Chapter 24:

Unspeakable Acquaintances

Hermione counted her lucky stars that her Monday schedule listed her first class as being under her new favorite teacher. The mysterious, kind and - according to consensus among the other Gryffindor girls - handsome Divination teacher. Hermione, for her part, couldn't find it in her to disagree with the consensus. She wasn't a liar.

Imagine her shock when she ascended the stone staircase of the not-so-secret passage to the divination classroom only to be greeted by a mummy with two black eyes, one arm in a sling and a cotton-filled mouth.

Once again, her complete disengagement from the Hogwarts rumor mill had left her in the dark.

"Did professor Morrigan get into a car crash?" She asked Lavender when she took her seat next to the blonde and Fay.

Professor Morrigan was busy trying to shoo a particularly fat snowy owl that had taken roost on his desk where she glowered at everyone in the room who got close to her master. She wouldn't budge, so eventually he had to give up and begin his class.

"Good morning, everybody. As you all probably know already, I was attacked by a group of would-be assassins at Diagon alley Saturday evening." He explained.

Apparently, Hermione wasn't the only person unaware of these events for hers wasn't the only concerned gasp.

"Oh my god!" Hermione said.

"Aren't you scared?!" Asked Parvati asked.

"Course not. They're dead." Professor Morrigan said matter-of-factly, as if the question was absurd. "But I am in considerable pain at the moment due to my unwillingness to take my prescribed painkillers before a class. I am unwilling to teach while under the influence, you all deserve better. Speaking of, onto todays lesson."

He turned away from them and wrote the days lesson topic on the board while they were left with a significantly more frightening impression of the man than they had before.

Dream Interpretation

The series of groans that echoed around the classroom only served to make Morrigan chuckle.

"I take it my predecessor already covered this topic then?" He asked knowingly.

"To exhaustion!" Said Weasley. "We spent years making up dream journals amounting to nightmares about how we might die."

"Made up, you say?" Morrigan asked with a sly grin.

The guilty silence that met his observation of Ron's choice of words was answer enough.

"Sounds to me like you all haven't done much actual dream interpretation at all." The professor went on. "I'd be surprised if any of you can describe what dream interpretation actually is?"

The questioning tone was a clear invitation to raise hands, and Hermione was never one to turn down such an invitation.

"Yes, miss Granger?" He said, calling on her.

She preened at the attention of those luscious green eyes.

"Dream interpretation is the art of deciphering meaning, usually psychological or spiritual but sometimes prophetic of the symbology in the dreams." She dutifully recited.

"That is incorrect." Morrigan said simply, without a hint of chastisement in his voice.

Her preening turned to wilting at the failure, even with his lack of malice or cruelty in correcting her.

"The answer I was looking for, is bullshit. Dream interpretation is bullshit." He explained to a round of uproarious laughter.

Well, that was Hermione's second guess and honest opinion of it, so she at least had the satisfaction of a professor confirming her own biases against his craft.

"Dreams are at best the chaotic processing of information. A hallucinogenic blending of your experiences of a day with all of your past experiences. Attempting to interpret it is like attempting to interpret "abstract" art, the kind that are low effort low skill random paintings created for the sole purpose of money laundering for the elites of society. But you didn't hear that from me." He went on. "So, the most you'll get from dream interpretation is an interesting conversation that may lead to you opening up about real psychological or spiritual problems, a self-therapy if you will. The same effect could be gained from joining a book club. So the question must be asked. Why in the world would it be part of the divination curriculum?"

This time even Hermione didn't raise her hand. She doubted she would get away with answering "because divination, too, is bullshit" so she bit her tongue.

"Because there is one type of premonition all people are capable of, and all people have achieved multiple times within their lifetimes. Dream Premonitions." He explained. "Visions of the future witnessed in your sleep. Many people, from a Misses Lincoln to Nostradamus, have had visions of the future while in bed and they came true. There's just one problem. Can anybody see it?"

Everyone raised their hand.

"Mister Longbottom?" Morrigan called on the shy child of prophecy.

