Chapter 11: Time Warp

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.

Leonard Bernstein

Dean Thomas had been worried that the device he'd bought at the Muggle hardware store wouldn't work at Hogwarts, just like most other electrical appliances.

Well, it worked fine. In fact, it was screaming.

Seamus Finnigan covered his ears. "I think we've made our point about the ghosts," he said. "Can we go? Please?"

"I wish I could take video," sighed Dean. "I don't think Harry will believe me otherwise."

When Dean had mentioned his idea to examine the paintings of Hogwarts with an EMF detector, Harry had said something about ghosts not actually being real, and that any anomalous readings were probably related to other forms of electromagnetic activity in Hogwarts, or just the fact that they were jiggling the device too much.

But, as Dean's experiment seemed to show, the EMF detector lit up and whined all over Hogwarts, but seemed to combust with tension when approaching a painting. He wrote down his readings from the meter and turned the device off.

"Right, so I think I have enough data," said Dean, his eyes scanning his page full of notes. The thing that bothered him the most was that his readings frequently crossed into the to the red danger zone.

"Oh good, finally," said Seamus, frowning as he rubbed behind his aching ears. "We've been walking all day. I'm starving and it's not even lunch time yet."

They headed back to the science lab, where they would do the other necessary part of science experiments: write a boring report. Fortunately, Seamus didn't actually mind doing that part, which is why they were a perfect team.

"So, what do you think the readings mean?" asked Dean, wondering if his friend's opinion would be different from his own.

"Well, clearly there's a lot of something in Hogwarts, especially in the paintings, that's setting the meter off. It doesn't really prove that it's electromagnetic, though. The device whined a lot when we pointed it at a bowl of water."

"True," said Dean. He'd bought the cheap EMF reader, and was regretting it now. "That means our next step will be to determine what sort of energy is causing the EMF spikes, and go from there."

"Yeah," said Seamus, sighing. "You know, Muggle boys don't have to work so hard to use Gameboys."

Well, that was their end game, but…Dean sort of was committed to this for other reasons now. This was his quest, and he was determined to beat it. It was almost as fun as winning a duel against a Slytherin.

Dean and Seamus opened the door to the lab, taking a moment to appreciate their jokes on the doorway. They'd jinxed the disappearing ink so Harry would never see, hoping that whenever people mentioned it in conversation, he would just look confused.

Inside, they saw Padma Patil standing at a work table, tapping her wand against a small brown bead, her gaze focused.

"Hey, Padma," said Dean, setting down the meter and all his notes on an empty desk, then climbing the steps to the work area. "Oh wow…is that what I think it is?"

Padma responded with, "That depends. What do you think it is?"

Dean got closer, inspecting the nondescript, completely mundane miracle she was working on. "Your extendable ears. Did you get one to work?"

Padma glanced at him, then shrugged. Her voice was softer than normal when she said, "I'm still trying to perfect it, but it gets the job done."

"Wow, that's awesome, Padma!" Dean firmly believed that Padma was at least as intelligent as Harry, and possibly as smart as Hermione. "I always knew you could do it."

Padma, her gaze fixed on the table, smiled just a little, before returning her wand to the gadget. "Do you want to see how it works?"

"Yeah, of course," said Dean.

"Oy, Dean," called Seamus, rummaging in Dean's bag. "Mind if I steal some of your snack bars?"

"Sure," said Dean, as Padma handed him her bead. "So, what do I do with this?"

"Just hold it," she replied. Padma took a second bead from a pouch, tapped it with her wand, and then walked to the other side of the room. Cupping her hand around the bead, she whispered, "Testing, 123."

Dean had the bead in his hand. Yet he heard her clearly, as if she were whispering directly into his ear. "Nice! Let me try," said Dean, and whispered to the small bead.

"I can't hear you," said Padma. "It only goes one way."

"Ahh, right of course," said Dean, feeling stupid. "You wouldn't want your target to hear you, after all."

Padma retrieved the bead, and said, "Actually, in some cases that's preferable, if you needed a communication device. I could modify it to work as an earpiece, but it might take a while."

Dean leaned against the table, studying Padma as she put the beads away in a small pouch. "Are you going to sell your patent to the Weasleys?"

"I'm not sure," said Padma. "Once I finish testing, I might. But I want it to be perfect first."

