Chapter Two: The Conundrum

What do I do
With a love that won't sit still?

– "Stray Italian Greyhound," Vienna Teng

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The second skirmish proved messier than the first, if not quite as deadly - taking with it nearly half of the castle's east wing, but very few additional fatalities on their side. Despite the initial rush of their victory, the Death Eaters were getting tired, and many of them did not remember the run of the school as well as the students and faculty did. Currently the two factions had reached a sort of temporary stalemate, one of the deceptively calm hours that fell between Voldemort's repeated attempts to storm the school. This one was lasting longer than the others, and had so far stretched out for a few days. Everyone knew better than to hope for much more, but nearly all the remaining adults were in the Hospital Wing and the students' faith in an achievable victory was beginning to dwindle.

Luna was sitting quietly on the floor in front of the fire in the Gryffindor common room, along with Hermione, Ron, and Neville, who were all sitting woodenly on the plush furniture as if it were made of porcupine quills. Ginny was upstairs in the girls' dormitory, where she had remained since the last attack had ended. Luna had brought her up some food from the house-elves' (blessedly unharmed) kitchens earlier that day, only to find that the tray from the previous day had gone untouched. She'd left Ginny sobbing quietly on her bed, reflecting with a tinge of bitterness that any comfort she might try to provide now would be so inadequate as to be useless. The fire snapped and popped angrily, as if echoing her frustration.

One of the flames next to her leapt a little higher than the others, and her mind took her to the mythical, menacing Heliopaths of bedtimes past. Her father always told the best stories — these days she didn't care if they had been true or not.

Until he betrayed Harry Potter. And was killed.

Luna watched the fire vacantly.

"We've got to kill the bastard somehow," said Ron suddenly. "If only we could get at that damned snake."

"He knows better than that," Hermione pointed out in a soft voice. "He won't let it near the castle again, not while we're holed up in here."

"D'you suppose we could send someone out?" suggested Neville, not sounding very hopeful. "You know… to find it?"

Nobody bothered to respond. Moving slowly, Luna hunched her shoulders and buried her face in her knees. The fire was so hot on her right arm that it was becoming numb with pain, and she could feel Wrackspurts buzzing in her ears, but she couldn't bring herself to care.

"What are you all doing?"

An unexpected voice, cracking and hoarse but still holding a kind of stubborn strength, interrupted the silence. Luna looked up to see Ginny, haggard and pale, her bloodshot eyes flicking around to stare at each of them in turn.

"Ginny," Ron croaked, getting up and moving as though he intended to embrace her, but his sister batted his arms away, a furious glint in her eye.

"How are you just sitting here? Why aren't any of you doing anything to save Harry?" she demanded of them all, her mouth flattening into a hard line.

There was a stunned, uncertain silence. Luna shook her head quickly, to clear it of Wrackspurts, and Ginny looked at her sharply before Hermione spoke.

"Ginny," she began in a strained voice, "Harry's — "

"I know Harry's dead," Ginny snapped. "Don't patronise me, Hermione."

Ron, apparently still stung from her rejection of a hug after three days of no contact, spoke up in a harsh voice. "Well, what the hell do you expect us to do? Summon a bunch of Inferi and hope he's among them so we can prance around with his rotting body? Paint his damned portrait? Don't be so naïve," he snarled. His ears were scarlet with anger by the time he finished speaking.

"You know better than to think magic can bring back the dead, Ginny," Hermione added, sounding tired and, to Luna's now-clear ears, close to crying.

Ginny scoffed. "Oh, come on. I should think you, of all people, ought to know what I have in mind. I'm not talking about bringing him back." She looked around at them all, that furious light still in her eyes, as if it were obvious what she meant. No response came.

Finally Luna looked up, her eyes floating from Hermione to Ginny and back. "Of all people," she said in her high, wispy voice. "Are you talking about her Time-Turner?"

Ginny made an impatient gesture of assent.

"I haven't got my Time-Turner, Ginny," Hermione grated out, sounding angrier now. "I gave it back to Professor McGonagall at the end of term, and if she was following regulations — which we know she was — then she must have returned it to the Ministry." Ginny's scowl deepened.

"Hold on," Neville interrupted, "I might — hold on," and launched out of his chair to run up to the boys' dormitory. A tense silence filled the room as they listened to him clatter around upstairs.

