Thursday 3 September 2020

In which the narrator receives a most uninspiring offer.

Despite the news about Potter's son, and Draco's, and Ms Mbewe's shock about the second Time-Turner, that night all I could think about was what she'd said about house elves. It still gave me a sick feeling to think about what she'd said, although from a purely rational perspective I could understand why she had recommended this course of action. The penalties for playing with time completely eclipsed the ones that related to the harming of elves.

The problem was, if I went along with it, even if it enabled me to evade punishment for the Time-Turner, I actually thought that I'd rather be dead. My elves had saved me, more than once. There were moods that descended on me sometimes, so big and so dark that I would forget that anything outside them existed, and my elves had sometimes been the only thread connecting me to the present. They brought me tea, got me out of bed, washed me, made sure I was eating properly, loved me unconditionally. I imagined going back home and finding it empty, knowing I was to blame. I wouldn't last the day.

I wondered who Ms Mbewe hired to kill trusting house-elves, who would sink that low. Walden MacNair, perhaps. My father had told me some stories about him, and he had been released from Azkaban a year or so before me. His employment options had probably also been fairly limited. Perhaps he'd found a profitable little gig here, or perhaps it was someone else, another no hoper with nothing to offer the world but their unthinking, unquestioning brutality. Perhaps this house-elf murderer provided other services along similar lines. I also wondered what Ms Mbewe's cut would be, if it was in line with what Borgin took from me; he'd made a ridiculous profit off my work, the extent of which I'd only found out after I started selling direct.

My elves had tied themselves in knots over what I'd done turning myself in. They couldn't criticise me for it, but nor could they criticise my father for dragging a Muggle home for me to torture and kill. At least they also couldn't criticise me for failing to kill her.

"Mister Theodore, we is glad you is home," Weenie had said shyly when I'd arrived at Dreycliff Hall on the Knight Bus, laden with all my Diagon Alley purchases. She had baked me a cake: plum, my favourite, she'd remembered that after all the years I'd spent away.

"We hears you was sent to Azkaban, but we knows you is guilty of no crime, sir," Dappy had added.

"Actually," I'd said, "I was guilty. I confessed. I helped my father murder someone."

"Your father, sir! We is missing him, sir, he is a good, kind man."

I'd coughed. "My father made me help him kill someone. You were there, Dappy. You must have known something was going on."

"Mister Aldous explained. She was a Muggle, and Master Theodore was needing to learn."

"Right," I'd said, after a brief, confused pause. "But it was still murder." The thing that Granger et al don't seem to really get is that house elves can be some of the most outrageous pureblood supremacists. It's part of the symbiotic relationship between elves and wizards, particularly where the bond between elf and human families goes back many generations. The elves derive their status from the power and purity of the line of wizards in their care, and the wizards... well, what we stand to gain is more obvious. I didn't invent this system, but I was hardly going to argue with it if it meant being waited on hand and foot for free. What got me was how pure-blooded wizards like my father then lined up to be slaves themselves, prostrating themselves before the Dark Lord like a humble house elf. I had absolutely no idea why one would voluntarily undertake such humiliating self-abasement.

"Only in the eyes of the law!" Dappy had squeaked. "Dappy knows that Mister Aldous and Master Theodore did nothing wrong, but Dappy is keeping his masters' secrets."

"I, er, did think it was wrong. That's why I went to Azkaban, Dappy."

"Master must do as Master wishes," Dappy had said non-committally. House elves are the dearest of creatures, but their inability to think for themselves can occasionally be grating.

"Oh yeah, I had a great old time in Azkaban," I said. "Totally what I wanted to do." I'm not sure Dappy got my sarcasm.

I was not expecting to see Potter for a while, as I'd heard some of the Ministry staff milling around the holding cells talking about the ongoing search for his son, but the very next day he abruptly entered my cell, closely followed by Ms Mbewe. His face was ashen.

"They have the Time-Turner. My son Al and Scorpius Malfoy."

My stomach jolted. The Ministry had lost control of the Time-Turner; anything could happen. This was terrible news. I felt shaky and weak, my head still fuzzy from coming off the potions.

"There must be a way for you to trace it."

In truth, there wasn't, and that was by design. With illegal magic, it's always wise to cover your tracks as far as you can, but that meant that now there was nothing I could do. The Time-Turner was now no more connected to me than it was to Potter.

"I advise you not to answer that," Ms Mbewe said to me. "May I speak privately with my client, please?"

"I need to know they are going to be safe," Potter said desperately. "Please, help me get my son back."

Ms Mbewe nodded, but gently took Potter's arm and guided him towards the cell door. "We will do everything we can to assist you, but I must speak privately with Mr Nott first."

Potter reluctantly left, the door clanging shut behind him.

