[A note to readers-Thanks to those who took the time to leave a short note. I appreciate all comments, positive, negative, or neutral. There are a couple of little typo errors that I've noticed. Two spellings for the house elf Winky, for example. At one point she became Twinky. Those don't affect the plot and I'll go back and fix them eventually, but writing new text every day for Part Two, and re-posting Part One as chapters is consuming all my fan fiction time budget at present. Best to all Harry and Daphne fans!]
Chapter Twelve
Brigadier, We're Having a Little Problem With Time
Harry walked through the gate in the dark, up the hill, and outside the wards. After casting revealing charms, he was satisfied it was safe to disapparate. Harry visualized his apartment and turned. With a 'pop' he disappeared from the ridge overlooking Greengrass Manor.
With a 'pop' Harry apparated into a water-filled hole in the ground, looked up, and was blinded by a brilliant light directly above him. In the instant before he lost his sight, Harry saw a splintered log, barbed wire, and a bayonet, fixed to the barrel of a rifle. The rifle was pointed at his sternum. The bayonet rested on his shirt.
"Whoa, I surrender!" Harry shouted.
"Don't stick him yet, lieutenant said we're supposed to take all the prisoners back to the command post!"
Harry knew he was hearing English, but he couldn't place the accents. As his eyesight started to come back, he saw that he was in a war zone, somewhere. The uniforms his captors wore looked familiar, but not current.
"He's out of uniform. Must be a spy. I say we stick 'em," said the first voice.
"Naw, got to take him back. We'll turn him in. Maybe there's a ree-ward."
Apparently, that resolved the disagreement. Harry still couldn't place the accent. The first soldier made a 'Get-up' gesture with his bayonet, and Harry stood up in the crater. He started moving toward the lip nearest the two soldiers when he felt his shoe stick in the mud, and start to come off. He started to reach down to pull the shoe out of the mud when he heard two clicks. He thought he knew what those were. He had attended lectures in auror training that went into all kinds of arcane subjects, including muggle weaponry. Muggle firearms, he recalled, sometimes had devices called 'the safety' that in theory rendered them incapable of being fired, if 'the safety' was in the right position. Harry was pretty sure the two soldiers, who he had decided were Americans, had released the safeties on their weapons, and meant to shoot him right then and there.
"Shoe?" he managed to croak out.
"Leave it," said the first soldier. "You ain't goin' that fur."
Harry hadn't heard American English spoken before, but he had heard English, Scots, Irish, and Australians, so by process of elimination he settled on Americans. They could have been Canadians, but he hadn't heard Canadian English spoken, although he had been told Canadians are always sticking 'Eh' into their sentences, and these two weren't doing so, therefore, in the absence of additional info, he'd proceed on the assumption that these were Americans.
Harry got to the lip of the crater and stumbled into a foot path where he was joined by the two Americans and marched off to the command post. He wondered how far he would have to walk with one shoe.
While he walked, Harry tried to assess, from the limited information available, just what he had stumbled into. The American helmets were old fashioned, soup plate models. The visible features of the uniforms were a blouse, worn outside the trousers, which were gathered below the knee in a bandage-like wrap. Unless he had apparated into a movie set somewhere, Harry had missed his exit and landed in the First World War, also known as The Great War. That's useful. If Harry remembered his Muggle Studies from Hogwarts, the first Americans got to France in late 1917, going into combat in 1918. The war ended in November 1918, so he had to be in muggle France, probably sometime in 1918.
A terrain feature emerged out of the darkness. It looked like a little hill, as burnt and blasted as the rest of the land nearby, but when they got closer, Harry saw there was a large canvas drawn over the top. He guessed they had arrived at the command post.
The sentry outside the canvas door said, quietly, "Halt."
Harry stopped. The two Americans stopped and let their rifle butts rest on the ground.
"State your business," said the sentry.
"Corporal Smith and Private Jones returning from patrol, bringing a prisoner found about 40 to 50 yards outside the company perimeter, speaks English, dressed as a civilian. We're bringing him back to the CP as ordered."
