Around the World in 24 Hours
There was no word from Charlie or his friends over the next few days, so Harry, Ron, and Hermione took that to mean that there was no trouble getting Norbert to Romania, despite the lack of a transport crate. Their fellow students were angry with them for all of the house points they had lost, as they'd anticipated, but that just made it easier to avoid people. The most important thing was that the 'albedo' phase of their recipe to create their own Sorcerer's Stone was complete, and it was time to start talking about the next steps.
"That's the first two phases done," Hermione said proudly. "Which is the halfway point, by the way." The three of them were gathered in one of the castle's many secret passageways to discuss their plans.
"We're only halfway done? After everything we've already been through?" Ron asked incredulously, putting his head in his hands.
Hermione frowned. "Evidently you're a glass half empty kind of guy."
"At the risk of also sounding like a glass half empty kind of guy…" Harry chimed in. "We obviously have pretty limited time remaining. If we catch up to the day that Quirrell and Voldemort go after the stone, and we haven't finished…"
"I know," said Hermione. "That's our deadline. I'd like to be done with this before then if at all possible, actually. I don't want to have to deal with those two again. But I think we can make it."
"What do we need to do next?" asked Harry.
"Phase three is called the 'citrinitas' phase, also known as the yellowing. We're going to need sunlight, and lots of it. Specifically, 24 hours of continuous sunlight. If we succeed, our ingredients should dry and harden, producing a yellow stone."
"Hermione, I promise I'm not trying to be negative, but… the sun doesn't stay out for 24 hours at a time," said Ron.
Hermione grinned. "It does," she insisted. "At least, it's always out somewhere in the world."
Harry and Ron exchanged glances. "So, we're going to… travel?" Harry asked.
"We're going to travel," Hermione confirmed. "We can get about 12 hours of sunlight here, but the other 12 hours will have to come from elsewhere. I figure that Australia is a good bet for most of that, but the problem is that there are 2 hours in between sunset here and sunrise there. However, if we wait out a few hours in New York we should be fine."
"New York… City?" asked Ron.
"Exactly."
Harry and Ron exchanged glances yet again. "Are you going to explain how we're going to get to New York?" asked Harry.
"And Australia," added Ron.
"That's the only bit that's a little tricky," said Hermione. "International travel isn't always easy, even with magic. The best way is for us to use the international equivalent of the Floo Network. Of course, there are pretty limited fireplaces that are hooked up to it, so we'll have to head to the Floo Port for that. But we can't take the cauldron with us if we do that, we can't take it inside during the 24 hours, and anyway it would be very suspicious if we were carrying around a cauldron with a half baked stone. And portkeys aren't safe for people to use over such long distances, so that won't work either-"
"Hermione, I don't mean to interrupt," Harry interrupted. "But, you're doing that thing where you tell us what won't work instead of the thing you've thought of that will work."
"I know, this is my thought process," Hermione said dismissively. "And anyway, I'm technically not doing that this time because we are going to be using the Floo Port and portkeys."
"But you just said we can't use either of those," said Ron.
"I said that the stone can't travel via the Floo Network and that we can't travel via portkey, but I didn't say that we can't travel via the Floo Network and the stone can't travel via portkey."
"I'm confused," said Ron.
"Me too," said Harry.
"Here's my plan," said Hermione. "One of us will stay at Hogwarts, one of us will travel to New York, and one of us will travel to Australia. Whoever stays here will monitor the stone in the sun until it's almost sunset, then they'll use a portkey to send it to New York. Whoever's in New York will monitor the stone there for a few hours before using a portkey to send it to Australia, and whoever's there will monitor it for the remainder of the 24 hours. Simple."
"How is any of that simple?" Ron demanded.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Okay, fine, it's not simple but we're trying to make the Sorcerer's Stone. If it was simple everyone would be doing it."