"Shitting Merlin," I said. "How could they have let this happen?

Ms Mbewe spoke. "My current advice is not to tell them anything. Circumstances may change, but you have a lot more to lose than to gain by working with them. With the Time-Turner missing, their central case against you can't hold up; all they can prove is that a Time-Turner was found at your residence. They can't prove that you knew of its existence, let alone that you made it or used it."

"I understand," I said.

"If you give them any information about the Time-Turner, any at all, you'll be admitting you knew about it. They don't have any evidence for that, and you shouldn't give it to them. Now, Potter may offer you a plea bargain if you cooperate with him on this, but I do not think this will be worth pursuing. There is now quite a good chance you could walk away from this entirely."

"Really?" I said.

"Yes. Leaving aside the fact that it was Potter's own son who took it, it is terribly embarrassing for the Ministry that the Time-Turner was stolen from them, and from the office of the Minister herself."

"From Hermione Granger?" I asked, perhaps a bit too eagerly. "What did she think of it, do you know?"

"I don't know," said Ms Mbewe, giving me a strange look. "I think it was a misjudgement on her part to keep such a powerful and dangerous magical object in her office, with such inadequate protection that two fifteen-year-old Hogwarts students were able to walk in and steal it. I must ask you, though, if they do use it, what do you think could happen?"

"Things could, er, change a bit." I said.

"How so?"

"Well, that entirely depends on how far back they go, and what they do there. But it might be possible that a few people would... cease to exist."

"Which people?"

"The descendants of people whose lives they touch in the past – they wouldn't have to meet these people, even, just influence their fates. We look back on the past, we use terms like fate, destiny, because it appears that events were bound to have unfolded as they did, but they weren't. Go back in time and the solidity of the past crumbles, and with it, the present."

"People whose lives they touch – do we have any way of knowing who that would be?"

"Not really, no."

"And they would just... die, their descendants?"

"No, they just wouldn't exist anymore," I said. "Not in this reality, anyway. The world they existed in might still exist, but we would have no way of knowing... When you travel in time, the way you jump from one reality to another is extremely convoluted and the boundaries between your past, future and alternate selves become... indistinct. If Potter and Malfoy's kids don't know what they are doing – and I assume they don't – they might disappear from our reality altogether. Or there's an outside chance our reality itself might disappear."

"I'm sorry?"

"It's a difficult phenomenon to observe from both sides," I explained. "Nobody really knows what happens to one reality when someone breaks through it into another. There's some evidence to suggest that they can bleed into one another to form a single new reality, but naturally that means that some of the... er, detail from each of them might be lost."

"What do you mean, detail?"

"It's not certain," I said quickly. "But you change the past, accidents can happen or be avoided, and that has a knock-on effect of relationships being different, and that can mean children not existing, and so on. If the realities cease to be kept separate from one another, they must resolve themselves somehow."

Ms Mbewe looked horrified.

"But like I said, that's not certain. What is more likely is that Potter's son and Scorpius become stuck in another reality and are never heard of again. They'll be OK, probably, we'll just have no way of knowing for sure."

"I suggest that when Potter comes back in, you leave the talking to me."

"I'm sure that's for the best," I said agreeably. "Although things really aren't so bad as they might be, really. Using the Time-Turner probably won't hurt the kids – it's what they could do in the past that would change the future that could do real damage."

"That's not terribly reassuring."

"It should be," I said, "For Potter at least. With a Time-Turner of that range, going back too far in time is usually fatal. Only Unspeakables from the Department of Mysteries have travelled as far back in time as my Time-Turner goes, and they've died immediately afterwards – they couldn't solve the problem of ageing on the way back. I did." I tried not to sound too smug, but I was pretty pleased with what I'd achieved. The charms I'd used were powerful, but they also had to be precise. The de-aging spell was particularly dangerous; too strong and you could go back to before you were born, but too weak and you'd come back dying of old age. The rub was that the required strength depended on the magical power and body mass of the person or people travelling in time, and how far back they went. The spell had to be flexible enough to accommodate this, and smart enough to know how. The charmwork had been difficult, but the Arithmancy behind the charms had been near impossible, requiring calculus well beyond NEWT level. It wasn't like there was an instruction manual for this stuff either.

"You're going to have to resist telling everyone how brilliant you are if you want to avoid Azkaban," Ms. Mbewe said drily. "Given the danger the world as we know it is currently in, I am sure that this knowledge would be of limited comfort to Potter, and it would give him the evidence he needs to prove that you knew about and probably used the Time-Turner.

"The world isn't imperilled," I said. "It's just that it could be in a state of flux. But if it does change we won't know or care. That's kind of the point."

"I somehow doubt that most would greet this news with such equanimity."

"The Ministry will try to hush it up though, won't they?"