"Advance and be recognized," said the sentry. Something poked Harry in the back, and he moved forward.
"Close enough" said the sentry. Harry and the two Americans stopped once again.
"Sergeant, Corporal Smith and Private Jones are outside, with a prisoner," called the sentry. A canvas flap was pulled back and a voice said, "Corporal Smith, Private Jones, bring your prisoner in, please."
The sentry waved Harry on inside, followed by the two Americans. By the light of a kerosene lantern Harry just made out some vaguely humanoid shapes.
"Captain," said an American wearing sergeant's stripes, "these are Corporal Smith and Private Jones."
"Yes, I know, Sergeant," said another of the shapes. "Good going men, really a great, great job. Next time we get some slots we'll get you a few days in Biarritz, I'll see to it."
Corporal Smith and Private Jones murmured respectful yes-sirs and thank-you-sirs.
"Now, Major Zabini, if you'll sign here…and there we go, you can take our prisoner here off for interrogation, thanks to the excellent work of Corporal Smith and Private Jones. Thank you, men. Excellent job, and Sergeant, if you would please?"
"Detail, dis-MISSED."
Once Corporal Smith and Private Jones were beyond the canvas flap, a hand reached out of the gloom clutching a wand and a voice said, "Lumos!"
"Harry, here we are again!" said Blaise Zabini.
"Blaise," said Harry. "What year is this?"
"Harry, it's 1918, and this is Captain Robert Goldstein, United States Army. Captain Goldstein's absolutely first-rate Sergeant Brown, and you know Kingsley, of course."
Harry looked over at the humanoid shape coming out of the gloom in the corner and nearly fell over at the sight of Kingsley Shacklebolt, the Minister for Magic.
"Harry, we've got to get you cleaned up," said Kingsley, drawing his wand. Harry felt the magic on his skin as the dirt was dislodged, and his clothing freshened up.
"You're missing a shoe, Harry," said Kingsley. "You never were a dapper dresser, exactly, but I don't think I've seen that before."
"It's stuck in the mud in the bottom of that hole where Smith and Jones found me. One second, I'm disapparating from Greengrass Manor, the next, I'm in a hole, with two Americans whose English I can't understand, debating 'stickin' me, there is this big bright light right overhead, blinding me…"
"Star shell. Well, don't worry, we'll get you fixed up," said Kingsley. "But right now we've got to get you briefed on what this is all about. We had an idea where you were going to appear, which you've probably figured out already, and Captain Goldstein here, kindly sent two of his best men out to await your arrival. They came back alive, and everything. Not an insignificant accomplishment with those snipers in the other trenches. Enough, though, the captain needs to fill you in on some things from his perspective, so, Captain Goldstein?"
"Harry Potter, an honor," began Goldstein. "Some of what I'm going to tell you may be hard to accept, hard to understand, or both. We have encountered a little problem with time. You are undoubtedly aware of the work of Professor Albert Einstein. Superficial understanding of Einstein's theories becomes quite common later in the century, but very few people in 1918 know who he is. Mathematicians, physicists, astronomers, and chemists are reading his papers, and grasping the ramifications. Unfortunately, there are some wizards who have done the work necessary to understand a bit of what Professor Einstein is saying, and someone seems to be running with it.
"We've had a few incidents of unexplained interruptions of the time stream. Nothing that couldn't be patched and put right by the people with the right skills. That can occur from natural causes. Magic and muggle physics have certain points of intersection, did you know that?"
"I suspected it," said Harry, "but no one ever confirmed it, until now."
"They're very obscure," said Goldstein. "Processes that happen down at the most fundamental level, totally invisible, undetectable unless stumbled across. Professor Einstein encountered some phenomena that couldn't be explained using physics as generally understood, so, you might say, he did the math. Then he had to draw some new conclusions.
"The thing is, there is a tiny corps of specialists who have been tending to the time stream since the riverine civilizations were new developments. Like anything else, the stream has maintenance needs, analogous to the pruning of plants, or performing corrosion protection for metal. Wizards have always had a role in it. It's kind of a liaison job."
