Chapter XIII: The Order of the Phoenix
A fire blazed through downtown London. It stretched for three blocks, consuming several buildings, both Muggle and non. Harry and Ron apparated one block away, and fortunately, only received a few bumps and niches.
Before either of them could wake up, a pay phone rang a few feet away from Ron's head. It ceaselessly rang its bells until finally, Ron lifted his hand and clutched the phone. He pulled its wire as close as it would stretch and then crawled his body forward a bit.
"Ron Weasley?"
"Who are you?"
Harry turned over. "Who are you talking to, Ron?"
"Shh," Ron hushed to Harry and then held the phone closer to his ear and mouth. "Excuse me, how did you know my name?"
"Because I called you. Listen, it's urgent that you and Harry meet me at a secure location. Your friend has already found me."
"Friend? Who are you?"
"Oh, that's right, that's in the future. I'm Sturgis Podmore; you've met me before. I want you to go to the Firehouse one block away from you. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Ron said, and he hung up.
Harry stood up and looked back and forth from the phone to Ron. "Could you explain to me what just happened?"
"I'm not quite sure. That was a man named Sturgis Podmore… He wanted us to go to the Firehouse."
"Podmore, from the Order of the Phoenix? I thought he was sent to Azkaban."
"He was, but it was only for a short while. Not even a year… He said something about our friend already finding him, but that that was in the future."
Harry shook his head, having no answers either. Then, he looked over the crowd of people who luckily were too busy staring at the blaze to notice Harry and Ron appearing out of thin air. Just down the right side of the block Harry spotted a tall, brick building that had wide, red garage doors on the front.
"It's over there," Harry told Ron. And with that, the two were off.
Inside the Firehouse there were no trucks, no firemen and no Dalmatians. Instead, an empty room stood with one shiny, silver pole connecting the bottom floor to the top. When Harry and Ron arrived, they knocked on the front red door but no one answer. The door was open, and so Harry lightly pushed it open… With caused the door to unhinge from the wood and fall, creating a loud thump and heap of dust to float into the air.
A shadow of a figure came through the cloud, but Harry could not see it clearly yet. As it came closer, the curves and waves of the long hair gave away that it was a girl. Finally, the dust spread into the air, and the girl stepped forward. Ron jumped and kissed her smack on the lips.
"Hermione," Harry said.
After both Hermione and Ron were done kissing, which lasted a good 15 seconds, Hermione turned to Harry and gave him a hug.
"I knew you two would come again."
"Again?"
"Mister Podmore is waiting upstairs," Hermione said and showed Ron and Harry a hidden stairwell off to the side.
Toward the top of the stairs, a straw haired man stood with a square face and broad shouldered body. He wore Muggle clothes, perhaps to blend in with them, but he still looked very much the same as he did from three years ago.
"Wonderful, the trio is together, much sooner than before."
"Before?" said Ron.
"That's right, I keep forgetting. Well, I might as well tell you now."
Sturgis threw a strange looking ball onto the only table in the room. It was a wooden plank, only three feet hair, with one leg missing an inch from it, making the whole thing wobbly. He then turned to Ron and Harry and smiled.
"In two days from now, you two will send Hermione to find me. She will be in Ireland, brushing up on their many magical creatures. I will also be there. You send Hermione to me and explain your dilemma. You chose me because I know very well how to break into the secret parts of the Ministry. I will go and steal the Time Turner that Hermione used to use—"
"But if this all happens in the future, how are you two here now?" Ron asked.
"The Time Turner, Mister Weasley! Try to piece my story together. Anyway, when we finally came back right here, in this very firehouse, to tell both of you we had gotten the Time Turner, you two were gone. We're not sure what happened to either of you in two days from now. Perhaps locked up in some prison. Instead of trying to find you, we came back in time two days."
"Okay, I think I get it. But what happens to the Hermione of this time? And Podmore Sturgis? Aren't they still in Ireland?"
Sturgis sighed. "Yes, one of the many paradoxes. They are there, and they will go and get the Time Turner again, and come back here again… It's a loop really I think. Try not to think too hard about it."
Harry nodded. "All right, now that we have the Time Turner, where are we supposed to go with it?"
Hermione stepped forward. "You actually came up with the idea, Harry. You knew the key to Atlantis, the one you had and one that Mrs. Diggory had, had something to do with it all. So, we decided to go back to Atlantis and find out what was going on there."
"Wait, we did that already?" Ron asked.
"No, Ron, we still have to do that."
Ron placed his hands over his head and muttered, "I'm getting a head ache."
"Temporal Physics, Ron," Hermione said. "Don't worry, really. All you have to know is that all three of us must go back to Atlantis before all of this chaos began. Mister Podmore, will you do the honors?"
He nodded. "Call me Sturgis, my dear." He then grabbed the Time Turner and started twisting it and turning it. He then gave it to Hermione.
"Wait, won't that just take us back in time? How will that get us into Atlantis?" Ron asked, huddled next to Hermione and Harry.
"We made a few adjustments," she whispered.
Suddenly, the world around disappeared.
Sturgis didn't have to wait long for the three to reappear. Within a second, the group reappeared with fluttered and confused looks on their faces. They turned to Sturgis and Hermione rushed over saying,
"We've got a problem. I think someone saw us."
"Was it the one who destroyed the enchantments?"
Hermione shook her head. "I don't think so. But it was too late anyway. Atlantis was already visible. We have to go back earlier."
Sturgis nodded, but then looked away. "If someone saw you, the timeline could already be changed."
"Isn't that what we're doing in the first place?" Harry asked. "Even if something has changed, however minor and big it is, we're going to go back earlier and prevent it all in the first place!"
"Yes, what about your key, Harry?" Ron said.
"Your right… But I left it in Hogwarts. Unless my future self got it for me and you already have it?"
Hermione shook her head. "I'm afraid not. You said Mrs. Diggory had one too. I still don't think that's possible."
"Hermione, I saw the key in her book. It was real. And Harry says he has one too, and I believe him."
"You don't understand," she began. "There is only one key to Atlantis, not too. One of them must be a fake."
"I don't think Hagrid would give me a fake key for my birthday," Harry said.
"Alright, so that means Mrs. Diggory's key is a fake… Oh, Harry, that's what caused the enchantments to break! It's so obvious."
"Of course, so obvious," Ron said and rolled his eyes.
Hermione continued anyway. "Only the real key to Atlantis can make it visible. She must have gotten a copy of yours somehow, Harry. When she tried to use it, Atlantis became visible. But it must have corrupted the system of enchantments like a virus."
"I follow you, Hermione. But I still don't understand why she would go to Atlantis in the first place," Harry said.
"That's why we have to stop her from using her key."
Ron nodded. "So, we use the Time Turner, get there right when she is about to use it, when Harry noticed something weird in those mirrors, right? And stop her outside of Atlantis."
"No, Ron, not outside," Hermione said. "You have to Disapparate first to Atlantis, Apparate inside of it, and go the Power Source."
Ron didn't question her. She obviously read about Atlantis in a book somewhere and knew what she was talking about. The three huddled together and began discussing their plans. Sturgis would interrupt every few seconds with more suggestions. After a good hour, they decided what to do.
First stop… Hogwarts.