"I don't usually remember my dreams?" He answered timidly.

"That is EXACTLY right! And that is the purpose of dream journals in the context of dream interpretation." He explained. "To train you to remember and contemplate your dreams, so that when a precognitive, or post cognitive, dream comes down home plate you can hit it out of the park! And if it also helps you develop the mental tools to recognize and tackle your psychological and spiritual hurdles? All the better."

He once again turned his back on the class and retrieved a familiar stack of dream journals. The kind Trelawney had assigned them in years past. Alongside these he had a case of glass vials.

"I will be assigning each of you two dream journals. One to be kept private, the other to be shared with me and or the class." He explained. "If you must withhold the contents of a dream, either because they are, shall we say, a little too spicy to be sharing with your peers or too inappropriate to share with a professor, then mark them as such in the non-private journal."

He went about handing out a pair of journals and glass vials to each student, and Hermione noticed that the snow-white owl glared at each student as the professor neared them. It was as if she was daring them to try and make a play at his life. Hermione studiously ignored the bird. It was slow progress, seeing as he had to limp around the room and tentatively hand out the objects with his one good hand.

"Professor, what are the vials for?" Asked Seamus.

"I'll get to that in a moment." Professor Morrigan answered as he made his way back up to the blackboard. "Now. Who here knows the alarm spell?"

Every hand went up int the air.

"Good. I'd be ashamed if any of you didn't. Or shocked how you managed to make it through your OWLs." Morrigan said. "And how many of you know how to extract a memory?"

Zero hands went into the air.

"I likewise would have been shocked if any of you had known that one." He said. "Allow me to demonstrate."

With his good hand he raised his long, smooth wand to his temple and - while holding a look of severe concentration - slowly pulled the wand away. At the tip of his wand and temple came a white string of light. Ethereal and liquid in appearance, it was some of the most simple and beautiful magic Hermione had ever seen. When it finally came loose from his skull it was like a lunar moth had been blended and the liquid produced was leaking from the tip of his wand.

"This is my memory of our class today." He explained unhelpfully. "It is like a video recording of everything I have experienced over the last few minutes. Sadly, without the use of a very powerful, and very expensive, magical artifact called a pensieve it is useless to anybody save myself. But I can reinsert this memory into my skull and doing so will allow me to better remember the events of said memory if it is fresh. It is akin to magical reiteration and recall to oneself for memorization."

He demonstrated reinserting the strand of memory back into his temple and adopted a look of supreme concentration on his face. For several moments all-encompassing silence filled the room as they watched him. Eventually he took a deep breath and returned to his lecture.

"And that's all there is to it." He explained. "Hold the tip of your wand to your temple and concentrate on the memory, recalling it from beginning to end in chronological order, and slowly draw it out. You can then place this memory in a container to share it with others - though sadly not without a pensieve, as a method for transferring memories between people has yet to be devised - and then when you reinsert it the memory goes straight into long term memory. As easy to recall as the multiplication table I would hope you've all memorized."

Hermione ogled the spell with something between disgust and anger. It was even simpler and easier to perform than the levitation charm. It was hardly even a spell, so why in the world did they not learn it, and things like it, in their first week of schooling? It sounded terribly useful.

"What I am about to assign you is not homework. I want to make that very clear." Morrigan continued. "Refusing to take part in the project I'm about to outline will not cost you any credits in this class, however doing so will earn you some extra. For extra credit anybody who wishes may keep a proper dream journal, of two dreams per night. And you shall accomplish this by use of the alarm spell combined with storing memories in the vials I have given you. Set an alarm for four hours after you go to sleep. Another alarm four hours after that, when you usually wake up. Each time you wake up try and recall the dream and, if you can, draw it from your brain as I demonstrated and store in the vial for the morning. Doing this you will usually be able to recall a good two dreams per night, hence the two vials. In the morning you put them back in and presto, they're there to stay."

Before they could reach for a piece of parchment to write down the assignment Professor Morrigan stopped them.

