Quest of the Seekers: The Timeless Conflict
Year Four at Hogwarts
('sss)
Chapter 11: The Tablet of Time
The four of them felt as if they were traveling by an extremely unstable portkey. It felt as if they were being flushed down the toilet into a black hole and their screams echoed all around them in the void. They felt like they were screaming for hours until they felt land underneath their backs. To any who were passing through, it would've seemed that four young teens just appeared out of thin air and collapsed instantly to the floor.
Tyler opened his eyes and saw a semi cloudy sky. 'That doesn't make sense. Aren't we in the chamber?' He thought as he tried to bring his eyes back into focus. He looked around and saw that his friends were all scattered around and had yet to regain conciousness. "Hey...Jacke, Reggie, Brad. Wake up. Come on, get your arses up!" He went to each one individual and pushed and smacked their faces to get them to wake.
Through his tirade, Jacke was the first to wake. "Hey, quit it. Honestly..." He brushed himself off and was ready to tell Tyler to get lost when he looked around and saw where they were.
They were in the middle of nowhere. The land they were in didn't look any bit familiar to them at all. There were a few mountains in the distance and patches of trees here and there but there was no one around. The air had a cool misty feeling to it like it had rained not too long ago. The castle was nowhere in sight at all and there was no clue to tell them which direction to go.
When Reggie and Brad regained themselves, Reggie started to panic. "What happened? Where the bloody hell are we? How did we get all the way out here." He turned towards Tyler like he thought it was his fault.
"How should I know?" Tyler said raising his voice to imitate his panic.
"Okay, come on, let's not panic," Brad said breaking them apart.
"Too late for that Brad!" Jacke said getting angry himself.
"I'm just trying to help. Much more than you're doing right now!" Brad said turning at Jacke with a glare.
"Why are you looking at me for, it's not my fault!"
"Oh and it's mine? You're the one who found that stupid rock!"
"Oh yeah," Jacke shouted before he dove at Brad and started to fight with him while Tyler and Reggie tried to pull them apart.
"C'mon, this isn't helping. Besides, it's not either of your faults that we're lost because of that rock. It's Tyler, he touched it remember?" he said pulling at Brad's waist trying to get him off Jacke.
"Oh, does that mean it's my fault that we're who knows where?" Tyler spat as he was trying to keep Jacke from punching Brad again.
"Well, all this happened when you grabbed it."
"You're the one who asked me too!"
Tyler and Reggie joined in the fighting and as it progressed and the Seekers started to give each other bloody noses and cut lips.
They kept fighting with each other like this for about a few moments before a voice broke through them. The voice had a powerful and olden tone to it. "Hello! Is there something amiss with you young fellows? Have you had a little too much grape wine?"
The four of them stopped in mid action to see a group of people dressed in a very odd way. They had weird cloaks on that didn't seem to be wizard robes because they weren't very good in style. The could also see plates of metal underneath some of them and there were metal shoes on each of them too. They were also all on a horse and had their hoods up with what were unmistakingly swords peering out from the waists. The one in the front seemed to be of great importance since he had an air around him like he was high in social status.
"Do you think they're wizards? They do have robes." Brad said as he whispered to them.
"I've never seen robes like that before. They look so...awful." Tyler said taking in the sight of them.
"Well, it still won't hurt to try and ask them for help would it?" Reggie asked. "Maybe they're just wizards coming from Beabauxtons or Durmstrang. Muggles don't wear armor that's for sure."
"Good point," Tyler took everything of what Reggie said and it made perfect sense. "Hello there," he said raising his voice to them. "Err...you wouldn't happen to know in which direction of where Hogwarts is would you?"
"Hogwarts?" The one in the front looked to his comrades in confusion. "What are you laddies talking about? I never hear of a pub by that name before but you might find what you're lookin' for in the nearby village."
"There's a village?" Tyler asked with hope. If there was a village then it might just be Hogsmeade and they could get back to school.
