cxlvi. in this reality or the next
Upon prying her eyes open to the hospital wing's ceiling, Harriet's first thought was, Oh, not again.
It wasn't a secret that she hated the infirmary, that she despaired of finding herself there whenever she looked up and saw the familiar rafters and arched ribbing, the moonlight sitting like a ghost at the tall, unveiled windows. Tonight, the moonlight wasn't quite so prevalent, a gentle rain pattering on the glass that didn't match Harriet's inner turmoil at all. Given how quick her heart was beating, she thought the rain should sound like drums or boots marching on solid stone.
She hated it here.
The ward was dark, but she still wore her filthy school uniform, legs bloody in half a dozen places from running through the wilderness, so Harriet surmised she hadn't been sprawled there long. Hermione sat on a chair between her bed and the next, where Elara laid, her head wrapped up in thick gauze as she glared across the aisle at the infirmary's only source of light, a single candle on a nightstand. Harriet jostled her aching body enough to look as well.
"A note, you say?" Professor Dumbledore inquired, sounding as if Snape—half-slumped against his own bed, ragged and soaked to the bone, one arm braced to his injured side like a kicked dog—had just made a fascinating comment.
"Yes," Snape hissed. "Written in Granger's hand, waiting on the desk. How it got there, I couldn't say, seeing as the brat was already in the forest. But, unless Miss Granger is secretly an Olympic sprinter, I fail to see how she covered the distance in such an abbreviated time."
Dumbledore smirked, his beard giving an uneven twitch when he did so. "No, I don't believe she is." Then, the Headmaster sobered, gazing through his half-moon spectacles at the tired, shivering man before him, rainwater still dripping from Snape's cloak. "I commend you for remembering the Wolfsbane, Severus," he told Snape with a grim tilt of his head. "I cannot bear to think of how much worse this evening might have been if you had not had the forethought. I will impress upon Remus the severity of his misstep when he is himself once more."
"I told you," Snape snarled, voice gone as mean and nasty as a rattlesnake curled up under a rock, ready to strike. "I told you, Dumbledore, I told you having a fucking werewolf in the castle was madness, that he was just as thick as ever with his merry band of fucking thie—ouch! Leave off, woman!"
Madam Pomfrey, who'd been trying to inspect his injuries, startled when Snape smacked her hand from his ribs. "Stop being difficult, Severus! I have other patients to attend to!"
"Then attend to the wretched little blighters and leave me in peace!"
"You've three broken ribs, by my guess, and Rowena only knows if any of those gashes are infected. The rest will keep." Again, Snape shoved her hands away. "Lay down, Professor Snape!"
"Kindly keep your ministrations limited to the sickly and juvenile, Madam!"
"Then it's a good thing I'm looking at the biggest bloody child in the room at the moment!"
"And what of Greyback?" Dumbledore asked as if Snape and Pomfrey weren't locked in a furious competition of wills. Harriet thought Pomfrey might actually smack the Potions Master if given half a chance, no matter the blood drying to his face. Snape sniffed, unimpressed, and his gaze rose to Dumbledore.
"I do not know," he admitted, jaw clenched. "Someone managed to draw him off. One of your agents, then?"
"Perhaps." Dumbledore ran his hand through his beard. "I'm certain we'll discover more in the morning. You should rest now, I think. You've expended a great deal of magic and energy tonight. However, the students are safe, and there is nothing more to do at the moment."
"What are you going to do with Black?" Snape demanded, ignoring the Headmaster's platitudes.
"He's being held in the dungeons until he can be remanded into Ministry custody for trial."
"Trial?" Snape's tone went quiet, soft as a whisper, and Harriet knew from experience his temper was about to erupt. "He gets a trial after terrorizing a school full of children for a year—stalking students, trespassing, attempting murder on the grounds? He'll get off, won't he? I'm not surprised. All is forgiven for one of your golden Gryffindors, the return of the blessed son to your saintly fold." His volume rose. "Why is it that nothing Black does reaps repercussions? Nothing any of them ever did earned more than a slap on the wrist from you or McGonagall or fucking Horace or any of you!"