"You may be aware, in America, wizards and what we call 'no-maj' and you call muggles, don't interact much. The time stream maintenance liaison function is an exception. Little things happening on very subtle levels, left uncorrected, a million years later, you've got planets colliding. We think this is different. Someone out there is experimenting, intentionally cross-connecting time streams, but we don't know why. There have been breaches that can't be attributed to natural phenomena. We have to conclude they were intentional. It causes all kinds of disruption. You have figured in two incidents. We want to find out why."
"Knock me over with a feather," Harry thought. Time travel was one of the major taboos of wizarding. The temptation to revisit the past was too great, and the ramifications of modifying time so profound, that time travel was permitted only under the most stringent controls. But if someone had started disconnecting time streams and reconnecting them in new configurations, the only possible outcomes would be disastrous.
"Taken to its logical extreme," Harry said, "wouldn't that usher in Chaos? Cause and effect would cease to exist."
"Didn't I tell you Harry would get it, Robert?" said Kingsley. "He got there in, what, two minutes? It took us weeks!"
Harry looked at Blaise, who was smiling and giving him a thumbs-up.
"So, what's next?" Harry asked. "Where is the problem, anyway? Which century?"
Kingsley spoke up.
"Next is getting you out of those clothes and into a uniform so you can move around without being our prisoner. Blaise? Second question, we're not sure, there are clues but no conclusions. The problem is in the twentieth century, 1918, but the symptoms are appearing in ours."
"How does Captain Goldstein fit in?"
"Oh, the Captain is a wizard, with some muggle teaching responsibilities in the New York area. Best keep that vague. He's our liaison on the American side."
Blaise appeared with a uniform. "Here you go, sir," said Blaise. "While we're both kitted out, here in the war zone, you can call me Major, or Major Zabini. Observe the niceties, stay low profile."
"Who am I, then," asked Harry?
"You're Head Auror, Harry," said Kingsley. "Your equivalent military grade is Brigadier."
"So, all set?" Blaise checked Harry over for any obvious uniform flaws. "Our transport is this way."
Harry extended his hand to Captain Goldstein. "There was a Goldstein in my year at Hogwarts," he said.
"Anthony. If you see him, Uncle Robert sends regards," said the captain.
Harry followed Blaise and Kingsley outside, where Blaise took the lead down a path to an open touring car. A driver wearing a mud-spattered uniform with sergeant's stripes on the sleeves leapt from the car and opened the rear door.
"Take the rear on the right, Harry. Blaise will sit up front and give us some protection. We need to talk on the way," said Kingsley.
"Mr. Minister, where are we going exactly?"
"I'll be general, not minister while we're in the theatre of operations. And where we're going, that's hard to say. Alright Sergeant, up to the knob."
"Yes, General!" snapped the sergeant, who hopped into the driver's seat, set some controls, hopped back down, ran to the front, and hand-cranked the engine, one, two, three turns, when the engine caught, then ran back, hopped up into his seat, closed the door, put the car in gear, and drove away.
"General," said Harry. "What is this machine?"
"It's a Model T Ford, Harry. Marvelous creation. The Americans invented it. Goes anywhere, mud, fields, couldn't operate here without them. They're a lineal ancestor of Arthur Weasley's Anglia, can you believe it?"
"But General, can't we use magic here? Why don't we just apparate to wherever we're going?"
"It is felt that showing ourselves going about routine tasks, like getting driven by the sergeant here, helps with cover, doesn't draw attention like mysteriously moving about with no one actually seeing us would do. Think of Hermione when she used the time-turner to get to her classes. You and Ron Weasley came close to figuring that out, so, same thing here. We're going up to that knob over there, and we'll move the whole lot by apparation."
"We can do that?" Harry asked, incredulous.
"Desperate times, desperate measures."
Harry lowered his voice. "And the sergeant, he is witting in all this?"
"Oh, yes," said Kingsley. "Have a little patience, Brigadier Potter, this is about to get even more interesting, very soon."