"I imagine so," Ms Mbewe said. "If only to avoid mass panic. This is extremely serious."

"I know," I said. "I never thought it would come to this."

"Really? You didn't realise you were making something so powerful it could destroy the world as we know it?"

"I mean," I said. "Do we even know it any more? A lot has changed in the last year and the Time-Turner could undo it all. Is there a Muggle alive who wouldn't take that bargain?"

"That means nothing. You can't have been expecting what happened."

"Not that exactly, but I thought something might, at some point, something big."

"It didn't occur to you that your Time-Turner could unleash that kind of destruction by itself?"

I shrugged. "I didn't really think about it."

Ms Mbewe cast me a disbelieving look. "Why did you do it, then?"

"Because I could," I said. "I lost my magic. I got to the point where I was struggling to perform a simple hovering charm, and then I spent ten years in Azkaban. I got out, and I started to be able to do magic again. You've no idea how incredible that felt. Like I was discovering my powers for the first time. I wanted to push myself, and do more than I'd ever done before, to surpass anything that had been achieved with magic and time. I didn't think about what might happen if someone got hold of my work – I didn't really think I'd end up with anything that interesting, to tell you the truth."

"But you did," Ms Mbewe said.

"Yes," I said ruefully. "I should have taken better precautions, but... I was more interested in the breakthroughs I was making than in covering myself from prosecution. When I sold the Time-Turner, I suppose that would have been the time to... get legal advice, or destroy everything that linked me to it, including the prototype, but I didn't. I guess I was complacent."

"I will be happy to advise you on your legal position in future," Ms Mbewe said. "I think you will find that a much more cost-effective approach."

"I would hope so," I said. "This has been quite an investment."

"We have made good progress. I am convinced that we may be able to secure your release," Ms Mbewe said. "I was not so confident before. Just... don't say anything. Let me do the talking, it's why I'm here. Are you ready?"

"I guess," I replied. I was still feeling a bit tender and I really didn't want to come face to face with Potter again at all.

Ms Mbewe rapped smartly on the cell door to get Potter's attention. He seemed to have spent the intervening minutes just leaning against the wall and staring into middle distance. He seemed exhausted, and looked much older than he had done just a few days earlier. He peered suspiciously at me and Ms Mbewe as he came in, as though wondering what had passed between us.

"So," he said. "What can you do to help us?"

I looked at Ms Mbewe.

"I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what you are expecting from us, Mr Potter," Ms Mbewe said.

"We want to know about your Time-Turner," Potter said to me. "How far it can go back, what kind of trace it leaves."

"You've asserted my client's ownership of this Time-Turner," Ms Mbewe cut in. "But you've failed to prove it. I'm not sure my client can help you."

"That Time-Turner was found in your home, Nott," Potter said, again addressing me directly. "Possessing a Time-Turner of that kind of range is a serious felony, and you could also be charged with creation of a Dark object, and breach of the laws of time. Any one of those crimes is enough to earn you a life sentence in Azkaban."

I sat, impassive. Ms Mbewe also remained silent, and Potter was forced to continue.

"There is another way," Potter said. "If you demonstrated your commitment to rectifying the consequences of your crimes..."

I raised an eyebrow, but let Potter's unfinished proposal hang there until again he continued.

"If you were to help us find the kids, and make sure that no harm came to them, that will count for a great deal when the case comes before the Wizengamot. I would personally testify on your behalf; I think we could probably talk them down from a life sentence."

"If the case comes to the Wizengamot," Ms Mbewe corrected him. "Our preference would be to settle out of court."

Potter grimaced; this was clearly not his preferred outcome. "I suppose that might be a possibility," he said. "This department does sometimes offer plea bargains, but it has never done so for crimes of this magnitude."

"Igor Karkaroff was offered a very reduced sentence for multiple counts of torture and murder when he aided the Ministry," Ms Mbewe said.

"I should have said, my department does not generally offer plea bargains. And despicable as Karkaroff's crimes were, they did not have the potential to destroy the world. Nott might yet kill us all, you know."

"You've no evidence of any wrongdoing," Ms Mbewe said.

Potter gaped at her. "The Time-Turner was found at Nott's residence."

"Have you any evidence he knew about it?"

"Of course he knew about it!" Potter exclaimed.

"Can you prove that the Time-Turner was not left at the property by another individual, perhaps Mr Nott's father?"

"The property was searched extensively after Aldous Nott died," Potter stammered.

"Was this search activity documented?" Ms Mbewe said. "Unless you can prove that the Time-Turner was hidden in a place that had been searched previously, I'm afraid that you cannot prove that it wasn't placed there by Aldous Nott."

"But that's ridiculous," Potter said. "You could tell just by looking at it that the Time-Turner was created recently. Nott's father died decades ago."

