Chapter 21: Via Tempus

Padma collapsed on her bed in exhaustion. Working on the time travel device was taxing, and it left her with little energy to do other things with. But they were making progress. It was slow progress, but it was progress all the same. A full week of slow and steady progress.

That is, until yesterday. Yesterday, their work had come to a complete and utter halt. There was just no obvious places for the equation to go. There seemed to be no way for the equation to continue. It seemed...impossible.

But Padma wouldn't give up. The answer was probably just within reach; they just had to find it. Padma sighed. She was reviewing some parts of the equation in her mind, as she had been doing for the past several nights before settling into bed, just to clear her mind and make sure there hadn't been any mistakes.

But tonight, there was something Padma wasn't expecting. As she thought through the proof, she found a small mistake. It wasn't that large of an error, but when Padma fixed it, suddenly, things began to click into place. Padma rushed over to the desk in her room and pulled out a piece of parchment and a quill, writing furiously. She plotted out the equation, and, to her surprise, the answer was presenting itself.

With a sigh of relief, she held up her wrist to her mouth, and activated the communicator cuff. "This is Violet," she said, barely able to contain the excitement in her voice.

"Maroon speaking. What is it?"

"I found a mistake. It solves everything!" Padma exclaimed.

"Oh, good. I was waiting for you to catch it," replied Miss Maroon.

"Wait, what?" Padma was speechless. She had just been about to go on about what she had found, but this was stopping her thought process right in its tracks.

"I was testing you again. If you hadn't figured it out by the end of tomorrow, I was going to show it to you, but you figured it out. I honestly didn't expect you to find it at all. Good job."

"You were testing me? Why?" demanded Padma.

"To see if you were learning what I was teaching you. You did a good job catching it." Padma's anger was distilled slightly, but she still was annoyed by what Miss Maroon was telling her.

"Can I come in and test it out? To see if what I changed makes it work?"

"Of course. See you in a few." Miss Maroon hung up, and Padma put her work clothes back on. She wished she didn't have to take the time to put on and take off her mask. It was time consuming. But she didn't have an answer of how to get rid of that. Maybe if she talked to Mr. Crimson...yes, that was it. He was in charge of inventing stuff, after all. Maybe he could make the uniform pop out of the communicator cuff or something like that.

Miss Violet shook herself out of her thoughts. She would have to think about those later. Right now she had to complete a time travel equation.

Asyli Intimi Abdere

Harry walked along the beach, exiting his sand castle, and heading up toward Tom's house. Right now, he needed someone to talk to, someone who could understand his problem. And Tom was the only person he could think of.

He knocked on the door. Through the window, he could see the kitchen light on, and heard the faint sound of the radio blaring some headline or another. Tom opened the door, and his eyebrow rose when he saw that it was Harry.

"Hey, Harry. Is something on your mind?" he asked kindly. Harry nodded. He didn't want to explain it out here, though. "Come on in. I just made myself a cup of cocoa. I'll get you one, too."

Harry took a look around the house as he walked in. It certainly was a lot homelier than he remembered it being. "The house looks nice," Harry commented. "It looks a lot better when it's clean."

"Yeah. One day about a year ago, I just decided that I couldn't deal with the mess anymore, so I took three days and purified the house from top to bottom. It really helped out, as you can see, and I've kept clean ever since."

He handed Harry a mug of steaming hot cocoa, and Harry took one tentative sip. It was just right. There wasn't too much chocolate, but there wasn't too little, either, and the drink was just hot enough to make you sip it, but not enough to burn your tongue. In other words, just how Harry liked it.

"So," said Tom, after Harry had taken another sip of his hot cocoa, "what did you want to talk about?"

"Well, the other day…" Harry steeled his nerves. "Daphne died."

"I'm sorry," said Tom. "She meant a lot to you, didn't she."

"She was like the second half of me," said Harry. He paused. "I—I knew it was coming eventually, I just didn't prepare myself for that possibility yet."

"Intellectual knowledge is very different from heartfelt knowledge," said Tom understandingly. "It scares me, too, to think that Hermione, Susan, and Ophelia will one day...disappear."

