Hello! There is a brief mention of a character contemplating suicide later on in this chapter that is ultimately insignificant. Also just a general warning that a very young child dies, though this is not depicted in graphic detail. This chapter does overall contain some dark content.
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Eckels felt himself fall into a chair. He fumbled crazily at the thick slime on his boots. He held up a clod of dirt, trembling. "No, it can't be. Not a little thing like that. No!"
Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful and very dead. "Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!" cried Eckels.
-Bradbury, A Sound of Thunder (1952)
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In every reality, there are minute differences. Two realities could be perfectly identical in every way shape and form with only minor differences such as, say, the taste of orange juice. In other realities, you get simple changes to one's DNA, something that could be the difference between biological sex or appearance or personality. In even other realities, there are much larger differences. See, with an unimaginable amount realities, each one is a new, exciting combination of any amount of differences from the last.
Occasionally, there's a perfect combination of circumstances that allow for extraordinary things to happen.
For example, in one reality, a girl named Edith Hope Lupin was unknowingly picked out on this day out of billions of people to exist in an infinite sample size by the universe to storm through the Ministry of Magic. She would've been more aware of this fact had she known of the existence of the Hall of Prophecies. She also didn't know the name for what laid ahead of her, but were this not the most guarded secret in the Ministry, she would've also known that the place she had entered after stepping into the unknown of the box was called the Hall of Multiverses. Mathematically, it seems so unlikely that she would be the first person to accomplish this feat. Why her? As her alternate self had asked.
The day before the beginning of the end of the world, a regular Sunday in September third, 2017, eight Unspeakables in her reality had gone out to dinner together. Going even further back, one of the chefs at this establishment that the coworkers frequented had recently finalized a divorce. It being the weekend, the restaurant was understaffed and struggling to put in all of the orders in a reasonable manner. Putting the stress of these onto one person and giving him a lot of pressure to perform in an unrealistic time manner, he forgot to double check the package of meat that he used to insure that it hadn't gone bad. Come September fourth, three of those Unspeakables became so violently ill they had to be hospitalized and given fluids. The other five stayed home anyways.
Understaffed and trying to insure all of their divisions were sufficiently covered, there was an unusual lack of guards outside of the locked door that held what was called Pandora's Box. The girl presented her newly acquired badge to the person at the front desk, shakily holding up cups of coffee and explaining that she was in a bit of a hurry to deliver it to her boss. They believed her lie innocently enough, which was useful considering she had no free hands to grab her wand and no more available polyjuice potion at her disposal. After wandering around the Space Chamber long enough to nearly cause her to panic, a helpful Unspeakable pointed her back to the Time Division, assuring her that even they got lost in the tangled mess of hallways at times, but that she ought to be careful.
At the entrance of the Time Division, a new, smaller department had arisen during the war. This was where Unspeakables, if you could even call them that, were just shy of having wands pointed at their throats to conduct research on the transference of magic to determine how muggleborns in this world stole magic from witches and wizards. Of course this wasn't really happening but they had no choice. Now, due to the expansion of the Ministry, though the building seemed to shape itself to its own desire, there were practical changes that had to be made. A new bathroom had to be added to the Time Division, because truthfully, there was nothing more compromising than a guard having to wander off into a different Division just to relieve themselves, exposing more openings for deviants to run through while potentially endangering employees seeking out shortcuts through unsafe rooms. It was less paperwork in the long run to build a new bathroom. Alternatively, it lead to the girl ducking out of the meeting room within the new research hall with a good excuse. The new bathroom was in the direction she needed to be headed and gave her another excuse to be lost. She had to run, despite the fact that it drew several people's attention to her through a long corridor of artifacts. The nail in the coffin was whichever person that decided writing the contents of each door on top of the door where everyone could see. "PANDORA'S BOX". They fought hard, Edith finally got ahold of her wand and was able to at least knock them back. It was barely worth anything considering the green flashes of light that hit the steps beside her. She crawled up to the podium where the small wooden box sat, opening it with no second thoughts.
Everything in her reality lined up beautifully, the universe handing her the perfect conditions in a small window of time that she just happened to take. Everything had to go right, from Flourish and Blotts accidentally discarding the wrong book to the food poisoning to the placement of the bathroom. It wasn't certain that she would make it through security, of course. Her appearance and lies were completely up to her and were the determining factor in this game that the universe was playing. And sure, her name was chosen to be the one to accomplish this, but that didn't guarantee that herconsciousness would be the one to pull it off. It just meant that her dice landed perfectly in this moment that she was to be the one to be given the perfect set of circumstances. Had she failed, it would've gone to the next person.
In one reality, Teddy was hit in the back by a killing curse, having made it only a few steps before someone caught on that he was going in the wrong direction. The jumbled layout of the Ministry put the new bathroom in a different direction than the box, giving him no cover when he started running. In another, Edith was caught and killed via strangulation by an Unspeakable as she tried to unlock the door. Ironically, the track record of the Edith's and Teddy's with the ability to morph proved they were less likely to even make it down to the department. One Teddy lost his hand as the box slammed shut on it, the rest of his body dragged to Azkaban for execution. In some realities, they never even had to chance to learn what the box was, the last book containing its knowledge being correctly labeled to be destroyed instead of sold at a reduced price.
