World Enough and Time – Chapter Seven

What Then Is Time

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know. – Saint Augustine

Terry Boot was the epitome of everything that Ravenclaw House embodied. He was naturally clever, adept, and sharp. He had chosen, from the numerous options that awaited him after school, a rather eccentric career working in the Department of Mysteries, which, while extremely prestigious, tended to attract a more unusual crowd. And he was not accustomed to forgetting things, to slipping up in his work, and certainly not to both at the same time.

The idea of someone else, a stranger, wandering through his mind was intensely unappealing, especially considering that he was not sure the memories everyone was so interested in were in his head to find at all.

As Terry walked slowly through the familiar halls of his department he sighed and rubbed his temples, straining his brain once again to remember anything about when, how, why he had gone missing and why his memories had disappeared with him. Once again, he came up with nothing.

In a few short minutes Terry reached his destination and paused for a moment behind the shelves lined with time turners and listened. He could hear quiet, muffled voices – young, mostly male – and sighed, resigning himself to the inevitable. He could hear his colleague, the perpetually irritated Fletcher Smith, among the others and fought down another sigh.

"I'll go fetch lad," he heard Smith grumble and knew that he could only postpone the inevitable for so long.

Waiting just another moment Terry stepped out from behind the towering shelves, his hands shoved in his pockets, his gaze fixed on the wide-eyed employees from the Experimental Charms Department. Their hushed voices silenced when they saw him and his steps faltered very slightly. He tried to smile but was not at all confident in his success.

"Terry Boot," he introduced himself curtly when he reached them and he offered his hand to the young woman, who was closest. He shook each of their hands in turn, nodding at they introduced themselves. Elaine Goodrich, Walter Macmillan, James Potter.

Terry could not help his eyebrows lifting ever so slightly at this last introduction. Although he and Harry had never been close at Hogwarts they had taken a number of classes together, had been in the DA together, and Terry had always considered them to be on friendly terms. And so he had the good grace to ignore James's last name and move on.

"It's very nice to meet all of you," he said with a small shrug of his shoulders and as much of a smile as he could muster. "I only wish the circumstances were more pleasant."

Terry could tell he had only half of their attention. He could see their eyes flicking off in every direction, their faces lit with the pale blue light of the room, their expressions betraying that they were very eager to take everything in, to explore. Terry knew that feeling well; it never really faded even after working in the department for almost two decades. Department of Mysteries indeed, he thought, a smirk trailing at the corners of his mouth.

"All right, all right, enough pleasantries," Fletcher said in his usual growl. All attention snapped to him and Terry felt the vaguest twinge of nerves. He worked to keep his face impassive.

Elaine was clearly doing no such thing. Her face was alight with excitement and Terry hoped fervently that she would not be the one to delve into his mind. "I hope you're ready, Mr. Boot," she said. She pulled out her wand and Terry's hand instinctively twitched towards his own but Elaine was merely conjuring up some stiff wooden chairs that neatly arranged themselves into a circle. She frowned slightly. "I've never got the hang of conjuring the cushioned ones," she muttered to James.

When they had all taken a seat Terry cleared his throat and asked, "So, how are we getting started then?"

Elaine was busy rifling through a stack of parchment in her lap and James seemed distracted, his gaze lingering obviously on the shelves of time turners a few yards away. It was Walter who answered.

"We'll be asking you some questions first so we can narrow down the incident," he said, taking obvious care to speak calmly and clearly. "Then we have some charms we've been developing that will, hopefully, recover whatever memory has been magically obscured or altered. It's a bit like legilimency, but we won't have nearly as much of a broad range of your thoughts, and we've added some additional enchantments into it."

Despite his measured tone Walter's words did very little to calm Terry's nerves. He took a deep, shaky breath and resigned himself, nodding.

"They're quite good," Elaine insisted, beaming. "You shouldn't feel anything at all."

"And even if we don't find anything, they'll be no harm done," James said, his attention no longer focused on the time turners. Terry took a steadying breath and nodded again.

They sat for a moment in awkward silence before, with flushed cheeks and a bright smile Elaine said, "Let's get started, shall we?"

In the oppressive silence Lily could hear her heart pounding in her ears, could almost feel the blood coursing through her veins, keeping her alive, breathing, standing despite the fact that her legs felt hollow and weak. She closed her eyes for a moment and wished for some sort of distraction, something so big and loud that Dumbledore's words would be nothing but a fading memory. The moment he had uttered her name her situation had become alarmingly real and Lily felt ill-equipped to cope.

