Chapter 44:

Alastor Marchbanks was a man of great faith.

As a child he had been a bit of a contrarian, especially in Sunday school. One thing he never understood was how God's law classified all sins as equally evil. A petty thief and a mass murderer earned the same damnation? This among other things that didn't make sense to his undeveloped brain drove him away from the good word.

Science and maturity eventually brought him back.

It was when he became a junior Unspeakable of chronomancy that he finally had the answer to his question on why all sins, unlike men, actually are created equal.

The butterfly effect made all sins equal.

Back in biblical times, stealing a loaf of bread could be the difference between life and death for the victim or their family. Assaulting somebody could leave then unable to work for days or months at a time, and those lost wages could mean the extinction of an entire bloodline. Back then, it was more readily apparent how stealing or assault or any other numbers of seemingly small harms could lead to the death of another back in those days. In modern times it was less apparent, but still just as true. What is stealing a penny in the grand scheme of things? Or a smidgen of property damage? In a modern economy we have all of these safety nets. Doesn't that absolves us of the deadly consequences. It doesn't. The principle still holds true. Even stealing a penny is tantamount to murder over a long enough period of time.

But surely mass murder is a worse sin that just one murder, right?

Wrong. And it takes the perspective a time traveler to see why.

It only took a quick thought experiment. Imagine a man has gone back in time to commit a murder against somebody who would cause the deaths of millions. Many had gone back in time to eliminate an Adolf Hitler, or a Norma McCorvey, or a Karl Marx, or a Muhammad, or even Big J himself by killing them before they caused, either directly or indirectly, the murder of tens of millions of people.

In doing so they don't wind up killing just the individual, but everybody they would have ever sired.

They killed the person's children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and all other descendants for the rest of eternity. They further killed anybody who would have come into being because of that person, either because their grandchild saved a life, or any other number of domino scenarios. Do the math. What's one multiplied by infinite? Fucking infinite!

Infinite is a lot more than the twelve million people killed by that Austrian painter. Infinite is a lot more than the sixty million as a result of Norma's false testimony. Infinity is definitely more than the two hundred million killed by Marxism. And infinite is even more than the two hundred and seventy million people killed by the Islamic slave trade, let alone their conquests, or the retaliatory crusades.

And what of the people who found enlightenment in Christ or Allah despite the misdeeds of their peers? What of the great authors and artists who were made from their suffering in the brutalist gulags, the soul eliminating poverty of communism? Making beauty from horror. What of unsung saints who saved countless thousands of Jews, Christians, gypsies and conservatives from Socialist Germany? What of the character and soul of those whose lives were now completely altered because they did not go through the trials or wars they were meant to? What of the homes they would have built, the great art and architecture, the love they shared, the poetry they wrote?

What of the Algazels, the Solzhenitsyns, the Leonardo Davincis, and all other brilliant minds whose existence and creations were as a result of these religious and ideological figures?

All gone, or at least severely altered.

Yes. It's true; Any time you commit a murder, you don't kill just one person. You kill an infinite number of people. All of that person's hypothetical descendants and the hypothetical lives they would have touched unto the end of time.

With regular murder that's only hypothetical. Those people are not real. God never wrote them down in his book of names. Or maybe he did. He is God after all. If he can create a universe that is predetermined and paradoxically give people free will, exist in all places and all times, then he can know the names of all hypothetical people who were never born because of a murder or theft, and punish the murderers and thieves accordingly.

The murderer and thief cannot comprehend this infinite, and few have the intellectual capacity to even consider these possibilities, and so don't. But God does. And time travelers do.

All time travelers know this. All time travelers know that any change they make, from stepping on a butterfly in the Triassic period, to killing an important historical figure, creates ripples in the timeline so large as to cause literally infinite death and destruction. They cannot claim ignorance like the petty criminal who steals a penny not knowing that they stole that penny from every owner it ever would have had, unto the end of time, and thus stole infinite dollars, and killed infinite people from where the domino effect of that penny's travels would have fed a starving child.

The time traveler is culpable for the unmaking of infinite lives.

But what happens to those people? Their names were in god's book. They were meant to be. Where do they go? Are they simply dead, do their souls go off to heaven like all stillborn or aborted children?

Nope.

"What the hell is that thing?!" Voldemort demanded.

Yeah. The Unmade were a disturbing sight even to hardened dark lords. Constantly in a state of flux, mutating between different stages of their lives or hypothetical versions of themselves thousands of times every second. They are men, women, children, infants, elderly, disabled, and everything else they could have ever been all at the same time.

That's what they were, but in appearance they resembled a Jeff Kimmel wet dream. All that weird twitching like from Jacob's Ladder, but on steroids.

And now they were pouring out of the films all over London. This was not supposed to happen, but Voldemort always was an overachiever.