"Yes, but you better be careful. Be watchful of suspicious characters because we have had a lot of scout sightings of wizards lately." He turned his horse to head up the trail and was starting that way before he looked back. "By the way, those robes of yours, very exquisite. It's nice to meet such young nobles time to time. Yah!" He yelled as he pulled on his saddle ropes and his horse as well as his party raced off.
"What was with those people?" Brad asked as they rode off. "They sure were strange."
"Err...hey, did any of you...catch the way they were talking?" Reggie said with a quivering lip like he'd just seen a dementor.
"What? What is it Reggie?" Brad said looking at his friend in concern.
"The way they were talking, the way they're dressed, the things they said about wizards, those were muggles."
"Muggles? That can't be. Muggles don't dress like that." Tyler said remembering this past summer.
"No...they don't dress like that anymore. I...I think we're in the past." Reggie said looking around. "About a couple of hundred years by the style those muggles were in with their robes and armor."
"The..the past. But how? We didn't do any magic for time traveling. There is no magic for going back through time." Jacke said with a defiant voice. He just wouldn't believe that. Even in the wizarding world, traveling back through centuries of time was impossible.
"There is, I've read about them in Magical Wonder of Wizarding Devices. There are magical devices called time turners and they can bring people back through hours of time depending on how much you turn them. They look like hour glass charms" Reggie said tuning into his memory of reading about time turners.
"Yeah, well we didn't come across anything that looked like an hourglass." Brad said completely stumped on all of this.
"But...There was an hourglass marking on that tablet that we..." Jacke fearfully said recalling what happened before.
"The tablet!" Tyler fearfully cut in. "Wait, where is it!"
"Over there," Brad said pointing over to the spot that they had been laying on before.
The round stone tablet was there and Tyler went to pick it up and looked carefully at it and when he did, he almost fainted.
"Tyler! What's, what's wrong?" Jacke said catching the terror in his friend's eyes.
However, Tyler didn't answer his friend. He just stared at the markings on it, completely dead to the world around him. At least until a gust of water splashed on his face, choking him back to reality.
"Brad, why'd you do that for?"
"Tyler, now isn't the time to be frozen. Care to share what the hell is going on?" He said with an impatient gritting of his teeth.
"Okay, sorry, but you're not going to like it?"
"We don't like it already so you don't have to worry," Reggie said settling on the grass. If the news was that bad, at least he won't hurt his head from passing out.
"You have the right idea," Jacke said before he and the others settled on the ground.
"Okay...first things first. Reggie, you were right. These markings are parselform, parselmouth writing."
"I knew it."
"Alright, anyway," he said before Reggie could gloat more on how he was right. "What I read will shock you."
"Honestly! Enough with the suspense! Get on with it!" Jacke said. He had been making impatient fists and his nails were threatening to puncture his skin.
"Sorry...well, I read the first line and it said "Beware for those grasping this item for it will take thee onto a sacred speaker's inner wish to the spot of wonder and history." It was a warning written in parselform." Tyler swallowed a little because his throat ran dry.
"Take thee onto a sacred speaker's wish to the spot of wonder and history? What does that mean?" Brad asked desperately.
"I think it means that if a parselmouth touches the item, it will take them to where they wish to go in the past. Since the inscription was in parseltongue writing then the sacred speaker that it's talking about means a parselmouth; strange, I think I've heard sacred used before but I just can't remember when. Also, it did say "spot of wonder" so I assume that that means place and "history" must be talking about the past."
"Reggie, for once, I wish you were the stupidest person on the planet so that you could be wrong," Jacke said putting his arms behind him so they could keep him from falling back in shock. It wasn't everyday that you traveled in the past.
"Tyler?" Reggie said continuing now that he was on a roll. "Did you have any wishes or thoughts before you touched that thing?"
Tyler thought back to when they were still in the chamber. He tried to recall what was going through his mind then. He remembered looking around at all the things that were stashed away: the medallions, heavy cloths. He remembered getting a little curious and wondering... "Oh Merlin," Tyler said in a low voice.
"What? What's wrong?" Brad said catching what he said. This was getting to be too much for him to take.