"Now, Severus—."
"But if he'd been a nasty little Slytherin, you'd have never forgiven him. Slytherins don't get forgiven for their mistakes, do they?! No, no worthless, scrawny Slytherin boys growing up with too much Dark magic in a poor milltown would ever earn your forgiveness. If I'd tried to feed him to a werewolf, I wouldn't have been swatted on the nose and sent off to my gilded tower; you would have chucked me to the Dementors right off, boy or no! You'd have seen me in Azkaban much faster than the first time around!"
Harriet didn't have a bloody clue what Snape was on about, but the man was spitting mad, lurching off the bed he'd been slumped against to stand eye to eye with Dumbledore, breathing as hard as he had while running from Greyback. That couldn't be good for his ribs.
"You know that isn't true, Severus," Dumbledore said, gentle and calm, not blinking or lowering his gaze. "You're injured and need to calm yourself. The magic you used to tonight—."
"Is the only reason I'm still breathing!"
"A very good thing indeed, something I and many others are grateful for, but those spells are not without their considerable drawbacks. You know this. You must rest."
"Don't—."
"Here—." Pomfrey jostled Snape's unsteady hand and forced his long, skinny fingers around a tumbler. "It's Firewhiskey."
But it wasn't Firewhiskey; Harriet had seen the witch take a vial of purple liquid, hold it out of sight, and Charm the vial into a glass, then the potion into a clear, amber substance that looked like Firewhiskey, at least from a distance. Snape drank it, maybe because he was angry or upset and didn't notice the discrepancies, maybe because he didn't care—but as soon as the disguised potion hit his tongue and he swallowed on reflex, Snape dropped the glass. It shattered on the flagstone. His eyes widened, and his head swiveled to fix Pomfrey with an inky, incredulous stare.
"You dosed me," he said, the anger beginning to billow, red blotches creeping up from his robes' confining collar. "How dare—!"
Then, Snape went out like a blown candle, Dumbledore catching him before he could hit the floor with surprising strength for a man of his age with only one arm. Pomfrey snorted.
"As if I'd give one of my patients Firewhiskey," she muttered, assisting Dumbledore with levering Snape into the bed proper. "The stubborn boy's going to be as mad a wet kneazle in the morning, you mark my words. Werewolves, Albus? What is this world coming to?"
"I'll leave Severus to your estimable case, Poppy," Dumbledore said, neatly side-stepping Pomfrey's remarks. She huffed, turning her back, and started to wave her wand over the Potions Master's limp form before the Headmaster snapped the privacy curtains shut, hiding them from view. He retrieved his own wand and chanted under his breath, a thin line of blue runes briefly flaring to life on the floor around the curtains before dissipating. Professor Dumbledore raised his head. "Good evening, girls."
"Er, good evening, Professor Dumbledore?" It came out like a question, and the Headmaster chuckled.
"It appears the three of you have had a rather adventurous night. Again."
"You could say that, sir." Harriet rubbed at her brow and glanced at her friends, Hermione fidgeting with her hands, Elara staring at Snape's curtains with a blank, distant expression. "What happened after we got separated? I don't really remember much after the Dementors showed up."
Hermione managed to pry her hands apart, but Harriet could see the anxiety in her face still, the uneasy set of her shoulders. "Nothing too terribly exciting happened to us in comparison," she said. "Mr. Black, he—well, after he attacked Greyback, Professor Lupin intervened, and Mr. Black came back to me. By that point, someone had run off on her own—." She glared at Elara, who looked up at the ceiling, feigning interest in a cobweb up there. "And we hadn't a clue where she'd gone, and Professor Snape had taken you into the woods alone. Greyback hurt Professor Lupin, and then he chased after you."
