TEN

The cosy Yule Ball spirit didn't last much beyond final bell of the following afternoon. Hermione and Ron were wrangling the moment Harry sat down at the dinner table with them.

"Even Moaning Myrtle knows, which means that Peeves will know come dawn tomorrow and the rest of the spooks come noon! Everybody!" Hermione shouted. "How could you possibly tell everybody in this school within twelve hours?"

"I didn't tell anybody. The only person I even mentioned it to was Harry and . . . ." A stunned look crossed Ron's face. He sank deeper into his chair. "And George."

"You told your stinking brother?" she screamed.

A authoritarian glare from McGonagall at the head table made her drop her next statement to a sinister hiss. "Next time why don't you just send word to Rita Skeeter? She'll love it. It'll probably make the banner page. 'Hermione Granger and Total Turd Implicated in Mistletoe Tryst'!" Hermione wheeled on Harry just as he sat down. "And you--"

"Don't bring me into this. I'm done playing Miss Lonelyhearts for you two. And I've got a plan."

"Your last plan put me in a dark corner of the Main Hall with your best friend and his roaming hands!"

"Don't believe her, Harry. I never laid a finger on her for fear of drawing back a stump!" Furious, he snatched up his dinner plate and swapped seats, silverware clattering as he thumped down beside Harry. His face brightened as he got a good sniff. "Hey! You don't smell like cinnamon anymore."

"Evensong fixed me up. Hermione, please, listen. I think I've figured it out. At the start of third year you had a Time-Turner so that you could take two classes at the same time. Do you think Snape has gotten hold of one?"

The idea of this was enough to quiet her. Slowly she turned the idea over in her mind, considered the details, then rejected it. "For one thing, they're very dangerous. You've got to make sure you know about paradoxes and temporal stability and all kinds of things before you use can one. The Ministry of Magic doesn't just hand them out to any half-cocked wizard off the street."

"But they let you have one," Harry persisted.

Hermione went murderous.

"That didn't come out right. Please don't kill me. What I meant was, they gave one to a student--"

"After McGonagall signed hundreds of forms for it!"

"--Why wouldn't they give one to a professor? They'd surely be able to trust him."

Hermione calmed down enough to find her normal business-like composure. "Are you suggesting that Snape used a Time-Turner to go back sixty years? Considering that you have to turn it over once to go back an hour, that doesn't seem likely. He'd have to turn it over five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred times, not counting Leap Years. It's bound to do some kind of damage, going back that far."

"What's scary is she just did that math in her head," said Ron.

"That's not even starting to consider paradox. Say he did go back sixty years, he'd eventually run into himself as a student."

"Is that bad?" Harry asked.

"That's really bad. That's called temporal paradox. One of those destroy-the-whole-world kinds of things." She took a sip of water.

"Would it close the flow?"

Hermione's eyes went grave over the rim of her glass. She set it down carefully. "Yes. Yes, it most certainly would. Now tell me how you knew about that."

"Evensong said it. She said that she and Snape had to be very careful not to close the flow. What does that mean?"

"That's the thing that McGonagall warned me about. It's also one of the reasons I decided against taking double classes again; I forgot and nearly ran into myself in the girl's toilet between classes. It's a loop in time that happens in a really big temporal paradox. That section in time gets closed off from the flow of history, forever, and starts skipping and replaying itself again and again, like a scratch on a CD."

"That's not like a BBC, is it?" asked Ron sceptically.

"For the sake of explaining, I'm going to say yes. It's really more like a crack in a window. Eventually as time goes on, the damage gets worse, and the crack starts spreading in both directions throughout time. Something like what we did, going back a few hours to break Sirius out of the tower--that wouldn't be much of a paradox, because a few hours don't mean much in the course of all history. Sixty years, though . . . it's a really bad idea. Snape would have to be up to something huge to even consider it."

"How about Dumbledore, could he do it?"

"I don't doubt but he could. He didn't just win that Order of Merlin, First Class, in a Gandalf look-alike contest, Harry. It's only awarded to those who've mastered the flow of time--like Merlin living backwards through history. Brr." She shivered. "Our Headmaster's a really scary man, if you look at him the right way."

"Fine then. So my theory's scrapped." Harry drew them both into a huddle. "But this is my other idea. Tonight, we're going to break into the library."

"Again?" Ron sounded agonised.

"I want that book of student enrolments, and anything else I can find. All this ties together somehow with the thing in the sub-cellar, and if we can figure that out--"

"Then we'll know what Snape is up to." Ron sighed. "Harry, if you'd known in advance that following Snape to the greenhouse would be this much trouble, would you still have done it?"

"Too late to fix it now."

Dinner hour was ending. The three of them moved in a tight knot out of the room. Sunset slanted through the hall windows, and the ban against being caught in the halls was rigidly in place. Students scattered quickly in pairs and small groups down the halls, hurrying to their rooms. The three of them walked more slowly, allowing themselves to be left behind. Hermione mulled over the new slant in the situation.