In a surprising amount of realities, there was no Lupin child. They didn't know this, but in a good amount of realities, the key events that lead up of time their birth never happened or happened incorrectly. The child had to be born, survive into adulthood, and lose both of their parents, no matter how in order to be set up for this task. Any world missing one of those key components disqualified for the prophecy. The Lupin child, no matter what their name, was the one meant to open the first door to the multiverses. In fact, had the Edith that made it through to tear down the door simply misspoke by a few words or slept in by a few more hours, it would've lead to her arrest or death. This story belonged to "The Lupin Child", whoever that entailed, not necessarily her. Even more ironically, if she had not stepped through the door, if anything had gone wrong, the Teddy that she met up with would've gone on to work as usual and met up with his friends afterwards, the group deciding to go perusing through Diagon Alley. Victoire would've dragged him inside to look for a particular romance novel she had been waiting to release for months, and as she was checking out, he would've tripped on a rug and knocked over a box of books older than himself.
It would've been roughly eight to twelve months depending before he stepped into the Hall of Multiverses.
But they didn't know that of course.
No one was waiting for this to happen. Most people didn't care about the existence Teddy/Edith or didn't even know they existed. Only a small handful of scholars even came across their prophecy, but what could they do about it? Prophecies are inevitable. Everything was bound to happen. A few of them tore down their own doors for their own safety, for better or for worse. But as destiny had planned, opening that first door and stepping through caused an unfortunate chain reaction of things to happen.
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{Making things a bit simpler, the pair would soon create a system of remembering which doors were which. They had come from opposite sides of the hallway, so they would call Edith's side "Y" and Teddy's "X". With Edith coming out first, she labeled her door as just "Door Y." Since Teddy's was not perfectly across from hers, his door was "X3", across the hall and over two. One direction was a positive axis, the other negative. How they kept up with this was less important.}
To paint a clearer picture, the following events occurred behind door Y184, the first reality that felt the direct effects of the cosmic disruption.
"Lupin?" A cold voice said in a low almost-whisper. Talk about the implication of a multiverse hadn't even been brought to the table yet. Bellatrix Lestrange leaned over the table, picking up her glass goblet of wine. The party was in a bit of a slump at the moment, having had to watch their master begin to succumb to what appeared to be an unknown magical illness, and the three Lestranges had gotten a head start on drinking. It was a bad day when Lord Voldemort, the owner of the elder wand itself, became weak with malaise as a magical rift was beginning to form. "I thought we cleaned up the Lupin problem two decades ago!"
"Oh, I'm sorry!" Her husband jumped from his seat to his feet, his finger pointed accusatorially in her face. The table shook, the glowing blue orb they had acquired hours ago rolling across to the other side, nearly landing in the floor before Narcissa caught it and set it gently in her lap. This was supposed to be the solution to their Lord's problem, but now they weren't so sure. "If we had tied up all of the loose ends two decades ago like I had suggested, we wouldn't have this problem!"
"Would you two stop acting like children for one moment?" Narcissa cut in. "There's no way we could've known about this. If you two would use your brains, you could see that this was inevitable. It's a prophecy! This had nothing to do with us."
"Don't you speak to me like that, Cissy." Bellatrix spat. Her drunkenness made her no less venomous. She had been tearing herself apart for days with fear and worry over what was about to happen and now her pent up anger was beginning to spill out. "You're the one who insisted that we-"
Narcissa slammed her hand down on the table. "That's enough, Bella!"
"I don't want to hear from your guilty conscious!" Her sister grabbed her by the front of her shirt. "This is your fault. You made the choice to delay our orders. You're the one responsible for the Dark Lord's affliction! You were the only one who could have prevented this!"
Nearly two decades ago, Bellatrix (though, Narcissa was also there) had been told by the Dark Lord himself that her responsibility was to dispose of the remaining branch of her sister's family: Andromeda, Ted, Nymphadora, and by extension, Remus. There were rumor going around that of course, the werewolf would get their detested niece knocked up fairly soon after their wedding if he hadn't before hand. Werewolves were not exactly known for their control when it came to these things. And naturally, it wasn't long before that came to be true.
Ted Tonks was killed in a forest, traveling with a ragtag group of other muggleborns. This seemed to be a good idea until there were too many of them that they fell under the Snatchers' radar. Now in the late months of their expectancy and hearing the news of their father's death, Tonks had agreed to go into complete isolation with Remus and Andromeda. The war was getting worse by the day and the family was unable to leave, except for when Andromeda left for roughly an hour once every two weeks or so to get groceries, consisting of rice, eggs, and canned vegetables. They were running on fumes and tensions were high. Remus had run out of Wolfsbane months ago. The threat of death eaters were high, but the baby was going to come any day and that was a more of an imminent threat to their safety at that moment. Andromeda's vision was clouded with worry for her own child, making her sloppy. She didn't cover her tracks as well, her disguises weren't as effective, and her focus wasn't on insuring that people weren't following her. Her feet had just touched the ground when someone came up behind her, grabbing her by the throat and choking her. It wasn't enough to torture and kill Andromeda by herself. Bellatrix, Narcissa, and Rodolphus made their demands to take them back to her house and let them onto the property. Andromeda was strong. She had fought her sisters before in her life, magically and physically, but her withered state from sleepless nights and malnourishment made her too weak. She was left there, dying alone in an alleyway, the death eaters keeping her alive just enough to get her to tell them her address.