"This assignment is only available to those taking nine classes or fewer." He said. "So the seven standard classes and two electives. Anybody taking more than that needs every wink of sleep they can get, and I will not tolerate anybody in such a schedule risking their psychological health for a measly extra credit in my class."

He gave Hermione, who was taking the maximum of twelve(which was only possible through the use of a time turner) a scathing look and she glowered back at him.

"But there is one more reason behind this assignment than the psychological, spiritual, and divinatorial - yes that' a word - benefits to this assignment." He went on. "Every person on earth experiences a vision within their dreams roughly once per year. That's one in three hundred and sixty five. Pop quiz! How many students are there in Hogwarts?!"

"Four Hundred and Eighty-Three." Hermione answered before raising her hand, then gasped at the impertinence of forgetting to do so.

"One point to Gryffindor. Now sadly, only about eighty of those students have elected to take divination class. So, with these numbers in mind, if all of my students took part in this assignment how many true visions, of past, future or other events would we be able to collect within a single week?"

Hermione did the math in her head. Two dreams per night. Multiply it by eighty... Multiple that by seven... Divide that by three hundred and sixty five...

"Three." Ronald answered as quickly as Hermione was able to collect all of the factors and divisors in her head.

The entire class turned to look at the boy who had never stepped foot in arithmancy class, only to see a complete lack of quill or paper at his desk for mathematical computations. He had done that in his head?

"Correct! Ten points to Gryffindor Mister Weasley!" Morrigan rewarded. "Now it will more likely be one or two as a whole third of my students are disqualified from this project due to their status as overachievers, but if we are lucky then this time next week we will have a vision, produced by one of you or my other students, to consult. Some of you are still non-believers in divination, despite having taken it for years. I will make you a believer. If not next Monday, then definitely the following Monday. And so, I demand this of you... Go forth and dream!"

He paused for dramatic effect, and though for any other teacher Hermione would have rolled her eyes at the antics, his deep kindly voice kept her transfixed.

"For in dreams we enter worlds entirely our own. Go. Swim in the deepest oceans and glide over the highest cloud. And share these wondrous worlds in your head but know this. Just because something is in your head, doesn't make it less real. And if we are very fortunate, then one of you will have had a genuine premonition in one, of either the future or distant past, and we will gaze upon it together."

They left divination class with much more chatter and excitement than usual. And for once, Hermione chipped into the cacophony of voices. Discussing the wonders of the last hour. Usually, she would hang behind and wait for a clear moment to turn for her next class, but today she joined in on discussions of the topics and assignment. While she would studiously obey and only jot down dreams she remembered at her usual wake up times, both in the mornings and after her three-hour afternoon naps, she implored her fellow girls to tell her all about theirs for the next week.

And then the discussion turned down a corner she simply couldn't follow.

"Is it just me or is Professor Morrigan like a young, hot Dumbledore?" Lavender asks.

Aaaaand, that was her cue to take the back door out of the conversation. So, she silently took a side door halfway down the astronomy tower into a hallway which would, inevitably, lead to the hospital wing if followed, and there she hid behind a suit of armor and waited for her peers to shuffle down to the ground floor. When the telltale eerie silence of a school area without students finally purveyed her senses, she retrieved the time turner and reached out to turn the dial.

Only for a gloved hand to snatch it away from her.

She gasped and, in her attempt to back away from her assailant, collapsed on the floor. Her terror abated somewhat when she caught a glimpse of the supposed thief, and her eyes met the concealed, hooded figure she would recognize anywhere. Only one person she knew of wore such concealing grey robes or matching hood. Only one man embodied such endless possibilities and smelled of ageless tomes.

"Father Time!?" She gasped at the concealed man.

Seeing the fully cloaked and fully hooded head unspeakable in Hogwarts was certainly a surprise. This was the man who subjected her to her oaths to obey the laws of time before the start of her third year and debriefed her of her mischief at the end of every year. And then re-administered those oaths every year since then. This was the man who had seen in her the potential of a future unspeakable when McGonagall first introduced them those three years prior.