"We'll have to sneak out late, after midnight when the Fat Lady falls asleep," said Hermione at last. "Both of you wear your student robes and something black under them. We can take the back staircase through the teacher's wing. There are never any lights on in that hall. If we're quiet, we can make it down without being spotted."

"This would be so much easier if I still had my cloak," Harry grumbled.

"Like you say, it can't be fixed," said Ron. "Don't worry. We've sneaked out of the dorm without an Invisibility Cloak before; we can do it again."

Hermione went on. "Ron, you can stand as lookout. Stick close to the front passage and send up a flare if anything's coming. No, not a real flare. It's a metaphor. It's . . . oh, just forget it. I'll get the student enrolment book. It may take a while; there are a lot of books on that shelf that attack if they're jarred. Harry, go to the Yearbook Shelf and find the one from the year Snape would have graduated."

"1972? That was Mum and Dad's final year."

"Yes. It's recent, so it should be close to the bottom. I really think that you may be right about this one, Harry. Too many things at once. Snape is really up to something this time." She sounded excited about the prospect. Harry only wished he could feel the same.

"Shall we have a rousing battle cry?" asked Ron.

Harry held up his right fist. The other two did likewise. They cracked their knuckles together in the centre of their circle, then latched hands and squeezed. Whistling in the dark, but in Hogwarts, any kind of magic was the best kind.

"What are we doing?" said Harry.

"We don't know!"

"When will we do it?"

"Now!"

* * *

Breaking and entering had gone beyond a stomach-clenching, panic-fuelled necessity. During third year it turned to a giddy thrill, and by their fourth year Harry grew to almost enjoy it, but these days it had dulled into a routine, unconsidered way of life, like brushing one's teeth in the morning. Hermione sprang the lock. After all this time, the library was still considered less worthy of protection than say, the kitchens or the Prefects' bathroom, despite the fact that none of the three of them had ever had justification to forcibly enter either of those. One would think that by now someone should have suspected something was going on with the library, but the locked door gave as easily as ever. Ron positioned himself inside the door as Hermione and Harry padded deep among the books.

The first stop was the Yearbook Shelf. Harry took one look and turned pale.

"God, there's a million of these." He bent to the floor, looking closer at the bottommost row. "And they're not in any kind of sequence. Look, this is 1522 here near the floor. What kind of pictures could possibly be in a yearbook from 1522?"

"Just take a look through while I get the other book. Look for the late '60s, or anything after 1941; that's the year he started teaching."

"Hermione, does the phrase needle in a haystack hold any meaning for you?"

Hermione ran her fingers along the flush spines of the middle shelf, biting her lower lip. "1830, 1522, 1666. . . hmm, really slim volume, that . . . well, there's bound to be some kind of order. If you can't find anything, then don't worry about it. All we really need is the enrolments."

She hurried to the back, her dark robes soon disappearing between two narrow towering columns of books.

The Yearbooks went back to the 1100s, row upon crammed row of them--thousands, all with a layer of velvety dust across their tops. All were bound in a uniform dirty-brown leather that the eye skimmed over without remark, and the dates on the spines were printed in a lacklustre shade of grey which would have barely readable even if the library lamps had been lit. The shelves bowed under the weight. Despite Hermione's insistence, there was no kind of pattern--the Steam Age next to the Dark Ages, the whole Victorian era strewn throughout four or five rows--and Harry stared up at them, overcome by the generations of students who must have gone through this school not knowing that their descendents would be thwarted by Hogwarts' lack of a comprehensible filing system.

The only question now was whether he should start at the top and work his way down, or start at the bottom and work his way up. Since both plans were equally likely to produce results, he started in the middle, directly at eye-level, and drew up a chair in case he had to climb later.

By the kind of fortuitous chance known only to students who've tried to find any specific book in a open-stack system, he discovered Hogwarts Review: 1972 at the very end of the third row. He had to wiggle it free like a tooth. Settling down at a table, he flipped through the section of top forms while attempting to keep an ear out for Ron and an eye for Hermione.

Cheery previous graduates in their old-fashioned pointed caps waved at him from the pages. No James Potter was pictured or even mentioned--not even on the House Quidditch team, which Harry had thought the best place to find him. No Lily Evans, either, although he couldn't remember clearly if his mother had been the same age or a year younger than his father; he reminded himself to check the book for 1973, or even '74, if he could find them. And not a word about Severus Snape on the graduate pages. Maybe Snape had never graduated--interesting information, if true, but not useful. Frantically he scanned for dates--any date at all--and couldn't find a one. It was almost as bad as the old nightmare about taking Professor Binn's final exam and finding himself with his mind a total blank, unable to remember a single thing, and stuck with a quill that didn't work.

Maybe he needed to try an earlier year--1971 might be near enough. He put down the first volume and scanned the shelves for the next, hoping dumb luck would find him again.

Either he'd been too nervous to notice before or it hadn't been that way when he started, but the spine of one book stuck out two inches from its brothers. Dotting the smooth line of the shelf were several others, half a dozen all told, which seemed to have been pulled partway out. He climbed on his chair and leaned to take one. In his hands it fell open to the title page.

Hogwarts Review: 1972.