"Well...I did sort of wonder what it was like around my ancestor's time right before you called me over to look at this thing."
"You mean...we're back around the Founder's time." Jacke said looking around again.
"That makes sense. Those muggles...the way they talked of magic and the way that they were dressed in the old style armor, it's all around first millenium AD." Reggie said recalling those horseback riders.
"Wait, Tyler, can't we just use that thing to go back home?" Brad said looking towards the tablet. "Maybe if you wish again, we could get back."
"I'm sorry. I can't. There's more written on the tablet then I told you guys." He seemed to have their full attention after that sentence. "The second line said, "Beware. Once the magic forces have been uprooted, only after a moon can it be reborn." I guessed that meant that we had to wait for the magic to return to this thing. It looks like we're stuck here." No one spoke after that for a while until...
"After a moon? That must be a month." Reggie said recalling the message.
"Yeah, we're not stupid, we got that already Reggie," Jacke said looking at him like he was tired. "So we're stuck here for a month and I say that we have to make the best of it or we won't get by the first week."
"Tyler, let me look at that again," Reggie asked and Tyler gave him the rock. Reggie looked from the tiny hourglass symbol carved it to the parseltongue writing to the runes. Two of them tat were solely on the bottom caught his eye. "Hey look, these runes. I know Professor Vector didn't go over them in class but I know what they mean." The three of them looked at him in confusion. "I decided to read a little more into runes for a little night time reading."
'Reggie's got to get over this. He's got reading on the brain.' Tyler thought in amusement before he went to listen in.
"These two mean, Tablet and Time. I guess that's the name of this thing. The Tablet of Time."
"So, what do we do now?" Brad said putting a hand over his forehead like he was checking for a fever. He felt like he was a hair away from passing out on the spot.
"Well...I am a little hungry." Jacke said a little sheepishly.
"No surprise there." Tyler said rolling his eyes.
"Wait, I'm hungry too." Reggie said after he felt his stomach go into knots.
Then there was a slight growl from Brad's stomach. "I guess I could have a little something myself."
"Yeah, maybe some food would be nice. Didn't those muggles say that there was a village around here. Let's go get something."
"Tyler, I know this may be the last thing that you want to be heard but it needs to be said. What about money?"
"What are you talking about? I have a bit of gold with me. I never leave my dorm room without some handy."
"Yeah, and I have a little bit of money too." Jacke said jingling the coins in his pocket.
"Well, how do we know that it's still good here. Remember, we are in the past." Reggie said, again hating to be the one that points out these things.
"I think it's good. I remember from old movies about the old medievil times and how they used gold coins as money," Brad said recalling movies from his youth.
"Anyways, the wizarding world has been using the same money system since only Merlin knows when. I'm sure we'll be set if we come across anything and I think between the four of us, we'll have more than enough money to hold us out." Tyler said hoping to calm down both Reggie and Brad.
They started up the road that the muggles had taken before in utter silence.
Tyler was thinking about how he could use the tablet to get back home since he could only use it. 'I wonder what everyone's doing now that we're gone. Will they notice us missing?'
Jacke was trying to concentrate on anything but the fact that they were stranded for a month in a strange land and time. 'I wonder what kind of food they'll have here?'
Brad was visibly shaken and his face had nothing but worry. 'This is honking mad. Getting lost in time isn't how I wanted to spend the year. I thought that with most of those pureblooded purists gone, this year would actually be a calm one but this is crazy. I should've just stayed in bed the entire day.'
Reggie was taking in all of the scenery. "Everything here seems so...different. I know that we're stuck in the past but it still is a fascinating experience. Might as well make the most out of it. Guess Jacke had the right idea after all if anyone would ever believe that.'
It was starting to get a little dark and they still didn't see any sign of the village. With the night coming, the air was getting cold and everyone started to shiver a little bit. Jacke went over to a nearby tree and broke four big branches off with a Severing Charm and lit the tips by conjuring a fireball.
"Well, at least we'll blend in this way," Jacke said as they went on ahead.