"Miss Granger. I wish I could have seen you again under better tidings." Father time said in place of a greeting.

He did not appear to be joking.

"As it stands, I will be taking this from you." He went on. "As you are in contact with somebody who seems to have broken my laws. OUR laws. And until my investigation is over you are under suspicion of breaking your oaths."

Hermione was no mother, but in that moment she felt what she thought a mother would feel in the event her newborn baby was snatched away from her and held at ransom. Before she could even register these feelings her tears welled up.

"What?! But... I followed EVERY rule! Even the rules that contradicted the other rules!" She nearly screamed, her voice a mixture of fear, rage and crying.

Before he could even respond and open up the possibility of convincing him out of his decision a new voice erupted from above, shaking the very walls around them.

"FATHER TIME!" The sonorus-enhanced voice of Professor Morrigan came down from his classroom five stories above them. "Granger had nothing to do with it! You come up here and harass ME not her!"

They both stared at the ceiling above them for several moments before Father Time addressed her again.

"I suppose there's no harm in leaving this with you for the rest of your school week, but know that you are under scrutiny at the moment, possibly for reasons which you had nothing to do with." He told her before tossing the necklace at her unceremoniously.

She snatched it from the air with reflexes so fast that they would make you think she was a Quidditch seeker. The way she clutched it to her bosom you'd think she was a keeper.

"Be warned, if you were planning any unapproved activities with the time turner over the next week, now would be a good time to cancel them." He told her before leaving. "Oh, and I recommend discretion in keeping any speculation you have over what is going on here to yourself."

With that he turned heel.

If Hermione were in a better state of mind, she would have scoffed at the idea that she would have shared such secrets or speculation about such secrets with anybody. As if she had anybody to share them with! The closest thing she had to a friend was Draco which, beyond being an incredibly sad thing to admit, was also more of an academic rivalry than anything approaching actual friendship. Susan was just a mediator within those terms. The only other person she could think of was that werewolf boy she had flings with during summers and the occasional Hogsmeade weekend, but the secrets of the department of mysteries hardly made for good pillow talk.

Perhaps she ought to make an effort to write Romulus with more than an invitation to her next Hogsmeade visit? Build something there.

Then Morrigan's magically enhanced voice returned.

"Oh! And if that perverted octopus is here with you tell him/her/it to keep their distance!"

"Actually, I'm right here." The perfectly synchronous voices of a man and woman was carried over through Morrigan's sonorus charm.

"OH FU..."

Harry barely had the frame of mind to cancel his sonorus before screaming a four-letter word loud enough for the entire school to hear him. That certainly would have been cause for a disciplinary hearing with old man Dumbledore.

The cause of his near heart-attack stood just a few feet behind him, and even as he gazed upon them his extrasensory abilities still registered nothing in his presence. Love, with a capital L. One of the twelve heads of the department of mysteries. They were the only person/persons in existence who didn't exist according to his magical senses. As such, she... er, he... well, it... it could sneak up on him. Which Harry didn't appreciate.

"You seem to know me well enough, despite having never met me. How much do you really know?" Asked the being in grey.

Harry glared at the space between the two hoods of their two faces. Then glanced down at the four arms and equal number legs beneath. Love must take up half of the tailoring costs of the department of mysteries.

But it was a good question. The answer was "Too much." Love had once been two people. A man and wife working within the department of mysteries. So right there you know they weren't of the soundest mind to begin with. Then they decided to merge in an attempt to recreate the Greek ideal of the hermaphroditic "first people". To become soul mates joined in flesh. It worked. And now they were something beyond human. Body, mind and soul united, virtues and vices of both man and woman made in perfect unity.

And then put in charge of the DOM section involved with magic about love potions, marriage, orgies and all things erotic. And there was power in these things beyond most people's comprehension. Power that was dangerous and destructive to humanity for eons before Aphrodite's invention of marriage to tame both men and women's desires and turn these things from the soul-devouring, destructive force that led entire civilizations down a rabbit hole - chasing the ever greater high until utter destruction in the form of apocalyptic blood orgies- into something constructive, beautiful and loving. Into marriage and family.

