For their first Occlumency session using the Time-Turner, Harry and his friends considered using the Chamber of Secrets, but decided against it. Although the Parseltongue password made it secure, the place was cold, dark, wet, and full of bad memories. Getting in and out was inconvenient at best. None of this felt conducive to getting in the right frame of mind for Occlumency practice.
They settled instead on two disused, out-of-the-way classrooms, which the castle had no shortage of. One room would be for the actual practice, with the other reserved for the time-shifting.
On Saturday afternoon, they made their way to the first of the classrooms they had selected, doing their best to amble along like they were wandering the castle with no particular agenda.
Ginny had used Legilimency to test Hermione's progress before, but hadn't tested Harry or Ron yet. Hermione had begun practicing the individual exercises earlier, and it seemed only fair to give the guys equal time to prepare to defend themselves. Today, the time had come to test them both.
Ginny started with Ron. "Clear your mind," she told him, as she raised her wand. "Legilimens."
She refrained from probing too aggressively, but was able to get a sense of his general emotional state. He was nervous, but also annoyed about giving over part of his weekend to the task.
Ginny released the spell and lowered her wand.
"That's it?" he asked. "That wasn't so bad. Maybe I'm a natural!"
She pointed her wand at him again. "Hey, is that a spider on your shoulder? Legilimens!"
She used the prompt to trigger a chain of associations she could follow to his memory of the Acromantulas in the Forbidden Forest, and the terror attached to the memory. After holding the spell for several seconds, she released it.
"Ah! What the hell was that?" Ron demanded, shaken.
"A small taste of what Riddle would serve you a heaping helping of. You've got a lot of work to do, and you need to take this seriously. Even on weekends."
She turned to Harry, who appeared even less thrilled about having the spell used on him after seeing its effect on Ron.
"I'm not looking forward to this either," Ginny told him, "but this is more important for you than for any of us."
Hermione said, "You can do this, Harry. You were able to throw off Moody's Imperius. I just know you'll be good at Occlumency too. They both require will and determination."
Harry nodded. "Do it, Gin."
She raised her wand. "Clear your mind. Legilimens."
She found Harry's mind offered even less resistance than Ron's had. She released the spell, but kept her wand pointed at him.
"How much progress do you feel you've made?" she asked. Before he could answer, she cast again. "Legilimens."
This time, she probed his attitudes towards Occlumency.
She released the spell and sighed. "We've got a problem."
"What is it?" Hermione asked. "What did you see?"
Harry crossed his arms and looked away.
Ginny said, "He has mixed feelings about closing the connection. He thinks he can use it against Riddle."
"I need some sort of advantage," Harry protested. "I'm not going to be able to out-duel him anytime soon. Maybe not ever. I'm not Dumbledore."
"You're certainly never going to beat Riddle at mind games. We'll find a way, but this isn't it."
"What are we going to do?" Hermione asked.
"I don't know," Ginny said. "You can't learn Occlumency unless you truly commit to it. The mind is too good at jumping away to think of other things."
"What about… more aggressive methods?"
"No. I won't torture him."
Ron snorted. "You didn't mind doing it to me."
Ginny whirled on him. "Don't be an idiot! What you just felt was nothing compared to what someone genuinely skilled and ruthless can do. Trust me. I know from experience."
"Sorry," he said, holding up his hands. "I'm not making light of what you went through. I had enough after even a few seconds."
"Forget it," she told him, waving away the apology. "Focus on learning to protect yourself, so the same thing never happens to you." She turned back to Harry. "It's not just a question of talent or practice. You'll never be vicious or devious enough to exploit the connection the way Riddle will, once he realizes it's there. If he hasn't already."
She stepped forward and put her hands on his shoulders. "You have to shut him out. Please. Learn from my mistakes. If I can teach you all to protect yourself from him, at least one good thing will have come out of everything that happened to me."
Harry nodded. "I'll try harder. I promise."
