Chapter 16

Becky looks around at the Room of Requirement, which looks much as it did when she and Gus were here the first time. The bust where they found the diadem still sits on its shelf, dusty and unadorned. The Time Turner is around her neck and Gus holds the Invisibility Cloak, ready to put it over them before they go back, just in case there's anyone else in the Room when they arrive.

Draco hands each of them a bottle of the Time Turner potion. "Drink half of it," he says, "and keep the other dose just in case. You shouldn't need it if you put the diadem back and then come back to the present immediately."

Gus and Becky drink the potion and put the half full bottles in their pockets.

"And you will come back immediately," Draco continues, more sternly than they've ever heard him speak. "This isn't a game, isn't an adventure. You have our lives in your hands. You do understand that?"

"We do," Gus assures him.

Becky only nods, feeling ashamed and awful as she looks at Hermione, whose eyes are puffy and red-rimmed. Draco doesn't appear to have been crying, but he looks sadder than she's ever seen another person look. Becky feels her own eyes start to prick with tears. The remorse for what she and Gus have stupidly, selfishly, thoughtlessly done is almost more than she can bear.

Gus drapes the cloak over them and through it, Becky sees Draco take both of Hermione's hands in his. The way he looks at her is like a knife through Becky's heart. Guilt twists deep inside her, but through the guilt and the shame over what she's done, she feels something else—a longing deep in her soul to have someone, someday, look at her the way Draco is looking at Hermione. Someday, she hopes that someone might love her the way Draco loves the woman who both is and isn't her mother.

Becky spins the Time Turner carefully, counting out thirty-four turns, and just before she and Gus vanish into the past, she sees Draco and Hermione come together, clinging to one another as though their very lives depend on never letting one another go.

Becky's eyes are blurred with tears when Gus pulls the cloak off them and takes the diadem out of his robe pocket. As she watches him put it back on the bust, it occurs to her that when she wished that someone would love her the way Draco loves Mum in that other timeline, she didn't wish that Gus would love her that way someday, but that an unnamed, unknown someone would.

Her crush on her best friend is something she sees from the outside now, something childish and a little embarrassing. They're children. They know nothing of what she saw between the couple whose lives they destroyed with their Time Turner, and they won't for many years yet, if they ever do.

They're alone in the Room of Lost Things, but they put the cloak back on anyway and, keeping their promise, use the Time Turner to go immediately back.

After thirty-four careful spins, the room is still empty, still full of old junk, but things have shifted a bit, new junk added to the old. The bust is still on the shelf, but the diadem is gone.

It seems almost anticlimactic, Becky thinks as they walk down the stairs and through the corridors. They pass classmates they recognize, going back to their common rooms at the end of the school day. By unspoken agreement, neither Becky nor Gus head to the Slytherin common room, but to their respective family quarters.

"Twice in one day," Hermione says when Becky enters. "What's the occasion?"

Becky stares at her mother—her real mother, not the Hermione from that other timeline who looked like her mother, but wasn't. Hermione looks the same as she did in that other life, but slightly different. The lines of tension around her eyes and between her brows are gone in this world. She smiles more, and the smile always reaches her eyes. She is relaxed and happy.

Becky knows that even though it feels like forever since she's seen her mother, for Mum, it was only that morning that Becky was there for breakfast—and a theft she deeply regrets.

"Becky?" Mum asks, concern in her voice.

Becky feels her eyes fill with tears. "I just missed you," she says, her voice choked.

Mum pulls her into a hug. "Why are you crying, love?"

Becky shakes her head and tightens her arms around her mother. When she finally pulls back, she wipes her eyes and asks, "Where's Daddy?"

"Meeting with a client. He should be back soon."

"Mum, can I ask you something?"

"Of course, love."

"It's kind of personal." Becky takes a breath. "Why did you break your engagement with Draco?"

Mum's brows shoot up. "What on earth makes you ask about that?"

"I don't know. I was just curious."

"It was such a long time ago."

"Were you in love with him and then stopped loving him?"

"It was…complicated."

"Do you ever regret it?"

"Regret it?" Mum frowns. "Regret not marrying Draco?"

"Yes."

"What on earth…? No, of course I don't regret it. I love your father."

"Why? What made you love him?"

Mum gets sort of a faraway look. "I don't know what makes one person love another. Circumstances have a lot to do with it, I suppose. If we make one choice, take one road in life, we love one person. If we take another…"

"I worry that I'm going to take the wrong road," Becky whispers. Or maybe that she already has.

"What brought on all this introspection?"

Becky is saved from having to lie when the door opens and her father comes in. She devours him with her eyes, cataloguing every little difference between the man she saw in that other life and the one she has known all of hers. Like her mother, he looks relaxed and happy. She lets out the breath she was holding, and launches herself at him.

"What's this?" he laughs. "You act as though you haven't seen me in days, when you were here for breakfast just this morning."

Becky doesn't answer because she's crying too hard.

"What's wrong, Piglet?" he asks.

"Nothing," she says, her voice is muffled against his robes.

"Are things really so bad in Slytherin?" he asks

"No, it's fine," she says. Not getting along with her stupid Housemates now seems like the most trivial of problems. What does she care if Cass and Delilah are a couple of catty little cows and Zabini is a pompous git?

"If you're really that unhappy," Mum says, "you can ask to be re-sorted."

Becky turns to look at her mother. "I can?"

"It's in Hogwarts, A History. A student can ask to be re-sorted anytime during his or her first year. It doesn't happen often. The last time was in the early 1800s, I think."

"But I made my bed," Becky says. "I should lie in it, don't you think?" I should be punished for what I did to you and Draco in that other world, she thinks.

Her mother shrugs. "Who says?"

Becky looks at her father.

"It's up to you," he tells her. "I won't think any less of you whatever you decide."