A few minutes later he bolted back down and stumbled a little as he came to an abrupt halt at the foot of the staircase, quickly holding up the object he'd retrieved from among his possessions.

"Traversing Time by Oliver Edward Stransbury," he said. "Professor Vector gave it to me at the end of fifth year — well — I've always been rubbish at Arithmancy, but she liked me and knew I was interested in experimental spellwork, for figuring out how to deal with those walking cacti Professor Sprout just got in from America — and she said I might find it a good read. I've been hiding it from the Carrows, because — well, because," he finished off, taking a long, shaky breath. He handed the book to Hermione, who took it with trembling hands, eyes bright.

She perused it quietly for a few minutes as the others looked on, her brow growing steadily more furrowed. When she looked up, the light in her eyes was gone, and she shook her head slowly, lips tight.

"There are some experimental time travel spells in here, but none of them are built for stabilised temporal relocation," she said. "When you're using a Time-Turner it isn't a problem, because Time-Turners are built to be — sort of like both the ship and the anchor. As long as you have it with you, spontaneous temporal displacement isn't a problem." She looked up, her gaze heavy. "With these spells… we'd be lucky if we could stay put in another time for more than five minutes."

"That is a problem," admitted Ginny in a quieter voice.

Luna, meanwhile, was deep in thought. Abruptly, she shook herself and stood, padding barefoot to where Hermione sat looking as though she were debating whether she wanted to burst into tears or collapse from exhaustion. When Luna reached her, she looked up.

"Hermione," Luna said softly, "this isn't an unsolvable problem." She took her friend's hand and squeezed it encouragingly. "If I remember your academic inclinations correctly, we've both taken advanced Arithmancy and spellcrafting classes before. You did the artefact creation project around the end of term. How different can this really be?"

Hermione simply looked at her for a moment, thinking, and then the ghost of a smile began to play on her lips.

"You know, Luna, sometimes I forget you were sorted into Ravenclaw."

Had she been a slightly more typical Ravenclaw, Luna's feelings might have been hurt. As it was, she took it as a compliment, and smiled.

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After spreading the word to the rest of the students, the next eight hours were spent in a frenzied rush of brainstorming, theorising, and experimentation. Hermione and Luna did most of the heavy lifting, metaphorically speaking, but they had some help from Neville (who turned out not to be quite so rubbish at Arithmancy) and Ron, who kept them grounded and thinking practically. Ginny, who really was rubbish at all things Magical Theory, proclaimed that she would go mad if she didn't get out of Gryffindor Tower and busied herself with bringing them snacks from the kitchens and keeping watch for Voldemort's followers.

Just after Ginny had brought up their second array of eatables and gone back down into the main part of the castle, Hermione, Luna and Neville were trying to puzzle out how to properly enchant an anchor that was capable of holding a temporal focus without being too cumbersome to move around. They were all three of them bedraggled and exhausted, but hadn't yet reached the point of a total halt in productivity. Ron was taking a break, napping in one of the armchairs by the now long-dead embers in the fireplace.

"What if we alternated the temporal focus between two separate anchors? Smaller ones."

"No, that wouldn't stabilise it properly, look at the equations again. Besides, if the two of them got farther than five feet away, you'd be off like a shot. What if you were to drop one?"

"Maybe the problem isn't the surface area of the anchor after all — is it something to do with density, do you think?"

"I don't see how that would help with our mobility problem."

"Has anyone considered a shrinking spell?"

"No, that would narrow the temporal curve, look here — we don't want it to be impossible to get back, just not wildly swinging back and forth."

So the conversation went, each of them exchanging thoughts and arguments and the occasional is that a Blibbering Humdinger? in hushed voices. Apparently they had not been quiet enough, however, because Ron suddenly spoke from where he sat in the corner of the room.

"I know you're all… working really hard on this." He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say more, then closed it again and after a moment added, "But have we thought about what we're actually going to do once we figure it all out?"

The other three were silent. A creaking step alerted them to the return of Ginny.

"Isn't it obvious?" she said, looking around. "We have to kill him."

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A/N: Starting to get things rolling now. I didn't want to make the chapters too terribly long to start off, but they'll begin to get a bit heftier as the story progresses. Please R&R! xo shai