Shattered Moments
By Rurouni Star
For those who haven't happened to glance at the theories of Quantum Physics and such, here's the low down as I understand it. Anyone able to correct me, you may do so. (EDIT: Aha. Cookies to Aranel Abeille, for catching that mistake right off the bat. I was thinking volume and writing 'mass'. I might still be wrong about that…)
The speed of light is the fastest possible speed, so far as we know. This is because photons have no mass, or so little mass as to be the things with the least mass in the universe. Einstein therefore theorized that nothing could exceed the speed of light. Humans especially.
This is relevant when applied to a black hole. The reason a black hole is black is because its density is so incredible that its gravity pulls light into it and doesn't allow it to escape. Even the speed of light is insufficient to make it past its gravitational field, once it is caught inside – this catching point, where you can't escape again, is the black hole's event horizon. Since the speed of light is the fastest speed, it follows that absolutely nothing can escape a black hole once it's hit the event horizon.
Scientists believe that the basic laws of physics break down inside a black hole because of this unique state of incredible gravity. It's believed that time slows to the point of nearly stopping inside – this phenomenon is generally called a singularity, a point of infinite density and infinite mass. The idea can't be proven, however, because no emissions escape the black hole. There's nothing to measure to prove it. Whereas going inside the event horizon would not only be suicide, it would also stop time for you, and distort perception.
Stephen Hawking is famous for describing this – "God abhors a naked singularity", he said. A black hole is unforgiving by nature, and unmeasurable – it therefore clothes the singularity. The theory, if it's entirely correct, can never be proven.
What does this have to do with time travel, you ask? It's been said that if you exceeded the speed of light, you could move back in time. If the theory is correct, then both are totally impossible.
To be fair, this theory's been argued about a lot. And the quote, because of agitation, has since been changed to "Nature abhors a naked singularity". But this is the theory I'm using for this particular story, especially because I have not majored in physics.
Now that I've completely destroyed your brain with something you'd probably rather never have heard of… angst, for your reading pleasure.
You'll notice this one is entirely in Sirius' POV. I may continue in this fashion, because of the way the rest of this is formatted. And when I say 'I may not update for a while', I mean it this time. Damnit. Enjoy.
Chapter 24 – House of Honor
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
-Bertrand Russell
It was a familiar Hermione. Another one, one that had been through hell and Azkaban and things that she had begun to suspect might be even worse. She was older. Her hair was trimmed down, shoulder length. Her face was tired, without being lined. She was wearing a plain, button-down white shirt, and black slacks. Barefoot, in the sand.
"Who are you?" she asked. It was more than a single question. It was complicated. There would be a long answer. But she had the feeling of eternity, here, and time, for once, to listen.
The other her was silent, for a moment. Watching.
"…I don't know I'm sure, anymore. You keep confusing me."
Hermione straightened, slowly. Looking back into eyes that were hers, and exactly the same, except – unmistakably different. Dark. They had that void, that way of taking in light and not letting it out again.
"You've been here the whole time?" she asked, feeling young and worthless (or worth less) in her shirt and skirt and tie. Less experienced. What could she possibly tell this woman that she didn't already know? She was her.
"I think so," the other Hermione said, hands in her pockets. Toes digging into the sand, pale white against its startling, glimmering shades. A million tiny stars on a beach stretched out into eternity - into that impossible horizon. "Since time began, anyway."
"And when-"
000000
How do you argue with a person when they agree with everything you say? How can you get any satisfaction out of yelling when they won't yell back?
He'd looked at him, old, with eyes no longer twinkling. For a moment, Dumbledore had looked dead, with a still-beating heart.
"Do what you feel is right, then."
And that – the weight – the responsibility. His decision, now. The world, Harry, Hermione, Dumbledore, himself – countless people – all in his hands.
It was the only way out, for Dumbledore. He hated him for making him understand. He didn't want to understand, he wanted to live normally and make the choices that seemed right, and hate people for making the wrong decisions where everything seemed simple. Where had the simple things gone?
They'd never been there. They'd all been in his mind. He'd been the person making things simple, tearing them down to meaningless bits of what they really were and nodding as it all made sense. But life wasn't supposed to make sense, he found. Only to stupid Gryffindors with moral pretensions.
Dumbledore had to have been a Slytherin.
He leaned his forehead against the cool stone wall and tried and tried and tried to find the answer. There'd always been one before, staring him in the face. Do this. Do that. Everything will turn out, if your intentions are good.
Where is it now? What do I do? What do I do?
Was this how Dumbledore felt, every day?
His fingers clenched against the stone wall, scrabbling for purchase. They caught in the lines of mortar, tensing.
The map on the table was open. He looked at it with tight eyes, daring it to show him again. To strengthen his resolve in the wrong course of action.
Flick. Flick. Flick.