They all had to laugh at that. They looked as if they were exploring some ancient dwelling which Tyler pointed out that they sort of were. The sky turned to a deep dark violet sky before they saw lights in the distance.
"Look, that must be the village those horse riders were talking about," Reggie said as he lifted the hood on his robes. "Good, because I am hungry and tired."
"Well, at least we had some exercise." All of them looked towards Brad like he just recommended that they put their hands in front of a hungry dragon's mouth. "What?"
"Let's go," Tyler said forcefully.
When they reached the town, they were...surprised. The town's look wasn't much too different from Hogsmeade. There were homes and a few shops still opened and they could see merchants in outside stands packing everything in for the night. From the looks of it, this town wasn't filled with royalty or anything. It seemed like a common place that travelers pass by on their journeys. The townspeople themselves were something to look at as most of them were rather young. Most of them seemed to be no older than forty.
"Before we do anything, I say we go and find a place to eat and sleep and we'll make a plan tomorrow." Tyler said after the shock of seeing this place lifted.
Reggie went to a passing woman to get some answers.
"Excuse me, but I was wondering if you could help us?" He asked in the most polite voice he could muster.
"Sure. I don't reckon I've seen you around here before."
"Yes, well, me and my friends have...been traveling and we're just passing through your town. I was wondering if there was a place to stay near here?"
"Oh...well I believe the best place to stay is in the Valiant Heart Inn. It's just down the road there. It's the one with the sign of a heart and moon over each other. They serve the best food to but it is very pricey."
"Thank you mam," Reggie said bowing down. 'When in the past, do as the people in the past would do.' he thought as he came back up.
"Good day."
Then she went off while Reggie was joined by the others.
"So?" Tyler said bringing his hand out.
"There's a inn where we could sleep down there." He said as he pointed in the direction the woman directed him too. "It's a pretty expensive one though."
"Never had a problem with that," Tyler said as they took off and had them laugh freely for the first time since they'd been there.
The four of them soon came upon the building with the sign of the heart and moon just like the woman explained to Reggie. When they reached it, all of a sudden, each of them felt like they were a hundred pounds more heavier and that their feet would be slush any second now. They went in and saw a blond man that looked around 19 or twenty at the front table. It was surprising to find someone that was so close to their age working in what was typically an older person's place.
"Good evening, I'm the caretaker, Lars, and welcome to the Valiant Heart Inn. May I help you?"
"Yes, we'd like a place for us to stay." Tyler leaned a little too hard on the table as his feet felt like murder.
"Well, you're all in luck. We have one available room tonight and it contains four beds. How long can I place you for?"
"Just for tonight thank you." Tyler said as the receptionist took it all down on his parchment.
"What should be placed as staying party?" He said stopping in the middle of his recordings.
"Err...just Seekers please."
"All...right, that'll be three gold bits." He extended his hand and everyone held their breath. Tyler handed him three galleons and everyone let out a little relief that he took them and placed them in a money box and handed them a large, old fashioned, iron key. "Your room is up the stairs and is the room with the raven knocker on it. Our serving maidens will bring you food whenever you request it."
"We would like food now, thank you."
"Very well, our cook will be right on it." Then he placed a basket before them. "May you please surrender your swords or daggers please."
"Err...we don't have any." Jacke said wondering if the guy was mental.
"Four young men such as yourselves traveling without anything to defend yourselves. You must all be very brave or very foolish, or both."
"Thank you." Tyler said for the final time.
Tyler took the key and all of them went up the stairs to find their room. Each of the doors had an animal with a sword under it type knocker on the top mid-section of the doors and soon they found a raven knocker beyond a room with a turtle one. The room wasn't too big but that could be because of the four poster beds on each corner. Tyler and Jacke quickly called the two beds beside the window ahead and the four of them went to get themselves settled in. The food was brought in by a pretty woman in her early twenties and Lars the caretaker. The girl smiled at each of them in turn as if she was...flirting and then left the room a little dramatically by closing the door slowly behind her. At Tyler's suggestion, Jacke cast a powerful silence charm on the door before they went for their dinner. The food itself was on a very large tray and had many delicious looking courses and each of them went to wolfing them down.
