Persistence
Chapter Two
The Holes In My Head
--
I looked out through the window, assessing, calculating. I knew more about the knots of time than most - it was my field of expertise. Time was my job, had been my life for years. Dealing with old, bizarre rituals that invoked the power of reality, of time itself - it leaves its signs on you. The most mundane one I had was the ability - the knack of always getting the time right. I remember the first time ... I was heading the Aurors then, trying to catch the few Death Eaters still active, hunting for works in the field. That was when I met Wentworth, and heard about the deeper divisions within the ministry. The Syr I wasn't excited about, a bunch of half-crazy maniacs who researched old and ancient powers everyone else had forgotten; but the cobra division grabbed my imagination. Looking after the more dangerous aspects of law enforcement, handling responsibilities so dangerous even the Aurors shied from them. True danger. Combat, instead of sitting on a desk and shuffling bits and pieces of people's lives around... Shacklebolt had his doubts, but it sounded like a dream come true. I dreamed of better things, those days.
The first time I accompanied the cobra section overseas on a mission, the Commander's incompetence left me blindfolded and left for dead underground for a month, without food or water. Starved, dehydrated, bound I'd sat in the underground cavern. Waiting for a sound in the black damp quiet. For twenty-nine days, until the rescue came. I'd counted every second, had known every moment even though no light nor blessed air from above had reached me. That was… will be… 2002. I'd left Gin with her mother. She was expecting.
My third year of being married. Third and last. I still remember fighting my way through the fog that surrounded my mind and the peculiar exhaustion that comes from sitting still. Remember praying, to no god for I knew none, but to providence. To see her, once again, to feel her. To see our son. Remember devising a thousand ways to kill the buffoon who'd left me behind.
He died of a heart-bursting curse, thankfully releasing himself from the burden of a painful Wizengamot trial. A full week after I'd returned home to the loving arms of family, friends, overenthusiastic reporters and crazy fans. It was a clear case of suicide, so everyone said, the guilty Auror not forgiving himself leaving the Chosen One to die alone. If anyone suspected, they were wise enough to keep their mouth shut.
Thus I found my darkness in Albania, just as Tom once had fifty years ago. The Chosen One found a new meaning of life, a new way to make it right, a way to save the innocents from those who would do them harm, with malice or wilful ignorance. Just like a red-eyed youth who had promised himself power and justice, in the beginning of his flight of death.
History is funny like that.
--
There was a Syr, in the fifteenth century, who'd transported himself to five years back in a disaster that involved, or so office gossip said, a broken time-turner, a witch assistant, and an Aztec sex ritual. True or not, we did get a list of laws and instructions informing us about the things to do in the case of an unintentional temporal displacement when we joined the division. It basically consisted of : keep your head down, don't do anything that might challenge the timeline, and contact the division. We'll take care of you.
I knew better.
Oh, they would take care of me. The situation I was finding myself in- it was unique, it had to be. Not a simple temporal displacement of matter, but a real soul transmission - the spirit riding the time winds to back, back, thirty years ago... the theory was impossible, the possibilities breathtaking. And it was the only thing that could've happened, for the only other option involved someone transporting me through thirty years and replacing my younger self with me, de-aging me in the process, all under Albus' broken nose. Besides serving no purpose I could see, it was impossible.
And the department would want to know how, once they believed my story, unlikely as it sounded. They wouldn't believe me when I said I had no idea. They would break me and rip me apart, cell by cell, molecule by molecule, to know how I'd managed to disengage my self from the flesh safely without the benefit of an anchor, a horcrux, and how I'd managed to stitch it together with another body, however familiar. The mystery of time-travel was almost secondary to this, this knowledge that could unlock the mystery of the human soul itself. They would use every means they can to unravel it, and obliterate me in the process.
I should know. I've done it myself.
Not the division, then.
But I still needed to know exactly when and why I was. I had to avoid... complications. I knew enough about timelines to know exactly how dangerous a time-travel of this scale was. The fact that I remembered what had happened to me in my fifth year as clearly as if all of it had happened just yesterday wouldn't be any help at all if I skewed the order of events to any significant degree. I needed to know. I needed to learn, to assimilate, to adapt. I needed time.
Funny how you can get thirty years' worth and still not have enough.
--
"Do you think he's alright?" Ron asked nervously, as we walked down the corridor. He was fidgeting, like he always did whenever he was uncertain or was trying very hard not to think about something. "I mean, he just collapsed, sudden as anything. I didn't notice anything wrong with him during the feast. Did you?"
