Emily sighed as she finished summarising the events that led her to be sitting in front of a far younger Dumbledore than she was accustomed to seeing. She winced as her scar throbbed again, the overall ache she felt in her body almost making her beg for rest.
"So I was showing you a certain memory in the future and it pulled you through to now?"
Emily sighed tiredly at the Transfiguration Professor but gave him a wan smile, the drain on her energy making her shoulders sag.
"As strange as that sounds, it's actually a pretty average thing to happen to me," she joked dryly. The man smiled at her but remained serious.
"Fortunately for you that I had the headmaster's Pensieve with me tonight, Miss Potter," he said, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands over his stomach. "It seems that I was just the person you needed to see."
Emily frowned but let the comment go, too tired to really bother with pursuing the subject.
"So do you know how to get me home?" she asked, Hermione's words some years ago haunting her thoughts.
Awful things happen to wizards who meddle with time, Emily.
"I am afraid that I have no extensive knowledge of time travel, Miss Potter," Dumbledore responded, lips puckering curiously. "I do, however, have a contact at the Ministry that might be able to help."
Emily tried not to cringe at the mention of the Ministry. There was certainly no love lost between her and the wizarding government.
"The Unspeakables have the perfect level of confidentiality for the job, I believe. And the best knowledge."
"How long will that take, Professor?" she asked, her eyebrows pulling together as she debated what to say. "You see, we were kind of in the middle of something … very important, and I don't know what'll happen if I don't get back soon," she said slowly, weighing her words carefully before she spoke them.
Awful things happen to wizards who meddle with time, Emily.
"I will send my contact a letter this evening, Miss Potter," Dumbledore assured her, seeming to sense her urgency. "For now, though, I'm afraid the best I can offer you is a warm bed for the night until we more fully understand how you came to be here," he smiled, his eyes twinkling suddenly when Emily let her body sag in relief at his words. "You, my dear, look knocked off your feet. I can't imagine time travel to be an entirely fatigue-free venture," he chuckled.
"You have no idea, sir," Emily huffed, pulling herself from the comfortable seat. "Where should I sleep?" Her sudden concern made Dumbledore pause.
"I believe the guest wing will be suitable. Fortunately it is not too far from here. We will be there in just a jiffy," he told her easily, walking around the desk to lead her away.
It did take a while for Emily to get to sleep, despite the overwhelming exhaustion she felt. The bed was firm and the blankets like a cocoon. The softly crackling fire warmed the room and when Emily closed her eyes she could almost imagine herself still in the Gryffindor Common Room with Ron and Hermione. She tossed and turned and moaned unhappily as she strove for the rest that was eluding her, though, cringing into her pillow as the reality of the situation pressed down on her. She tried not to think on it so much, tried to push away her worries and doubts and cling to her faith in Dumbledore to help her as he always had, but, as the night began to wear on, Emily couldn't help some of the tears that fell. Any other time; Emily knew she would have preferred any other time than the one she'd been dragged to.
Dumbledore's ease when telling her the date had felt wrong and ugly; it had made her feel sick.
It was 1943 – October 26, 1943, and Emily felt her heart crack.
He was in school now. The bane of her existence, the one who had taken her mum and dad, her friend, her godfather, her childhood from her.
Tom Riddle was in the very same building as her right in that moment. As she tried to find sleep in the familiar Hogwarts bed, she knew Lord Voldemort was probably already asleep in his. In the castle. The boy before the monster. Or perhaps he was a monster already. She knew she couldn't find proper rest knowing that.
Emily hissed when her scar began to burn again. It hadn't relented once since she'd stumbled out of the Pensieve and she wasn't sure she wanted to know what that meant. But it was with a sluggish relief that she finally felt herself succumb to the formerly elusive rest she needed. She didn't rest peacefully, though. As she slept, she dreamed. There was a cold feeling of victory in her dream, an unavoidable feeling of excitement that instead of happy, made her feel dread. There was hissing she knew was Parseltongue, words she understood, and a flash of dark eyes looking at her with intense, wary attention. The wide-open jaw of a snake came at her from the darkness behind her eyes and snapped at her, a rush of overwhelming panic shooting through her and waking her up. Emily shot up in bed, sweat on her brow and a harsh throbbing in her scar that made her double over in pain. The light coming in through her window alerted her to the fact she'd slept most of the night but for the life of her, Emily felt like she hadn't slept a wink.