"Have you noticed that the people here are so young?" Brad said as he helped himself to some chicken soup.
"Well, from what I read in some old history books that my mom lended me, people around this time didn't live as long lives as people in our time do." Reggie said helping himself to a buttered roll.
Tyler thought that the apple pie was fantastic. "How old do most of them live up to?"
"Well, muggles around this time live up to about fifty years old at the most. Many of the people in this time marry before they're even twenty."
"Wow. That's what I call rushing into things." Jacke chuckled as he drank some water.
"And that's not all. Remember the warning that noble gave us about wizards. I remember from what Binns told us back in our second year of how muggles feared magic and forced the wizarding population to be hidden in secret until they eventually forgot about us. Obviously, we're now back before the wizarding world became so secretive."
"That's cool." Jacke waved his wand and made a little hot air gush out of his wand to heat up a cooled piece of pork.
They were almost finished with all the food before Reggie snapped his fingers. "Listen mates...I was doing some thinking as we walked out there today and I realized something that we have to remember at all times."
"What is it?" Tyler saw that Reggie looked very scared and serious.
"We have to remember that until we can use the Tablet of Time to go back home that this is the past. Anything we do here can mess up the future so we have to blend in with the crowd at all times. It's a good thing that we're wearing everyday robes because then we would have a lot of trouble in our hands if we were found in T-shirts, sweaters and jeans. We have to make sure that nothing we do will change the future."
"Reggie, we're a thousand years in the past. What could we possibly do that could upset time for the next millenium?" Jacke said like it was a joke.
"Jacke, this is serious. We have to be very careful here, it's not a joke."
"Okay...sorry." Jacke was livid.
"I didn't mean it like that. We just have to handle our month with care. We have to plan what we're going to do to not upset the future."
"Reggie, no offense to what you think but come on. We've been given a once in a lifetime chance. Sure it's a little frightening but it's not even rare that people get to go a thousand years into the past. Like it or not, I did make the wish that brought us here and obviously, the tablet brought us here to fulfill it. Not to stay in one spot and waste what's been given to us."
"What are you saying Tyler?" Reggie was scared at how Tyler seemed so motivated all of a sudden.
"We should go see Hogwarts. I did wish to...know how it was around this time."
"Have you gone mad? Go to Hogwarts. If we go there...then..."
"What? Reggie, what could any of us possibly do to change what happened? We'll just be four average looking teenage wizards visiting the school for a month. Besides, it's not like any of them might believe anything we say about the future anyway."
"Maybe it's the weariness I'm feeling that's talking but...Tyler has a point." Brad said feeling drowsy from the long walk. "I mean, do you think people will take us seriously if we say that one day human beings will walk on the moon?"
"Never thought of it that way." Reggie knew he was beaten down as usual and went into the usual phase of If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
"Yeah, but how are we going to find the school. We don't even know where we are." Jacke said settling down on his bed. "Since you only wanted to know what it was like around the time of your ancestor, the tablet just dropped us off anywhere. We should find out where we are first before we set out."
The three of them looked at Jacke with great surprise evident on their faces. Since when did he start using logic?
Brad let out a loud yawn and that signified the time for everyone to tuck in for the night. Reggie went to turn off all the lamps but before he did, he tapped Tyler's shoulder.
"What?" he said with his face in the pillow; he was almost asleep.
"Tyler...listen...I'm sorry about what I said earlier today. You know, about it being you're fault that we're stuck here. I hope you could forgive me for that. I don't know what I was thinking...if you could believe that."
Tyler laughed a little at that and so did Jacke and Brad which made it obvious that they were still awake. "I'm sorry for lashing out at you. I guess I did because I thought that it was my fault. The tablet wouldn't have brought us all here if I didn't touch it while you were. If I just picked it up alone then at least you all would still be home."
