticing with the goblins in Estonia."

The woman with the blackberry eyes twitched, then started to get up.

"Mrs Touré," Hermione said softly, "will you please stay? Just for another five minutes."

The woman sat again with a sigh. "But I don't know any of these people on the wall, sweetheart."

"Just five minutes, okay?"

Mrs Touré rolled her eyes at Harry as he shrugged behind Hermione's back. She was one of the more aware patients here in the ward. Most days she recognised Harry from his numerous visits, even remembered his name, although she never connected it to the Boy Who Lived and the war.

Hermione was taking notes in her little blue book, so Harry looked over to the others in the room, sitting in rows of chairs. In the dim light he could make out at least two dozen patients. They were glued to the flashing images on the wall, or asleep or distracted by something that likely only held interest for themselves. At the back of the room stood Avery, the resident Death Eater of the ward, his face haggard and pale underneath a five o'clock shadow. His body was skeleton-thin, barely covered by a threadbare set of black robes, as he refused with an odd pride to wear the hospital garb. Around his ankles, Harry could see the shackles that restricted Avery's movements.

All of the patients here suffered from permanent spell damage. Hermione's area of expertise was memory loss and damage from Obliviation. Associative Therapy the daily sessions with the flashing slides were called. Something about familiar images unlocking memories hidden deeply within the unconscious. It was still experimental, Hermione had explained. She had brought the Muggle therapy to St. Mungo's, with much success.

"The session is almost over," Hermione whispered to him.

"It's okay." Harry put his hand on her shoulder. "I like watching your patients."

Hermione gave him a wide smile. Sometimes it scared Harry how passionately dedicated she was to her patients. If she saw even the slightest chance of healing one, she forgot everything else, dates with friends, meetings with superiors. It was during times like these that Harry would drop by unannounced, to get her out for some Indian dinner, or even just take her away from the ward, for a cup of the strong coffee that St. Mungo's refectory was famous for.

Harry knew that Hermione had not left the hospital since the Day The Clocks Stopped. Worry lines were etched deeply into her forehead. Only last week she had taken him down to the Second Floor that was swamped with new patients. The vanishing sickness was spreading through Diagon Alley, a highly contagious disease. The bed space in the Quarantine Station had been doubled over the last fortnight. Magical draining seemed to be rampant, and wizards and witches came from all over Britain to seek help from the renowned healers at St. Mungo's. And increasingly people came with progressive memory loss. Harry was certain that a fair number of the patients sitting with them in the room had been in full grasp of their mental faculties less than two weeks ago.

Gently he moved a lock of Hermione's hair back from where it had fallen into her face when she'd written into her book. She gave him a surprised look. Harry just shook his head. They never touched much, but now he felt his throat constrict. They'd been through so much together. The tattoo of smoke-rimmed flames circling his wrist seemed to reach for his fingers -- a trick of the eye in the dim light, or perhaps part of the tattoo's magic. He cleared his throat and looked ahead where pictures of an old city flashed on the wall.

"So, um ... a Time Master, Hermione? What does he do?" he asked, stroking Hermione's upper arm, then taking his hand away.

She looked at him curiously, then said, "Time Master is a honorary title bestowed by the Esteemed Society of Arithmancers. The title goes back way into the early Middle Ages when the Society was founded. Since then, it has been granted to perhaps a hundred wizards and witches."

"And how does one become a Time Master?"

"The title Time Master is conferred to people who change our knowledge about the nature of time. Like the wizard who invented the Time-Turner. He was the first British Time Master."

"But Malfoy? What did he do to get this title? Certainly he's not invented anything. Did he nick some Dark forgotten device from his father's collection and pass it off as his own invention to impress the esteemed Arithmancers?"

"Not an altogether bad guess, Harry." Hermione leaned closer to him. She spoke very softly, so that no one but Harry could hear her words. "But no, he really did invent something. He'd studied Muggle physics in Germany, then Advanced Arithmancy at the Magical Academy in Marseilles. He was one of the master students of Laura Nigellus."

She must have seen Harry's baffled look, the way she rolled her eyes. "You have no idea who I'm talking about, do you? Harry, do you read anything but the Prophet?"

"Um, Modern Curse Breaking, Which Broomstick?, Lush, The Quibbler ..." In front of them, pictures of Diagon Alley flashed, half-second shots of Gringotts, the Leaky and other places Harry didn't recognise. He thought about mentioning Leather Wizard to convince Hermione that he was, in fact, a well-read man, but then stopped himself. There were some things Hermione didn't need to know.

"I get it, I get it." She shook her head and Harry grinned.

"So this Nigellus witch is a famous Arithmancer, I take it. And Malfoy, for whatever reason, studied with her. But what did he invent?"

"He invented a time-travel machine. To go back into the past." Hermione glanced up at the wall. Harry caught a glimpse of the tall towers of Hogwarts Castle before a slide from the lake appeared, then another of the ivy-covered gate. Travelling in time ... Hermione turned in her chair and looked at him. "And before you get all excited: no, Malfoy's machine does not work. Not yet. But he's come up with a new theory about Teleportation, about the magic behind it."

"And this new theory of Malfoy's is important?"

She nodded. "It was published in Unspeakably Unfathomable* three or four years ago and caused quite the stir in the magick-scientific world. He makes a very convincing argument about how Teleportation can also be used for travelling through time."

"And he told you all about this when he was talking to you because of his mother's death?"

"No. Everybody knows about Malfoy's dense matter gravitation theory." Hermione's mouth twitched into something like a smile. "Well, everybody who reads something other than sports rags and gay magazines. And I never was assigned as a healer to Malfoy. We have history, remember?" St. Mungo's policy, strictly enforced to keep all possible bad blood after the war at a minimum. "We ran into each other after one of his sessions and talked. He was speaking quite openly. I was surprised. Considering ..." Hermione shrugged. Considering Malfoy had called her a dirty Mudblood for most of their school years. Considering she'd been tortured in the very place that Malfoy, for all that Harry knew, still called his home.

"I think he was looking for ways to deal with the loss," Hermione said. "How to remember his mother. How to forget. You know what I mean?" She looked at him from her brown eyes, her attention focused on him as if none of her patients were here, but only just she and Harry.