She also felt as though she had been caught out of bed after hours or in the Restricted Section of the library. Lily had the distinct impression that she had done something wrong and when she opened her eyes again Snape's accusatory glare only intensified this feeling. Turning away from the glowering professor's stare she looked to Harry, who was gazing back at her with confusion, curiosity, and denial.

Lastly, Lily looked at Dumbledore, wondering why he had told them her name when it was by his insistence that her identity be kept a secret in the first place. She could see in his expression, in his eyes, that something was wrong. He looked old and he looked apologetic and Lily could see that Dumbledore felt he had had no choice.

But why?

Still the silence pressed on and Lily wondered if perhaps they could brush this off as an unlikely coincidence and no one need know anything else about her. But from the continued piercing looks she was receiving Lily knew there would be no leaving this office without some sort of explanation. She only wished that someone else would be the first to speak. I'm your daughter from the future, did not seem an acceptable way to continue the conversation.

Glancing again at Harry, whose emotions were, somewhat unusually, written all over his face, Lily was suddenly struck by his great resemblance to her brother Al. She felt a pang somewhere deep in her stomach at the thought of him and wished more than ever that she could see her family. She felt the way Harry currently looked – upset and confused and unsure what to do next. Lily could picture that expression so clearly on Al's nearly identical face and wondered if he had looked that way after finding out that she had disappeared.

"Albus, if you expect us to believe-"

Lily's eyes darted back to Snape when he started speaking, his low, chilled tones slicing easily through the silence. But Harry cut him off.

"What exactly is it that you expect us to believe," he began hotly, ignoring Snape's glare. "There is no way that this is my mother, I know what she looked like."

Lily's eyebrows rose in surprise and she thought of the grandmother she had never known. Although she had been named after the woman, she had seen pictures and knew that they had never shared any close physical resemblance. Her hair was the usual bright, Weasley orange rather than the dark red of Harry's mother and her eyes were brown like her own mother's rather than the startling shade of green that had been passed on to Albus.

How ridiculous, she thought but refrained from saying so. She had traveled back in time over two decades after all – who was she to say what was normal?

When no one replied Harry's cheeks flushed slightly and Lily glanced over at Snape, expecting a scathing remark at any moment. But Snape's attention was fixed on Dumbledore, his own pallor much paler than usual making him look like some sort of extra-solid ghost. "Lily Evans is dead, Albus. And this girl is fifteen years old. Lily would be close to forty now."

The way Snape had said the name Lily Evans, almost with a caress in his voice, made Lily squirm uncomfortably. Harry was looking quite uncomfortable as well, staring between Snape and herself, his hand still gripping his wand, which he had not put away after his brief confrontation with the Potions Master.

"Yes, Severus, Lily Evans is dead," Dumbledore said quietly, his expression grim. "However-"

"Then who is this," Snape snarled, pointing a shaking finger at Lily's face. "She is hiding something, Dumbledore, I know it and I won't be lied to anymore."

Finally, Lily found her voice. "Who said anything about Evans?"

In an instant all eyes were back on Lily and she looked desperately to the Headmaster to avoid looking at anyone else. What are you doing, she asked herself before more words tumbled out of her mouth.

"I just meant – that is – Lily Evans was my grandmother."

"So you were preparing to leave for the day? You had finished all of your work?"

"I remember packing up my things, yes. I was ready to leave."

The interviewing was taking longer that Terry would have liked. The three charms workers were careful not to let even the smallest detail slip between the cracks but how many times could he tell them he had packed his satchel before they believed him?

However he had to admit that it was nice to know they were serious about this endeavor. While Terry was still extremely uncomfortable at the thought of someone else rummaging around in his thoughts, these were certainly not the worst set of people to be trusted with the job. He shifted his weight in the uncomfortable wooden chair and tried in vain to stop his foot from tapping nervously on the floor.

"And the last thing you remember is walking towards the door? Or is it before that, at your desk?"

Terry's eyebrows knit together as he considered Walter's question but he found it increasingly hard to concentrate with Fletcher's loud breathing and Elaine's quill scratching rapidly across the parchment in her lap. He closed his eyes in an attempt to push away his surroundings and the dull ache that was pressing at the base of his skull.