"Is Professor Lupin okay?" Harriet remembered that haunting yowl in the forest just before Greyback's loping footsteps had started.
"He should be? We obviously couldn't do anything for him, not when—well. Mr. Black checked on him and thought it was just a broken leg and a few deep cuts. Madam Pomfrey will have to look him over in the morning." Hermione sighed, brow furrowed in thought. "Afterward, Mr. Black tried to follow Greyback—and you and Professor Snape, but you'd already gotten so far, too far for him to chase. He came back for me, and we went looking for Elara."
The witch in question exhaled, a harsh, cutting noise, crossing her arms over her chest. Harriet noticed her collar, with its buttons torn, gaped enough for the scar below her throat to be visible. "Pettigrew bashed my head in and stole my wand."
Harriet gasped.
"Mr. Black and I found her," Hermione rushed on to explain. "And he carried her back to the castle, where he—."
"Turned himself in to me," Professor Dumbledore interjected with a smile, nodding toward Hermione. "And told me his harrowing story, as he should have done from the very beginning, but Sirius has always had a rebellious spirit. It can be quite inconveniencing sometimes, but alas, perhaps it is my failing for not better earning his trust."
Elara's eye twitched.
"What about Pettigrew? Did he get away?" Elara's scowl darkened to something near apocalyptic. "So that's a yes. What does this mean for Sirius?"
"Nothing good, I'd think," Hermione replied with a frown.
"Now, I wouldn't worry too quickly, Miss Granger," Professor Dumbledore said. "There is some hope for Mr. Black's recompense still, if you know where to look." Poking about the pockets of his cerulean robes, the Headmaster hummed a bit—then produced a jam jar that should not have fit so seamlessly into any article of clothing, and inside the jam jar laid a familiar, Stunned rat.
None of the three witches gathered in the dim infirmary had a single word to say, struck dumb by the bizarre sight of their Headmaster holding a rat in a jar like some bizarre kind of fruit preserve.
"But how?" Hermione rasped. "Where—? Were you in the forest, sir? Did you know what was happening?"
"No, Miss Granger, I did not. I had no foresight of the events that occurred this evening. As for where I procured Mr. Pettigrew here, you handed him to me about five minutes before I strode into the ward."
Harriet waited for the other foot to drop, for whatever missing link of information she didn't have to reveal itself, but as Professor Dumbledore and Hermione shared a single, knowing look, Harriet and Elara simply gaped, befuddled.
"I…I understand, Professor," Hermione said, grimacing.
"I'm sure you do." Shuffling again, Professor Dumbledore dropped Pettigrew into his pocket and instead withdrew a rather handsome pocket-watch, opening it to study its face. "It is precisely nine thirty-two at the moment. About four and half turns should do it, my dear, but you don't have time to spare, I fear. The limit is five."
"I know, sir."
"Good, good." He found a lemon sherbet packet in his robes and popped one candy into his mouth. Nothing made any sense at all to Harriet, and all she could concentrate on was those silly candies, like the ones she saw once in a dream. Was she dreaming now? It would explain why Harriet felt so adrift in the conversation. "Now, I'm going to step past that curtain and speak with Madam Pomfrey. She and I will be preoccupied for, oh, let's say, twenty minutes?"
"Okay, sir."
"See you soon."
With that, Professor Dumbledore parted the curtains around Snape's bed just enough to slip inside, then shut them tight once more. Harriet rounded on Hermione the moment their dotty Headmaster was out of sight—but Elara was faster, leaping out of her bed, heedless of her wounded head.
"Hermione, what in God's name is going on?" she demanded, a hot flush overtaking her pale face as she loomed over the shorter witch and swayed. "Damaged brain or no, I remember perfectly well that you were the one who sent us out to the Sundial Garden after class! And then Professor Lupin said you sent him after us, which is absurd, considering you were standing next to me the entire time! Now Dumbledore tells us you caught Pettigrew, when there's no possible way you could have while you were there with Black!"
