Happy Full Moon and Thank You to:

1. ShadowMoonDancer, who has added Tempus as a favourite. I feel honoured and deeply grateful.
2. The 4 readers who have placed Tempus on their alerts. Your support is invaluable.

So without any further ado, let me present...


Chapter 2: Shades of Grey, by Delta

"Shades of grey," you say, rather disgruntledly, looking at something which McValley apparently wrote.

"The myth of dichotomy," Albus continues aloud. "Why things are not always White and…and Black…"

Black black black.

"I live in a house by a lake of grey," says Cathy, cryptic as ever.

"You're mad," you say.

"Though this be madness, there be method in't," she replies. "Hamlet."

"All I know from Hamlet is – 'there is nothing good or bad, thinking makes it so…'"

"Oh, but you must read Hamlet!"

But you're not a fan of Shakespeare. Your father learnt a fair bit of it when he was at school and you appear to have inherited his opinion."It's stuffy and impossible to understand."

She squeezes your hands, making a pact. "I will learn the rules of Quidditch, and you will read Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night, or What You Will'."

"What is it about?"

"Twins," she says.

"No it's not," says Albus, and gives a long-winded breakdown of the play by theme and subplot.

D.R.H.

Neither Athena Attwood-Plath nor Artemis Lovegood ever came to another LexLit class; Artemis had exchanged it for Care of Magical Creatures, while Athena had expunged it altogether from her timetable ("Arithmancy is so much better!"). Many others agreed with them, which required that the "groups" be rearranged, and much to Delta's dismay, she found that McValley had placed Phineas Black on their table. "You four are taking exactly the same subjects," he said, ignoring Harvey. "You need to stick together."

"WHAT does he think he's DOING?" Delta asked her table one morning before class. "All the things he's proposing – group projects, 'reflections', where on earth…I've written to my parents, they think he's mad…and dad's a muggle which says something…"

"McValley, Machiavelli more like it," mused Cathy, playing with the fibres of her quill.

"I'm sure McValley's just trying to foster inter-house relations. We need to start on the newspaper," said Albus loudly, trying to distract everyone from Delta's unadulterated rage and loathing. "What kind of articles are we going to write? McValley has hinted that he wants something radical and revolutionary."

"He hasn't been hinting, he's been stating, Bobbie" said Phineas.

"Only my Quidditch friends call me Bobbie, and nobody asked for your opinion!" snapped Delta.

Albus gave her a reproachful glare, as if to say, "Can't you be civil? We have to work with him!"

D.R.H.

"Greetings, friends and countrymen!" Professor McValley had re-entered the Friday morning class in what might have been a toga, but looked suspiciously like a bedsheet.

"I believe your good Professor has had the misfortune to encounter a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, so I am here replacing him. My name is Heraclites, and I'm here today to hold a debate about time. You see, I believe that you can't step in the same river twice. Now. Will anyone disagree with me?"

"Sir," said Albus. "Your concept of time negates the possibility of Time Travel, which means that the Time Turner should not function."

"Indeed – change is an eternal process – everything is in a constant state of flux and decay. There are three spatial dimensions and three temporal dimensions which accompany them. Young man, can you elaborate? If you can, you can have a point."

Albus continued. "You believe that we exist in the present, which is the only thing that is real. Neither future nor past exist – the past used to exist, while the future is yet to. Therefore, there exists be no destination for you to 'time travel' to."

"Does anybody know my good friend Parmenides?" The Professor looked at Delta. "Young brunette lady with the red-and-yellow scarf – what do you know about Parmenides? Apart from the fact that he is a wizard and I am not?"

"He…thinks of the world in four dimensions?" She shot a smug look at Phineas Black, as if to say, he picks on me, not you, and I am therefore right. In reality, Delta was hoping that McValley wouldn't ask her any more questions, particularly those which dealt with the actual physics of time travel, since the numbers tended to make her feel slightly ill.

"That's right. Take another point. Now – a point to whoever can think of good analogies for my concept of time, and for Parmenides'."

"Please, sir, Heraclites," said Cathy, waving her hand about, "while you think of time as a spinning wheel – the past is the finished thread, while the future is the unshaped wool, and the present is the bit between the spinner's fingers – your friend thinks of time like a book – everything exists at the same time, and you can merely flick back and forth between the pages of the past, present and future to time-travel."

"What does Parmenides think of change?"

"Parmenides thinks change, like time, is an illusion – 'time is the moving shadow of eternity'."

"He is, in short, a damned fatalist. And what do you think of time? Which one of us is right?"

Cathy inhaled deeply, and began in her slightly-dreamy philosophizing voice, "I think neither of you is right. Yes, time is an illusion, but change is not. All there is, for the individual observer, is change – that is interpreted as "events", which are chronicled in our memories to be compared with prior records." Cathy looked McValley straight in the eye, expectantly, her hands covering the worst of the raw marks on her chin, but he turned his head and swept away to look at another table. Perhaps one day, if she managed to get rid of them somehow, someday, she could be rather pretty, with her light blue eyes, Delta thought, particularly when she had a bit more colour in her face.

"A most interesting theory, O Sibyl of Apollo…could I possibly ask you to write your argument down for me, on about two feet of parchment, outlining your opinion of time – does it, as the Romans say, flee, flow, or pass – 'Tempus fugit'? – or is all this talk of passage confused, misleading or contradictory? And that goes for all of you – I shall inform Professor McValley to forward them on to me. Now, let us start to talk about some of the readings you have been doing recently!" He moved onto the next table, out of earshot of Delta's table.

"I told you, he's mad," she nudged Cathy. But then she realised the girl looked paler than usual. "Are you all right?" Delta asked, taking her cold, little hand and rubbing it. "You look as you might faint…"

D.R.H.