"How will you test it?" said Dean.

"I've already done one field test. Harry wanted me to spy on one of his duelling mates for information. It worked reasonably well that time, though I couldn't retrieve the bead afterwards. This would have been a problem if the target realized what happened."

Dean sighed. It was obvious who Harry must have spied on. He wasn't surprised, but he was a little disappointed in Harry. "Maybe we should give Roger's intelligence a little more credit, since he's been right about everything so far."

"Yes. Well…I've thought about telling Roger what we did," said Padma, her forehead creasing in doubt as she slung her bag over her shoulder. "But I know Harry wouldn't like it."

Dean winced. Underneath their camaraderie, all the group members knew that you didn't cross the Lord of Chaos. "Yeah, I'd be scared to get on Harry's bad side."

"I'm not," said Padma. "That was the last time I'll spy on classmates for him. If he goes too far again, I'll tell him so. He's not as powerful as he pretends to be."

Dean smiled. He knew there was a reason he liked Padma.


Normally, the group met on Friday afternoons, but this Monday, Harry called a special meeting. The only information the group was given was that there was an "unusual" discovery.

Upon entering the room, the seven available members lounged in desks nearby, several of them munching on the snacks that were always available. Harry's extensive research showed that attendance and participation increased in direct proportion to the amount and quality of snacks, with the highest rated being "pizza day."

At 4:05 pm, when it was clear everyone was in attendance, Harry set a bag down with a thunk that shook the desk. "This is an actual quest item," he announced, with a smirk. "Discuss."

The group all gathered around to inspect the contents of the bag. They wasted no time with moralizing over how he had obtained the illegal looking substance, and skipped straight to the wisecracks.

"Caramba," said Seamus, clapping Harry on the back. "You did good, mi hermano."

"I vote we rename ourselves the Godfathers of Hogwarts," said Dean. "And carry around cigars at all times."

"Seconded," said Anthony. "Next order of business, after we liquidate this into sweet amounts of cash, is to figure out how we're going to make all this money look legal. Which one of us is old enough to open a bank account in Curaçao?"

"Me! Now how about we test this product?"

"Gentlemen," said Harry, a genuine smile on his face now. "I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I would like to warn you that this is not what it looks like. I was able to confirm that using a few…science experiments." Several of the boys chuckled. "By which I mean, of course, experiments with colour change reagents such as Scott's and Menke's. Now, who remembers how to determine the identity of an unknown substance?"

Several people suggested testing for physical properties, such as colour, texture, melting point and boiling point. Other students pointed out that this method generally didn't work as well on many common magical substances.

"Actually, there is a way to combine the two strategies," said Harry, and hefted an enormous book from his pouch. Several students jumped from the sound of it hitting the desk. "Now, let's get started."


Hermione's week passed without incident, with most of her time spent studying and reading. She could sense Professor McGonagall's relief when Transfiguration class went on without any major incidents. On Thursday evening, Hermione held a tutoring session in the Gryffindor common room. While she enjoyed tutoring in general, working with 1st year Muggleborns was especially rewarding. Every new thing they learned about magic completely blew their minds. "Wow! You can levitate people with Wingardium Leviosa?" "Teach me the laughter jinx!"

In the middle of a laughter battle which was getting out of hand, Hermione got a message on her Auror mirror. It was from Harry, and it read, Please come to the lab. I need you desperately.

See, she thought with a bemused smile. If I didn't know better, I would say he's making a proposition that any respectable girl ought to decline. But, knowing Harry, he's probably in the middle of some science related dilemma and forgot to double check the message.

On the other hand, thought Hermione, as she made her way to the lab. If there are rose petals on the floor when I get there, and sultry jazz music playing… Hermione chuckled. He would say, "Hey baby, want to do some science together?"

Hermione walked into the lab and saw…

A mess.

Books and random objects strewn all over the room, papers hovering in mid-air, and a charred hole in the wall near the bookshelf. As Hermione carefully stepped into the room, hoping everything was done blowing up, she called out, "Harry?"

He appeared from around a corner of the wall, black soot all over him, his frantic gaze looking like he'd survived a war. "Hermione!" he cried staggering over to her. "I can't take it anymore! I tried everything!"

"Why? What's wrong?"