"Um, I guess, yes." But he didn't. Not really. All his life he'd cherished whatever scraps of his parents' memory he could get: pictures, stories, even the recurring nightmare of green light and a woman's voice -- his mother's voice -- screaming. He didn't need to forget, because there was nothing for him to forget. Nothing personal, no memories that belonged to him alone. All he had were images in a magical mirror and ghost shapes from beyond the Veil. Harry found himself wondering what Malfoy wished to forget about his mother. Her death? Or perhaps some small recollection, meaningless to anybody but Malfoy himself, so full of his mother's presence that he'd couldn't stop thinking of it.

Hermione was still looking at him.

"But why would he want to travel back in time?" Harry asked. It seemed fake, like his parents' reflection in the Mirror of Erised, or another person's Pensieve memories. You could only be an observer in the past, were not allowed not interact, not touch, not to be seen ...

"Wouldn't you want to go back sometimes?" Hermione asked, her eyes shaded and her head turned away from him, towards the wall.

"No." Harry shook his head. "Why would I? There's nothing I would want to do in the past that I haven't already done. I couldn't change things, I couldn't --"

Change things. Of course. They'd done it before. He and Hermione -- they'd gone back in time and saved Sirius's life. And Buckbeak's. Harry would give a lot to change so many things. Hell, if he could travel back in time, he could stop Voldemort right on the doorstep of his parents' house in Godric's Hallow. He could save his father and his mother. He would have grown up as an unscarred boy with a loving magical home. He'd be a different man today. A better man? Harry doubted it.

Hermione had her head slightly tilted towards him, while she kept an eye on her patients and the images of high blue mountains flashing on the wall.

"Do you think Malfoy would want to change ... things? In the past, I mean? During the war?" Not bring Death Eaters into Hogwarts, not have cursed jewellery or poisoned mead smuggled in. Not repair the bloody cabinet. Not take the Dark Mark, not become one of them. All those choices Malfoy had made. Did he want to travel back in time to change any of this?

"He may have wanted to, in the beginning" Hermione spoke softly. "But he knows that he can't do that, even if he manages to get his machine to work. There is no Arithmancy in this world that lets you calculate the possibilities of even the smallest alteration to events that happened so long ago. Just imagine if we had saved Sirius much later -- like years later. He would have been dead for years to come alive again all of sudden because you'd sent your Patronus from a distant future. All the events that followed his death ..." she drew invisible quotation marks around the word, "... they'd all change as well. Our present time would spin out of control, the world would become incomprehensible to us over night. That's why with a Time-Turner you could only move back a very short time."

Time could spin in out of control. But -- wasn't this what they were dealing with at the moment? Harry opened his mouth to ask Hermione about it, when he became aware of the white square of light on the wall. Hermione quickly turned, reaching for the projector that ejected the last tray of slides with a clacking noise.

Mrs Touré stared at the lighted wall for another two seconds, then she pronounced, loud and clear, "Spairas inflamarae". Patients were not allowed to carry a wand at St. Mungo's, but her magic was powerful enough to ignite the magical candles. A bright, warm light flooded the common room. Mrs Touré got up, clapped her hand on Harry's shoulder and headed for the door. The other patients blinked into the light, and after Hermione announced that the session was over, they followed Mrs Touré.

Hermione talked to a bald man who'd remained seated with a vacant look in his eyes. At the back wall Avery was staring at Harry, mouthing silent words that Harry didn't understand. There were times when Harry wondered whether the man did remember him. Or perhaps recognised in him a familiar similarity to Lily Potter. During one of his visits, Avery had called him a sly Mudblood witch, a statement that had made Hermione scribble furiously in her blue book and had Ron in stitches from laughter. But something sad and desperate showed in Avery's thin face today. Harry turned away to see Hermione lead her patient to the door where another healer waited to accompany him to his room. She, too, noted that Avery was all focused on Harry.

"He's got much worse," she said as she stood beside Harry, watching Avery pull at the shackles as he tried to move away from the wall. "They had to Stun him yesterday. His magic was going wild, he was breaking the dishes at dinner. Macnair ..." She looked to Harry. "Walden Macnair? The Death Eater?"

Harry nodded. Of course he remembered Macnair.

"He used to come by and visit him every other day or so. But not since the Day The Clocks Stopped. I wonder ..." Hermione sighed, then turned to Shrink the dozens of trays of slides.

Harry looked at Hermione's back covered in the light blue of her healers' robes. There were days when Harry could not bear to see those robes on her. Spin out of control. He needed to talk to Hermione about this, but instead he was grasping her shoulder, turning her around with more force than he intended. "Would you? Want to change anything in the past? If you could, I mean? If Malfoy's machine really worked?"

Hermione stared at him, wand in one hand, Muggle plastic tray in the other. "Would I want --?" Her eyes were shining too brightly in the light of the globes. With a sharp flick of her wand, she cast what had to be a silent Finite on the Charmed windows, for the grey afternoon light streamed into the room all of a sudden.

"Harry," she said, her tone exasperated, "what do you think? What do you think? That Malfoy is the only one who's made mistakes in his life?" Her shoulders had gone stiff, a clear sign of barely suppressed anger.

Harry took his hand away, waiting for her to continue, to let it out. But she never did. Not even now, when the catastrophe brought them close again. Close like they had been during those last months of the war against Voldemort, closer even than Harry had ever been with Ron. But not even now, when her tired face and the quiver in her voice spelled utter exhaustion, did she say what they both knew she needed to say so badly. Harry would have raged, would have screamed at anybody close enough to him to be able to bear the brunt of his anger. But never Hermione. She hid it all under those blasted blue robes, tucked it away like she now tucked away her wand. With the wand gone, the anger seemed to seep right out of her. It left behind something else, a sadness that had been growing in her ever since they had returned from Australia.

And there it was: the reason why the three of them barely saw each other anymore, why they never met casually on weekends, for a game, for dinner, even just for a beer on a work night.

They were still close and cared deeply for each other. When Harry has his public coming-out, the Prophet had insinuated that such 'Muggle perversion' was not befitting any wizard awarded the Order of Merlin, First Class. No matter that the perverse wizard was the Boy Who Lived To Grow Up To Love Men. When Harry's sexuality was making front page news for weeks, Hermione and Ron had stuck with him all through the smear campaign. Then Mrs Weasley had fallen ill with cancer and Ron was going mental in the Burrow and Harry and Hermione had hauled him off to each and every Cannon game of the season.