"I was walking," he said confidently. He remembered walking towards the door. In his mind's eye he could see himself lift his bag over his shoulder, could hear his footsteps echo in the large space as he made his way to the exit. He heard a rustling, shuffling, a voice.

Terry's eyes flew open and he stared at his interviewers. "Sorry, what was that," he asked, thinking perhaps he had missed one of their questions.

"We… didn't say anything," Elaine told him, a perplexed frown gracing her features. She leaned forward, her head tilting to one side.

"I thought I heard…." Something lingered tentatively on the edge of his memory that he could not quite grasp. He tried to reach for it but his head began to throb. Terry raised a hand up to the back of his neck and rubbed tiredly at it, trying hard to focus.

"You were walking…," Walter prompted patiently.

"I was walking," Terry repeated. He turned his head to stare up at the ceiling, which was glowing blue along with everything else. He had heard something – a voice.

Someone else was there with me.

Terry winced as this thought flooded to the front of his mind and he let out a small groan of pain. He clenched his eyes shut and rubbed his palms against them.

"What's wrong," Elaine asked frantically.

"Did you remember something else," James put in.

Terry nodded slowly but did not open his eyes. "There was someone there with me," he said quietly, baffled that he had not remembered this before. He supposed the environment was awakening something that had been repressed. When he did open his eyes his gaze darted around the vast room, half-wondering if he would see a figure lurking in the shadows.

"I thought you said you were the last to leave," James reminded him, not accusingly, but intently focused.

"Yes, you said you were working late," Walter said, nodding in agreement with James.

Elaine was practically bobbing in her seat. "Who was it?"

Terry scowled. "I don't know," he said in clipped tones, half from the pain, half from annoyance. "And I was working late. I had seen everyone else leave but… I suppose it's possible someone came back. Maybe they forgot something."

But this sounded wrong when he said it aloud.

"Is it possible that it wasn't an Unspeakable," James proposed, voicing the doubts that were quickly forming in Terry's own mind.

Elained scowled. "Magical Maintenance?"

"Don't have 'em down here after hours," Fletcher said abruptly, contributing for the first time. "And not without constant surveillance. Can't have them sticking their noses in."

"This is the most secure department in the Ministry," Terry said quietly, "but it's not impenetrable." He looked at James when he said this, wondering if he knew of his father's long-talked about exploits at the Ministry so many years ago. There was nothing in James's expression to suggest he knew anything about that particular incident.

"So you don't remember who it was," Elaine asked, clearly disappointed. "No name, no face, nothing?"

Terry shook his head, grimacing. "That's what you all are here for, isn't it?"

There was a moment of silence and Terry realized that they had reached the end of their questioning. With a glance at each other James and Elaine both pulled out their wands and again Terry fought the reflex to draw his own. Some habits, he supposed, stayed forever.

"Who, er, who will be doing the actual…," Terry trailed off, unsure what to call the invasion into his mind.

"I will," James said quickly and if he had blinked Terry would have missed James's eyes darting back in the direction of the time turners.

"I'll just be spotting," Walter said, "and Elaine will be helping with the enchantments." Elaine nodded in affirmation.

Terry felt a rush of nerves overtake him as James and Elaine both directed their wands at him and he briefly considered stunning the lot of them and hurrying out but instead he swallowed hard and straightened his shoulders. The last thing he remembered thinking was wondering if, should they be successful, he would be glad he remembered at all.

It took a moment for Lily's words to become a coherent statement in Harry's mind. He had already processed so much unexpected, unpleasant information that evening that this new shock caused his brain to move sluggishly in protest. The words from the girl in front of him now seemed to hang in the air, thick and heavy.

Lily Evans was my grandmother.

Instinctively Harry looked to Dumbledore for answers but the Headmaster appeared neither surprised nor skeptical of this latest revelation. He had, after all, been the one to tell them her name was Lily Potter. But she could not be Lily Potter, certainly not a Lily Potter whose grandmother was Harry's own mother….

"I think I would know if I had a kid," he said loudly to no one in particular. "Not to mention that she's fifteen."

This should not even need refuting. Why was no one else saying anything? Why was Dumbledore looking so frustratingly calm and Snape – no, Harry could not even look at Snape without a terrible anger boiling up inside of him. The strange girl was looking pale and grim and sad and so… familiar. Her bright Weasley hair was tousled and seemed to fall wherever it pleased. Her eyes were brown, just the same shade as… as Ginny's.