"No," Jacke said following Tyler's example. "It was me who made us all pick up the tablet and it was even my idea to go to the secret store corridor in the chamber in the first place. If it's anyone's fault for anyone brought here, it's mine. You were right Brad."
"Don't be thick Jacke. I was just out of my mind scared and I blamed the first person I saw. I didn't mean any of it. Forgive me?"
"Honestly...of course. Forgive me?"
"Yeah."
The Seekers had no trouble sleeping that night now that they had made up. It lessened the exhilaration that they felt from the fact that they were lost in time.
('sss)
Tyler opened his eyes when the sound of commute from outside woke him up. Memories of the previous day flowed into his head and he even looked around and saw that it wasn't just a dream. He saw that his friends were still sleeping so he decided to be quiet and let them have a few more minutes. Tyler got up and pocketed his wand before he went downstairs heading for the welcome desk. He saw that Lars the caretaker was awake as well.
"Oh, hello there. I hope that you and your companions had a splendid night here."
"Yes, it was quite...relaxing. I was wondering if you could loan me a map."
"Oh, of course. Let me russle one up for you." Lars went over to a cupboard and pulled out one of many rolls of paper and parchment that were there and unrolled it in front of him. "There you are. Are you trying to get somewhere?"
"Yes...err, first, we're exactly are we here? You see, my comrades and I...fell asleep in a carriage and it broke away from our traveling party and we are trying to get back to them." Tyler was amazed at how quickly he made a convincing story to tell this olden person.
"Yes, you're right here." He pointed over at a square which obviously represented this town and Tyler didn't recognize the area from the way that the map was drawn. "Where exactly are you all trying to reach anyways?"
"I'm glad you asked me that question. You wouldn't happen to have heard of...Hogwarts, have you?" Tyler crossed his fingers.
"Hogwarts...Hogwarts...the name...it sounds familiar. Hold on..." he said trying to remember. "Wait, now I remember. There an old castle in ruins by that name. No one goes by there though. Nothing and nobody is there of any type of value."
Tyler's memory flashed back to when Brad had told them about the school's enchantments that he had read in Hogwarts, A History. He had said that when muggles look at the castle they'll see nothing but ruins where it should be. "Oh, where is it?"
"You actually want to head there? Nothing of worth going there."
"Yes I know, but...it's something I need to do. Could you please show me how to get there?"
"Well...alright. I'm not your father. What you want to do is head northwest from here and you'll probably find yourself there in about...five days if you're traveling on foot."
'Five days? It was tough for us to just get over to here. But...nothing ventured, nothing gained they always say.' He thought despairingly to himself. "Thank you for your help."
"Oh, don't thank me yet. Getting there is tough. The terrain is terrible and these aren't the best of times. With those evil and troublesome wizards running around causing havoc, you'll probably never make it there without weapons. If I were you, I'd forget about it."
Tyler wasn't worried about them being defenseless. They had were wizards after all and with their magic, they were defended enough, but there was something else.
"These wizard problems. What are they?" The caretaker looked at him suspiciously before Tyler caught the tone at how he said it. "You see, my friends and I are from another province and we aren't familiar of what's been happening here with our educational training."
"Oh, well I guess that explains why you look like you do. You four don't seem to be the warrior type to me. You're all so smaller than soldiers your age. We've had a few wizards destroy some homes in random villages and towns and even destroy a whole town even. But lately, the wizards seem to be disappearing and many people think that they're just waiting out for a big attack to wipe everyone in sight out."
"I see," he said slowly.
Tyler went to wake up his friends. They had a long journey ahead of them so they might as well start now.
('sss)
End of Chapter 11
Dark672: I'm glad you think so. I hope you feel the same for this chapter.
Author Notes:
With the Seekers stuck back in time, how will they get through this one? Time travel fics are always so...intensifying and it inspired for this idea but it's something original in it's own right. I just hope it is as fantastic to you as it is in my mind. Review and tell me what you think or where you believe I'm going with all this but I have a feeling that none of you will be close.
High Serpent King