They were friends. What had happened had nothing to do with how all their vague plans of a future after Voldemort had never materialised. How Ron had not married Hermione, but kept up an 'affair' that now had lasted more than seven years, with Gabrielle, Fleur's younger sister. How both Ginny and Harry had come out, and Ron had never been comfortable with it.

It had nothing to do with all of this.

Four times, over the years, Harry had accompanied Hermione on her annual visit to Australia. Her parents had not come back. They still lived in the quiet, sprawling house that Hermione had bought for them. Mr Granger worked in a library, a mentally disabled if enthusiastic volunteer with a surprising knowledge of all things medical. Mrs Granger was the neighbourhood's baby-sitter, a shy grey-haired woman who was a bit slow, but the children loved her. They'd kept the false names Hermione had chosen for them, Monica and Wendell, because those were the names they had remembered after the Reversal Spell Hermione had cast on them. The Memory Reversal Spell that had gone so utterly wrong.

"Mione," Harry whispered and wished he could back smooth the lock that had fallen into her face again. But he knew better than to touch her now. "You did nothing wrong. It was not your fault."

She stepped back abruptly. The anger that had been stuck in her hunched shoulders blazed into her eyes. "Not my fault, Harry? But it was my fault. I held the wand, I cast the spell. And I should have bloody well known better than to do it myself."

Harry heard the low rattling from the night-globes vibrating with Hermione's uncontrolled magic, he heard Avery making soft moaning noises, as if he was in pain. But he didn't take his eyes away from Hermione. If he could ... if he said the right words, then perhaps ... perhaps ... "You didn't know, Hermione. God, you didn't know what would happen."

"Oh, but yes, Harry, I did know. Best witch of the year, remember?" Cool and sharp, the words precise as if they were back in Potions and she was answering one of Snape's impossible questions. "I did know. I was barely seventeen, just out of school, casting a spell that takes years of training. I knew that. We all knew that."

How? How to take that away? "But you'd done so many spells that were far advanced. God, Hermione, you were brewing Polyjuice in second year. I can barely get it right today, and I've been trained by the best. But you, you modified a Protean before we were even taught N.E.W.T.-level spells. How should you have --"

"Don't you get it?" Her voice was still deceptively calm. If Harry had not known her so very well, he would have missed the quiver in it. "They are my parents. They don't remember me, but they are my parents. And I fucked up. I fucked them up. Irreversible spell damage. And yes, Harry, I want to change a thing in my past. Just one little spell, but I'd give anything for the chance to undo it. But it's not possible."

The tears spilled from her eyes now and she turned away from Harry, picked up her blue book, the projector and the jumble of tiny Shrunk trays. For a moment it seemed like she would leave without another word, but then she looked back at Harry.

He couldn't bear her tear-stricken face, her strong, dear jaw trembling with all that she was holding back. And he knew he shouldn't say what was on his tongue, but he just couldn't stop himself.

"Don't do this, Mione. You're destroying your life right along with your parents'." His voice was low and scratchy, but Hermione had heard him well enough, heard him say words like "destroy" and "parents" and "life". Her face turned white as a sheet.

"Get Malfoy," she whispered as the Shrunk trays fell from her hand, hundreds of miniature slides clattering to the floor. "Get Malfoy and save the world again, Harry. That's what you're good at."

As he stared at the tiny squares on the floor, Harry remembered what he should have said. That Hermione was a brilliant mind-healer, one of the best. That she was saving people every day. That she had saved his life and Ron's because she'd used magic that had been far advanced for her age. But Hermione was gone from the room before he could think of those words.

Behind him, there was a sharp clink and a groan. Harry turned to see Avery pull at the shackles with all his might. Blue sparks ran around the Charmed metal, as he tried to move towards Harry.

Harry stepped close to him, wand drawn. The man was hurting himself. Avery stared at him with blue eyes dilated so that they were all black. "Potter," he murmured, "you've always been the sharp one. Tell me ... did he go? Why hasn't he come to tell me?" His lips started to tremble, a ripple of pain flashed across his face, then he collapsed. All Harry managed was to break the fall and help the emaciated man gently to the floor.

As he called for a healer Harry wondered about what memories Avery couldn't stop thinking of.

* * *

The drive up to Malfoy Manor was overhung with thorny branches, trailing forbiddingly in Harry's way. He did not expect Draco Malfoy to be any more welcoming than the roses. An ancient house-elf, clad in a spotless white tea cosy, opened the door. Harry just knew what was going to happen: in another moment, the house-elf would inform his master of the unlikely visitor. Malfoy would give orders to slam the heavy door in Harry's face, and that would be the end of it. Why should Harry Potter have more luck than the Minister for Magic?

But instead of leaving, the house-elf just stood in the opened door, looking Harry up and down. Its bulging eyes lingered on Harry's scar, then on his out-of-style robes.

"Harry Potter." It was no question. The house-elf indicated a quick bow, making Harry wonder whether it had known Dobby. "Please to be following, Sir."

He was led into the hallway where sombre wizards and witches stared from portraits dark with age. Light from stained-glass windows painted patterns on the marble floor. They turned into a corridor opening on the right, passed three closed double doors, then stopped before a smaller door opposite a window looking out into a court yard.

The house-elf knocked and from inside Harry could hear Malfoy's unmistakable voice -- that arrogant drawl with the ever-present tinge of disdain. The door swayed open by magic and the house-elf gestured towards Harry to enter. Silently, the door closed behind him.

A man was standing at a broad window overlooking the Manor's gardens. He wore old-fashioned Muggle clothes, his blond hair longer than Harry remembered. Slowly he turned. It was Malfoy all right, face pointy and pale, haughty pure-blood posture, even when he just seemed to be contemplating this poor excuse of a summer day.

"Salazar from the -- " Malfoy's hand shot towards his sleeve, then he caught himself and dropped the arm, as if realising the futility of the gesture. He stared at Harry with a look that spelled less annoyance than startled surprise. And, if Harry was not mistaken, barely concealed fear. "Potter!"

"Malfoy." Harry nodded at him. He stepped onto a Persian carpet of blues and greys, taking in the two leather chairs before a fireplace of gold-veined marble. His eyes were instantly drawn back to Malfoy.