He ran a shaking hand through his frazzled hair. "I've tried protection spells, bubblehead charms, accio spells, anti-jinxes, confounding myself, blowing things up and just…just…I can't get the cursed item out of my closet!"

Hermione glanced uncertainly at the floating paper near Harry's invisible closet. "Is it safe to go over there?"

"Yes," said Harry, though he didn't sound convinced.

Hermione crossed the room to the wall, pulled out her wand, and cast a simple detection spell. "I think I found something."

"What? What is it?" he asked anxiously.

"Your room is jinxed with a petrification spell. It's a bit complex, but not very strong. I'm going to get rid of it—"

"What the—" Harry stuttered. "I checked for jinxes! I even checked for anti-anti jinxes!"

Hermione frowned. "Try casting the spell yourself."

Harry did so, and his jaw dropped.

"It's…it's not real!" He whirled on Hermione. "You're not real! You're just something else my closet produced to mess with me!"

"Harry, calm down," said Hermione.

"I was stuck in there, cumulatively, for almost 24 hours!" cried Harry. "And you're telling me now that…that I was just petrified and didn't know it! And I couldn't even sense the jinx until another person cast the spell for it!" Harry put his head in his hands and stood still for a very long moment, his breathing laboured. Finally, he whispered. "I don't want to even think about all the stuff I destroyed trying to get the cursed item that…probably doesn't exist." He laughed bitterly. "All that time and energy wasted on just a very clever jinx."

Hermione felt like Harry needed a hug, but she didn't think he'd like it until he calmed down more.

"How long has this been going on?" asked Hermione gently.

"Four weeks," muttered Harry. "Remember, you were the one who wrote the note that suggested time dilation."

"I…did?" said Hermione, frowning. "I don't remember that. I remember you disappearing into the room, and when I knocked you said you were busy and to come back later. Anyway, if I were to message you, I would have used the Auror mirror."

Harry reached for his pouch, saying rapidly. "Notes supposedly from Hermione Granger." Hermione couldn't see what was written on the notes he read, but as he refolded it, his face was transformed by cold anger. "Oh. I see. Very funny. When I figure out who did this, they will be crushed into a fine powder until there won't be enough left to bury."

Hermione rested a hand on his shoulder, leading him to a chair. "Harry, please. Before you start plotting revenge, let's clean you up and get you something to eat. You look terrible."

He sat down and cast the cleaning spell on himself, which fixed everything except his gravity defying hair. Hermione pulled a muffin from her pouch and a juice bottle and handed them to Harry.

"Thanks," he muttered, and bit into the muffin, chewing with a sullen expression.

Hermione (carefully, after assuring herself there were no explosive traps) cast the counter jinx to petrification. It didn't work, and she stood there a moment, thinking. Most jinxes required knowing the counter jinx to fix them, but low level jinxes built up to high level ones. If you cast a counter jinx to a low level curse, and it was partially effective, then you'd have some idea which higher level jinx you were dealing with.

She decided to start from the bottom and work her way up. She cast the spell Sanus Rectifico, which scrubbed away the most basic jinxes and spells, clearing the area for further diagnostics—

And…that worked. The "petrification" jinx was gone. Hermione blinked. What kind of basic jinx could make Harry desperate enough to blow up his closet?

Hermione cast Scourgify to clean up the worst of the mess in the closet, but couldn't fix the scorch marks in the wall. Peering at Harry's shelves, she could see why he hadn't been surprised at her unusual quest item, and she was very concerned about the black ooze dripping out of the XXX potion bottle.

"Well?" asked Harry, as she returned to the table. "How bad is it in there?"

"Ehh...I'm not going to lie, you might want to clean it quickly before you burn holes into your floor."

Harry groaned and thumped his head on the table.

"You probably shouldn't…umm…do that," said Hermione with concern.

He raised his head with a sigh. "Who knows, maybe it will make me less stupid."

They were silent for a few seconds as Harry mechanically ate his food.

"I don't understand," said Hermione. "If you were having so much trouble, why not call a professor? If you'd called me earlier, I would have helped."

Harry shook his head. "I couldn't call a professor, they would have too many questions about the stuff in my closet." Harry rapped his fingers on the desk. "And, while hindsight proves otherwise, at the time I had a strong plan of attack I thought would work. I certainly couldn't tell you because you would solve the problem yourself."