Hermione Granger leapt in and out of time, as she sat in the library. She was reading. She was dying. She was going to die. She was going to disappear forever.
What is she trying to do- what is she doing-
His breath stopped, on the sudden thought that welled up inside. She's disappearing. Will I forget her?
No. No, no – he sat down in the couch, fingers twisting in his hair. Forgetting her was impossible. He couldn't possibly forget her. He'd given her bits of himself. You couldn't forget that.
Red and gold, at the corner of his eyes. He looked over, staring. Still my colors…
Were they?
He'd changed. Before Azkaban, and James, and Lily- god, James and Lily, they were dead – he would have grabbed her and ordered her to get rid of it. Somehow, anyhow…
Now, he understood all the reasonings and consequences. No, not all, but some. He was turning Black.
His fingers twitched. The weight of that was gone. He'd given it away.
To her. On her. She was wearing his terrible history on her finger.
Slowly, before he could realize – he slid to his knees. Leaning his forehead against the wall.
James, what do I do?
Laughter. He'd brush his fingers through his own hair and laugh and shake his head. Because Sirius was smart, but he was nothing, nothing compared to that ineffable, natural charisma. James always knew. Everything.
"Now Padfoot, mate, you just need to leave things to me…"
Dogs are meant to be led. They do not lead. They follow, in the steps of someone else's path.
They need a best friend, too.
"I don't know what to do."
It echoed, in the room.
Everything was exactly the opposite of how it should have been.
000000
He found her sitting in the commonroom alone, at three am. Her legs were pulled up into the armchair, by the fire, chin tucked against her knees.
"I can't sleep," she said, without needing to look at him.
There was a peculiar note in the tone. She hadn't turned her head at all. Her eyes were still staring into the fire.
Sirius moved around the chair, pulling off the invisibility cloak and damn the consequences. And…
And there she was. And there she was.
Put back together again, in all the wrong ways.
"Hermione." He didn't say her name much, he realized, in that moment. Because it was somewhat awkward on his tongue. It didn't roll off quite like it should have.
She looked up at him. He was blocking the fire. It might have been his shadow (no, it wasn't) but her eyes seemed…
Darker.
The timeturner glittered against her fingers. Against a silver ring, still on her thumb.
He stared at it for a moment, and decided that this was it. He was going to do the entirely wrong thing.
"You need to get rid of it," he said.
Hermione smiled weakly. "It's a little late, Sirius."
She never used his name either.
He was stepping forward, before he knew what he was doing. His hands on either arm of the chair. Leaning, tired, looking at the Azkaban in her eyes and – why –
Why did she have to look like that? If there were just one thing he would ever have wished for – he would have wanted to keep her from that. It was worse than death.
She was looking at one of his hands now, with an odd light in her eyes. It wasn't light, actually. It was more darkness, but a different kind.
Her fingers… touched his hand, just barely. She looked almost surprised that her hand didn't go through him entirely. A strange sound escaped her throat, high and vaguely muffled. Her breath drew in-
And in a sudden, unexpected turn of events, she burst into tears.
There was an awkward moment, of course, during which time he found he could only look down at her in her little curled up ball, shaking. These were not normal tears. They were the last gasping cries of a little girl, finding she was no longer that. Someone who's lost their entire world, all at once, irrevocably – he'd cried these. Alone, sitting alone, in a dark, damp, stone cold room. Screaming into the dark.
His knees gave way almost expectedly, and his hands moved to take her shoulders. His fingers pale against her shirt, which was quite white itself.
She didn't move toward him. She didn't even try to hide in her own arms. Her fingers were twisting, in the chain of the timeturner; the ring, that evil thing on her finger, clinking faintly against it. He'd thought a lot of giving to her, at the time. He wanted to melt it into nothing, now.
His hands stayed on her shoulders. It was a useless, helpless gesture, against the total devastation on her face.
He didn't even dare to ask what had happened.
And finally, words were wrenched from her – "God… god… god…"
God did not listen to these kinds of wordless prayers. He knew.
The word escaped her over and over. God was stacked upon Himself, a pile of nothing, all to no avail.
He wasn't sure how long it went. His hands stayed clenched on her shoulders, and she continued unabated. She wouldn't fall asleep, to die the little death that sometimes helped. He'd already taken away that perfect respite, cruelly. She was shaking with his own energy.
Her eyes stared down, at something he couldn't see. He would later learn that it was a world apart from this one. One inside the timeturner, with sand and storms and a short-haired woman staring back into her soul with dark eyes.
She wasn't flickering anymore. She was perfectly, perfectly solid. But he had the feeling she wished she'd disappeared forever instead.
When he woke up, it was to a hand on his shoulder. He'd lost consciousness, exhausted and drained, sometime in between. Hermione was looking down at him with a face that was perfectly composed, but for the raw tracts down her cheeks and the inescapable shade in the place behind her eyes.