The sergeant drove on a rutted track away from the trench line, between mud fields where lay the remains of mules, horses, equipment, and men. Field medics, working in the dark, collected the bodies of the men, put them on stretchers, and carried them back to collection points, where ambulances waited to take them to the rear. The medics struggled in mud nearly up to their knees, but they handled their burdens without complaint, and carried the loaded stretchers with an air that Harry thought showed genuine tenderness.
"This was fought over yesterday," Kingsley said. "The attack came from that way, more or less east, got to here, and the reserves came from the west and stopped it. Then the men in the trenches, who had wisely made themselves inconspicuous when the other side overran them, popped up and the enemy was trapped. It was a slaughter. Such is the strategic and tactical genius of the commanders on both sides. It is utter, fully diagnosable, madness, Harry. I had read about it, some, years ago. Nothing prepares you for this."
"Whose sector is this?" Harry asked.
"British," Kingsley replied.
"And those uniforms, like the one on that fellow they're carrying off?"
"German."
"They're being awfully nice to him, for an enemy."
"Here's an interesting thing, Harry. The men doing the actual fighting will shoot, stab, bayonet, run out of ammunition and pick up a rock and bash the other guy's head in, but once he's done for, and their blood cools down, they pick him up and lay him out like he's a brother. Humans, wizards and muggles alike, could learn something from that, but it seems like it doesn't come out except in circumstances like what you're looking at.
"Well, looks like we're here. Got a grip on the car, everyone? Hands together then, don't let go."
Harry had never disapparated under such circumstances. Kingsley twisted in his seat and the familiar churning of Harry's stomach started, and he nearly did lose his grasp of the Model T, but the four of them managed to bring it along with them. Harry looked around. The Model T was in the middle of a farmstead somewhere. He saw a stone barn, a two-story house, some animal pens, and what looked like outbuildings, although it was hard to tell in the darkness. He wondered what it looked like in daylight.
Harry could hear rumbles in the distance, and occasionally caught the sound of some rifle or machine gun fire. Nothing seemed to be happening nearby, though, and the farm certainly hadn't been fought over.
"Come on inside, Brigadier, we'll get you fed, and up to speed," said Blaise.
Kingsley and the sergeant joined them, and all entered the farm house. There were plenty of lights burning, a wood stove filled with pots and pans occupied one wall, and Harry smelled fresh bread.
"Where are we?" he asked. After the hell of the trench line, this really did seem like Heaven.
"Little secret," said Kingsley. "We're not that far from the shooting, but this place doesn't get any visitors who aren't magical, so, naturally, wands being what they are, people put them to use. Fixed the place up, you might say. Now, our business is in here," Kingsley indicated a doorway, leading everyone through to what must have been the farmhouse' living room, equipped with a large table in the middle, maps, and a collection of instruments that Harry didn't recognize, but that reminded him of the ones he had seen in Dumbledore's office.
Harry was surprised to see the sergeant join the group in the living room. He was wondering what the driver was going to do in the conference that was obviously about to start, when Kingsley said,
"Introductions are in order. Harry, I want you to meet Mr. James Potter, Harry, James, James, this is Harry."
Harry just stood there gaping as Sergeant James Potter removed his helmet and stuck out his hand.
"Glad to meet you Harry!" he said.
"What is this?" Harry said, with more than a little anger in his voice.
The man before him did look like James in the old photos. He wore glasses, and had a head of black hair that wanted to do anything except stay combed. But James was dead. As far as he knew, James had never time traveled to 1918, either. At least, it wasn't part of the James Potter narrative that Harry had picked up at Hogwarts. Someone had to be playing a very nasty trick on Harry.
"Time for explanations," said Kingsley.
"To say the least," Harry choked out.
"The simple version," said James, "is that I truly am James Potter of Godric's Hollow, husband of Lily Evans, father of Harry. But, and a big but, I concede, I am not yourfather. I'm not James from this timeline. This timeline's James is indeed dead, may he rest in peace."