"Please do. I'll try to think of an approach that better fits the way your mind naturally works, but you're still going to have to work at it if you're to have any hope of keeping Riddle out."
"I will."
Ginny checked Hermione's progress as well, then gave Harry and Ron a brief refresher lesson on the techniques they should be practicing on their own. Everyone felt like they'd had enough for the day, so they exited the room and went around the corner to the other classroom they'd picked.
Once inside with the door closed behind them, Hermione drew the Time-Turner out of her robes. While she checked her watch and set their travel duration, Harry asked, "How awful is this going to be?"
"What are you talking about?" asked Hermione.
"Every sort of magical travel is hideous in one way or another, at least until you get used to it–the Floo, Apparition, Portkeys, the Knight Bus… I figure time travel must be bad, too."
As she looped the chain around them all, she said, "There's no physical discomfort, though it can be disorienting to be out of step with the rest of the world. Everyone ready?"
When they indicated they were, she activated the device.
"That's it?" Harry asked, as Hermione lifted the chain off them and looped it back around her own neck.
"With Time-Turners, boring is good, interesting is dangerous."
Ron said, "So we're in the past now?"
"I wouldn't phrase it that way, since this is our present now, but yes, we traveled one hour back."
As they exited the room, Ron and Harry looked down the corridor, back towards the other room they'd used. Ron started to ask, "Then if we–"
"Don't even think about it!" Hermione cut him off.
"Alright! I was just asking."
They left by a route which led away from the other room they'd used.
Hermione said, "I still wish we had someplace suitable that was better hidden, for doing this more often, or for longer sessions."
"You could try the lost and found room," said a soft, dreamy voice behind them. "I've never seen anyone else using it."
The four friends turned to see a blonde witch with pale, silvery eyes gazing back at them.
Ginny said, "Luna! Hi."
"Hello, Ginny. I wasn't sure you would remember my name. You often seemed confused about it when we were little."
"Oh, that. Sorry," Ginny said, flustered. "I didn't mean anything by it."
"It's okay. A lot of people say a lot of things they don't mean. It's a rather bad habit though."
"Yes, well… You know Ron, and these are my friends Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. Harry, Hermione, this is Luna Lovegood." She shot Ron a quick glare. "That's what we're all going to call her, and not use any childish nicknames."
When Ron shrugged and nodded, Ginny turned back to Harry and Hermione, and added, "Luna lives in Ottery St Catchpole, not far from us."
After everyone exchanged greetings, Ginny addressed Luna. "Sorry for not reconnecting with you sooner. First we wound up in different houses, and then first year was… rough for me. Then after so much time had gone by, I thought it would be awkward."
"I don't think I would have minded. People often find conversations with me awkward. You shouldn't blame yourself though. I think I may have been mostly fictional back then, at least to a lot of people."
"Fictional?"
"That may be why people feel uncomfortable around me. They don't remember me clearly from previous school years. I suspect lots of other students here are fictional at least part of the time, from certain perspectives. It would explain why there are so many empty classrooms. Hogwarts was meant to have more fully real students attending."
Hermione couldn't hold back any longer. "People are either real or not. It's not a matter of perspective."
Luna blinked at her. "What makes you think so?"
"It's intrinsic in the definition of the word."
"Oh. I'd rather not argue about dictionaries."
"It's not just about dictionaries," Hermione insisted. "If Voldemort comes back, we can't make him go away simply by not believing in him."
"Of course not. He's too important to the story."
Harry spoke up before the argument could continue. "Luna, what were you saying about a room we could use?"
"The door to it appeared to me one time when I was searching for some belongings the Nargles had hidden. Lost things generally turn up there sooner or later, but I also use it as a quiet place to study. Nobody else seems to go there. I don't mind sharing, if you'd like to use it too."
"Nargles?" Hermione asked with a frown.
Ginny jumped in. "That's kind of you to offer, Luna. Could you show us this room?"
Luna nodded and strolled off without checking to make sure they were following. After a quick exchange of glances, the others hurried to catch up.