"I'm sorry," she said, looking down at him now. It was a finished apology, finally. The one from her dreams.
"What did you do?" he asked her, without managing to raise himself from where his chin had fallen to his arms, in her chair. His limbs refused to move. 'Made of lead' was truly an appropriate way to say it, this time.
She didn't say anything. But… her fingers twisted at the silver ring on her finger. As though she knew.
Most honored House of Black.
Most honored…
The poison in his soul. It had been there forever, before James and Lily and Azkaban. Slowly, ever so slowly, it had taken him over. Insidious in its whispers. He wanted to be a Black. He wanted to be loved. He'd regretted, in the dark of night, that he had ever listened to the voice of the lion, before the tattered old hat. And now, after all the consequences of that single stupid action, he was there, and he wanted back.
Hermione attempted a smile at him, shakily, and he wondered to himself what time of morning it was. If the sun had risen, yet. It would be the dawn of the first day of this strange reversal in his life.
Because suddenly, he was following, again. He could be called a dog, bone weary, stranded at her feet.
"You're practically family anyway, you know."
He was too tired to cry. Much, much, much too tired…
"Don't ever let me cut my hair," she said, inexplicably.
…but somehow, he found the energy yet to nod.
000000
"-was that?"
The dark eyes looked back, for a moment. Then, they turned up to the endless sky. "Whenever it began. I'm not certain. It could have been when I talked to him, in Azkaban; or maybe when you put on the timeturner. Maybe when the timeturner was created. There's all kinds of possible starting points. Maybe all of them are right, in some way or another."
Hermione knelt down in the sand, to run it through her fingers. As she thought – it sifted, familiar, as though through an hourglass.
"So this is the timeturner?" she asked. "Or-"
000000
And somewhere before the waking hours, he was back in the little room, nearly falling from the couch.
The scarf was pressed against his face, somewhere in there, twined around his neck. These are my colors.
He was a betrayer. But he was the good kind. The kind on the side that called it 'bravery'. When they knew… when they knew about it.
She knew.
000000
"-is it my mind?"
A shrug. "Some combination of both. I didn't have the chance to clear up that particular question, before I started this whole mess."
Hermione's knees shifted away the sand as they dug into it. Her toes curled under her, one hand leaning to the side.
"Harry died?" she asked. There would be a quiver in her voice, normally, but in this timeless space, it was a simple question.
"Yes," said the shadowed eyes. "And Fred. And George. Sirius." A pause. "It wasn't that they died, really. It was all in the way."
Sirius died. Sirius died This struck her strangely, preemptively. There was the feeling of a hammer, just about to hit her funny bone. Because when she got out of here – if, if she did. She was going to cry.
"You're not going to like me much, after this. Or yourself, I suppose. Actually, there's a lot of people you're not going to like, or we won't, or…" A shake of the head. "It doesn't matter. I'll hit the highlights, shall I?"
A quiet nod. The sand was warm, against her skin.
000000
And time passed.
It went, for once, as far as he could tell, in a perfectly straight line.
The timeturner did not malfunction once. It was a clockwork mechanism made of gold and sand, and it took her where she told it to. She never flickered, ever again. But then, she didn't happen to visit him again, either.
He heard, later – about Hagrid, about the newspaper article, and the way Harry hadn't really been working on his egg until she said something to him, in a low voice.
The entire time was spent researching. Researching anything and everything Dumbledore could give him. That was what he was good for. He had been a natural genius, in his time. And he had knowledge no one else did. Like the potion. That had been his.
And just before the Second Task, he was given the strangest, most blatant set of texts yet. They were on time travel.
As he halfway expected, any of them that treated the subject with any kind of seriousness were very, very dark.
There were foreboding warnings, about it. It could be done, they said. It had been done. But there were prices, and it didn't always work the way you wanted it to.
None of them could say quite how.
On the morning of the Second Task, he was still awake from the night before. Staring into the pages of a ragged green tome, without a title.
He didn't understand it.
There were allusions. This was obvious to him. He could tell they were allusions to something. But he didn't have the slightest clue what, and no amount of searching through piles and piles of vaguely related books could turn up anything.
Speed of light. Relativity. Singularity. Escape velocities, and infinite density in a point of no volume. Event horizon.
Who was the author? He tried to discover this, to perhaps begin at their background and find things from there. There was no such luck. The author was imaginary, only a cardboard stand for the ideas themselves. Because ideas last forever, once set to pages, but a name can die away like that.
There was no name. None at all.
Perhaps that was not by accident.
He left the book to itself, to slip away to watch the Task. The person for whom they'd done it all was going to be at risk, for a thousand galleons and a trophy.
It seemed a terribly ironic thing, now.