"They are called Unmade, and they're easy enough to deal with." Alastor told him. "Here, let me take care of that since your hands are full."

A quick vanishing charm and the one that just leaked out of the dome surrounding the Dark Lord was no more.

Voldemort actually blinked in surprise at what he just saw.

"You can just vanish them?" He asked. "They looked more formidable than that."

"And without laughter, boggarts seem formidable as well." Said Alastor. "But yes. Unmade things, or miscreated things, can be sent back to the realms of nonexistance from whence they came with a simple vanishing charm. That's what it does. Actually, I know of people who stop using the charm entirely because of that."

Voldemort was visibly struggling to maintain concentration on the task at hand while talking to him.

"You know you just told me nothing, right?" Voldemort asked.

"Indeed. Knowing the terms unmade and miscreated is about as pointless as you continuing to fight against the timekeeper." Alastor told him.

But struggle he did. He was only supposed to keep the time flux open for a few minutes. They were now approaching the fifteen-minute mark and causing actual tears in reality. He really should have tried for one of his disgruntled but more powerful Death Eaters that wanted to be rid of the dark mark. That Snape kid probably could have done the trick. If only just.

Nah. That guy was too street smart to have fallen for this. Unlike Voldemort who was so easily conned.

"I take it all of this wasn't solely to repay me for putting you in the hospital?" Voldemort asked sarcastically.

Alastor looked at the dark lord, trapped inside of the dome of films where all the other films erupted out of. He held the time keeper in both hands and it fought against him as he continued to fuel its chain reaction, with him as the catalyst. Thick, varicose veins of white light grew up his arms where his very cells were being put in a state of time flux similar to the unmade.

And he was just gritting his teeth through the pain. Alastor would have been impressed if he wasn't so annoyed.

Such a remarkable device. Capable of deciphering time signatures of objects and people. With its aid many people afloat in time had been set right. Now it was being used to unset time signatures. But couldn't kill Voldemort like they planned. Of course, removing one of their three biggest obstacles couldn't be that easy. And the other two were almost certainly on their way towards him at that very moment.

"You wished to undo your mistakes. To break your own oaths and be free. We wish to do the same. Or did you think we helped you towards this end out of the goodness of our hearts?" Alastor asked.

Voldemort's eyes narrowed.

"We?" He asked.

Oops. Did he let that cat out of the bag? Honestly, Alastor didn't understand why people overestimated his abilities so much. Even he wasn't so capable as to orchestrate all of this by himself. Tom Riddle may be delusional enough to think he can do everything himself, but Alastor wasn't. He suffered from wholly different delusions.

"You'll be meeting more equals than you ever dared to hope existed real soon. Assuming you survive." Alastor promised. "I have to wonder how lonely it's felt, being such a genius with no other minds quite like yours."

He allowed as much mockery as possible to seep into his voice.

"Well, men like you, Hadrian and Albus are not so rare as you've been led to believe." Alastor told him.

"So, the Department of Mysteries is planning a coup." Voldemort, rightly, concluded. "And that's where all of my peers have been hiding lo these many years. How exciting! All I have to do is keep this up long enough for the ones you failed to cajole over to your side to put a stop to all this."

Alastor frowned. Damned, if this man's mind didn't move ten kilometers a second. He was correct, of course. And with those films between them Alastor could do nothing to the man but badger him. He wasn't exactly the best at foul talk, but he'd give it the good old college try.

"Evanesco! Evanesco! Evanesco!" Harry's team of Death Eater and Order members called out over and over again

They were all taking cover behind more of those blocks that CrabbeOrGoyle had conjured while laying waste to the seemingly endless onslaught of Unmade.

"You know, this is turning out a lot more anticlimactic than I expected." Bellatrix complained as she erased more members of the horde charging at them.

"Imagine how much less anticlimactic it would have been were I not here to tell you how to deal with them." Harry said.

"I imagine the Aurors, Order members and Death Eaters in other sections of the city don't have to imagine it." Lucius yelled out at him.

Harry blanched, before disengaging from the fight and pointing his wand eastward.

"Expecto patronum! Go tell everybody with a wand that the vanishing charm works on these things." He said to Prongs.

Prongs bowed and flew off in a trot.

"Are you going to tell us what these Unmade things even are?!" Remus demanded.

"They are what happens when somebody was never born because of a time traveler's meddling." Harry explained.

"What about people who only exist because a time traveler altered who wound up with who?" Asked Bellatrix, her curiosity

"Those are called the miscreated. Unspeakables regularly hunt them down and unmake them. They have to. It's a real pain in the ass." Harry explained.

"How do you know these things?!" Lucius asked.

Harry raised both hands to his face and made spirit fingers.

"Psychic!" He lied.