Preparations to send their work-in-progress stone around the world across 24 hours kept Harry, Ron, and Hermione quite busy over the next few days, but it was nice to have something to do. It had been decided that Ron would handle things at Hogwarts while Harry went to New York City and Hermione went to Australia. Harry and Hermione would be utilizing Polyjuice Potion to complete their journeys, but thankfully they still had some left over from their trip to Diagon Alley. Creating the portkeys had been the toughest part. None of them had done that before, and the fact that they had to transport an object over such a great distance added an extra layer of difficulty. Thankfully there was plenty of material to reference in the library and, when that wasn't enough, there was Dumbledore. Hermione was still a bit disappointed that they'd had to use their last resort, but there simply wasn't enough time for them to keep trying and failing to figure it out themselves, and they couldn't afford to fail if they ended up making a mistake somewhere. It ended up being a blessing, as Dumbledore had had the clever idea of using stickers for the portkeys, that could be stuck onto the cauldron ahead of time, and would activate on a schedule.
And so the day of the plan was upon them, and Ron was outside on the Hogwarts grounds at sunrise, watching over their cauldron. Harry and Hermione were resting, as they had many hours before their parts of the plan were to be carried out, and they would be up quite late that evening. That is, they would be up late as far as their own time zone was concerned, even though physically they would be travelling to other time zones where the sun was still shining. Their sleep schedules would be completely thrown off by the time they got back, but hopefully it would all be worth it.
Ron found that the grounds were quite lonely this early in the morning. Everyone else in his dormitory had been sound asleep when he left, there was no one milling about in the common room, no one else wandering the castle halls. It was good that there was no one around to question him as he transported their cauldron of whitened ingredients from the Room of Requirement and out to the grounds, but it gave him the strange sensation of being the only person left in the entirety of the massive castle. It was a bit spooky if he allowed his mind to acknowledge it for too long.
Sitting and watching a cauldron work on its tan turned out to be a rather dull business. Ron knew he couldn't leave it alone, as they couldn't risk anything happening to it, but he knew it was going to be a long 12 hours. He occupied himself for a few minutes by snacking on the crumpets with jam that he'd brought for his breakfast, but didn't really know what to do with himself once they were gone.
After a while, it became clear that Ron was going to need to move the cauldron every so often to avoid the shifting shadows. According to Hermione, the ingredients had to be in direct sunlight at all times for the entirety of the 24 hour period, which put a lot of pressure on Ron who was going to be so relieved when his part of the plan was over.
The solitude started getting to Ron after about four hours, at which point he abruptly began to miss it as three figures showed up, walking straight toward him.
"What are you doing here, Malfoy?" Ron demanded as Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle came into view. His heart began pounding, not because he was scared of the Slytherins, who were much younger than him even though they didn't look it, but because he knew they had the potential to screw everything up if he couldn't get rid of them, and fast.
Malfoy smirked. "Just out for a stroll. You don't own the grounds, Weasley." Crabbe and Goyle laughed as if this was the funniest thing they'd ever heard. Those two really were morons.
"Well, get on with your stroll, then. Have a nice day."
"You don't get to tell me what to do, Weasley," Malfoy sneered. "What are you doing out here, anyway? This is a bit of a weird spot to be sitting around by yourself. Did you and Potter get into a fight? He probably realized what a mistake it was to befriend a lower caliber wizard." Crabbe and Goyle started laughing again.
"That's none of your business, Malfoy," Ron insisted. "If you don't want to tell me what you're doing here, I'm certainly not going to tell you why I'm here. So, we should both just continue on about our business." Malfoy was such a pest. In their own time he was a menace, but here, with the age difference between them being what it was, he was just a nuisance.
"What have you got behind you there, Weasley? Working on your potions, are you?" Malfoy said as he caught sight of the cauldron.
Ron sighed. "It has nothing to do with you."
"We'll see about that." Malfoy started to walk toward the cauldron, but he'd barely taken two steps before Ron was on his feet with his wand raised.
"Go away and mind your own business," Ron warned, his tone stern.
Malfoy initially seemed surprised to have a wand pulled on him, but then he started to laugh. "You want to duel, Weasley? Let's duel." He pulled out his own wand and pointed it back at Ron.
