Staircases
He can't stop what's coming. But he's here anyway, because someone has to be.
Even as he drifts down the street, hands held loosely in his robe, and green paints the sky in monstrous tones, hell and all its train cast into the horizon, his mind wanders to other times and other places that he has seen-
The red-haired girl runs up the staircase, skirts flying out behind her, her breath coming swift and hard, and she's leaping over the missing steps. Beneath her feet, she can see all the tower plunging down below, but it doesn't frighten her. Not many things do. He's there, on the landing above her, running, yet she's faster. Faster than anyone else she knows, and with bright, youthful daring, she dreams that she's the fastest being in the world right now.
And there he is, and she throws her arm back and the green light screams, and-
James falls to the floor, laughing, half-sprawled across the steps, his hair coloured dawn grass green, and Lily smiles-
The grey-eyed boy sits in the dark, hard sitting room and lights up a cigarette. The dull smoke curls limpidly in the dank air. He looks up from the red glow and stares around as if in a mist, and all is abruptly coloured unfamiliar. There are shouts and screams from the room above, and he takes another drag and breathes out.
He takes a moment, even as the carpet darkens and pools at his feet, the floorboards above creaking, and inhales more of the smoke. The clock on the mantle is ticking, singing, and suddenly, he cannot bear another stroke of that hand.
The stairs down to the basement are dark and slippery and uneven, gaps between them, and the shadows below are hungry. The coal shutter almost cracks as he pushes it open, and he's walking out, and London is before him.
In the sitting room, someone has torn open the back of the clock case and a burning cigarette has been rigidly crushed into the intricate golden gears. Another name from the tapestry, and the past has changed-
Perhaps in another universe, all of those staircases broke.
Harry reached for the time turner around his neck and turned it further back, as the green light flowed across the moon.
Because sometimes, the past is kinder than the present.