Lily Evans was my grandmother.

Suddenly Harry's throat felt horribly dry and he shook his head. Impossible, he thought. Again, he turned to Dumbledore for some sort of answer or reassurance or contradiction. This time Dumbledore's blue piercing gaze met his own and Harry saw in his face that he believed her.

"No," he said quietly. "No, that's ridiculous. She's only a year younger than I am! Will someone please tell me what the hell is actually going on here?"

"You've had some experience in this area, Harry," Dumbledore said quietly. "Time is not always precisely linear and it seems that Ms. Potter here has, through unknown means, managed to demonstrate just an event."

Harry remembered, very vividly in fact, the night he and Hermione had used her time turner. He remembered leading Buckbeak away from Hagrid's pumpkin patch, conjuring his first real patronus, Sirius flying away and wondering when he would see him again. It was not an experience that Harry would be quick to forget but that entire ordeal had covered a matter of hours not… not years.

The office was quiet again but this silence was not so overwhelming as before. The sun outside was still sinking rapidly behind the trees and Harry stared at orange light it splashed on the floor while trying to comprehend the possibility that the daughter he might someday have could be standing just a few feet away. He looked anywhere but at her, this girl he had not ever properly met, who he had not given a second thought to until now.

Harry rubbed his palms against his face and wished that Hermione were there to ask the questions that were only half-formed in his head. He could hear her voice as though she were standing right there.

Awful things have happened when wizards have meddled with time.

"This… isn't happening," he said, more to himself than to anyone else in the room. He lowered his hands and, avoiding Lily's gaze, sank into the nearest chair.

Suddenly, Snape visibly flinched, his hand jerking reflexively to his left forearm where Harry knew the Dark Mark to be inked permanently into his skin. It had to be hurting him and Harry found that this thought did not bother him. What it meant, however, did. Voldemort was calling.

"Go, Severus," Dumbledore said quietly to his professor.

"I won't have to go far. They are here."

"Who?"

Reluctantly, Harry returned his attention to the girl still standing in the middle of the office. Her shoulders were slumped and her eyebrows were knit in confusion. "Who's here," she asked again.

When neither Dumbledore nor Snape responded Harry let out a sigh and said quietly, "Death Eaters."

Lily stared back at him, fear and confusion all over her face. "At Hogwarts? Now?"

"Now," Snape sneered and, with one more silent exchange with Dumbledore, he swept from the room. Lily continued to look back and forth between himself and Dumbledore but Harry's mind was filled with one terrible, hollowing thought. There are Death Eaters at Hogwarts.

Harry thought of Malfoy and what he had been planning all year, because he had been planning something. He was sure that Malfoy was involved in this somehow, there could be no refuting it now. Everything that had happened up until that point in the evening seemed much less important now than the fact that Voldemort's supporters had made their way into Hogwarts. His meeting with Dumbledore, the revelation that Snape had been the one to overhear the prophecy, even the fact that the red-haired girl in the office might just be his daughter – none of that was as important as Death Eaters in the castle.

Lily's face was white with fear. She seemed frozen. He thought fleetingly of Ginny and Ron and Hermione and how he had left them the Felix Felicis and told them to keep an eye out. Did they know about the Death Eaters? Did anyone but Snape know?

Standing abruptly, Harry gripped his wand more tightly in his hand and took a step towards the office door but Dumbledore was suddenly blocking his path. He blinked and then Dumbledore's hands, one normal and one blackened and dead-looking, were resting on his shoulders.

"Harry, I need you to listen to me very carefully."

Harry nodded, not prepared to deny Dumbledore anything in that moment. He had rarely seen the Headmaster so focused and vehement.

"After tonight, I hope to explain things to you more clearly but for now you must listen."

The grip on Harry's shoulders tightened and he nodded more earnestly this time. "Yes, of course."

"There is a cave," Dumbledore said, his blue eyes fixed on Harry's own. "In this cave there is, I am certain, a very important object, a locket, do you understand?"

A horcrux. "Yes."

"This cave is the one Tom visited as a boy. You remember the story?"

Harry did. Mrs. Cole, from the orphanage, had said that those other two children, they had never been the same….

"I remember," he said confidently.

"If you have to, you can find it." It was not a question, but Harry nodded anyway. And then before Harry had time to realize why Dumbledore was telling him this, the Headmaster had given his shoulders one more squeeze and then rushed out of the office, his voluminous cloak sweeping out behind him.