As they walked, Ginny and Luna asked after each other's families, and discussed the classes they were both taking, though in different sections. With Hermione listening, Ginny tried to keep the conversation from straying into Luna's more unconventional beliefs.
Confusion arose when Luna started to lead them outside. When Ginny questioned her, Luna asked, "Oh, you meant you wanted me to show you now?"
After they clarified this point, Luna guided them to the seventh floor. She stopped in front of a blank stretch of wall, opposite a tapestry showing what seemed at first glance to be a wizard training a group of trolls for combat, but which turned out to be a ballet lesson.
Luna told them you had to think about wanting to find lost things as you paced back and forth three times. She demonstrated the procedure herself, and a door appeared.
On the other side was a vast space, with towering piles of lost things which had seen better days.
As they picked their way between the heaps of junk, they took care not to disturb them. Tables and chairs with broken legs joined dented cabinets with drawers hanging out to form looming jumbles which reached towards the high ceiling, with little thought given to the stability of the arrangements. Rusty swords and axes balanced precariously, waiting to come slashing down. If you escaped being crushed, impaled, or decapitated, sealed bottles of unknown shimmering potions crouched in readiness to shatter and splash all over you.
The piles of torn and stained cloaks and other clothing presented no obvious hazards, though none of it looked suitable for wearing–a quality shared by the partial suits of armor.
Mixed in with all this were toys and games, statues and paintings (or their empty frames), broken brooms, jewelry or loose jewels, and such a random collection of other miscellaneous items that the mind struggled with the overload of even the sheer number of categories represented, let alone the individual objects.
Hermione glanced at all this, then quickly homed in on the nearest stack of books. As she rifled through them, she was disappointed to find nothing but old editions of common textbooks.
Looking around, she drew her wand. "Accio book about-"
Ron grabbed her arm to interrupt her casting. "No! What if you pull something from the middle of a pile and bring the whole thing crashing down on us?"
"Right. Thanks." She glanced up at the nearest collection of rubbish towering over her, and took several steps back. "I didn't stop to think. When it comes to books, I suppose I sometimes lose track of other considerations."
"Oh? Do you enjoy reading? I hadn't noticed."
"Funny." She sighed. "I guess I'll have to sort through them by hand some time. There might be something worthwhile in all this, though I suppose I shouldn't expect to find the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Most of this looks like the people who lost it probably never missed it much."
Harry asked, "How could a space this big fit in the castle without us noticing?"
"It's only this big on the inside," Luna told him.
"Oh, right. The Weasleys' car could do that to fit everyone in, along with their luggage. This is a whole other level though. Thank you for sharing this with us, Luna."
"You're welcome, Harry Potter."
~*~The first time Hermione summoned the lost and found room herself, she took care to reproduce the exact procedure Luna had described, holding the wish to find lost items firmly in mind.
The next time she did it, she let herself get distracted by her plans for an even better practice location. When she opened the door, she froze as she found an entirely different space on the other side.
Rather than piles of discarded junk stretching out as far as the eye could see, this was a much smaller space, nothing but a short corridor running past the door she stood at, with more doors on the opposite wall.
Ginny bumped into her from behind. "Hermione? What–" she started to ask, but stopped when she caught sight of what lay beyond the door. She looked back at the tapestry behind them to confirm they hadn't discovered some other hidden room.
"Uh, did we break it?" she asked.
"I don't think so," Hermione answered. "This looks… familiar."
"You've been in this room before?"
"No, never."
Hermione stepped forward. There were five doors on the opposite wall, though only the leftmost had a doorknob. She nodded to herself and headed for it.
"Hermione, wait!" Ginny called after her. "We don't know what this is."
"I do. It's exactly what I wanted."
Hermione opened the door and stepped through. The first thing she noticed was the ceiling, which showed the sky, just like in the Great Hall.
The room offered comfortable-looking couches and chairs, and tables at a convenient height for writing. There was a door to her right, again lacking a doorknob. The door opposite the one she came in through had one, so she went to open it. On the other side was a small bathroom, complete with shower.