Hermione smiled a little. "Well…I would have given you the chance first."

He snorted. "Oh really? Last time we played Trivial Pursuit, you kept calling out the answers."

That brought out a blush, and she stammered, "It was only because it was the 1950s edition, and you know that one is the hardest."

Harry sighed, finishing the muffin. "I don't get who would do this. I mean, the Weasleys definitely could, but I'm their business partner, so it's against their interests. Roger has motive, but he didn't when this jinx was cast. Blaise or Neville could have done it, but they have almost negative levels of motivation, and to be honest I need to stop suspecting Blaise for everything."

"I don't know," said Hermione, shrugging. "Maybe you should just let it go."

Suddenly, Harry was looking at her very suspiciously.

"What?" asked Hermione.

"You had the opportunity, when I was alone in my closet, to cast the jinx. You were also the only person able to detect the jinx. Neville couldn't, when I asked him a few days ago." He folded his arms. "You certainly have the skill, and you don't really need a motive besides…" He blinked, straightening up. "The rivalry! That explains it. You cast the jinx, then started the rivalry so I wouldn't suspect…oh, that's very clever."

He was gazing at her as if he'd never seen her before, and she suddenly felt nervous.

"Listen," she stammered. "If I wanted to prank you that badly, I suppose I could have done it, but you know I would have felt bad after a few hours and fixed it."

"Would you?" he said, bemused. "Or is that just the persona you've adopted to trick me?" He leaned back, studying her, his mouth twitching into a grin. "I must say, it would be very interesting if you had gone full Slytherin. Tell me, Hermione, how many masks do you have?"

For a second, Hermione considered playing along with him, pretending to be a Sneaky Slytherin Hermione. But then he might actually believe her, and she really didn't want to start a pranking war.

"Just use Legimens, Harry," said Hermione, shrugging her shoulders. "As a trainee Auror, I'm not allowed to learn Occlumency, in case I have to witness at a trial."

Harry stared at her for a long moment, then sighed and shook his head. "I'm not going to use Legimens. The fact that you offered is enough…oww!"

He cursed and shoved the offending book from under the table, grimacing. Hermione, who couldn't leave a book on the floor, picked up the large volume.

Bartimus Bailey's Index of Magical Powders, Dusts and Aerosols

Everything you need to know, whether you believe it or not

"Just throw that in the acid with everything else," said Harry.

"Why?"

"It's completely useless," he replied. "Did you know that there are over 50,000 magical powders in existence, and 1/5th of them are white? In that case, wouldn't it make sense to categorize them by properties, to make them easier to identify? And shouldn't there should be some standard method of testing their identity, such as boiling point or solubility in water?"

Hermione nodded.

"Well, all of these are listed alphabetically, and there are no charts. It's exactly like a dictionary. Not to mention, each one has a unique method of identification, such as boil for 2 minutes and bombard with the sound of screeching eel. The only way to make this book more counter-intuitive would be to write it all in Sanskrit. Which means that the only explanation I can come up with it that high level wizards have a spell that facilitates database access, and they don't want to share it."

Hermione opened her mouth.

"And before you ask, I have checked out other magical indexes, and they're just as bad or worse. I also asked Flitwick and McGonagall, who informed me that if there were such a thing as a magical mass spectrometer, it would be considered highly dangerous magic and could not be purchased by a Hogwarts student."

"What about Professor Sprout? I'm sure the Hufflepuffs have some kind of finder spell for this sort of thing."

"Ha ha," said Harry, smiling sadly. "If you want to find something you forgot, or something you lost, then yes. Beyond that, no." He sighed, rubbing his forehead. "I can't test for each one individually, not if I want to save my sanity. I tried to get my students to help me, but none of them wanted to, and I can't even blame them. Sometimes I wish the free exchange of knowledge was a thing in the wizarding world."

"Well…if we can't find what we need, then let's make it," suggested Hermione. "We're both highly intelligent wizards. How hard could it be?"


It was Thursday evening when they got the news. Immediately afterwards, Fred and George went back to their workroom. They were on a deadline, arbitrarily defined by the gods of time travel.

It was around 9:30 that night that they finally completed the strangest spell they'd ever created.