"We have a problem with time, Harry. Streams are getting confused. Think of it this way: Put too much strain on a rope, and the rope parts at its weakest point. Splice the rope together, and you can do certain things but it isn't the same. Diameter, length, strength; all are different. Splice one piece of the parted rope with a different rope, more differences. If you have to knot them together, more differences. Change one little thing in a time stream and everything that one little thing touched after that point, and everything that all those things touched, gets modified, differences emerge, BIG differences. There are formulas for all of that but the math gets really complicated, so take my word for it. Time streams are getting broken and spliced back together. We are one incident away from disaster."
Harry didn't know what to call his father-from-another-time-stream so he settled on Sergeant Potter.
"Sergeant Potter, what does this have to do with me?" Harry asked.
James looked at Kingsley, nodding slightly.
"Harry," Kingsley began, "James is here in this time stream on assignment. He is part of the time repair team where he comes from. We needed some help because this was totally outside our experience. James was loaned to us to help us get up and running. He'll be going back soon."
"Again, why me?"
Kingsley sighed. "The phenomenon is not random. In James' time stream, Professor Einstein is a few years younger, hence he published his papers an equivalent number of years earlier, and the time stream breaches began earlier as well. They have just about contained the problem over there. In James' stream, the experimenter didn't really want to do anything drastic. It was more like model railroading. You know how hobbyists build the elaborate train systems and then turn on the power and watch the trains run around?
"In James' stream, the experimenter did that, but he messed with the train schedules. The real trains, and the real schedules. Loads of inconvenienced passengers, freight deliveries disrupted. Luckily, his actions didn't really change the course of history."
"Like the same thing happening to muggle airlines. Just some pissed-off passengers, give them a voucher for a free flight and all is well."
"But in YOUR stream," said James, "there have been two very concerning splicing episodes, very concerning indeed. Things that can interrupt the stream, and bring those cascading mutations we talked about."
"And those are incidents in MY life?" asked Harry.
Kingsley looked at Blaise, who looked at James, who looked at Kingsley.
"Not just you, Harry," said Kingsley. "The experimenter seems to be taking an interest in Daphne as well. It is the two of you who have attracted their attention."
Harry slumped in his chair, laid his glasses on the table in front of him, and put his palms over his eyes. The day had been long and arduous—emotional rollercoaster didn't begin to describe what he, Daphne and the Greengrasses had been through. He felt the old nightmares coming back.
"Who's doing this?" Harry demanded of James. "Who did the experimenting in your time stream? Tell me where to find them in this one and I'll put an end to it."
For Blaise and Kingsley, who knew Harry's history well, there was no mistaking the lethality implicit in his voice. If he got the chance, Harry would kill, preemptively, to eliminate a possible threat.
"Harry," said Kingsley, with a great gentleness, "It's not possible to solve this in the way you are thinking. Time streams have to be allowed to follow their courses. The incidents we're concerned with are Ivy Fletcher and the mysterious, attempted confundus in Hyde Park, and the three wizards you handled at Fabio and Kendra's a few hours ago.
"They told us you showed up without a wand and you thrashed them anyway. Is that true?"
"Yes, General," said Harry.
Kingsley looked at Blaise, who pursed his lips.
"Not unprecedented, but rare. Very rare," mused Kingsley. "Well done, then."
"Thank you, General. What are my orders?" Harry asked.
"We're still collecting information. We've made progress. James saves us a lot of time. Essentially, we need to collect enough to see from the incomplete mosaic where we should look for our experimenter."
James spoke up. "The time repair teams haven't found more than one person doing this kind of experimentation in any one time stream. We don't have a reason to think that varies, so we proceed as if we are looking for one individual, unless that is shown to be wrong. You are critical to finding a solution in this time stream. We expect you will be seeing the effects the experimenter brings about. Daphne may be an ancillary, as in the connection, through the dog Raffles, between Ivy Fletcher, Daphne, and you. She could also be part of the next episode, as she was at Greengrass Manor. We're counting on you being alert to events with those common factors."
"I'm going to the St. Mungo's Ball with Daphne on Saturday. Is that normal life, or the result of intervention by the experimenter?" asked Harry.
James was taking notes.
"That can't be known until triangulated with other information," said Kingsley. "Either way, you're free to go and have a good time. Now, you'll be going back to regular time through a portal that will be opening. Major Zabini and I expect to return later, and I think he wanted to take you to lunch this week, right Blaise?"