"You might've noticed something if you weren't busy eating every scrap of food piled on the table, Ronald", I snapped, and regretted it immediately. He wasn't the only one occupied during the feast, what with the horrible Ministry toad (no, I shouldn't call someone that on the basis of their appearance, but really, she even behaved like one) and the Sorting Hat's song and all. Maybe I should've kept more of an eye on Harry, I thought guiltily. He really was under a lot of stress right now, wasn't he? What with You-Kno - no, Voldemort being back and Diggory's death and the trial and half the country calling him liar while the other half believed him insane... no wonder he fainted even before he reached the common room. That kind of pressure would've killed me. I know what stress can do to a person, I topped the basic Psy course I took in the holidays after all. I shouldn't have made the remark about the food either, I realized. Ron is sensitive to their financial status, and this kind of remark would only make him think I was making a dig at his family. At that moment I wanted nothing except to tell him how meaningless it was to me just how many Galleons his father earned each month, but it wasn't the time or the place for that. Besides he wouldn't have understood anyway- patients like him never believe there's anything wrong with them even when you make it clear as day. I'd have to be subtle, I realized as we entered the Hospital Wing in silence.
He was lying on the bed, his body covered in bandages, the last rays from the setting sun reflecting from his glasses. He looked up at us and smiled. We rushed to him, ignoring Pomfrey's clucking.
"What happened to you?" I demanded. "What are these bandages for? You didn't cut yourself-" I stopped, recognising the sheer ridiculousness of the question. I doubted even Harry could manage to cut himself up so severely, falling on a hard stone floor.
Maybe he cut himself, to cope with the stress, I thought suddenly, the textbook case of self-loathing manifested by a cutting ritual- I pushed the thought away. Harry wouldn't do that. He was tougher than that. Better than that. Yet... yet... I asked, suddenly anxious, knowing I had no real reason to be,"When did it happen? Not in num- not in- not when we were staying with the old crowd?" I fished lamely.
He smiled, faintly, his eyes now sharp and bitter. "Old injuries, Hermione", he said softly. "This summer..."
Oh. Oh.
The next time I see those Dursleys... a knee-inversion curse might be just the thing. And a homesickness hex, with a forgetfulness jinx just for variety. At the very least, that big pig would get kicked off his job.
Ron's face, I could see, was darkening slowly. Yes, I sighed silently. He's got it.
--
By the time they were gone, I had a throbbing headache. Seeing people you had once loved and had seen die, melting slowly, once again so full of life and still keeping your face smooth, your mind clear- that took effort, and occlumency was never as easy to me as it seemed to be to Snape and Albus. But I had persevered, and they seemed to accept the total bullshit I fed about the Dursleys, if Hermione's expression and Ron's bellowings were anything to go by. It was easier than I'd thought it would be, but then again it should be easy for someone in my position to garner sympathy from the people. That was why Fudge had feared me and had tried to use me, believing I had any ambition whatsoever in moving up the political ladder. Fool. I am better than that.
So. My closest friends wouldn't be so suspicious now if I somehow acted a little out of place... out of time. They'd chalk it up to stress, fear - or, if everything else fails - to domestic abuse. Maybe they would watch me that little bit closer, that little bit more intently for signs of imbalance, but I'd be damned if I can't squeeze out time away from two busy fifth-years for my activities. The gamble had been worth it.
Now all I have to do is to find out how I got here- and if I can go... forward, to my time. I have to know what did I do in the space of a month to accomplish this. I have to figure out where the hell these cuts are from, for I had nothing like this in my timeline. I have to er, to fix... to fix the holes in my head.
And, of course, I have to face Ginny...
Her face, frozen in the rictus of a scream, her skin now white with age and peeling away
James, James, my baby boy, no no no
--
James was born in July.
I remember me and my wife, a year or so into our marriage, talking in our cozy little bedroom in our little home by the quiet sea. We were married, we were happy... we were so sure of the bright future. We wanted a family. Children. She wanted to make up names, and we played at it, laughing. James Sirius, I'd proposed, for the first son we would have. Lily Rose, she said, for the first daughter- after her gran Rosemary. We agreed on Albus then, after the greatest wizard any of us had ever known... so we went, into the night. I remember. There was no fear in us , no sense of what was to come. The war had come, and we'd paid in blood... yet it was over, and we remained. Safe. Happy. Forever.
I didn't know, couldn't have known what would happen in two years' time. The night they died, my wife and my son and my two best friends, their bodies rotting from within, their flesh aging centuries in a single night. I remember sitting with her ravaged face melting in my hands, the stench of death so heavy I could barely breathe. So they died, Hermione and Ron, Ginny and James. The night I died, too, in all the ways that mattered. The night I went back for the resurrection stone. I remember.
July thirty-first, 2003.
Happy birthday, Harry...