"Quite convenient you appeared to us on a Saturday evening," Dumbledore commented cheerily, an excited spring in his step that made Emily scowl. Her head hurt, her scar burned, and her exhaustion had barely eased at all. Turning her head too quickly resulted in a harsh lurch of her stomach, the nausea forcing her eyes shut as she tried to steady herself. She felt sick and tired and depressed and didn't know what Dumbledore could be so happy about.
"Really?" she muttered, wincing when a Ministry worker bumped her shoulder.
The pair had eaten early in her rooms where Dumbledore had happily informed her that his contact had gotten back to him almost immediately and had requested their appointment early that morning. Thus the reason why Emily found herself jostled and bumped through the early morning crowd of Ministry employees, the occasional shout at Dumbledore in greeting feeling like a screw in her brain.
"Indeed, my dear. Had it been a weekday I would have had to come up with some rather ingenious reason to excuse myself from classes to escort you," he chuckled, gently directing her into the elevator and pressing the button for Level 9, the Department of Mysteries level. "Hello, Ignatius!" he greeted one of the men in the elevator, smiling delightedly. "How are those giantsbane beansprouts coming along? Have they flowered yet?"
Emily sighed and tuned out the conversation of the unfamiliarly energetic Dumbledore, rubbing her temples and then her scar quite furiously, hoping it would relieve the pain. It didn't. Soon enough, though, the elevator emptied and the pair found themselves looking out into a near-empty corridor, if not for the man standing to greet them.
"Albus, Miss Potter," the man said, reaching forward to shake both their hands when they stepped out of the lift. He was an average-sized man with plain brown hair and eyes. His slightly soft face would have made him entirely unremarkable to Emily if it weren't for the familiar caution she saw when he looked at her. He reminded her of Mad-Eye.
"Claudius, my friend, so good of you to see us so quickly," Dumbledore smiled, turning to Emily. "Emily," he said, her having insisted on his use of her first name, "this is Claudius Willem, Unspeakable for the Department of Mysteries and the contact I told you about," he introduced.
"So you're from 1997, you say?" Willem wasted no time as he bid them follow him down the hall.
"Yes," Emily replied, reaching up to rub her scar again.
Willem followed her movement and studied her scar briefly before he made a noncommittal sound and stopped outside a familiar door. Emily felt a chill go down her spine at the sight before her. That door would not change at all in the next fifty years. Behind it, in one of those rooms, she'd lost Sirius. The thought made her turn her eyes away as the Unspeakable led them inside.
The small room was just as she remembered it as well; circular with a collection of identical doors she knew she would get lost in if left to her own devices.
"Time Room!" Willem's sudden exclamation made Emily jerk to look at him. She watched in understanding, then, as the doors spun around them at an almost dizzying speed before stopping again. She remembered how she'd desperately screamed out for the right door in this room fifty years from now, when they were in the middle of their battle with the Death Eaters. She'd been sweating and panting and bloody. It clicked then, that the trick of the room was hidden in plain sight; you just had to ask for the room you wanted.
Unaware of her sudden understanding, Willem moved forward and opened the door, stepping through and holding it open for them courteously. Dumbledore held his hand out and gestured Emily through first, following behind her a moment later.
The first thing that hit her was the sound; hundreds of clocks all ticking on relentlessly like the marching footsteps of a small army. She was aware of the door closing behind her but kept her eyes on the room she'd just stepped into.
Last time she'd been there it had been empty of life, though full of instruments and magic she could never begin to comprehend. Despite the bloody, violent battle she could remember playing out here clear as day, Emily still found herself enchanted by the magic in the room. There were clocks of all kinds on every surface, some Unspeakables tinkering with a few at their desks, and clocks hanging on walls, from the ceiling and standing tall and proud against the surrounding stone. Most enchanting, though, was the playful, sparkling, diamond-like light that lit up the room, a light that originated from a familiar bell jar at the far end of the room. The cycle of egg to chick to grown hummingbird taking place within the curling, shimmering wind was on an endless loop within the jar. The morbid image of the Death Eater who'd had his head stuck in there only to emerge with a grotesque baby's head on his grown body and thick neck flashed through her mind's eye and made her shudder.