The trees turned red, then gold, as the Quidditch season commenced. Delta, Billie Meissner and Kenneth Potter had all returned as Chasers to a very successful Gryffindor Quidditch team, that promptly steamrolled Hufflepuff, even with Harvey, an excellent Chaser. But with three practice sessions a week, Delta found her ten-subject load extremely heavy, and was in fact somewhat relieved when Hogwarts awoke one morning to several inches of snow.

"Why doesn't snow make a sound when it falls?" Cathy asked her LexLit table, as they enjoyed the sight of the lightly falling snow a few minutes before class commenced. The five of them were away from their desks, sticking their heads and arms out of the classroom windows.

"It does – just the snowflakes are too small – so the sounds they make are too soft for you to hear."

"But Al, if a tree falls in the wood when no one is watching, does it make a sound?" asked Harvey, quoting yesterday's topic of discussion.

Albus softly began to quote,

"There was a young man who said "God
I find it exceedingly odd

That this tree I see
Should continue to be
When there's no one about in the quad."

Cathy replied,

"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad.

And that's why the tree
Continues to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God."

"If a snowball never leaves someone's hand, is it still a snowball then?" asked Delta, taking aim at Phineas, then getting a better idea.

"Of course – OUCH!" Delta threw at Cathy a clump of snow which she had gathered with her wand. "It's good stress relief. Come on, we just had Arithmancy! I'm sure you could do with a bit too…"

"Oh I love my number charts – but I love my snowballs even more!" Cathy hurled some snow at Delta.

"Delta! Cathy! You're thirteen – surely that's too old to…" Albus was cut off by Cathy hitting him right on the nose. "Oh, all right, if you insist…but only if you all promise to stay back behind after class so we can sort out the matter of the newspaper…"

"I wish Hesper was here, she's the only person who could out-mother you. And you're almost wrong," said Cathy. "I'm going to be fourteen in two weeks!"

"So you're half a year older than him – he probably thinks you should be setting an example!" said Delta.

"Why not? Don't you like the snow? It's so clean, and new, and…" It was Cathy's turn to be silenced, this time by the approach of the Professor.

"Good morning freedom-seekers! Today we will be reaching conclusions on whether our thinking consciousness confirms whether we exist or not! Who can tell me…?"

"Renee Descartes," said Delta, with a perfect accent, and a supercilious look at her cousin.

D.R.H.

"I agree with Harvey that we ought to make a good name for ourselves – if people love our name then they'll love our project," said Albus, addressing the table at the end of the lesson. "Love of a name increases love of the thing itself."

"Something about that doesn't sound right," Delta cringed. "Needs something stronger. Try Fear."

"Why would we want people to fear us though? Surely we're not that competitive," said Cathy.

"We could go with French. How about French? Vive la revolution!" Delta punched her hand in the air, and Albus gave her a disapproving look.

"We need something people can easily spell," said Phineas, who immediately regretted it because Delta shook her fist at him.

A torrent of names was then unleashed – which included The Monthly Mews, The Monthly Moos, The Monthly Machiavellian, Spaghetti, The Bohemian, The Pickwick Paper, Merlin's Beard, In Profundis Umbris

"It's a wicked pun! Don't you think so? It would make Elphias proud…"

"I'm not sure if our mascot should be a cat. Did you know, McValley is allergic to cats?"

"Could be worse though, Elphias is allergic to birds, how did that happen? Remember that time when he was walking down the path, and a bird was standing in his way, and he made us walk around…"

"Ooh, McValley sounds an awful lot like Machiavelli doesn't it? What do you mean – you don't understand what I mean?"

"I wish Artemis was here; he'd have suggested something hilariously out of the blue, something like 'Spaghetti', and he'd argue that it wouldn't need a 'the', just because it sounded catchy."

"La Vie Boheme!"

"Down from the table, if you please, Delta."

"But I haven't read Charles Dickens!"

"What the…Dickens?"

"We say 'Merlin's Beard' in the Wizarding world."

"Or…in the deepest shadows…now doesn't that sound magnificent? More so than our family motto…"

By this point, Cathy's absent-minded sketch of a large, deeply-set eye had progressed to a fair bit of detail. Delta's attention span had expired too. "May I look?" Delta pulled the notebook away as she asked Cathy's permission. "Golly…you are good…I think we've just found ourselves an illustrator! Can you draw cartoons too, Cathy?" she handed the book back to the stunned girl. Cathy scrutinized Delta and started making quick strokes.

"Nocturne," said Albus, looking out the window.

"What?" Delta screwed up her nose.

"How about 'The Nocturnal' as a name? It draws together the idea that we're operating underground, that we like our French and Latin, and it contrasts strongly with 'The Daily Prophet'."

"Al! You're a genius!" Delta threw her arms around Al's neck and kissed him on the cheek, so that he turned the same colour as his hair.

"We should probably go, outside is turning quite nocturnal now," said Cathy, marginally less quietly than usual, staring out the window again.


My Fair Lady: Wouldn't It Be Loverly If Someone Reviewed?
All I want is to know somewhere
Out there that all my readers care,
That the reviews page don't look so bare,
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?
Lots of messages for me to read,
Lots of crit to make me better I need
To make things right before I proceed
Oh, wouldn't it…be loverly?

A slightly different flavour to Part I, methinks. Shakespeare should be in the public domain now, so I'm not going to get flustered about writing a disclaimer for him in every chapter he gets a reference; as awesome as he is, this is all the credit he gets, since I can never hope to entirely thank him for all he has given. "La Vie Boheme" is a reference to both the Puccini opera and its transformation, Rent. Albus and Cathy's limericks are lifted from the Penguin Reference, Dictionary of Philosophy. Here I will also thank my Latin teacher, who enjoyed dressing up and storytelling, and my Philosophy lecturers.