Harry lowered his head. "How about a toast?" proposed Tom. "We'll drink to her memory."

"With hot cocoa?" asked Harry skeptically.

"Sweeter than wine, and it warms the soul, too."

Harry shrugged. "Alright."

Tom raised his mug. "To Daphne, may she find peace wherever she is."

"To Daphne," echoed Harry. They both drank deeply. The hot cocoa slipped down Harry's throat, and he thought he tasted something a little odd. He took another sip. No. There hadn't been anything. Much have been a figment of his imagination.

"So what have you been up to this summer so far?" asked Tom conversationally.

"Well," said Harry, "I've been doing a lot of research into different spells, and the like. It's been fairly routine, mostly. How about you?"

"Well, I haven't been doing all that much, to be honest. I did try writing a novel earlier in the summer, but I abandoned it, because it was getting much too complicated."

"Do wizards even read fiction?" wondered Harry. "I haven't noticed much of it around."

"Not really. Occasionally, you'll see a good one get published, but it usually doesn't make much money. I would have given it to a muggle publisher if I had finished it."

"It's a pity you didn't finish it. I wouldn't mind reading it," said Harry.

"Maybe I'll give it another later." Tom looked up at the clock that was hanging on the wall. "Whoa!" he exclaimed.

"What?" asked Harry.

"Sorry Harry, but I have to run. I have a previous arrangement I need to go to," apologized Tom.

"Oh, okay," said Harry. "I understand. Maybe I'll stop by again later this summer."

"I look forward to it, Harry. See you around." Harry drained his mug, and set it down on the kitchen counter. With a wave, he left, and walked back down the trail to the beach. The sun was just about finished with its daily run through the sky, the orange and purple colors emanating from it across the salty waves. Harry thought he saw a whale deep out in the ocean breaching. He considered for a moment, until he finally waded out into the surf. Taking a deep breath, he transformed into his animagus form. He needed a respite from his usual thinkings, and wandering into the ocean as a sea turtle would probably help him out.

Asyli Intimi Abdere

"Done!" exclaimed Miss Violet. She sat back in her seat, laughing. "Wow. That was...wow."

"We did it. Took us a while, but we got it," agreed Miss Maroon. She wiped her forehead and put down her quill. "You know what we have to do next, right?"

Miss Violet nodded. "Review it carefully. double check every calculation, and then we test it."

"Good," said Miss Maroon. "Now, you had better head home. We'll continue this tomorrow. We want to be nice and fresh tomorrow, so we don't make any mistakes."

"Did you do anything about my invention request?" asked Miss Violet as she organized her papers.

"I handed it in just before you got here. Mr. Daffodil will have Mr. Crimson work out a prototype by tomorrow, probably."

"Thanks," said Miss Violet.

"No problem," replied Miss Maroon. Miss Violet pulled the portkey attached to her necklace and activated it. She appeared back in her room, and pulled off her mask, putting back into her closet, where she kept it when she wasn't using it. She closed her closet door, and went downstairs.

The next morning, Padma was up bright and early: she wanted to get to the Conplus Colos Complex as soon as she could. Miss Maroon was there, waiting for her; parchment was scattered all over the work tables, and Miss Violet noticed several sheets of parchment hanging in the air.

"What are those for?" asked Miss Violet, pointing to the parchment levitating in the air.

"Well," said Miss Maroon, "we need to be able to inscribe this equation onto a slab of sandstone so we can use it. Runes are the best way to do that, because of their magical properties—you know that, right?"

"Right," said Miss Violet, "I just wasn't sure what those were for."

"They've got an extensive list of numerical and symbolic runes on there—we just need to figure out what our runic array is going to be. Why don't you take the first page of notes and start to translate it into a runic structure?"

"Sure," said Miss Violet, "I can do that." Both girls sat down to work, scribbling with their quills furiously.

Asyli Intimi Abdere

Harry was relaxing back at Sirius's house, and was just taking a sip of orange juice when he saw the headline of the latest Daily Prophet lying on the table. That sip of orange juice soon found itself sprayed into the air, rather than its intended destination of Harry's stomach.