"Yes, General, we're working on the reservation right now."
"Harry, Sergeant Potter will drive you to the apparation point. You'll see a portal open as usual, just walk through and you'll find yourself in the atrium of the ministry. You can go wherever you want from there. Watches automatically reset, so check the time, and I recommend you give yourself a minute or two to let yourself catch up to temporal reality. Clear?"
"Not at all, General. I'll get used to it, I suppose," said Harry.
"Actually, that is a very healthy attitude," said James. "Don't chew it over too much, that's what I say."
Harry looked for some indication of irony, but if there was one, he missed it.
Blaise walked Harry and James outside to the Model T. "Don't forget to sign the paper, please, Harry," Blaise said. "It's very important, for the files, you know."
"What am I signing," Harry asked, just a little bit suspicious, considering recent events.
" 'Fraid that's classified, Brigadier," said Blaise, closing Harry's door.
James Potter started the engine with the crank, jogged to the driver's door and hopped in. They got underway as soon as he closed the door.
"How long have we got?" Harry asked.
"Three to four minutes," replied James.
"Can I ask you about your time stream?"
"Let me guess, you want to know what you, Daphne, and some more contemporaries are up to," James said.
"Pretty much," Harry said.
"Okay, bear in mind, this is information about a parallel time stream. Time streams don't mirror, they're more like traveling companions, they sit together on the train, get to the destination and one splits off to the museum while the other has lunch, that sort of thing.
"Not reading anything into this, you understand, in my stream you are not Head Auror. You settled down with Ginny Weasley after Hogwarts, before Ginny underwent a personal crisis while playing for the Harpies. Ginny and Millicent Bulstrode are now in a stable, long-term relationship, Millicent teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts, and Ginny retired from quidditch, keeps house for Millicent and herself, plans and cooks for the most extraordinary dinner parties at their place in London. Their salons are covered by Witch Weekly.
"My Harry didn't take well to getting dumped at first, drew out a bunch of money and gave himself a thoroughgoing tour of every red-wine-and-acoustic-guitar joint on the Mediterranean, came back, and now lives with Romilda Vane near Shell Cottage. Romilda keeps chickens and markets organic eggs, teaches some form of magical meditation, and practices nudism. The woman walks around naked, indoors and out, all day long. If Lily and I want to visit, we have to send a patronus ahead to make sure she's decent. It's embarrassing.
"Seamus and Dean are Seamus and Dean. In every known time stream, Seamus and Dean are always Seamus and Dean. In one, they're a magical music duo act, in another they created and sell a line of magical kitchenware, they're magical travel agents, magical general contractors, magical art gallery owners, magical custom designers and tailors, you name it. Nobody knows why, although several competent temporal researchers are investigating. Daphne is a Healer in my stream, no attachments besides her parents and Astoria. Hermione is Head Unspeakable. Ollivander didn't have any children to pass along his business and knowledge, and Ron has become his apprentice. Ron's found his passion, and Ollivander predicts Ron will surpass him someday soon. Ron and Hermione keep everyone guessing, on/off, on/off.
"And here we are, right on time. The door to that stone barn is a portal. Walk through it anytime in the next two minutes and you're headed for your ministry, just shortly after you joined us here. Missing time is limited to the maximum required for the originally planned travel, otherwise, time accounts get out of balance, and that causes realproblems. If you want to go anywhere but your place, I'd suggest you change clothes first. Right now, you're a regular army brigadier, 1918 style."
Head spinning, Harry asked, "Just to clarify, Ginny and Millicent Bulstrode are together? Together-together?"
"Yep. Near-inseparable. Mad for each other, as far as anyone can tell. But that might, or might not, have anything to do with what goes on in your stream."
"Okay, thanks for the info, thanks for the lift, and safe travels."
"Same to you, Harry. I wish your dad had lived to see you now. He'd be very proud of you. Right through that door, better get going."
Harry turned and headed for the barn. When he got to the door, he looked back, and the Model T and Sergeant James Potter were gone.