His face was frozen in an expression of disbelief, but his mouth had turned into a mocking smile. Harry knew that smile so well, but for the first time he found himself wondering what emotion Malfoy was hiding behind it. He had caught him unprepared, for clearly the house-elf had not informed his master -- by whatever elfish magic -- of the identity of his visitor. Harry stepped even closer, to stand beside Malfoy on the polished wooden floor. He felt himself strangely possessed to touch Malfoy's hand or arm, greet him like he would a friend whom he hadn't seen for a very long time. Which was ridiculous, they'd never been anything like friends. But somehow Malfoy's slender silhouette was a familiar memory from Harry's past, a memory that he found himself feeling almost ... fond of.

From a closer distance Harry could see how much Malfoy had changed. He seemed taller, with a commanding air much like his father, emphasised by the high-waisted trousers. Still a Seeker's lean build, as much as Harry could see underneath the cloth of the shirt, fastidiously buttoned up to the throat. The years showed in the way Malfoy's features had settled, chin still pointy, but cheekbones and jaw line delicate rather than sharp. Delicate, fragile even, and the pale skin looked so soft that Harry found himself wondering how it would feel to trace his fingers ...

Gods! Harry couldn't recall ever having been so instantly attracted to another man. Sirius' advice to wear robes seemed like words of wisdom now, and hardly to accommodate for any pure-blood sensibilities about Harry's usual attire of t-shirt and jeans -- an unnecessary precaution, seeing as Malfoy himself was wearing a Muggle suit. But Harry's body was reacting in strange, inexplicable ways to the man before him, ways that made him more than grateful for the bunching folds of the robes.

"You?" Malfoy seemed to snap out of his Petrified state of surprise. He took a step away from Harry, towards a small writing table. His eyes were still huge as he stammered, "Hanny let you in? What do you think you're doing ...?" He stopped, catching his breath.

Fear, definitely. It was thick in the magical aura surrounding Malfoy. For a moment Harry wondered whether Malfoy could indeed be involved with whoever or whatever was behind the catastrophe. He was a Time Master, after all. But when Harry had drawn attention to Malfoy's past in the Ministry, he'd spoken theoretically. He'd wanted to make people realise that everybody, high-ranking politician as much as celebrated alchemist, could be responsible for what had happened. If the war against Voldemort had taught him anything, it was never to put his trust in the mighty and influential.

"The Minister for Magic sent me. It's an official kind of visit. Sorry to disturb you. You've not been answering the Minister's owls, and I figured I take my chances and just show up." Harry closely watched Malfoy's face. He still stared at him from wide grey eyes, but the tension in his jaw lessened. So the fear had nothing to do with the Ministry and their requests for Malfoy to join the Order. Something more private then. Something to do with him, with Harry Potter, perhaps? He couldn't tell, but since he'd entered the study Malfoy had not once taken his eyes off him.

"Well, I'll be damned." Malfoy's voice was soft, but the drawl was back in place. "So the Minister got his Golden Boy to haul me into their useless ploy to save the world. I don't know if I should feel honoured or put it down to a general clutching at last straws."

"It's been a while since I've been the Ministry's Golden Boy." Harry stepped towards the window, assuming the very position where Malfoy had stood before. He could see another wing of the Manor, tall windows of what looked like a room much larger than the one they were in.

"So I've heard. Harry Potter's playing for the other team. And there I've wondered what kept you valiant Gryffindors in the locker room forever after the games." Malfoy's gaze flickered over his body and Harry had to stop himself from shifting again. If he didn't get a grip on himself, Malfoy was sure to notice his erection.

"You should talk. It's not like there's any doubt which team you are playing for." Harry's voice sounded huskier than he liked, but he had done his research. Or rather, Sirius had provided him with all the pertinent facts of Malfoy's private life, as much as there was any private life to speak of. A couple of sightings at the Shadow Lounge, a lifetime membership in the prestigious Fairy Club, even though none of the staff seemed to remember having actually seen Malfoy on the premises. A subscription of Leather Wizards -- and Harry really didn't want to know how Sirius got hold of the strictly confidential list of subscribers. But no lovers, as much as Sirius could detect. No scandals, sex or otherwise. Pity, really, Harry couldn't help thinking, now that he had Malfoy before him.

A gush of rain spattered against the window, and Harry realised they'd both been silent for the last couple of seconds. Sizing each other up. He grinned at the direction his thoughts were going. Malfoy looked at him, his head slightly tilted to the left. He seemed more relaxed. So apparently Harry had him convinced that there was no need for a wand, that there was nothing to fear. That was good. Or perhaps not. Harry shrugged.

Malfoy turned away so quickly that Harry barely caught him rolling his eyes. He moved behind the small desk where, judging from the parchment and quill thrown onto it, he had been writing before he'd stood up and looked out of the window. Harry surprised himself by wondering what had been going through Malfoy's mind when he'd been staring out into the rain.

"I've always been gay," Malfoy said, the drawl entirely gone from his voice. He took a suit jacket from the back of the chair and put it on. "It's you who wanted the wifey and the brood of kids. Whatever happened to the Weasley bird? Ginerva, wasn't it?" He walked towards the door, gesturing for Harry to follow him.

"Ginny's also gay." Not that it was any of Malfoy's business. But something made Harry say it, an odd sense of challenge, as if he had to prove to Malfoy that he'd been always -- mostly -- gay, too.

Malfoy turned to him, surprise on his face, then he cocked his eyebrow in an amused sort of way. It looked bloody sexy and if Malfoy had been any other bloke, Harry would have assumed he was flirting with him. Or at least, checking out if Harry was interested in flirting. The warmth spreading from his stomach told Harry he was interested in quite a bit more than flirting, but this was Draco Malfoy.

Hell, the world was going to pieces, and here he was, aroused by the thought of flirting with a bloke whom he'd hated for most of his life. A bloke who wasn't even Harry's type. He never went for blonds and not for fairies, either. And while Malfoy seemed man enough in all the right places (at least Harry assumed he was, for no bulge showed and it would have shown, tight trousers and no robes that Malfoy was wearing), he was a fairy, all the way to his dainty cherry-wood desk, the silver bracelet around his wrist, the frilly lace on the front of his shirt whose colour somehow brought the shine out in his too-long hair and made Harry want to reach out and touch it. Fuck!

It didn't help that the tailored jacket made Malfoy look older, more broad-shouldered, more like the wizard Harry had imagined to meet. This was the new Malfoy, the one who'd studied on the Continent, the one with the spectacular career in Arithmancy. Malfoy the inventor. The Time Master.

He was staring until Malfoy's mouth moved in a quirky twitch, lips too thin and too pink and with a touch of cruelty that made Harry want to bite them.