"What the heck!" exclaimed Harry as soon as he got control of his oscular functions. The paper's headline read 'Minister denies reports of You-Know-Who's return!'. Harry grabbed the paper and began to read, becoming more and more angry the further he got in the article.

The crux of the article was that not only had Fudge stopped the investigations of Fleur's death, but had dismissed it as, quote, "A misfortunate accident". By the end of the article, Harry was ready to storm the Ministry and throttle Fudge for not only ignoring his advice but doing the exact opposite of what he should have been doing.

Sirius walked into the kitchen. "Did you see this?" demanded Harry, jabbing at the article in question.

"No, I didn't," replied Sirius. "What's up with Fudge?"

"He's saying that Voldemort wasn't resurrected!" shouted Harry.

Sirius sighed. "And why shouldn't he be saying that?"

Harry glared at Sirius. "After the tournament, I challenged him to find out what had happened to Fleur; it seems like he didn't take my advice at all."

Sirius patted Harry on the shoulder. "Sometimes, Harry, that's how life is. Frustrating. Now-"

A quiet beeping went off on Harry's communicator cuff. "I gotta go," said Harry, hurriedly gulping down the last of his orange juice.

"Where?" asked Sirius.

"To meet with a girl," said Harry, winking.

Sirius beamed. "I'll make a man out of you yet!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing with her?"

"We're translating the fluctuating differences between the temporal timestream and the riptide effect based on Perry's second principle of-"

"I get it, I get it," said Sirius. "You're hanging out with a smart girl. Now I want you to tell me how it went when you get back."

"Fine." Harry apparated into the Conplus Colos Complex and cast the illusion around himself to appear as Miss Maroon. He hoped Sirius wouldn't find out he was crossdressing as well.

Asyli Intimi Abdere

"Done!" exclaimed Miss Violet, putting down the carving knife and sitting back on her haunches, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. "We're finished."

"Great," said Miss Maroon. "Ready for a break?"

Miss Violet nodded. It had been a furious three days, with nothing but calculations and stone carving. She stood up and walked over to where her half empty glass of water was sitting on the table. It had an anti-spill charm over it, so it couldn't spill, so there hadn't been any risk of it falling over and ruining their configurations of parchment. She took a long sip, enjoying the coolness of the liquid she was swishing in her mouth.

"Ready for some preliminary testing today?" asked Miss Maroon. "I'd like to test this out a little before tomorrow."

Miss Violet nodded. "What will we start with?"

"Well," said Miss Maroon, "it has to be a living thing, but I don't want to send a person through just yet, so I was thinking we could conjure a bird and send that through." She whipped her wand once and a raven appeared. The raven squawked, but landed in the circle carved into the sandstone.

"Is the second area ready?" Miss Violet asked.

"I hooked it up and everything about an hour ago. We should probably only send it back that far."

"The equation modifiers are all set up and ready to go," said Miss Violet, after checking to make sure they were. "We're all set."

Miss Maroon grinned. "Hit it." Miss Violet activated the runic array, and the raven flashed in a bright golden light. Miss Maroon waited to the light to subside before running over to the receiving room and throwing open the door. The raven flew out, squawking, just as it had when it had been conjured. Miss Maroon closed the door, not looking inside for anything else.

"Well, that was extremely successful," said Miss Maroon. "Let's try one more time, only we'll set it up to Room 2, okay?"

Miss Violet nodded. "Shouldn't we use something bigger this time? Like a horse or a cow?"

"That's a good idea," said Miss Maroon. "Let's use a cow." She waved her wand, and this time, a cow appeared, mooing. She prodded to cow until it moved onto the runic circle, and Miss Violet double checked the calculations quickly.

"We're good," said Miss Violet. "Let's send us some beef backwards." She activated the array, and the cow disappeared in another flash of golden light. Miss Maroon paused for a few seconds, before running over to Room 2. She opened the door, and the cow appeared, mooing. "Success!" exclaimed Miss Maroon. She vanished the cow, grinning. "Are you up for a bit of time travel yourself?" asked Miss Maroon.

"Am I ever," said Miss Violet. "You're sure this'll work?"

