Chapter 5
They're in Gus's bedroom, but it's not Gus's bedroom. The furniture is different. So are the curtains and the pictures on the walls. Gus looks out the window and gasps.
Becky walks to the window and looks out. "What is it?"
"That tree," he says, pointing. "It's huge. Or it's supposed to be. It's so small now."
"Something's gone terribly wrong, Gus. I think we should go back right now."
"We can go back anytime we want. I want to have a look around first and see what's going on."
"I don't know," Becky says.
Gus rolls his eyes. "Don't be such a Hufflepuff."
Becky turns away, not wanting him to see how much this casual insult hurts. What's wrong with being a Hufflepuff? Why do these bloody Slytherins use the word like it's some kind of slur? Even her father, who calls her—used to call her, before the Sorting—his little Hufflepuff, who always said it in the most affectionate way, does he think there's something wrong with the members of that House? With her, because the Sorting Hat said she clearly belonged there?
"Hey." Gus puts his hand on her arm, but Becky shakes him off and won't look at him. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to upset you. Let's just have a quick look around and if you still want to go back, we will, okay?"
Becky nods, still not trusting herself to speak. Gus puts the cloak back over them and they walk through the empty sitting room, which is also completely redecorated from the one they know, to the entryway and out into the hallway.
They make their way through the corridors and down the staircases, careful to avoid touching any of the people who can't see them. It must be a break between classes, because students are walking about. Oddly, none of the students look familiar, and even their uniforms are slightly different in style from the ones Gus and Becky are wearing. And their hair! What on earth is with those hairstyles?
In the dungeons, Gus and Becky press themselves against the wall as students scatter to make way for a tall, thin figure in black striding down the corridor, robes billowing dramatically.
"Is that…?" Gus says, eyes bulging.
Becky stares, transfixed. It both is and isn't her father. It's the version of him she saw in the memory Aunt Pansy showed her, the one where she hexed Mum's teeth in Potions class. It was just a brief snippet of memory, and he said only a few words in it, but he was too skinny and dressed like this, all buttoned-up and billowing, and he had the same long, greasy hair and sallow skin as the man scattering students before him now.
Mesmerized, Becky stares as he disappears into the Potions classroom. She follows him inside, Gus walking beside her under the cloak. Inside the classroom, they stand against the wall and look around. The students look about their age, and are wearing either green or red ties, but they're not their Slytherin and Gryffindor classmates, or the second years. Becky stifles a gasp as she points at a table near the front of the room where a boy and girl in red ties are setting up their cauldrons. The girl, with bushy hair and buck teeth, is all business as she lays out her things with ruthless efficiency. The boy, whose round face hasn't yet matured into handsome, masculine features, acts like he's scared out of his wits, hands trembling as he sets up his Potions kit and casts nervous glances at the man in black glowering at the students.
Becky and Gus exchange a stunned look. If her mum and his dad are first years, the Time Turner took them back not thirty-four hours, but thirty-four years. How did that happen? That's not how Time Turners work. Everybody knows that.
At the table next to young Hermione and Neville, a boy with unruly black hair and glasses partners with a red haired boy. Harry and Ron. A few tables back, an adolescent Pansy partners with Draco, whose beautiful face is marred by a supercilious sneer. The equally beautiful boy at the next table can only be Zabini's father.
Professor Snape—Becky can't think of this grim, sallow man as Daddy—waves his hand at the board and Calming Drought, accompanied by a page number, appears in his familiar spiky script. "Get to work," he snaps, showing teeth every bit as awful as Becky's. He sits down at his desk, dips his quill in a pot of red ink, and starts scrawling comments on the scroll before him as he reads.
The students go back and forth to the supply room to get the ingredients they need. As Hermione passes by, Pansy casts a tripping jinx that sends Hermione stumbling right into Draco.
"Watch where you're going," he snarls, shoving her away as though she has leprosy or spattergoit and he might catch it.
"Shut it, Malfoy," Hermione mutters.
"Ten points, Miss Granger," the professor says without looking up from his marking.
"That's not fair!" Harry says.
"Ten more points, Mr. Potter," he says, sounding bored.
Becky's mouth falls open in astonishment, then snaps shut in rage.
Pansy looks smug. Becky remembers how Pansy told her she was a horrid little bitch in school, and Becky couldn't believe it was true. Well, seeing is believing. And Draco. Gods, he's worse than Cass. Pansy told her that, too. Pansy didn't tell her that poor Neville was such a scared little rabbit through. Becky supposes the Hat must really know what it's doing to see past the boy he was to the man he would become. She wonders what the Hat saw in her to be so adamant that she belonged with the Badgers.
Snape gets up from his desk and starts pacing the room like a large feline predator. He glares at the contents of Harry and Ron's cauldron, which is a murky gray instead of one of the various shades of purple in most of the other cauldrons. Two boys with green ties and rather bovine expressions have something that looks even less like the right brew in their cauldron, but the professor merely looks at it, then says, "Who can tell me what Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley have done to produce something that bears no resemblance to a Calming Drought?"
Hermione's hand shoots into the air. Snape looks at her like she's something he scraped off his shoe and scans the rest of the class. No hands go up. He waits. Draco and the dark-haired boy partnering with Zabini look smug, like they know, but only Hermione's hand waves in the air.