Thoughts of the wreckage caused that day drew her sight to a familiar case standing against one of the walls, its large size dominating its stretch of wall and the clear glass front giving easy view to what lay within. Emily wondered if the Time-Turners that were housed within the case would solve her problem, the hourglass instruments of different sizes drawing her eyes and causing her to reflect back to Hermione again, and Sirius. With a cold dread, though, like it was whispering her name, Emily's eyes returned to the bell jar towards the back, behind which was a plain door. Through it, she knew, was the Hall of Prophecy. It was such a deceptively ordinary door to hold what it did. Emily darkly wondered if there was a metaphor there somewhere.
"My office. This way," Willem said, striding partway down the narrow channel between the many desks before slipping between them to reach another door, this one leading to one of the nondescript offices just off the central chamber.
Emily followed, pulling her eyes away from the door at the back to follow the man towards and into his office. It was plain and entirely unremarkable, with a desk, neat stack of papers, a modest collection of chairs in front of his desk and another clock against the far wall. Dumbledore closed the door as they cleared its frame and, gesturing to the pair to take a seat, Willem walked around his desk and sat forward intently.
"Now, Miss Potter, I will get straight to it. Though we work in the Time Room, I can assure you we don't have any to waste," he said with a straight face. Emily wasn't sure if he was making a joke or not so just stayed silent. "You should not exist," he said, admittedly taking Emily aback.
"What?" she asked, feeling her ire begin to spark.
"Time travel, Miss Potter," he said, not affected by her stare, "is not possible for an individual without a strong anchor to the time they're going to."
"Like what?" she asked and rubbed her scar again as her irritation made the pain flare. Willem's eyes were drawn to it again and his face remained neutral as he studied the mark. Emily, noticing this, uneasily pat her fringe down, uncomfortable with his stare.
"Yourself."
"What does that mean?" she asked, glancing to Dumbledore for an answer. The professor, though, was studying Willem intently, his entire face contemplative when he glanced at her. His smile was not as reassuring as Emily assumed it was meant to be.
"You cannot travel back in time without being displaced out of time and laid vulnerable to the laws of nature, Miss Potter. Magic only goes so far," he warned.
"Look, I still don't get it," Emily hissed lightly, reaching up and frantically rubbing her burning scar again before lowering her hand. "I've gone back in time before, you know. We had a Time-Turner and —"
"A Time-Turner only goes back hours, girl. You have gone back over fifty years," Willem interrupted, not necessarily snapping but definitely said sharply. Emily felt chastised and groaned, reaching up to rub her temple in response to the same headache she'd had since arriving in the past.
"Okay, so how is that different? Please," she said, turning to look imploringly at the Unspeakable, her expression lost and sad. "And how do I get home?"
Willem leaned back in his chair and studied her again. His eyes flicked up towards her scar and a faint frown appeared on his face before he looked back into her sad green eyes.
"Miss Potter," he began, "there is a very good reason we only have devices that travel hours back in time. There is a very good reason why we don't attempt to leap back decades. When we travel in time we are, as I said, displaced; we, as we are when we travel, should not exist in the time we choose to go to. It is not natural. However, the rule can bend slightly. So long as you have a strong anchor to the time you are travelling to you will stabilise. You may experience a mild headache, but your displacement can reconcile the anomaly you create by a familiar energy. Your own," he said, lowering his head and raising his eyebrows at Emily's consternated expression. "Time travel is possible over a period of hours because you exist in that time and have your own magical energy as an anchor to keep you existing. You, Miss Potter, have not been born yet nor, even, your parents. I say you should not exist because you really shouldn't. There is no link that is immediately obvious that is keeping you from winking out of existence."
Emily knew her mouth was open but was in too much shock to bother closing it.
"So I should have died when I came here?" she asked, aghast at the implications.
"Not technically," Willem corrected. "You would have ceased to exist. No physical, magical or spiritual energy remaining to justify 'death', just non-existence because you were never meant to be here."
"As if that makes it better!" Emily snapped, leaning forward and clutching her head as it throbbed again.
"That is why your case is so curious, Miss Potter," Willem said, ignoring her action.
"Isn't it always?" she muttered into her hands before lifting her head up to look at him again. "So what now?"
"We figure out what it is that is keeping you from disappearing," he said, nodding his head. "And then we make an effort to correct the imbalance."
"You're going to study me?" she asked warily, watching as he nodded again. "For how long?"
Awful things happen to wizards who meddle with time, Emily.