A bright flash of light made them all hit the dirt. Harry got up first, recognizing the feel of the magic as that of the elder wand, which was still in his spare holster. Only one person that could be.

"Dombledore's back." Harry said in his normal speaking voice.

"Dumbledore's back!" Somebody, it sounded like Fred, yelled in his normal speaking voice.

And indeed, he just erased a good dozen of the Unmade with a single vanishing charm. Harry didn't know why he had been fighting with the handicap of not using the elder wand up until then, but he remedied that mistake.

He spotted the man in his vibrant robes marching down the street. Harry wondered at where he had been and could only assume he had opted to handle setting up a quick and dirty ward in one of the other sections of the city all by himself. Which wasn't a bad idea at all. It's what Harry had been planning to do, after all.

Harry waited for Albus to cast his next vanishing charm before casting one of his own at the exact same place. The spells connected, and the 'brother' wands resonated. The end result was absolutely nothing like what happened in the graveyard.

They didn't connect by a cable, they didn't struggle for control. The spells just exploded and the wand in his hand recoiled as if in disgust. The explosion itself was spectacular, as if the power of his vanishing charm was multiplied by the power of Dumbledore's, creating a vanishing sphere which engulfed and eliminated at least a hundred of the unmade. Plus half of the street and a couple buildings.

Thank goodness they were surrounded by empty office buildings and not residential homes. There was nobody in those at this ungodly hour, despite the brightness out. There were quite a few formerly potted plants, rodents, birds and insects which rained down into the crater. Living things cannot be effected by the vanishing charm. Unless they are Unmade or Miscreated.

He knew some Unspeakable who just went around randomly casting the vanishing charm on people, plants or animals to see if they're Miscreated. Sometimes they get a hit and have a pile of clothes and a wallet to start them on an investigation to find a time anomaly or traveler. Harry was still surprised they hadn't tried to cast it on him to check. Maybe they had and he hadn't noticed? Whatever.

"That should give you guys some breathing room." Harry said nonchallantly as every witch and wizard present slowly picked themselves off of the ground after witnessing the greatest display of magic any had ever conceived of in their lives.

"Split up your labour! Half keep up on the ward creation, the other on holding back the tide." He heard Albus yell out.

The crisis at hand combined the man's natural force of presence had everyone obeying his commands. The Death Eaters naturally went right back onto the offensive, casting vanishing charms directly into the holes in reality from which the Unmade continued to pour out of. Dumbledore's people proceeded to accomplish the other goal.

Harry waved Albus over and he apparated directly to him.

"Now that we've given them some breathing room maybe you and I should go give everyone else that same breathing room, then get to the source." Harry suggested.

"I think that is an excellent idea. Let us be on our way and completely gloss over our brother wands for now." Dumbledore said, offering his arm.

Harry took it and apparated them both to the next section where he had left Minerva and the Aurors. There, they found Arianna and her team completely overrun and struggling just to hold the line against the horde.

Harry and Albus shared a look.

"Same thing that worked before?" Albus asked.

"Same thing that worked before. But this time let's aim directly for the tear." Harry suggested.

Albus nodded, his face as serious as Harry had ever seen it

Looking skyward to the films that towered over even the church towers. Where they met, the sky split open and bodies sprinkled out as if poured from a pepper grinder. They both aimed at it, and after a count of three, cast.

The brother wands effect was the same as before, if not bigger. The light of the films faded for a split second as the clashing vanishing charms exploded.

That ought to prevent more Unmade from pouring out for a minute or two.

They then turned their wands onto the swaths of Unmade still on the ground and picked them off five by five while the many Aurors all cowered from the explosion in the sky above. Some regained their composure and joined the two of them in taking pot shots. Others were still a bit perturbed by what they just witnessed.

"Really?! What even are you two?!" They heard somebody yell, Arianna, Harry guessed.

"It's not as impressive as it looked!" Harry yelled back. "Now get back to the warding! We will take care of the Unmade in the other sections of the city."

They did not wait for a response, quickly apparating to the next section of the city. They repeated the process of abusing the timetwin wands – which were objecting more strongly to the treatment with each iteration – and were already on the verge of exhaustion. They did their best to keep the exploding vanishing charms away from populated areas, but this wasn't always possible.

They saw more than a few naked muggles and wizards alike running around after coming out of cover to find everything they owned obliterated, including the clothes from their backs. They wound up getting help combating the Unmade from a most unexpected source.

A roman legion, displaced in time, held a phalanx the size of a Quidditch pitch against the onslaught in one area. They were aided by three unmasked Death Eaters, among them Macnair and the Carrows, who were yelling out instructions and explanations in Latin, which wasn't such a dead language amongst wizarding purebloods. They seemed to be discovering the obvious fact that their modern Larin wasn't a one-to-one with the Latin spoken in Roman occupied England circa 5AC, but they were getting the job done.