Remus and Tonks were both out of practice from the lockdown, equally as exhausted and ill as Andromeda. Remus tried to keep himself between his spouse and the intruders. They both took heavy blows. Rodolphus had Remus pinned against the wall, Bellatrix taking her niece. Remus was infuriated, fighting back as best as he could against the man the had his hands bound. Tonks didn't have that sort of stamina. Remus died first, almost impulsively by Rodolphus, after taking several hard blows. Tonks was forced to watch as his lifeless body slumped to the floor. Bellatrix was taunting and scorning, her wand pointed deep into Tonks' neck.
Then Narcissa stepped in.
They had arrived at the house with the intention to kill the family, and Narcissa had gone with them if not but to give her sister a final look over as she died. But something happened when she saw Tonks sobbing at the death of their husband, their arms protectively placed over their belly. She could feel the weight of her own husband, her own son, leaning against her chest, begging to survive.
"We can't." Narcissa had insisted, putting herself between her sister and niece. "Not the baby. We can't kill a baby, they've not even had a chance-"
They would've killed them both. Narcissa pleaded to save Tonks, if only to save the baby just a little longer. It was ridiculous. It was negating the entire reason they had come here. Bellatrix flew into a rage and was screaming at her sister. Tonks, still hysterical and completely delirious after watching the death of their spouse, begged to die. Unfortunately, Narcissa had somehow, for whatever reason, convinced her sister to back off using her own pathos against her, or maybe even convincing her that the baby would have some use to them. Whether or not this was truly a ploy by Narcissa to save them both, to give them an escape, they were going to be allowed to live long enough for the child to be born. It seemed worse somehow to kill a child that hadn't even been born. Tonks refused to cooperate and continued to demand that they not leave them there alone, waiting for them to inevitably come back to die, even saying they would just kill themself before they came back.
And Tonks would have ended their own life shortly after the death eaters would have left. In a miracle stroke of luck, Andromeda had also managed to survive and recover from her injuries. Tonks gave birth to a little boy, and the three escaped from their home, moving and hiding from place to place, trying to stay alive for as long as they could. The were alive on borrowed time. Eventually, their time ran out. Teddy was very young, hardly old enough to walk. They weren't lucky enough to have Narcissa there to save them this time, and this time, Bellatrix was twice as brutal and slow with her methods, once again choosing to eradicate Nymphadora last.
"I killed the Lupin child. There were no others!" Bellatrix sneered. "There's no child! That prophecy is an absolute farce!"
Rodolphus's face shifted gravely. "How long did you say it was... well, the boy was over a year old when you..."
"Nymphadora was still pregnant with him when Lupin died. There was no time for a second child." Narcissa explained.
"That's not what I'm suggesting." He said quietly.
"What?" Bellatrix snickered. "Do you think our sister had another child? That's absolutely absurd of you to even think, and it's even more absurd to assume that she would've-with that thing."
"She's the only one who survived." Rodolphus was not one to often side with his own wife other than when he benefitted from it. "It's... not out of the picture, I suppose. She married a mudblood, who's to say she wouldn't..."
"She wouldn't." Narcissa interjected. "There's not much I can say for my poor excuse of a sister, but to sleep with her own child's husband? A werewolf? And to believe she would've had a child from is just completely unrealistic."
There was an odd moment where Rodolphus and Bellatrix looked at each other without saying anything, their thoughts impervious to Narcissa. She wasn't even sure if her sister was actually reading his mind or if they were just thinking the same thing. "Perhaps... perhaps it's not that complicated." Rodolphus suggested. "Perhaps when we killed them, it..."
"What if we killed the wrong child?" Bellatrix suggested. "What if those scum were lying and gave us the wrong baby?"
"Doubtful." Narcissa said. "You two are too inebriated to be thinking about all of this. We did exactly like we were supposed to do and anything that went wrong, was not our fault."
It would only be a matter of time before they would come to the full understanding of the magnitude of the prophecy. Narcissa was correct, of course. They successfully ended the Lupin and the Tonks bloodlines exactly as they were told and had planned. It was simply not their reality's child that opened the door and stepped foot through. For now, they would attempt to sober up, to clear their thoughts and try to formulate a solution to present to the Dark Lord come morning that would satiate him. For now, they wouldn't be able to sleep out of the unpleasantness the next morning would bring. But their Lord's illness would only be the beginning of something much bigger than them, much bigger than their own reality. Things were going to change in their favor very soon.