"Of course I am," assured Miss Maroon, smiling at her. "We'll set you up for Room 3."

Miss Maroon fiddled with the equation to set it for Room 3, and Miss Violet stepped onto the runic array. She took a deep breath. "I'm ready."

Miss Maroon smiled again, and activated the runic array.

Asyli Intimi Abdere

She ran. It was coming for her, and she needed to get away, so she was running. She reached the end of a hallway and froze. She had come across a dead end. Turning about, she searched for a hiding spot, but there were none. Nothing to hide behind or beneath. The monster grew closer, and she was ready to scream.

Reminding herself that this was only a dreamspace, she faced the wall and ordered it to form into a bank vault door. It did, and she entered in the code as fast as she could. 5-2-8-4-9-1. The door swung open, and she just barely managed to close it before the monster could make it through.

Now I just need to wake myself up, she thought to herself. Taking a deep breath, she tried to remember how to get out of a dream. Dying usually works, she thought morbidly. Just like that, a gun appeared on a shelf that she hadn't noticed just a moment before. Funny how things work in a dream, she thought, before putting the gun to her head and pulling the trigger.

She woke up, breathing heavily and sweating. I, she promised, am never taking afternoon naps again.

Asyli Intimi Abdere

Mr. Cyan cast another illusion spell, and this time, when Mr. Green evaluated it, he gave him a thumbs up. "Well done," said Mr. Green. "It took me a lot longer to get as good as you are now. Of course, there are still a couple of improvements I can think of, but that's just I got more experience than you do. However, I think you're up for a job. What do you think about heading into the Death Eater's lair?"

Mr. Cyan blinked. "You want me to infiltrate the Death Eaters? But that would take months."

"It would take seventeen minutes, actually." Mr. Cyan stared at Mr. Green incredulously. "I've had a Death Eater in custody for the past month. You just need to impersonate him completely, and you're good. I will have to help you a little bit, because you're going to need a Dark Mark, but don't worry about that. I'll cover that."

"Who do you want me to impersonate?" asked Mr. Cyan.

"Antonin Dolohov." Mr. Cyan gaped.

"You managed to capture Antonin Dolohov? How?"

"Well, he was leading a raid against Harry Potter's house, but let's just say that we foiled it and leave it at that." Mr. Cyan nodded.

"I'll do it."

"Great. Now, you'll have to use some legilimency on Dolohov to learn how to impersonate him, and then you'll have to practice his mannerisms and speech patterns. I suggest you take the rest of today to do that.

"Okay. Where is Dolohov?" inquired Mr. Cyan.

"Somewhere in this room. You'll have to find him in less than an hour. Otherwise you aren't going."

"You think a couple of illusions are going to stop me from figuring this out? You are severely underestimating me, old man."

"And you're several decades too childlike to talk back to me like that, youngster." Mr. Cyan grinned, and punched Mr. Green on the shoulder playfully. "Also," continued Mr. Green, "are you sure you want to be wasting time? The clock's already ticking."

Mr. Cyan rolled his eyes and activated his mage sight. It wasn't all that advanced yet, as he really couldn't identify colors all that well yet, but he was working on it. It had been the first thing Mr. Green had shown him, and he was very grateful for it. Now he had a Death Eater to find.

Asyli Intimi Abdere

Voldemort sat back in his chair, examining the brutalized Dolohov kneeling before him. "You said you managed to escape?"

"It was more like they let me go," admitted Dolohov. "I have no reasoning behind their decision." He was still looking down at the floor. "I apologize for my failures, my lord. Do with me what you will."

Voldemort raised an eyebrow. Or, what would have been an eyebrow, had he any hair there. "I applaud your service, Dolohov. But I must test you first."

"What is your test, my lord?" asked Dolohov immediately. "Anything to regain your favor."

"I must first tell you why this test is necessary." Dolohov didn't reply, only bowing his head further. "Not three weeks ago, an impersonator standing as yourself infiltrated one of our meetings. I cannot allow such a thing to happen again."

"Test me, my lord." Dolohov's voice was resolute.

