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ACT I

SCENE III

LIKE PICTURES ON THE WINDOW GLASS.

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The toes of Hermione's shiny Ministerial shoes tapped angrily almost in time with the ticking of a loud clock at Harry's side. Her face was crimson with fury. "Let me be clear about this, Hector. Theodore Nott has stolen a Time Turner which Erasmus Prince built out of spare parts? SPARE PARTS!"

If ever Harry had heard someone speaking in capital letters that was it.

"In essence, Minister." Hector twisted his gnarled hands together and Erasmus stared at the floor.

"Erasmus Prince," said Hermione. "Look at me when I'm talking to you! You've broken the terms of your license and betrayed the trust I placed in you. And you two"—she wagged a finger at Harry and Hector—"have failed to exercise any sort of control over him."

"It's not my fault!" protested Harry.

"Erasmus reports to you does he not? I suppose you just put a tick in the box and sent him on his way."

In the absence of any defence Harry subsided.

Hermione put her fists on her hips. "A former Death Eater has abused the privileged position to which he was appointed by me, the Minister of Magic. If this gets out I will probably be removed from my post. And your job"—she looked at Harry—"will be none too secure either."

Harry felt sick.

She turned back to Erasmus. "I understand that the device is some sort of prototype which can apparently go back for—how long?"

Erasmus fiddled nervously with the collar of his robes. "Ah, we haven't identified a precise limit, but we believe it is moderately accurate for, oh . . . fifty years or so."

"FIFTY YEARS!"

"But," Erasmus hastened to add, "unless it is manually adjusted it can only remain active for five minutes before it automatically returns to its chronological point of origin."

"I don't find that altogether reassuring," said Hermione. "Why has Theo Nott taken it? He can't be intending to use it, surely?"

"Oh no," Erasmus reassured her. "Theodore is very well aware of the risks and limitations of time travel. We have had much discussion on the matter. He quite understands the impossibility of changing an existing Time-Path."

"Then why are we worried?"

"I fear Theodore's father may have other ideas."

"His father!" exclaimed Hermione. "What in Merlin's name has his father got to do with this?"

Erasmus fiddled with his spectacles. "I believe Mr Nott had become fixated on the notion of time-travel. I gather he is a somewhat forceful character, and Theodore may have felt unable to stand up to him."

Harry interrupted. "Old Man Nott was a Death Eater back in the day, but he must be seventy-odd by now. Didn't he lose both hands in the war?"

"You're right," said Hermione. "He did. He was released early because he wasn't considered to be a threat."

"You think Theo was acting on his father's behalf?" asked Harry.

"I think it possible." said Erasmus. "Theodore had been asking about the feasibility of going back in time and changing a particular event. His questions were centred about the events which caused his father to sustain the injury to his hands."

Hermione folded her arms and paced up to the bell jar and back. "You believe Theo's father intends to prevent whatever incident led to him losing his hands?" She looked about at the three men. "Is it possible to change the course of time in that way?"

"Auror Potter," said Hector. " Minister. Your own adventures are well-documented. I take it you understand the established principles?"

"In general," agreed Hermione. "Doesn't everyone? So why does Nott think he can do something different?"

"Well you can, in theory, change an event. But of course, having changed that event, you also create a new Time-Path for yourself. That, I suspect, is what Mr Nott senior has failed to grasp. Please"—Hector beckoned—"I would like to show you something." He led them through a door which was partly concealed by a gigantic grandfather clock. Erasmus followed them in. It was pitch dark beyond the door and Harry heard Hector say, "Lumos."

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A chandelier hanging from the middle of the ceiling twinkled into life and Harry looked about. The room had a bare wooden floor and was empty of furniture except for a tall, narrow chest of drawers. All about the walls were ranged portraits, some blinking and yawning in the unaccustomed light, others apparently fast asleep. Occasionally a gentle snore or fart could be heard. One of the portraits waved at Hector and he responded with a little bow. "Octavius Tittle," he explained. "My immediate predecessor."

The room was rather muggy and smelt faintly of tobacco smoke. Harry suspected the odour came from a portrait of a wizard with a long beard and even longer pipe, which emitted such dense clouds that periodically the portrait was quite hidden and wisps of smoke escaped from around the frame.

"Welcome to the Gallery of Time." Pride was evident in Hector's respectful tone. "As in other departments, when a director of the Time Room dies, a portrait appears in here shortly thereafter. There are occasions when it is immensely useful to be able to draw on the experience of those older and wiser heads."