"Are you coming?" Malfoy asked, voice cool and clear, and Harry realised Malfoy was standing at the door, waiting for him.

"You are going to throw me out, after all." He chuckled to himself, half disappointed and half relieved. Then he saw the exasperated look on Malfoy's face, and no, apparently he was not thrown out.

They walked down the corridor in silence. When they came to the last of the three big doors, Malfoy hastened his steps. It might have been coincidence, but perhaps there was a way later to find out what was behind that door. From the entrance hall with the portraits Malfoy lead Harry into the corridor off to the left. He stopped before high double doors of darkly stained wood. The doors were familiar as was the sudden brightness of the room that opened behind them. For a moment Harry wanted to turn and leave, as fearful memories came back to him -- of his scar burning with blinding pain, bloated face tender and shiny, of Hermione's screams of agony. And of Malfoy, a younger Malfoy, who'd been scared to even look at him, for fear that he was indeed Harry Potter and he'd have to betray him to the Dark Lord.

Malfoy did look at him now, curiosity sparkling in his eyes and behind it, a sense of expectant pride. Harry looked around what had once been the Manor's drawing room. In place of the huge chandelier, neon tubes ran along the ceiling, drowning the entire room in their bluish light. Briefly Harry wondered how Malfoy kept the magic of the Manor from interfering with the electricity. He'd give something to learn that spell, for a spell it had to be. Grimmauld Place could use some Muggle appliances. Harry recognised the huge marble fireplace but everything else was changed in the large room. The walls had been painted white, the portraits replaced by shelves and peculiar looking charts. Towards the windows stood a huge desk, cluttered with books, parchments, a laptop computer and stacks of Muggle paper. Harry noticed a framed photograph of Snape on the wall behind the desk. Where once had hung the mirror with the gilded frame, a huge clock had been placed above the fireplace. Its hands pointed at exactly thirteen minutes after nine.

In the middle of the room rose a hexagon-shaped platform covered with copper sheets. Six slender poles were raised on their edges, each about eight feet high, with a thin golden chain fastened to their tips to form an uneven glittering circle in the air. At one side the chain dipped low between two poles and vanished within a waist-high, square box made from black-lacquered steel. Levers were attached to one side, an egg-sized knob stuck out at its front, the words "on/off" printed beside it. Movable slots above the knob displayed day, month and year, in black and red. The date said, Saturday, June 14th 1997.

Malfoy followed Harry's look to the platform and motioned for him to step closer. "I am not throwing you out, Potter," he said, in response to Harry's remark from minutes ago. "But I will tell you what I've already told Higgs and Radford and the bloody Minister. Again. If I get a thick-headed bastard like you to listen, then hopefully you all will leave me alone."

Not a small amount of frustration showed in Malfoy's voice, and Harry wondered what information Robards had held back when briefing him. "What did you tell them?" he asked.

"That I cannot do anything for you. That there is nothing anyone can do." Malfoy shrugged in a lop-sided way, his mouth twitching, and then Harry saw it: the same reluctant and incredulous despair that he'd seen in the eyes of those Muggle scientists in Geneva and in Gemynd Radford's face at the Ministry.

He turned towards the platform. It had to be Malfoy's time machine. "But you're a Time Master. And whatever happened when the bloody clocks stopped -- it has to do with time. Look at this lab or whatever you turned the room into. Hermione says you revolutionised the way Arithmancers think about time. There must be things you know that can help us solve this, help us make the clocks move again."

Harry'd spoken more forcefully than he'd intended, but all of a sudden he wanted Malfoy to join the Order. To become a member of the team. Something about the silence in this room, in this house where Voldemort had plotted his war, scared him like he hadn't been scared before. Perhaps they really were up against an Unbreakable Curse, a problem that could not be sorted out, no matter how hard they tried. But was this truly the end of everything? Hell, he couldn't imagine it. But if it came to it, he knew he wanted Malfoy on their side.

"I have no idea how to solve this, as you put it." If Malfoy had noted Harry's agitation, he didn't show it but as before spoke with an air of exasperated finality. "And I don't think there is any way this can be solved. I've studied time, Potter, how it relates to magic. But what is happening to the world has never even seemed conceivable. Not according to every fact and spell and hypothesis about time that I know of."

"That's what the Unspeakables are saying."

"Well, they're right." Again that dismissive shrug. Malfoy had given up, that much was obvious. He had surrendered to what he believed were unalterable facts. Harry couldn't imagine how Malfoy lived with it. Had he contemplated death when he'd looked out into the rain-fogged gardens?

"We've formed an emergency team, it's called the Order of the Hummingbird," he explained, speaking fast. "Wizards and witches from inside the Ministry and from the outside. The idea is to bring different kinds of experts together, pool our knowledge and resources. Robards asked my team to join, and we did. You're the only Time Master in Britain, Malfoy. We need you." It was the most Harry was going to say. He wouldn't beg.

Malfoy had moved forward while Harry was speaking, towards his machine. He squatted in front of it, wiped invisible dust from the edge of the gleaming copper sheet, then looked up to the glittering chain. "You know," he said, "there was a time when I would have given a lot to hear those words. From those bleeding-heart Muggle-lovers in the Ministry. From all you honest and oh so brave Gryffindors. From you." He turned back to Harry, still crouched on the floor. "But not anymore. Times have changed. Or more precisely," he let out a soft chuckle, "time has changed."

So much for Malfoy having changed. Harry stared at the long smooth fingers, which seemed to caress the copper. Something about the way Malfoy had his head half turned, his eyes away from Harry, his back so straight and proud ... it made Harry want to throw him onto the platform, push him against it, made him want to see Malfoy's blond hair against the reddish gold of the metal. God, but he wanted to shut Malfoy up for good and draw blood from those impossibly pink lips. Harry knew he was being taunted, that Malfoy was playing games with him. Slytherin games -- to find out how much his participation was worth it to the Ministry. And how much it was worth to Harry. It had always been personal between the two of them, in Quidditch, in classes, even in the blasted war.

"Don't play hard to get, Malfoy," he growled and didn't care one bit about the sexual innuendo of his words. He took another step forward and came to stand right in front of Malfoy, groin level with his face. Let him see his erection, let him see that Harry wanted him.