Eventually, Snape turns to look at Hermione and Neville. Hermione practically vibrates with the effort of keeping the answer from spilling out. Snape smirks, but remains silent, letting the moment drag out, like a cat playing with its food before the kill. "Mr. Longbottom?" he drawls at last.
Neville blanches. "I…I…I d-d-d-"
Hermione leans a little closer to him, glancing nervously at Snape, who says, "Tell him the answer, Miss Granger, and lose one hundred points for your House."
Hermione slumps, and Neville looks like he wants to die.
"Well, Mr. Longbottom?"
"I d-don't know, sir."
Snape sighs theatrically. "Mr. Nott?"
Zabini's partner replies, "They put too many lacewings in, sir."
"Ten points to Slytherin," Snape says, striding over to the two boys with green ties and yellow sludge in their cauldron. He Vanishes the contents and says, "Begin again, Mr. Crabbe, Mr. Goyle. And use diced flobberworms rather than flobberworm mucous next time."
"Yes, Professor," both boys say and head back to the storeroom.
Becky feels sick to her stomach. She wishes they could leave, but the classroom door is closed so they can't go until class ends. How can her father have been this awful man? How can he be so blatantly unfair to his students? So partial to the Slytherins? So hateful to Neville and Mum? Especially to Mum? He loves Mum. He doesn't love her now, Becky can see. He appears to loathe the very sight of her. Mum was teasing him just this morning at breakfast about being hated as a teacher, but Becky hadn't really believed it. Oh, she could believe he was strict and maybe a little cantankerous, but she never imagined anything like this. How could Mum joke about it, as though it was something funny? There is nothing funny about the way the professor is treating Hermione today.
Becky glances at her mother, who is now the same age she is, and can tell that it's taking every bit of self-control Hermione has not to cry. She's seen Mum cry before, but rarely, and never because of anything Daddy said to her. Becky feels her own eyes fill with the tears her mother doesn't dare shed. When one of them trickles down her cheek, Gus wipes it away with his thumb. He looks like he might cry himself if he wasn't a boy and boys didn't cry.
When class is over and the last of the students have filed out, Becky and Gus follow them, Becky casting one last look back at the bitter, angry man her father used to be.
They duck into the alcove where Becky first told Gus about the Time Turner.
"I'm sorry my mum was such a horrid bint to your mum," Gus says.
"And I'm sorry my dad was such a nasty git to your dad," Becky says. "I can't believe it. I mean, I saw it with my own eyes, but…"
"I know," Gus says glumly. "This wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be."
"No," Becky says. "And I have a headache."
"So do I. Do you suppose it's something to do with the Time Turner?"
"Probably. Let's go back."
"Do you think we have to go back from the same place we left?" Gus says.
"If we can get back in. Your password might not work in this time."
He sighs glumly. "I didn't even think of that."
"Let's try though," Becky says.
They wait long enough for the next class to have started so the hallways will be empty, then make their way back to the archway to the Headmaster's private quarters. Only it's not there. All they see is the alcove other people who aren't keyed into the wards see.
"Shite," Gus says.
"Who's that?" a voice barks out. They turn to see Argus Filch, who died when they were little children and he was a very old man. He's only sort of old now, and moves a lot quicker than they expect, bumping into them. He steps on the edge of the Invisibility Cloak, which slips and reveals the lower part of their bodies.
"Aha!" Filch cries, snatching the cloak off them. "What's this? You're in Hogwarts uniforms, but I've never seen you. Come on," he says, taking each of them by an arm. "We're going to see Headmaster Dumbledore."
Gus reaches into his pocket. When he pulls out his hand, he scatters a handful of black powder and everything goes dark. He gropes for Becky's hand, and when he has it grasped firmly in his, they run as if for their lives.
The staircases seem to be on their side, sliding into place to let them ascend and then moving again, leaving Filch shaking his fist and shouting at them from below, a chasm between the ground at his feet and the stairs he would take in pursuit.
They don't stop running until they reach the seventh floor and a doorway appears in the wall before them. It looks like the door into the Headmaster's private quarters, but when they enter, they're in an enormous room filled with old furniture, sports equipment, musical instruments, books, old clothes, trunks, and all sorts of odds and ends.
Once their breathing returns to normal, they look around them, and Becky sees that Gus is holding the Invisibility Cloak. "Good work," she says, gesturing to it.
"I told you I was only borrowing it. I couldn't very well leave it in the late twentieth century, could I?"
Becky gives him a small smile despite her headache, which is getting worse. "I want to go home," she says.
"Let's take a souvenir to remind us of our trip to the past," Gus says. "Just look at all this stuff!" He picks up a Quidditch bat.
"That's kind of big for a souvenir, and it's exactly like the ones in our time."
"Something small and unique," he says, looking around.
"I don't know if we should."
"What harm could it do? It's just a bunch of old junk people have abandoned."
"I suppose," she says doubtfully, then draws in a breath as a glittering piece of jewelry catches her eye. It's a diadem, sitting askew atop a bust.
Gus follows her gaze and levitates it down. "For you, my lady," he says with a courtly bow.
Becky feels a queer prickling when she touches the diadem, and a sense of melancholy engulfs her. She can't get home soon enough. Gus slips the glittering tiara into his pocket and throws the cloak over them. Becky lifts the chain so it's around both of their necks, and carefully counts out thirty-four spins on the Time Turner.