And this being before him had torn that contract of ancient gods in twain and unleashed the powers long lost to humanity in ways even the most disgusting reprobates like Crowley or John Money failed to do. But thankfully did it in secret and kept it behind closed doors instead of parading it down main street like a pride parade.

He also knew that neither were particularly devout to the other, and both found him particularly attractive and sought him as a replacement to their latest lover on more than one occasion.

The universe hated Harry, truly. Hopefully in this universe he could more effectively disincentive Their interest in him.

"Only that we do not get along and, though they are more dangerous and capable of destroying me, I would prefer to contend with Mind and Death than you." Harry spat the last word with as much vitriol as he could.

"I suppose that explains where you gained the power of time travel." Said Father Time as he entered through the stone passage door. "You will someday work with us?"

"With, yes. But not as one of your number." Harry answered honestly before he retreated to his desk and sat down with a pained groan. "So. Which mistake was it that finally alerted you guys to my status as a time traveler?"

Knowing that this conversation was going to be a long one, and that he had no further classes that day, he retrieved his prescribed pain relief potion and downed it.

"Your wand." Said Father Time. "You surrendered it after being arrested, and detectors indicated it belonged to one Albus Dumbledore, who confirmed he was in possession of a younger time twin to said wand."

It took all of Harry's self-control to not bang his head on his desk. Of all the cockamamie bullshit he couldn't foresee, Albus ACTUALLY registered the Elder Wand with the British Ministry of Magic?! Which meant that Albus now knew, or believed, he was displaced in time in some manner. Probably thought he was a time traveler from the future and was faking his divination skills... Which wasn't completely untrue.

"Do you know why we are here?" Father Time asked.

"To hopefully intimidate me into thinking you have any law enforcement powers or ability to coerce me into complying with you and revealing my true knowledge, abilities and origin." He answered with a chuckle.

The painstaking sighs they answered with told him they had already failed in their mission. They were not law enforcement and could not coerce, threaten or in other ways compel him to comply with anything they wanted. They were researchers. Scientists. Not some elite crew of black ops operatives eliminating those touched by powers beyond human imagination, let alone understanding. Which Harry was for the record, though not due to any fault of his own. But they liked to try and pretend, or hope to give people the impression, that they had such authority. Today, they had failed in that attempt.

"And you have no intention of sharing with us information pertinent to our roles in the Department of Mysteries? Particularly me?" Father Time asked.

Harry glanced at the ancient man. Considered the assumptions he must have been working under or questions plaguing his mind.

Did he think Harry had come back through his own actions or actions of his department? That he would one day pull the wool over his own eyes or steal from the time department in order to make the trip? It was wrong to leave the man with such painful assumptions and questions, Harry knew, but he also knew these were amoral assholes who didn't care if the universe was ripped apart and made as dust by their latest experiment except for an academic curiosity. It took a special type of sociopath to survive in the Department of Mysteries.

So, fuck em!

"You can let yourselves out the same way you got in." Harry dismissed them as he leaned back into his chair and felt the effects of the potion take hold.

He was ready for a long, drug-induced coma.

"Very well, Mister Potter. We will keep in touch." Love told him ominously.

They both made a grand show of fading out of reality - according to magic at least - and disappearing from Hogwarts in a form of teleportation few could imitate.

"I'M NOT IMPRESSED!" Harry yelled into the void. "I CAN DO THAT TOO!"

It was true. It was just so incredibly uncomfortable that after Death had brought him along in by side along that first time, he never wanted to do it again. And doing it improperly would lead to much worse than splinching. But for now, he breathed a sigh of relief as the full-body ache he had been ignoring for over an hour became lessened and sleep nearly took him. He would worry about this nonsense later. He already had a weeks' worth of meditating to do on recent going ons, what was one more catastrophic series of events to consider?

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