Malfoy rose slowly and they faced each other, barely two inches apart. There could be no question now about Malfoy's manly bits. A prominent bulge was showing, his trousers almost touching the front of Harry's robes. Malfoy's eyes were on Harry, considering him as his teeth slowly grazed his lower lip. For a moment Harry thought Malfoy would want to kiss him, but he stepped back. Shaking his head he turned and walked towards one corner. With his back to Harry, he checked on a cylindrical brass-ringed contraption, adjusted something at the glass tube held inside.

"Hey," Harry called out to him. "Show me how this works."

"What?" Malfoy turned his head, eyes glistening in the bright light.

"Your time machine." Harry pointed towards the platform. "How does it work? If you're not joining the Order, you can at least teach me some of the stuff you know, can't you?"

Malfoy laughed, a short and bitter sound, and yes, this was mental. But Harry was not ready to give up. Not on their world and not on Malfoy.

He watched him come back, unable to keep a smile from his face. God, he wanted Malfoy, all sharp angles and smooth moves. Perhaps, once they were through with this, once they ...

Malfoy walked past him, to the square metal box. He fiddled with the levers, then turned the knob. Immediately a soft humming filled the room. Tiny flashes of lightning crackled along the golden chain; shivering ghostly flames appeared on the tips of the poles, St. Elmo igniting his fires right within the walls of Malfoy Manor. Harry stared up at them in awe when he felt Malfoy's hand on his shoulder.

"Step onto the platform, Potter," he said, "so I can show you how the machine works. A practical demonstration." His smirk was vicious, the touch of his hand warm.

Harry looked at him. "You're going to send me back in time?" He tried to see if Malfoy had reset the machine, but couldn't make out the date.

"Of course not." Malfoy moved his hand away and bowed to pick up a sugar bowl tucked underneath the platform. "Granger must have told you that the machine is not working properly."

Harry nodded. "What is this?" He pointed towards the bowl. White roses were painted on the blue porcelain. Narcissa's, he thought.

"Standard-issue Floo powder." With a flick of his wrist, Malfoy's wand slid into his hand. "In general terms, this machine works like a combination of a Portkey and the Floo. Only, you're not going to another place, but to another time. Theoretically you'd be travelling back to the day that the machine's set for. In practice, though, Floo powder's too weak. Its gravitational pull lets you go back only a fraction of a second, I'm afraid. But it's long enough to show you how it works." He gestured with his wand for Harry to climb onto the platform.

"Er ..." Harry stared at the machine. In the space within the poles, a column of light had formed, as wide as the circumference of the golden chain above. It spilled downward onto the copper, its edges blurry as the chain was swaying in an invisible wind. It looked beautiful and not a little dangerous. "You are aware that at least a dozen people know I was going to see you this afternoon, aren't you? If this is some nefarious plan to Portkey me into the Sahara, you'll have Aurors crawling all over Malfoy Manor at supper time."

Malfoy blinked, huffed, then laughed, darkly and loudly, like Harry'd never heard Malfoy laugh.

"All right, so you think this is really funny," he said, not sure whether to feel insulted or pleased that he'd made Malfoy laugh.

"No, no, sorry, Potter. Constant vigilance, I understand." He touched Harry's shoulder again, standing so close that Harry could see the wrinkles around his eyes. "I promise you'll end up right here in this room. It's not going to be the most pleasant experience, a bit like Apparition. But it's not dangerous." He was stirring up the glittering powder in the bowl, and perhaps Harry still looked dubious, for he added, perfectly calm again, "I've done this myself every morning since the clocks stopped, to see if the catastrophe has any effect on the machine. It hasn't. There is no danger."

"Well, all right then." Harry unbuttoned his robes, shook them off and stepped right into the column of light. Immediately a heavy weight was pushing him down towards the copper platform. He couldn't help but go to his knees.

"You're in a space with high gravity. Don't fight it, Potter. Lie down, if it feels more comfortable." Malfoy's voice seemed further away, but Harry could hear him well enough.

"I'm fine."

Malfoy looked at him, his gaze sharp and cold, then he cast a spell Harry did not know. Floo powder was rising from the bowl like a cloud of stardust, trailing the tip of Malfoy's wand. He guided it higher and higher, then flung it up above the column of light. He muttered another spell, and the powder started to descend in spirals, tiny emerald specks moving in the light. Lower and lower they fell until they spun within the entire column. Harry could see Malfoy through the curtain of green light, as he stood behind the metal box, wand drawn, hopefully to get Harry out of this, should something go wrong.

The next moment the light around him was whirling fast, or perhaps Harry himself was spinning. He held himself up on both arms, kneeling on the platform, when he had a sudden vision of the back of his own head underneath him on the platform. Black strands of hair against the gleaming copper, a gush of cold wind ... Something crashed down into him with so much force, his face was smacked into the metal, his legs drawn out flat from under him. He barely had time to draw a startled breath when it was already over again.

Harry tried to lift his hand that felt glued to the copper, and he could do so easily. Only, there was a shadow hand following his movements. Or rather, he could see his hand, his arm doubling before him. The snake tattoo circling his right wrist seemed to jump back and forth from one right hand to the other, the first slightly translucent, the second more solid, more like Harry's blood was actually flowing in it. He raised himself into a sitting position. The left lens of his glasses had a crack run through it. Other than that, everything seemed like it'd been before -- Malfoy, the poles, the chain, the column of light. Only the emerald glittering of the Floo powder was gone. He looked up to the flickering blue flames and shook his head, trying to clear his vision. Then he raised both hands, mesmerised by the shadow form following his every move.

"Take your wand, Potter." There was a faint echo to Malfoy's voice, as if he was speaking from the other side of an empty hall.

Harry took his wand from its pocket at the side of his jeans. "What's happened? Did it work?"

"Or course it worked." Malfoy checked something on the metal box. "You are approximately 0.376 seconds back in time."

"But ... I can see you and hear you. And talk to you."

Malfoy smirked at him. "Oh no, not to me. You are talking to my self 0.376 seconds ago. Do you hear an echo? Do you see an afterimage when you move?"

Harry nodded.

"There's an overlap because sound travels slower than light. If I had denser matter at my disposal instead of just Floo powder, and you'd gone back, say, three point seven-six instead of 0.376 seconds, we wouldn't be able to communicate." He glanced at Harry doubtfully. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I think so. You need something stronger than Floo powder to travel back in time for real."

"In a nutshell, yes, you've got it, Potter." Even with the echo, Harry could hear the pride in Malfoy's voice. His eyes, though, were not looking at Harry's face but flickering over his body, down Harry's bare arms towards his hands.