Holding up a hand, Hermione drew in a calming breath. "I'll explain—I will, I promise! But please, sit down. Please." Elara sat, grumbling, but still, she sat, and Hermione gave her a weak smile she did not return. "It all begins with this, I suppose."
Hermione unbuttoned the top of her rumped blouse and drew out a gleaming chain, hanging from the end of which was a strange, golden device. Harriet leaned closer to inspect it and saw a tiny hourglass encircled by several rings like an astrolabe, and on each ring were a series of numbers, all of it pinned into place with a slender dial at the top.
Elara recognized it first and let out a sound of disgust. "Is that a Time-Turner?"
"How on earth do you know that?"
"The Blacks helped invent them," Elara retorted, lips pursed. "My family has dotted the Department of Mysteries and the Ministry for decades. Of course they have—tight-fisted, scheming supremacists that they were. My—our—." She shot a glance at Harriet. "Great-great grandfather, Cygnus Black, not the one I met, left behind old partial sketches of them, and they're framed in the trophy room. I didn't know they actually existed."
"Lovely," Hermione snarked. "Secrets of the universe, sitting about gathering dust in your china hutch." She shook her head. "This is how I've been managing my schedule this year, what with all my extra classes. I know you've noticed the books and discrepancies before."
Harriet asked, "What does it do?" and then groaned at her own stupidity. "I'm guessing it turns time, but how exactly? And bloody why? Do you go forward or back or—?"
"I'm not sure how it operates, exactly. It only goes backward; if it's possible to move forward through time, no one's told me anything about it, and I doubt anyone would. Professor McGonagall handed it to me at the beginning of the year as part of a new, experimental program the Ministry wished to test out."
"And they decided to test it on a third-year?" Elara demanded.
"They're probably not going to test it on anyone now, not after what I've apparently used it for." Hermione dropped the Time-Turner, letting it hang against her middle, and rubbed her cheeks. "It only goes back five hours—that's what Professor Dumbledore was talking about, with the turns. The dial is respective to the hours. I don't have much time to explain, but try to imagine a length of yarn with a knot at the end, and from the knot splinters all the individual threads."
"…all right."
"The yarn is—time, basically. The timeline. And the knot represents a choice, or an action, or—any kind of change, really. Time prefers stasis, and with every eventuality attempts to return to perfect balance, but the endless incidentals—anyway. Every individual thread sprouting from the knot is a consequence of that change. Magical theorists assume these threads comprise different realities. You could say the continuity of the universe is a giant blanket and all realities are just another stitch within it."
Harriet scrunched her nose but thought she had a basic understanding of what Hermione said. Time travel had been in Dudley's favorite sci-fi programs, and when Harriet had listened to them from the cupboard's vent, she'd heard them speak about multiverses and time travel and whatnot. It was at that point Dudley usually flipped the channel, bored by the theory. "But how'd you come to be in the History of Magic corridor? And how come you told us to go to the Sundial Garden? If you can—go back in time, then wouldn't you tell us not to go there? Warn us away?"
Sighing, Hermione admitted, "I don't know."
"What d'you mean?"
"Exactly that. I don't know."
"But what if you used it to go back this time and tell us to bugger off to dinner instead? I don't want to get kidnapped by Wormtail again! Or—for the first time?"
"I can't. That's not what happened."
"But—."
Hermione stood, frustration rolling off her. "Terrible, terrible things happen to those who mess with time, Harriet! It isn't a question of why or if I want to; it's a question of whether or not making such a decision would inexplicably unravel our very beings in the timeline's effort to contain paradoxes. It could spiral into an irrevocable helix of time-turning fallacies—or we could get stuck with the proverbial chicken or the egg problem." Hermione scratched her scalp. "Logic dictates that at the beginning of this stream, there was a version of us that went to the Sundial Garden unprompted. Whatever time travel occurred in answer to that reality has been self-replicating—meaning I have to go back in time to send myself back in time in the first place."