Her friends had come in behind her. Harry asked, "What is this? What's with the doors with no doorknobs?"
"It's to help prevent interference across different time iterations." She pointed at the door to the right. "The doorknob on that one will appear when it's time for us to move on to the next room."
"How do you know?"
"I've been planning out what the ideal place to use a Time-Turner would be like. Somehow Hogwarts gave me just what I wished for."
"The room changed for you? This is a lot more than a lost and found."
"It sure is," she agreed.
"I still don't get the deal with the doors though."
"The biggest problem I had using the Time-Turner last year was the long days messing up my sleep schedule. Dropping Divination made a big difference, but if we put in enough extra hours like this, it could start to take its toll. It occurred to me that if you could simulate the passage of a full day, you should be able to avoid the jet lag."
"Jet lag?" Ginny asked.
"Didn't you feel like going to sleep at the wrong time for the first several days when you visited Egypt? Then again when you came home?"
"A little, I guess. I thought it was a side effect of International Portkeys."
"No, the same thing happens when you take a long plane flight. I don't think Egypt is even that many hours different from us, so it can get a lot worse. Anyway, the safe limit on a Time-Turner is five hours, but I realized you could go back a bunch of times in a row to make it add up to twenty-four hours, as long as you let yourself catch up to the moment you left each time. That way, you'd never go back more than five hours in objective time."
She gestured up at the ceiling. "In each room, the ceiling should simulate five hours passing outside–four hours in the last room, actually–through a full day's cycle by the time we've gone through all the rooms. I thought seeing the sky–or at least a simulated sky–would help regulate our circadian rhythms. And, well, I just always liked the ceiling in the Great Hall," she finished.
Harry said, "I think I caught most of that, but how did you figure out the room could do it?"
"I didn't. I knew all this was possible in principle, though I didn't know when I'd get a chance to actually build it. In the meantime, I've been thinking about it as a side project." She shrugged. "I like to plan ahead, and the room must have taken that as my wish for how it should look."
Ginny asked, "Once we enter, we'd be trapped in here for a full day?"
Harry tensed and looked around the room again as though noting its size for the first time. He moved closer to the door they'd entered through.
Hermione said, "Of course not. It wouldn't be safe. You can leave at any time. Well, as long as you time it properly, and none of us dawdle in the corridor. If it helps, I can probably make these rooms bigger. The lost and found room had far more space than this arrangement is using."
Harry said, "Making them bigger would help." He looked up at the ceiling, and visibly relaxed. "Guess it won't be so bad as long as we can see the sky. Even a fake one."
Ginny said, "It's not just the small space. I know I pushed you to use the Time-Turner for this, but turning back once and walking away seemed simpler. Doing it over and over, and hanging around all day with all those copies of ourselves so close feels creepier somehow."
Hermione said, "It's no different in principle. It's safe as long as we stick to the rules."
While they were talking, Ron had moved to the door to the next room. He knocked and pressed his ear to the door to listen for a response.
"Ron!" Hermione said. "What part of keeping the iterations from interacting did you not understand?"
For once, instead of arguing back, Ron looked sheepish. "It's like Ginny said. It's so weird to think we could also be on the other side of that door right now."
"Yes, but not in any way that matters. We're never going to interact with time-shifted versions of ourselves. I visualized the doors as soundproof, but you shouldn't try to get around the safeguards. Though we probably wouldn't still be there anyway. If it's like I imagined, there should be airlocks between the rooms to further reduce the chance of timeline collisions."
"Airlocks?"
"Smaller rooms we'll use for doing the actual time-jumps back. It will help keep the timelines from overlapping."
Ron pondered this. "What would happen if we jumped back before you set the room configuration, and wished for something different?"
"Don't ever try that! The Time-Turner probably wouldn't work, but if it did, it would create a huge paradox. Are you trying to wipe us all from existence?"
