A/N Welcome back to The Butterflies and the Storm. I apologize for my long leave of absence. Suffice it to say that there's been a lot of stuff going on at my end, including 19 credit hours. But midterms are behind me now and I'm finally able to get back into the saddle.
Because it's been awhile, a brief recap might be nice. Here goes:
In 2009, the Department of Mysteries was attacked. The aurors responded, Harry Potter among them, and in the fight one of the attackers let out a spell which narrowly missed Harry and hit a time turner-like device instead. Harry immediately found himself in a field in the year 1904, along with Filius Flitwick (from 1905); Blaise Zabini's mother, Dominique (from 1966); Tom Riddle (from 1942); Charles Mulciber (from 1922); Baron Marley (from 1020); and Luna Lovegood's son, Lysander Scamander (from 2110). It was determined that some sort of nonsense was going on, because Filius remembered Harry as "Professor Evans" and the other three kids were also students at Hogwarts.
It was then revealed that Filius had been given a letter by Harry before being displaced in time. The letter turned out to be a list of directions, apparently in order to take advantage of the financial market, among other things.
Harry Potter went to Hogwarts to inquire about getting a position as the DADA teacher. He found out that he was going to have to teach Potions instead, and also that Nicholas Flamel had, long ago, handed to the Headmasters of Hogwarts a prophecy to the effect that they should expect, and make room for, Harry and the kids. He also met the Doppler sisters: Sabrina Doppler, who suffered unknown trauma while abroad and now teaches DADA, and Louisa Doppler, who turned into an alcoholic in reaction.
Dominique had an interesting conversation with the Sorting Hat, wanting to be in Hufflepuff because nobody suspected them. The Sorting Hat said that was very Slytherin of her, but agreed to do it because her motives were Hufflepuff ones. Tom was sorted into Gryffindor. Charles was sorted into Slytherin.
Alfred Marley then reminisced to himself about the Founders. We learned that Helga told dirty jokes, Salazar really cared about his students, Godric had ants in his pants, and Rowena had bad table manners.
Cutting to Filius and Lysander we learned that they were searching for Nicholas Flamel. It was also revealed that Lysander had determined that they were not in a stable time loop at all, but the result of thousands or millions of successive iterations of time travel. Lysander wasn't sure what was going on but knew there had to be two causes, because the timeline Filius was from was not the timeline which the others were from.
Lysander then told this to Harry, and gave him an additional piece of information: the letter which Filius had received also contained instructions to steal the Deathly Hallows. Lysander also told him that, in the original timeline, the Statute of Secrecy eventually fell down and bad things happened. Lysander wants to take the opportunity to make the same thing happen in this timeline but sooner, so the resulting war will be smaller. Harry wants to learn from the mistakes of the original timeline and be more proactive in keeping the Statute safe, because he doesn't want anyone to die.
After Lysander left, Harry went and had a chat with Tom. He showed pensieve memories of Voldemort to Tom in an attempt to show that Tom's original plans weren't going to get him anywhere. He offered to do everything in his power to help Tom find an alternative means of immortality, if they would make an Unbreakable Vow: "You don't kill anyone without my approval. Not one person. In fact, you do not take any actions at all with the intention of a person's death. You don't cast the curse yourself, you don't tell your mates to do it, you don't say horrible things that you know will drive somebody to suicide, none of it. Not without my approval. But if I get old and we still haven't found another means of immortality, then I will, as a condition of the Vow, offer my life… As the sacrifice that you need to make a horcrux. If I'm going to die anyway, and we haven't found another way for you to live, then I'll let you kill me. One horcrux is all you get, but in this scenario you're guaranteed to get one. And you might even get something better, if we figure out another way for you to live forever."
Before we could see what Tom chose to do, we cut to Charles Mulciber. He was revealed to be friends with Dominique, who is apparently "almost an honorary Slytherin," and also friends with a girl named Gwenant. Professor Doppler of the DADA is revealed to be scary, mainly because she doesn't know when to stop giving details about what a Dark spell does.
Lysander has an internal monologue about secrets and occlumency. He is very worried about the prophecy which foretold of Harry and the kids, and also worried about anyone finding out about this time travel biz.
Dominique then turned out to be playing at being a spymaster. Time will tell as to whether she's as cunning as she thinks.
Finally, Filius arrives at the scene of a goblin murder. He's going to anonymously report it to the aurors, mostly because he remembers reading in the newspaper that this is what happened. There will be other murders, but Filius isn't sure what all the fallout is going to be. He also isn't sure how the murder was done, but is really afraid that it was done how it looks: by eating the poor guy alive.
Thank you very much. Butterflies will resume this weekend.