Most of Hogwarts thought of Fred and George as creative geniuses, who turned out new products faster than most wizards could blink. However, Fred and George firmly believed that the reason they had so much success was because they were willing to try absolutely everything.

Of course, there were some things you should do once and then never, ever again. They had learned that the hard way a few times.

But this invention…this was about several orders of magnitude beyond what they could comprehend. Fortunately, creating spells didn't always require understanding them, only having an idea of what you wanted to do, and tweaking spells you think might do them. Understanding patterns, that sort of thing. Or, just combining random spells and seeing what happened.

That was a good thing for the Weasley brothers, who liked experimenting with weird and crazy magic for that very reason.

Once Fred and George found out that time turners existed, it was inevitable they would get their hands on one. In fact, they would end up in Azkaban if anyone ever found out how they did it. They could have started pulling fantastic pranks immediately, but that would be what everyone would expect. Instead, they got curious about how to make a jinx that would mess with time.

They'd recently come across a very useful spell called a Chameleon jinx. It would mimic a random, low level jinx for a short period of time, until someone besides the target broke the curse. It could be anything from making your ears slightly larger, to forcing you to hiccup every four seconds. It wasn't dangerous and rarely painful, mostly just annoying. It had the added bonus of being very versatile in spell creation. After fiddling around with the Time Turner, they found a common marker between the two magics and connected them.

Most experts believed that you couldn't use time turners to go back in time more than 6 hours, or risk causing a paradox. Last week Harry had told them about the problem with his closet, and they'd struggled not to react. They hadn't even finished creating the spell by that point. Now that they had completed it, they weren't entirely sure what to do next.

"Hermione broke the curse a few hours ago, so I guess we should cast it tonight?" suggested Fred.

"Well…" said George. "If we were to test it on anyone, it would have to be Harry, but I can't see why we would. He's our business partner and a good bloke."

"Right," said Fred. "Now is not the time to pick on our biggest investor. We're having enough trouble with our profit margins."

They shared a moment of sullen contemplation at the problem of unfillable backorders, especially regarding a certain potion.

"If we just cast the jinx because it already happened, would that really complete the circuit? Or would it create a paradox if we're not self-motivated?

They couldn't answer that question. They didn't know enough about the rules of time travel. No one did, if they wanted to stay sane.

"So…" said Fred.

"Well…" said George.

The door to their workroom burst open, and Roger Davies appeared in the doorway, breathing heavily as if he'd been running.

"I'll give you anything you want if you help me to prank Harry Potter!"


After Harry's Star Wars figurines had gone missing a year ago, he had developed a plan in case such a problem occurred again…

In the hallway, Harry fell into step beside Neville and said in a deep voice, "I know what you did."

"What are you on about, Harry?" sighed Neville.

Harry raised his eyebrows significantly, and Neville swallowed and looked away. "Okay, fine, I stole one of your watches, but I put it right back after meeting with my Gram."

Harry blinked. "Erm…well in that case, all's forgiven."

Mentally, Harry crossed another name off the list.

Harry caught up to Blaise Zabini after class. "I know what you did."

"I know what I did, too," said Blaise, with a smug smile.

"I see you're not ashamed," said Harry. "And I thought the Zabinis considered themselves men of character."

Harry took an involuntary step backwards after he saw what flashed through Blaise's mind. If Blaise knew what he'd just revealed, then he obviously didn't care, if his deep laugh was any indication.

"Ha ha, you wish you had this much character, Potter."

Harry crossed another name off his list, and wished for a way to alcohol scrub his brain.

Harry found Fred and George in their workroom. "I know what you did."

"You'll have to be more specific," said Fred and George. "We do a lot of things."

Harry left after 5 minutes of increasingly bizarre interrogation techniques. Alone once more, the Weasleys glanced at each other, answering the silent question with a shake of their heads. He would find out eventually, but hopefully they'd be dead first, or else he would kill them.


Notes:

So, about that time travel jinx. The Chameleon jinx can cause paralysis of a few seconds, which is mostly just annoying unless you're operating heavy machinery. However, the time turner stretched that out considerably, turning it into a huge problem. While the curse should have been detected by Neville when he checked for it, the addition of the time turner made it so that the curse could only be broken within six hours of its casting. The notes on the counter were forged by the Weasleys using a different spell.