Harry grunted noncommittally. Such had not so far been his own experience with previous Head Aurors.

"There is, of course, centuries of knowledge here. But . . ." Hector led them across the room and stood in front of a plain wooden frame. The canvas was blank. At the bottom of the frame was a small label, which Harry and Hermione peered at. It read: Augusta Twigg, Head of Department, 1877-

Harry and Hermione glanced at each other; then, as one, turned to Hector for an explanation. He pulled open a drawer in the tall chest and took out several books which he put on the top of the chest before pulling out battered journal.

Harry nudged the books round to face him and was surprised to see that they were mostly fairy tales. Jack and the Beanstalk; Jack the Giant-Killer; Jack and the Prince of Snakes.

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Hector started to speak again. "Augusta was an exceedingly clever woman who formulated a great many interesting theories. This journal documents her research." He opened the shabby book to about halfway and started to leaf through pages of what looked to Harry like a mass of spidery handwriting punctuated with sketches. His eye was drawn to a page of drawings. Was that a pyramid? And a crude doorway made from three blocks of stone? There was a classical sort of structure too. Doric columns supporting a triangular pediment he thought. It did look rather like the illustration from the magazine article, but likely all Greek temples looked much the same. And surely that was the arch in the Death Chamber?

Before he could ask about it, Hector turned to the next page and pressed his finger to an illustration of a Time-Turner, though one of a curious and more ornate design than Harry had ever seen. It had a number of rings surrounding the central hourglass and the outer ring was decorated with a linear image formed from dots: the image of a snake with its tail in its mouth.

"Augusta had come to the conclusion that someone—or something—from antiquity had the ability to travel through time and was causing mischief," said Hector. "The sort of mischief that often culminated in great distress and destruction. She intended to use a Time-Turner to locate this creature and attempt to curtail his activities. This, of course is the last page of her journal." He closed the book. "The story does not have a conclusion."

"I take it she didn't succeed?" said Hermione.

"How can we know? She never returned, and the empty picture frame you see appeared an hour after her departure. That does seem to imply that she is not, in fact, dead. There is a picture of her in here." Hector opened the front cover of the journal to show them the endpaper where a photograph of a round-cheeked woman smiled merrily out at them from beneath a mop of curly hair. "She was largely considered to be eccentric. Deluded, even! But I am not so sure. She was, as I said, an exceedingly clever woman."

Hermione rubbed her arms as if she was cold. "So we needn't be concerned about Nott? Because if he is stupid enough to attempt to use it and he actually manages to change something, we won't be affected anyway. He will simply find himself on another time-path and never return to this one."

Harry jumped as Erasmus's voice unexpectedly sounded behind him. "Were it a more conventional Time-Turner, yes. But this one is still in the experimental stages. In short, I fear it is . . . unstable."

"Unstable." That was how Harry was starting to feel. "I suppose I have to ask what an unstable Time-Turner might do."

"Well, you see," said Hector, "a Time-Turner works by momentarily reversing the flow of time."

"Time-Turners reverse the flow of time?" said Harry.

"I deeply regret that Time Studies are no longer taught at school," said Hector, "Though it seems perfectly obvious. How else would they work? But I digress. That reversion causes disruption which inevitably has an effect on the normal flow. The limited experiments we have been able to conduct seem to indicate that the prototype device has a significantly stronger effect on the normal flow than the old Time-Turners did. Let us go back into the other room." He ushered Harry and Hermione out of the portrait gallery and back into the main chamber. "Erasmus, can we explain for the Minister and the Head Auror please?"

Erasmus gestured at the window. "The material from which all Time-Turners are made is the same material from which time itself is formed." His expression grew dreamy. "They all contain particles from the very beginning. From the Big Bang." He blinked. "There is still much we do not understand; we are in the realms of theory, but we believe that the potential to destabilise the currents could ultimately result in a rewriting of the rules."

"Rules?" Hermione said sharply.

"It is both far more complex and at the same time simpler than Mr Nott believes." Erasmus waved his wand and summoned a couple of Ministry chairs to face the window. "Please be seated."

Harry and Hermione sat down without a word.

"Unfortunately, time travel theory was dropped from the school curriculum in 1958, being regarded as irrelevant in the modern world. Most people's knowledge is based on misconceptions and inaccuracies." He lifted his wand again saying, "Revelio Tabulara," and the window began to develop a flat, opaque quality until it looked like a blank white screen. Then, to Harry's astonishment, lines began to appear on the surface. As the lines solidified, it began to take on the appearance of a sort of map with many lines branching away from a broader central trunk. He stood up again to look more closely.