Harry and Lily were left standing alone in the office as the last rays of the sun faded into night.

Even as James stood, preparing to venture into someone else's mind, he could not keep his own thoughts in one place. He was distracted by the time turners and Lily and whether or not he would find anything to help her in Terry Boot's memory.

They did not exactly cover a lot of new ground so far with their investigation; most of it had been in the report. But James could not help but be intrigued by this mysterious new individual that Terry had dredged up from some buried part of his memory. He did not know how significant this individual's presence was but he could not help feeling that something sinister had been happening. It was not every day that someone infiltrated the Department of Mysteries, much less loitered secretly around the various artifacts.

He wanted to outright ask Boot how they worked, what happened if you broke them, and if there was any way to reverse their effects. But now that he had the feeling their research could possibly be turning into a criminal investigation at any moment, he thought it best to keep quiet a little longer.

In any case, it was too late for the moment. Elaine was already standing next to Terry, her wand directed at his temple. Terry looked distinctly uncomfortable with this arrangement and James did not blame him. He certainly would not want someone else poking around in his thoughts.

"How exactly is this going to work," Terry asked, his sharp features pinched in a frown.

It was Walter who answered. "Elaine is going to be performing the charms we've developed and James is going to be the one actually viewing and navigating your memories."

Terry continued to look skeptical and his posture did not relax. Elaine looked impatient and before she could jump in James tried to explain further. "Often what happens with memory loss is that memories aren't really erased. It's more like parchment with an ink stain. You can't read what's written there any more, but it's still there."

He took a small step forward. "I'm going to be placing my wand on the other side of your head. Just try to relax."

Terry nodded, his eyes following James and he approached his side. "So, it really is a bit like legilimency, then," he asked.

"Yes," Elaine chirped in. "That's really where we got the idea. But theoretically, not only will we be able to see your memories in greater detail than with legilimency, we'll be able to uncover hidden memories as well without damaging the brain."

James glared at Elaine over Terry's head and raised his eyebrows. "Not that there's any risk of that," Elaine added quickly.

"Brilliant," Terry muttered. "Best get on with it then."

The first attempt was nothing short of abysmal as nothing happened at all. Elaine's eyes were shut in concentration as she silently mouthed the complex incantations. "No, that's not it," she said abruptly without opening her eyes. A moment later she was murmuring quietly to herself again. James stood very still, watching her intently, his own spell held tight in his mind and then suddenly, Elaine was gone. And so was Terry. And Walter, and Fletcher Smith. He was standing exactly where he had been a moment before, wand still in hand, but everyone else had disappeared.

The sound of shuffling papers behind him made James spin rapidly, gripping his wand and he almost called out before he realized that the man now in front of him was none other than Terry Boot. Or, to be more precise, it was a memory of him.

For a second James just stood there as he adjusted to being, in a way, inside someone else's head. He was quite sure his physical body was still standing next to Terry Boot but he certainly felt real enough right here. It did not feel like any other memory James had ever experienced. He had been in a pensieve once before but this was somehow crisper and more real than that had been. He felt certain he could walk to the other end of the Department of Mysteries, far away from this Terry Boot, and be just as solid merely because Terry remembered what was there.

He really could see layers and nuances to the surroundings that must have been stored only in Terry's subconscious. He was in a world entirely in Terry Boot's head.

Keeping half of his attention on Terry clearing up his desk James walked over to the time turners to get a closer look. They were so small, so simple, and yet the damage they could do was enormous. It was hard to believe that just one of these delicate glass objects had caused his sister to vanish.

He reached out a hand, wondering if he could touch them, but then suddenly stopped short, his hand only inches from the shelf in front of him. He could have sworn that, through the gap, he had seen someone move on the other side of the shelves. He spun and saw Terry still standing at his desk. Terry had been right. There was someone else here, someone who was taking care not to be noticed.

Moving quickly James strode around the shelves to find the culprit, not sure what he was expecting. He could see a figure in the shadows, their profile outlined in shades of blue from the light all around them. Because he did not have to worry about being seen or heard James broke easily into a jog down the thin row, his footsteps making no sound as they beat on the ground that was not really there.

He caught up to the mysterious intruder from behind and when he edged around her and saw her face it felt like someone had punched him in the stomach.

What was Pansy Parkinson, reporter for the Daily Prophet, doing in the Department of Mysteries?