They had at least gotten the memo to use vanishing charms.

Another section of the city had Knights yelling out war calls in French. Harry wasn't sure which French invasion they were members of, but considering they got all the way to London it had to have been Prince Louis' failed invasion. This was probably the cause of said failure, as losing this many knights and soldiers to a freak time anomaly meant fewer soldiers for the fight at hand.

Professors Filius and Sinestra, along with what looked like the entirety of Hogwarts' seventh year population, were out on the streets among them. One of the teachers recruited must have decided that the Unmade demanded a lot of backup to handle. Most of said seventh years were more preoccupied with rounding up the men displaced in time with stunners and binding charms than the Unmade, but they were still vanishing the nonbeings.

These two sections in particular had things well underhand without them, as did the Goblins who came out in full force, pouring out of Diagon Alley like a tsunami. And more wisards and witches filled the surrounding areas, from Aurors and Death Eaters to just random citizens of Wizarding Britain.

"This is a losing strategy." Harry eventually said.

Albus nodded in agreement.

"What do you propose?" He asked.

"We need to get to the source. We already know Voldemort is at the center of this, but possibly not responsible. Lucius, sorry, an unnamed Death Eater told me their dark mark didn't allow them to directly apparate to him like usual, but it did point them to Big Ben." Harry explained.

"Ah. The prime meridian, by which latitude and timezones are determined. The clock by which all other clocks are set. I see now." Albus said to himself. "Do you suspect the Unspeakables are involved?"

"To ask the question is to answer it." Harry admitted. "And I think we both know which one in particular."

"Hm. You handle Tom, I'll handle Alastor." Dumbledore decided for them. "How do we get to them? I tried with Fawks, but had no luck."

Damn. That was going to be Harry's suggestion.

"I think I can hack one of their dark mark's. With that done, I think I can apparate us directly to him." Harry said.

"What makes you think you can succeed where they failed?" Albus asked.

"Mostly that we have two elder wands, and I can tap into magic directly." Harry said in a non-explanation.

Albus opened and closed his mouth a few times, no doubt to ask for some clarification on that "tap directly into magic" thing. Instead, he nodded.

He offered his arm and Harry took it, spinning in place to take them back to whichever o'clock it was that Lucius had been. They arrived to discover they had things well under control.

A cage of what at first looked like electricity, but was some kind of crackling magical web, covered the tear from which the Unmade had been pouring out of. It must have taken a lot of cooperation to get that built, and now the group was just picking off stragglers that managed to squeeze through while others set up those impedimenta and reparo wards. Good division of labour.

Now where is Lucius?

"Lucius!" Harry called out.

The Death Eater in question turned at the sound of his name and Harry pointed to him.

"Ah! Made you look!" He teased. "Now get over here!"

Lucius handed off his work on a stone bench where he had no doubt been carving in one of the wards Harry had instructed before running over to him and Albus.

"What is it?" He demanded.

"I'm using your dark mark." Harry told him. "Hand it over quietly or I'll take it by force."

Lucius hummed in thought.

"You think you can apparate to him with it?" Lucius concluded.

"Right in one. Now put out your arm and grit your teeth, this is going to hurt." Harry told him.

The man hesitated, glancing down at his arm. Then, he took off his mask so he could look Harry in the eyes, before rolling up his sleeve to reveal the vibrant red mark.

Harry lifted up his own in return, showing off the scar from where Wormtail had sliced him open for that thrice-damned ritual. Both Lucius and Albus showed recognition in their expression, as all the signs of sacrificial magic were there.

Harry shook his head.

"It's a long story. I'll tell you all everything after this emergency is resolved. I mean it this time." Harry told them.

They nodded, and he knew they would hold him to it.

And so, he grasped Lucius on the forearm with his free hand and then pressed the elder wand against the knife scar on his own. He got started without any further deliberation.

"Also, will you be coming with Albus and I?" Harry asked Lucius.

"Fuck no! Any situation which requires the two of you working together, plus Voldemort, is not one I have any business being near." Lucius said, cussing for the first time since Harry had come to know him.

I really tried to delve into the thought process of a wizard in charge of researching time, time travel, and of course countering the misuse of such. What his philosophy would be, and especially how it would tie in with his religious beliefs.

I think I nailed it, if I made it a bit wordy. Usual disclaimer: These are the character's beliefs and my insane hypothetical ramblings trying to wrap my head around his perspective with as charitable of a depiction as I can manage. This character is definitely one of the stranger ones. Wait until you meet the other Unspeakables!

It's an interesting thought experiment. Thinking on the long term consequences of your actions as a butterfly effect. My Patrons had an ENORMOUS conversation about it and it was some of the best philosophy debate I've ever had.