"I didn't say I was going to do it! I'm just asking questions. You've had a year to get used to using that thing. It's a lot to take in."
Hermione took a deep breath and let it out. "Okay. If you're just trying to learn, that's okay. That's a good thing. It just scares me when it sounds like you aren't taking the consequences seriously enough. This is dangerous magic we're using, if you try to use it the wrong way. In fact, it wouldn't hurt to add more safeguards." She tapped a finger against her chin as she considered. "I wonder if there's a way to create a barrier around a region of space-time to prevent time magic from crossing it in the reverse direction, while still allowing you to enter and leave in the normal, forward-time direction."
Harry asked, "Is there going to be a quiz on this? Because I don't think I'm following."
"I was just thinking that if I could set up the room so that it allowed the Time-Turner to work inside, but prevented using time magic to leave before we entered, it would remove the possibility of creating a paradox." She pondered for another moment, then shook her head. "No, I wouldn't dare to experiment with magic like that. That's Founders-level magic. If I messed up, we might wind up trapped in here. Or something far worse and stranger. We'll all just have to avoid doing anything which could create a paradox."
She gave Ron a pointed look, and he nodded his agreement.
Ginny said, "I don't think any of understand this like you do. How do we avoid breaking rules by accident?"
Hermione said, "While we're in here, everyone just needs to do exactly as I say at all times, and there won't be any problems."
Her friends exchanged looks.
Ron said, "I thought we weren't allowed to try to brainwash each other."
Hermione shot a glare at him, but tried again. "Maybe I haven't explained this properly. Time-Turners are safe as long as you only use them to fit more separate, non-interfering activities into a given day. If you try to change something you've already observed, the Time-Turner will probably prevent it by failing to activate. If you do manage to travel back and create a paradox, the consequences can be severe."
Harry said, "I'm sure whatever plan you have to sort it out will be fine. We'll get used to the rules, even if we don't understand the reasons as well as you do. Though a whole day feels like a long time to spend getting beat up with Legilimency. No offense, Gin."
Ginny shrugged. "None taken. Not my idea of a good time either."
Hermione said, "Oh, we don't have to spend the whole day on that. We can work on whatever." She hastened to add, "Though that doesn't mean anyone should be slacking off the rest of the time."
"Okay, I'm in," Harry said. "And thank you again for sharing the Time-Turner with us."
Ginny and Ron added their agreement.
"You're welcome," Hermione said. "I guess we should all go get some homework to work on. And we'll need food, though I hate to ask the elves to do extra work."
"Maybe we can ask them to start setting food aside when they prepare it for the usual meals," Ron suggested.
"I suppose," Hermione said.
Having settled that, they made their way out of the room.
~*~Arriving back at Gryffindor Tower, Ginny and Hermione started up the stairs to the girls' side.
Ginny said, "Looks like no more messed-up sleep or worrying about running into past selves. That's all sorted now."
"Yes, isn't it wonderful?"
"Now any of us can use the Time-Turner, even without the special training you had, right? It wouldn't necessarily have to be the whole group at once?"
Hermione stopped at the top of the flight of stairs and turned to regard her. "You're talking about trying to break your Trace sooner."
"Your arguments against it are all taken care of now."
"We still don't know if it would work. And even if it could, catching up to the rest of us in age would mean you'd have to spend a lot of time shut away all by yourself. You said being in there feels creepy."
"Since we're doing this, I'll need to get used to it anyway. I'll find something to keep myself occupied."
"That's what I'm afraid of. It's not safe to practice magic by yourself–certainly not the spells you're learning."
"I'll be careful."
"You'd try, for a while, until you got tempted to test the limits. I'm sorry, but there's too much risk, for maybe no reward at all."
"Will you at least think about it?"
"Of course. I think about everything."
"Yeah, no kidding."
"Though I'm not likely to change my mind unless you come up with better arguments," Hermione warned her. "For now, we should grab our books and everything. Ron and Harry will be waiting for us, and I want to try out those rooms."