A single metallic click as loud as a gunshot made Harry jump to the library floor, then a prolonged, excruciating rumble came to life within the wall itself. Harry backed away, fearing that the shelf might disgorge all its volumes at once, glancing around helplessly for Hermione.

Gears ground as the whole heavy shelf slid sideways to expose a dark gap.

Hermione's voice came back to him. I never really thought about it . . . unused student dorms, that whole suite behind the Hogwarts Alumni Memorial Yearbook Shelf in the library . . .

He thought of calling to her now, but couldn't bring himself to do it. Instead he set the two books on top of a table. He reached into his school robes for the Surreptitious Glowing Wand the brothers Weasleys had given him, giving it three sharp raps against his palm as the instructions said. A weak sputter of sparks gasped out of the tip, and the whole wand began to shine a feeble watery-tea colour that illuminated a sphere about as large as a cabbage. It grew brighter, then gave a loud pop and flickered out. He should have known better. Fred and George would have never given it to him if it worked.

He followed the passage for about a minute, hands in front of him in case it came to a dead end. Just as he was ready to turn back, his questing left hand touched something solid and wooden. A door. Groping down its length, he encountered a handle and pulled back, careful to stand behind the door in case one of Hagrid's pets might be on the other side.

Instead, it opened on another section of the library. Harry stepped out, still distrustful. The same ugly blue-and-grey paper on the walls, same heavy, immobile tables, same long dull velvet curtains. Just more library, complete with the sub-audible library hush. A wry humour crept over him: Hermione would be livid when she found that Hogwarts had been keeping another whole wing of books from her. Shutting the door behind him, he stopped in the pool of sunlight beneath the open draperies and looked around, wondering again if he should call the others to him.

Wait a minute.

The sun shone in that imperturbable manner possessed only by the sun, cheerfully ignorant of the fact that dawn was not due for another eight hours. From nearby voices chattered--in hushed tones, of course, but nonetheless an unquestionable chatter--and two students walked by as if they knew exactly why they were there and where they were headed.

Harry rounded the corner just in time to walk into an amazingly pretty girl with large brown eyes. Her dark hair, parted down the middle and held back with two sparkling clips, hung in her face. She was taken aback only a moment before her eyes travelled over Harry's face, and she brightened noticeably as pushed back her hair and gave him a warm, dazzling smile.

"Hello, are you a new transfer?" She stuck out her hand for a handshake. He'd never seen her, either, even though on her right shoulder she wore a Gryffindor crest. Her robes were dark navy blue instead of dull black, and her cape fell just below her knee, unlike the standard floor-length one. "My name's Genevieve Montmorency. Vivi to my friends. Sixth year."

He shook her hand. "Harry Potter. I'm sixth year, too. Gryffindor."

"I'm in Gryffindor, too, but I'm sure I'd remember you if I'd seen you. Hmm. Are you any relation to James Potter?"

The temperature in his stomach seemed to plummet twenty degrees. "He was my father."

Vivi laughed brightly, her long hair shaking. "No, no, James Potter. You know. Gryffindor's Seeker. He's only a seventh year--much too young to be your father, unless he had you when he was two or something. Are you sure you're not him?"

Not entirely prepared to engage in Alice-in-Wonderland lines of questioning with strange young women, he replied, "Well, I haven't checked lately, but I was me last time I looked."

"Can't be too careful with him. Last year, he and his lot pulled that Duplication prank. There was about six of each of them. The teachers were having aneurysms trying to straighten them out."

She laughed again as a sick feeling crept over Harry, as though he'd been punched in the throat. A question swam into his mind--a terrible question that rose the hair on the back of his neck. Before he could ask, the familiar chime of the bell filled the air, striking thrice. On his side of the bookcase it was nearly three in the morning; here, it seemed, time was twelve hours off.

"Bummer. I've got to go to class. Nice meeting you, Harry. See you." Vivi started to walk off. After a moment she seemed to reconsider and turned back around. "Oh, listen, Harry, some of my friends and I were planning on going down to Hogsmeade this weekend. Do you want to come with? We could . . . talk. Get to know one another." She smiled again, this time a little more than friendly.

Good grief, she's trying to make a date. Harry thought quickly. "I'd love to, Vivi, but I'm not allowed to leave the grounds this weekend." It was technically true, anyway, even though he was certainly a long way from the grounds just now. Or maybe not.

"Detention, huh? What a drag. That's okay, you can keep Lauren company." She grinned, tucked her hair behind her ear, and gave him a little wave. "Maybe next week, then. See you later."

Feeling totally numb, Harry returned the wave. As Vivi minced off, he took a second, more meticulous look around. There was the barred door to the Restricted Section. There was the table where he studied with Hermione and Ron--the scars on the tabletop were visible from here, and even the chew-marks on the legs were in all the right places. The door he has just came through stood next to a slightly askew bookshelf; atop this shelf was written Hogwarts Alumni Memorial Yearbook Shelf. As he watched, the shelf rolled over the door, settling into place with a portentous clang, like prison gates.

This wasn't another section of the library. This was the library.