Voldemort chuckled. "Your eagerness is appreciated, Dolohov." He turned to the junior Death Eater by the door. "Bring in the prisoner." The Death Eater (Voldemort didn't bother to remember the names of any of his recruits unless they surprised or impressed him) opened the door and brought in a woman, bound tightly with ropes and gagged. Dolohov raised his head, and turned to Voldemort quizzically.

"I want you to torture her to death."

"Any particular reason? What crime has she committed?"

"Are you questioning me, Dolohov?"

"No, my lord. I am wondering how intense her punishment should be," Dolohov said, sneering at the woman.

"Her husband has long opposed our agenda, and she is a Hufflepuff. Do you need any more reasoning, Dolohov?" Dolohov was practically glowing, now.

"No, my lord." He raised his wand, and conjured a badger. He ordered the badger to attack, and stood there, unrepentant as she was torn to shreds by the badger. After maybe a minute of this torture, Dolohov vanished the badger, and switched to the Cruciatus. Only, instead of the regular Cruciatus Curse, he added a suffix phrase to the end of the curse. First was Crucio Oculus; next was Crucio Caput; then came Crucio Corpus. He went through about twelve different variations before he finally took pity on the woman and killed her.

"That was very creative, Dolohov. Please, explain to me what you did," ordered Voldemort.

"All I did was focus the pain to a specific part of the body, my lord," replied Dolohov, grinning ferally. "It increases the amount of pain, but they get the pleasure of no pain in the other parts of their bodies. Until you get to that body part, of course."

"Well done, Dolohov," Voldemort said. "Welcome back. Will any of your wounds need treatment?"

"Of course not, my lord."

"Feel free to contact Severus if you need any pain reliever potions."

"Yes, my lord. Do you have any assignments for me?"

Voldemort smirked. This was why he liked Dolohov. Always outgoing, striving to further their cause. "No. Feel free to do as you please. There will be a meeting tomorrow night. Also, check for any tracking or listening charms that they might have placed on you."

Dolohov bowed once and left. Voldemort sighed. He wished that each of his Death Eaters could be as near perfect as Dolohov. His only real flaw was that once he had taken a slight to his honor, he would strive to right it, even if it meant endangering a mission. Perhaps he should give Dolohov a mission, if only to focus his attention on something. He could call him back in the evening. For now, he had to consult with Oliver about what was going on in the Ministry.

"My lord," said the Death Eater, "Oliver is here to report."

"Let him in," ordered Voldemort. "I've been expecting him."

Oliver stepped into the room, and Voldemort looked him in the eye. Oliver nodded, and Voldemort ordered the junior Death Eater out of the room. "What is the Ministry up to right now?" asked Voldemort.

"I was able to double the Imperious over Fudge, so we shouldn't have any problems with him. The main problem we have right now is with Amelia Bones. She's been wondering about me lately, I think. She might suspect something, and it would be well to neutralize her somehow."

"What do you suggest?"

"I should be able to Imperious an Auror to take her out unawares, but it doesn't have a 100% chance of working."

"I might have a way to deal with that," said Voldemort. "You see, with the recent infiltration by the Conplus Colos, it might be possible to frame them for the crime. That way, they can't come out into the open and receive the public's support."

"That is quite devious. I'll get to it as soon as I can." Oliver turned to leave.

"Oh, Oliver," said Voldemort.

"What?"

"Do try and keep your head down. Goodness knows you're the only one I can trust at the Ministry."

"Will do. Take care of yourself, too." Voldemort snorted. The pleasantries were nothing more than that. Pleasantries. They both knew that they were capable of dealing with any threat.

"Oliver, I just had another idea."

"What's that?" asked Oliver, curious.

"Maybe you should have whoever go after what you already stole from the Bones. That would make the Conplus Colos even more sinister." Oliver smiled.

"Thanks." With that, he left, leaving Voldemort to sit back on his throne and wait for the results. He smirked, knowing that he had the advantage. Your turn, Conplus Colos, thought Voldemort.

A/N: *whew* Got this out today. Yay! Merry Christmas everyone! I don't actually have a lot to say about this chapter, other than that I wish you the happiest of holidays, and that I will see you next Tuesday. Bye!