"It's moving!" he exclaimed. "It's . . . flowing. It looks like—a river."

"Indeed so, Mr Potter. That may be the most accurate comparison."

Hermione's gaze was sharp. "The Tabula Temporum! I have seen it once before, soon after I took office." She stood and stepped forward to stand beside Harry in front of the map. With her index finger she traced the widest line, following the direction of the current. "This is our Time-Path. The one we are travelling—have already travelled. All these other lines branching off and then some of them branching again"—she traced a thinner line—"and again here, are alternate paths. Is that right?"

Hector nodded. "That is correct, Minister. Clearly there are occasions when other Time-Paths have developed although we do not know how or why. It is possible they result from someone travelling in time, whether with a Time-Turner or another device or even through an accident of nature; we simply have no way of knowing."

"Bloody hell," murmured Harry. He looked more closely at the map as if he would be able to make more sense of it. "This line—our Time-Path—it looks almost as if it's got a . . . shadow!"

"So it does," said Hector. "Indeed, we call it the Shadow-Path."

"What does that do then?" Harry asked.

"We do not know, Auror Potter. Even Erasmus has not succeeded in postulating a logical theory."

Erasmus gave a thin smile.

Hector continued. "In the old days people used to believe it was a path followed by the dead. Or by those who at least were no longer living. And that the Shadow-Path could be accessed through certain mysterious portals."

"Portals?"

Hector waved a dismissive hand. "Such superstitions have no place in these more enlightened scientific days. We have observed that with some frequency the shadow path comes briefly into contact with our own and then moves away again. In fact the most recent convergence took place only about a fortnight ago. The nature of time as we understand it means that different paths should never be able to converge. That leads us to believe that the Shadow-Path follows different rules."

"Why can't—or shouldn't—different time paths converge?" asked Harry.

Erasmus came to stand beside them. "I presume you are familiar with the way magnets repulse each other if the same poles are placed together, but attract at opposite poles?" He steepled his hands, pressing the tips of his fingers together as if in fervent prayer. "A similar principle applies to Time-Paths. They are made of the same material and travelling in the same direction, therefore they are forced apart from each other. They can be very close and moving in parallel, but they can—or should, according to our theory—never touch. We fear that excessive disruption to the flow might, in fact. cause the current to begin flowing in the opposite direction. And if that happens even momentarily—"

Hermione finished his sentence. "Then alternate Time-Paths will be attracted to each other and could converge. Good grief. What would happen then?"

"We think it possible that you could find yourself existing more than once on the same Time Path. And history as we understand it would effectively cease to exist because the past would become as fluid as the present and as uncertain as the future. In a word, it would be Chaos."

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After a moment of silence, Hermione looked around. "Which of these clocks—if any—is showing the correct time? The correct time for the rest of the Ministry, I mean?"

Hector gave a faint smile and indicated a simple round wall clock with a plain face and large black numbers. "This one displays current British Summer Time, Minister."

Hermione glanced at it. "I have to go. I've already postponed a scheduled meeting with a representative from M.A.S.E. I can't keep them waiting any longer."

"Mace, Minister?" enquired Hector.

"The Magical Alliance of Southeast Europe," Harry told him. "That sounds serious."

"I need to know what's going on over there," said Hermione. "If giant cows are going to invade the British Isles, I want to be prepared. I'm leaving this Time-Turner business with you, Harry. For goodness' sake, get the thing back."

Harry grunted assent. "Let's hope Nott hasn't given the Time-Turner to his father yet. I'll go to Wizarding Resources now and find out where he's living. I'll need a warrant."

"Of course." Hermione took a small square of parchment from a pocket and tapped it with her wand. It expanded into a larger document which she signed with a quill. Then she tapped it again. It rolled obediently up into a neat scroll, and a cord twisted around the middle and tied itself into a tidy bow. She passed it to Harry. "Don't go on your own."

"I'll see if Edward Lupin's available. Hopefully it won't be too difficult."

"Report back to me with your progress please." Hermione looked up at the clock and flicked a springy silver wire that stuck out at the side of it. "An implecto? Is this a Muggle clock?"

"Indeed, Minister," Hector smiled and gave it an affectionate pat. "It is an Atomic clock. Radio controlled. Accurate to within thousandths of a second and never needs adjusting."

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