"Why is there an afterimage?" Harry asked.

"It's ..." Malfoy pulled his gaze away from the tattoos and busied himself with something at the metal box. "Well, it's perfectly normal that you can see an afterimage. Basically, there's two of you now on the platform, you, 0.376 seconds ago and you, time-travelling. Because you are in the same space, the bodies are merging. But slow moves still will seem like an afterimage to your eye."

Harry felt Malfoy watch him as he slowly spread his arms within the column of light. For a moment it seemed like he had four arms, but when he moved faster, the doubling effect was gone. "How do I get back?" he asked.

Malfoy's eyes shot up to meet Harry's, his expression unreadable. "You ... you Apparate." He moved his head so that blond strands fell into his face. "And use your wand, even if you've mastered the wandless spell. It takes a bit more magic than normal Apparition. Focus on deliberation. Concentrate on getting exactly where you are."

Paradoxical as Malfoy's words sounded, they made sense to Harry now. He raised the wand, cleared his mind of every thought but to here and cast the spell. The squeezing sensation was over before he could fully register it, and he found himself sitting amidst the column of light. There was a click from the metal box, and the light was gone. The blue flames flickered on the tips of the poles before they died down as well. The time machine had been turned of.

Malfoy stepped onto the platform and crouched before Harry. "Sorry about this," he said and reached for the broken glasses. "I should have warned you to take them off."

Wand raised he murmured, "Reparo" and the cracked lens was whole again. Slowly Malfoy returned the glasses but let his fingers linger on Harry's wrist. The touch was too intimate, but Harry didn't flinch, not even when Malfoy dropped his wand and hesitantly traced with both hands the twisting shapes of the tattoos stretching all the way up to Harry's shoulders.

"This," he whispered, "this is Fiendfyre." He moved a quivering thumb over the sparkling tiara flying before the red-snapping jaw of a raptor. Malfoy looked up and stared at Harry, eyes bright with wonder. "You have the fire from the Room ... the Room of Hidden Things tattooed on your arms?"

"Full-body tattoo, actually." Harry pulled down the collar of his t-shirt to allow Malfoy a glimpse of the orange-green monsters battling within the raging flames on his collarbone and chest. Malfoy's fingers gripped Harry's arms so hard he could feel the nails dig into his skin.

"Why? Why would you want this on your body?"

Harry wrapped his fingers around Malfoy's wrist, the left one, realising when he touched the bracelet that it was covering the Dark Mark's serpent's tail. Malfoy loosened his grip, his body still taut, even when the trembling in his hands subsided.

"Fire is my specialty," Harry explained, in the only way he knew. The only way that made sense to other people. "In the team, I mean. Fire Curses," he added, when Malfoy stared at him blankly. "While you were studying time, I was studying fire, I guess." He had to laugh at the thought, a short bark. "Hermione says I'm obsessed with it."

Malfoy nodded, a gesture of understanding. Perhaps he did understand, about being obsessed with things of the past. His eyes moved towards Harry's throat, then lower to where Harry's shirt had hitched up. Flames were leaping on the stretch of revealed skin, dancing around his navel, fiery tongues licking at the line of hair that lead towards his groin. Harry was getting hard again, he couldn't help it, not with Malfoy so close and his fingers hot on his skin. Malfoy seemed wholly unfazed. His fingertips had found the scars above Harry's elbow and he caressed them slowly. It struck Harry that Malfoy wasn't so much exploring the tattoos but his living skin.

"A souvenir from Tunisia," he croaked, his mouth dry. "Some old Pharaoh thought it a bright idea to have his tombs guarded by a Dragon's Breath Curse." Dragon's Breath was just another name for Fiendfyre, and judging from Malfoy's sharp inhale he knew it. Something about the way he stroked the scar made Harry wonder whether Malfoy had come out of the Fiendfyre with souvenirs of his own. His heart clenched painfully at the thought of burn scars on Malfoy's pale skin, and perhaps he'd made a startled move, for Malfoy drew away.

"No!" He grabbed Malfoy's hands, held them close. "You know how for years they kept calling me the Saviour, all that Chosen One crap. That's just so much bollocks. I never really saved anyone, only Ginny and --" And you.

Malfoy looked at him like he was mad, and well, perhaps Harry was a bit mad. Only Sirius truly understood him, and Sirius had lost his two best friends to the Killing Curse.

"You did save me and Greg," Malfoy said, his tone matter-of-fact, without the tremor of gratitude that Harry'd come to despise. He gently prised his hands from Harry's hold and got up.

Perhaps Malfoy hated to owe his life to Harry. Or perhaps he thought Harry had owed it to him to save his life, after what he'd done to him in Myrtle's loo. Harry didn't care one way or the other.

He took Malfoy's out-stretched hand and let himself be pulled up so they both stood. Malfoy's hand fell lightly on Harry's hip, touching him again as if they were friends or more. Harry looked down to where Malfoy's fingers were brushing leaping flames on his skin, then he raised his head. Malfoy studied him uncertainly, but just as Harry met his gaze, he seemed to have made up his mind.

"Come," he said, "I want you to meet someone."

* * *

As it turned out, the Manor's library lay behind the big doors that Malfoy had been in such a hurry to pass earlier. He opened them now without a knock and quickly entered the spacious room, gesturing for Harry to follow him.

The library was done in walnut wainscotting, leather-bound books stacked in broad shelves which reached all the way up to the high ceiling. The polished floor was covered with Persian rugs just as in Malfoy's study, but here the predominant colours were rich hues of purple. Harry stood back at the door, waiting.

"Father," Malfoy said.

It was a shock to see Lucius Malfoy after all those years. His hair was cropped short and had turned a whitish grey, giving him a stern air of authority, nothing like the smooth elegance of the wizard Harry remembered. He sat at a broad desk, clad in expensive dark robes, a presence to be reckoned with in the wizarding world. And yet Lucius Malfoy had never returned to the public after his release from Azkaban. Something about the brittle paleness of his skin made Harry think that he must have been seriously ill. Lucius raised his head, eyes grey and cold like his son's, but with a feverish sheen.

"Ah, Draco," he said, smiling in what seemed genuine pleasure to see his son, "you should have told me that Horatio was chosen for a seat in the Wizengamot. Did we send a bottle of the sherry from Granada with the congratulatory owl? Millicent likes her sherry heavy and sweet. And you know, she's the power to be dealt with, no matter that Horatio occupies the seat."