"Your evidence is thin," Ms Mbewe said. "And the central piece is missing, stolen by your son. So unless you can offer my client amnesty from prosecution, you make it very difficult for us to help you."

"Complete amnesty? After he's tampered with time?"

"There isn't a shred of evidence to suggest that my client has altered time in any way. And unless you find the Time-Turner, I doubt you will be able to make any charges stick at all. If you do find it, I will ensure that your son's actions are analysed with equal scrutiny."

"I'm sorry," Potter said. "But it's not in my power to offer anything like the kind of deal you're asking for."

"I find that very difficult to believe, Mr Potter. I can't imagine you would say that to the mother of your son, for instance."

"My son is underage, and has never been in trouble before. Nott is a convicted felon. Their situations are not comparable."

"I would argue that the crimes your son has demonstrably committed are more serious: trespassing at the Ministry and theft of a powerful magical object. Mr Nott has paid his debt to magical society. Previous crimes, particularly those committed under duress and while an individual is under age, should have no bearing on how a defendant is treated. Now, let's not mess around."

I shifted in my seat. It was strange to hear them negotiating my future as though I wasn't there.

"Look," Potter said to Ms Mbewe. "If the case comes before the Wizengamot, Nott's record will have to be taken into account. I know you are pushing for an out of court settlement, but you need to be realistic. Damaging the fabric of time is one of the most serious crimes someone can be accused of. I'd be surprised if you could get the sentence down to thirty years."

Maybe I could make a Philosopher's Stone. Maybe I could undo the damage time had done to my body. Maybe. If I got out of this. I still couldn't believe I might be going back to prison. Every time the thought came up, my mind skipped over it. Azkaban was my past, a murky lost decade. It could not be my future as well.

"You're acting as though you have no control over how this department operates," Ms Mbewe said. "But you're making it very difficult for us to help you."

"I don't determine the sentences for specific crimes. Nott is facing multiple life sentences. That can't be talked down to nothing."

"Mr Nott can only be charged if your son returns with the evidence, and that evidence links him to a crime. Both of those things seem doubtful."

"Why," said Potter, "would my son's return seem doubtful? What do you know?"

"I know that your central piece of evidence has been stolen and cannot be used against my client."

"You implied it would hurt them."

"Mr Potter, I did no such thing."

"Do you think I don't know what could happen to him?"

"Mr Potter, there is no sense in imagining the worst."

"The effects of time travel are well known."

"Should you be handling this case at this time, Mr Potter?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You are under considerable strain," Ms Mbewe said. "Having a child run away – that is something no parent should have to go through."

"Tell him that," Potter spat. "Your precious client, that piece of scum that caused all this."

"Mr Nott did no such thing," Ms Mbewe said, although her tone was soothing rather than contradictory. "I think you know you can't be objective about the case right now."

"I'm the Head of Magical Law Enforcement!" Potter shouted.

"Yes, you are," Ms Mbewe said. I couldn't tell if she meant to be patronising or if it had just come out sounding that way, but I knew from Potter's run-ins with Umbridge that there was no faster way to piss him off. Sure enough, Potter wheeled round at me and bellowed like an angry erumpent.

"TELL ME WHERE THEY ARE!"

There was a ringing silence.

"I don't know," I said weakly. I sounded as though I had a cold.

"I don't believe you."

"There's not a lot I can do about that, is there?"

"Look... just tell me – will it hurt them? Will it age them beyond what their bodies can stand, if they go too far back?"

I preferred it when he was blustering, and I could laugh at him; the anguish in Potter's voice was more than I could bear. I felt like a guilty child, ill and overwhelmed and responsible in ways I had only begun to imagine. Against my better judgement, I shook my head.

Ms Mbewe expression remained unperturbed, but I was fairly sure she must be furious with me. I was furious with myself. She cut in, however, "Mr Nott is not responsible for anything that happens as a result of the Time-Turner being stolen. The object was in the care of the Ministry of Magic. You were responsible for keeping it safe, and yet it went missing."

Potter, sensing that I was the easier target, turned to me.

"Is there any way you can trace it? Please?" He looked desperate and haunted. For a fleeting moment I almost felt lucky that I had nobody to care about like that, and that nobody but my house elves cared about me. But I had to look after myself. I could feel Ms Mbewe's eyes on me, willing me to say nothing, and so I kept my mouth shut, and didn't even move my head.

"I'm afraid my client cannot help you." Ms Mbewe said firmly.

Potter rounded on me. "Can't, or won't?"

I clenched my hands into fists but said nothing; it was hard. Ms Mbewe gave my shoulder a light, reassuring pat.

Potter tried a softer tack. "There's really nothing you can do?"

"Mr Potter, I think we've been quite clear. Mr Nott can do nothing to help you. "