"Theoretically, then," Elara said, arms crossed. "If you chose to shatter the hourglass, would you not be making a decision that branches away from the faceted realities of yourself? There would still be a Hermione who went back in time who existed in this reality, if only briefly, but she would be from a reality—what? Once removed from this one? One loop before in the knitting of the giant, universal scarf?"
"It's possible," Hermione agreed, sounding tired and, for once, reticent to debate her point. "Or I may shatter this reality, shatter us. Time and existence are very tenuous things, Elara, and Merlin knows, it's magic. Very old, and very temperamental magic. This is why I am not supposed to impart knowledge of the future to myself. It introduces a paradox the universe will do whatever it can to fix."
She held the little hourglass again, and it glittered in the weak, warbling candlelight. Harriet found it deceptively pretty for something with the potential to ruin so many lives.
"So I could choose to not go back, yes. I could attempt to break the cycle," Hermione muttered, cradling the device in her palm. "But I'm not going to. I don't want to take the chance. I'm going to return, tell us to go to the Sundial Garden, send Lupin after us, and apparently leave a note for Snape." She blew air through her lips, and when she continued, she sounded more like herself, more determined and strong. "And then capture Pettigrew, however I manage that." With that decided, Hermione lifted the Time-Turner and began to spin the rings.
"Wh—! Wait—! Hold on a minute there!" Harriet scrambled to her feet—and promptly landed on her face, her leg asleep from sitting on it for so long. She got upright under her own power and straightened her torn, muddied skirt. "I'm going with you."
"No, you're not. I just told you—."
"You've no evidence to show that I didn't go back," Harriet pointed out, reaching to crook a finger under the skinny chain and give it a gentle tug, pulling more from Hermione's collar. "I could have been there the entire time, out of sight. So budge up and put that around my neck. I'm not letting you go back to that forest on your own."
Hermione studied her friend, brown eyes flicking back and forth before she decided the effort of trying to dissuade Harriet wasn't worth it. Harriet wouldn't change her mind on this. The whole blather about time travel sounded like utter tosh to her, the kind of fickle nonsense Trelawney went on and one about, and if Hermione meant to go back out into the Forbidden Forest with two bloody werewolves and a desperate serial murderer on the loose, she was going too.
On the bed, Elara touched her bandages and frowned, eyes on her knees. "I can barely sit up without getting dizzy. I…can't come with you," she mumbled, frustration thick on her tongue. "I almost wish you'd let it go, let Pettigrew go, just so Black would go back to prison, and things could be as they were. I don't…I don't want things to change."
Harriet reached for her hand, took it in her own, and squeezed. Elara's fingers were ice-cold. Truth be told, Harriet didn't much want things to change either, not if it meant upending what semblance of peace and normality she and Elara had forged in Grimmauld Place, but Pettigrew didn't deserve freedom, and Black didn't deserve prison. "You'd never forgive yourself."
"Perhaps." Elara blinked, eyes sliding closed as she held Harriet's hand and took comfort from her warmth. "And I do want Pettigrew to pay for what he's done." She opened her eyes again and looked at Hermione. "Do give that jar a few shakes for me before handing it off to Dumbledore, will you?"
Hermione grinned—a wicked, mischievous thing that usually meant she was planning something terrible. "It's a promise."
Nodding, Elara released them, and Harriet crowded close to Hermione, the Time-Turner's chain cool against her neck as it settled into place.
"Ready?"
"As I'll ever be."
Hermione turned the dials, gently, carefully, snapping each into place one by one as the light kept on sparkling in the glass and Harriet watched the sand spiral. Then, without warning, Hermione clicked the dial into place, and they disappeared.
A/N:
Dumbledore, holding up cake: "You've done a great job, here's your reward."
Snape: "Why is there a Chiclet on it?"
Dumbledore: "That's the best part! You can choose between a nap or an hour of TV! Which do you want?"
Snape, sobbing: "The nap."