The floor all around the desk and before the bookcases was covered with stacks and stacks of editions of the Daily Prophet. Some were so old that the paper was brown at the edges. On the desk more Prophets were lying in precise piles, with a pair of scissors glinting and paper clippings strewn all over.

"I'm sorry, Father, but I didn't send an owl."

Harry turned to him, startled by how thin Malfoy's voice was, how hard he tried to sound calm and reassuring when obviously he was anything but calm and sure.

"I did attend the funeral, though. Mrs Bagnold died a couple of years ago."

Lucius looked at him, open-mouthed. Abruptly he lowered his head and cleared his throat. "Yes, yes. When was this again?" He looked around, searching frantically through the clippings and shoving an entire pile of Prophets off the desk with his fumbling moves. Neither father nor son seemed to take notice of the newspapers cascading onto the purple-patterned rug.

"I don't remember the year, Father, but I'll find the announcement for you."

Lucius answered with an odd jerk of his jaw. He still perused his clippings. Harry could see that his hands were shaking.

"Father," Malfoy said quietly, "we have a guest."

Harry walked into the room to Malfoy's side. Lucius' head snapped up at the sound of his steps, then he rose so abruptly that his chair crashed to the floor.

"Harry Pot-- !" Lucius reached for his wand, just like his son, but his hand remained empty when he shook the sleeve of his robes. Lucius Malfoy wandless in his own home! Harry knew there could be no simple explanation for this, but when he looked to Malfoy, his face showed nothing.

Lucius' eyes flickered to his son too, uncertainly, as if he was at a loss at how to react. Then, from one moment to the next, his demeanour changed. With quick steps he moved around the desk and came towards Harry, hand offered in greeting. Harry was so taken aback by the gesture that he actually shook the hand. Lucius' grip was firm, his skin dry and soft.

"A pleasure to have you in our home, Mr Potter." His eyes moved to his son again, plainly asking for a clue as to what to make of the strange visitor.

"I'm here on behalf of the Ministry," Harry said. "I'm trying to convince your son to join the efforts to combat the catastrophe."

Lucius' expression went from panic to pride within a moment, then settled into a look of bewilderment. Again he looked to Malfoy who watched them both with intense scrutiny.

"You are ..." Lucius took in Harry's robes with a quick glance. "You are with the Aurors then, I gather?"

"Uh ... no, Sir." It's been years since anybody had suggested Harry would work for the Ministry. In the Prophet, there'd been dozens of articles about the members of the team and their curse-breaking jobs all around the world. Harry started to wonder whether Lucius had been living abroad during the last years. "I'm a Curse-breaker. Never was cut out much for Ministry work."

"Ah, working for Gringotts." Recognition flashed in Lucius Malfoy's eyes and he beamed at Harry. "The head minter is a dear old friend of mine. Do give my regards to Ragnok when you see him, will you?"

"Certainly, Sir. But Ragnok -- "

"Father," Malfoy interrupted quickly, "Potter and I still have some business to conduct. Will you excuse us?"

"Certainly, Draco, certainly." Lucius' eyes moved from Harry to his son, obviously more than baffled about what business the two of them could possibly conduct. "You will tell me all about this later. Or perhaps," he turned to Harry with a smooth smile, "Mr. Potter here will join us for tea?"

"Thank you, Sir, but I'll have to leave soon."

Lucius Malfoy graciously inclined his head and mumbled a polite good-bye. When Harry turned at the library's door for one last look, he was back at his desk, seemingly all engrossed in an old copy of the Daily Prophet.

Malfoy walked a couple of quick steps, then stopped before the window leading out into the courtyard. A fine tremor was running through his body, but when Harry reached out to put a hand on his arm, Malfoy stepped away at once. Outside, the rain had turned to sleet.

"How long has he been like this?"

"Since the Day The Clocks Stopped."

Something incongruous in Malfoy's tone made Harry ask, "And before?"

"He hadn't been himself during the last years," Malfoy said, his face even paler than usual. "It started shortly after he'd come home from Azkaban. And when my mother died ..." He shrugged, that lop-sided, awkward shrug. "There were days when he barely recognised me. Or the Manor. He thought he was back in that dismal cell. But he's remembering now." He squinted as if trying to rein in the joy that shimmered in his eyes. "There's more coming back to him every day. Just last night he asked about her."

"What did you tell him?"

Malfoy turned to him fully. "The truth, of course. He deserves as much. He's still getting used to the thought. I was going to take him to her grave today."

"And then I showed up."

"Yes." Amusement played on Malfoy's lips to disappear the next moment.

They stood in silence for a couple of seconds. Malfoy's eyes had moved back towards the courtyard where patches of snow formed on the gravel. The pale skin was drawn taut over the sharp bone of his jaw; he was breathing slowly. Gathering his courage to say something that would cost him, was Harry's guess. Whatever had passed between them on the platform, Malfoy obviously felt that Harry deserved to know whatever was on his mind.

"What is it?" he asked softly.

There was a twitch of Malfoy's jaw. "I won't help you, Potter. Not the Minister, not your Hummingbird Order."

"Because of your father."

A sharp nod. Malfoy turned to him, but no emotion showed now in those grey eyes. Malfoy had made up his mind. And if not for the slight quiver of his lips Harry would have believed that he did not want to be convinced otherwise.

"You'd rather have everything out of control like this?" He pointed into the yard where wet clumps of snow were coming down thickly, sticking to the flowering rose bushes. "You'd rather live in a world where time's stopped than have your father lose his sanity again? Most likely we're all going to die, Malfoy. Your father, you, me, everybody."

"I'm ready to take my chances." Stiffly Malfoy pushed his hands into his pockets, a gesture so alien to him that Harry knew he was hiding not his hands, but his fear.

"There's other chances --"

"No." Malfoy jerked his head up. "None."

Harry reached out, and when Malfoy just stared at him, he gently moved his thumb over Malfoy's lips. Malfoy's eyes were widening, but he did not step away.

"Believe me," Harry whispered. Let me save you. "There's someone your father should see. She knows all about lost memories. And there's no one like her to help people find them again and remember."

* * *

* Malfoy, D. A., "Moving Through Space, Moving Through Time: Floo Powder Considered as Dense Matter," Unspeakably Unfathomable, 2006.