Ron wanted to laugh. He wasn't the best dueler in the world, but regardless an 11-year-old Malfoy stood no chance against him. He'd battled death eaters in the Department of Mysteries and lived to tell the tale. "I don't want to hurt you," he said simply, and he truthfully didn't. There was no honor in fighting someone five years his junior.
This declaration only made Malfoy laugh harder. "You couldn't hit me if you tried, Weasley. Depulso!"
"Protego," Ron said, easily blocking the spell.
Malfoy was unable to hide his shock. The shield charm was considered to be much too advanced for first years. And if Ron had been truly worried about ruining the timeline or being discovered as a time traveler, he wouldn't have used the spell. But at the moment, his number one priority was protecting the cauldron and keeping it in the sun. "Where did you learn that?" Malfoy demanded, his tone sounding a bit nervous.
"That's none of your concern," Ron said flatly. "Now, run along. We can both pretend this never happened."
Malfoy seemed conflicted. He certainly didn't want to back down from a fight, especially with someone who he'd repeatedly declared to be inferior, but he never could have predicted that Ron would suddenly be performing such an advanced spell with a seemingly practiced hand. "Rictusempra!" he exclaimed, trying to catch Ron off guard.
"Protego," Ron said, blocking the spell with the same ease as the first.
"You… you're a freak, Weasley!" Malfoy declared as he stormed away, a bewildered Crabbe and Goyle trailing along behind him. Ron slid his wand back into his pocket and sat back down.
Harry and Hermione visited Ron a little after noon, bringing him lunch and checking on how things were going. But now it was time for them to enact their parts of the plan. They snuck back to the Shrieking Shack and changed into their ridiculous robes that Ron had gotten from the sales rack at Madam Malkin's. Then Hermione handed Harry a flask containing some of their leftover Polyjuice Potion, grabbed a second one for herself, and they both added the hairs.
"Polyjuice is disgusting enough without having to drink something with someone else's hair in it," Harry commented as his face scrunched up in disgust.
"It's best not to think about it," Hermione said. "Cheers." She lifted her flask as if giving a toast, and then she and Harry both took a sip of their potions.
"Ugh that's bad," Harry said after forcing himself to swallow despite his brain trying to convince him not to. He and Hermione quickly began to change, suddenly filling in the adult sized robes they wore quite nicely.
"Well, I guess we'd better get going," Hermione said through a mouth that was no longer her own. She took some Floo Powder out of her bag, and she and Harry used the Shrieking Shack's fireplace to travel to the Floo Port, the one place in Britain where one could find fireplaces that offered travel to other countries.
The Floo Port itself seemed to mainly consist of rows and rows of fireplaces, with lots of witches and wizards from all over the world constantly coming and going. It had stone walls, high ceilings, and tall white columns. Everyone seemed to be in a rush, with somewhere to be. Of course, there was little reason to be there if you didn't have a destination in mind, but everyone's sense of urgency seemed to hang in the air, giving off an anxiety inducing effect. Harry and Hermione stuck close to each other as they took it all in, glancing around and trying to figure out where they needed to go.
"It looks like there are plaques on each fireplace saying which country they lead to," Hermione said.
Harry glanced around and saw that Hermione was right. "I think they're in alphabetical order," he said.
"I think you're right. I guess… I guess we'll have to head in opposite directions, then." With Hermione going to Australia, and Harry headed to the United States, their fireplaces were likely on opposite ends of the port.
"I guess we'll part here, then," said Harry. He was suddenly very nervous. Sure, he'd faced Voldemort and his followers multiple times, but there was still something unnerving about travelling to a different country, especially one where he'd never been before.
Hermione nodded. "This will all be over soon. Remember, when you're done you can head back here from the port in the states, and then from here you can take one of the British fireplaces back to the Shrieking Shack. If all goes well, I'll meet you and Ron back at school with the stone."
"Okay," Harry said, taking a deep breath to steady himself. "Let's do this. Good luck."
"You too." They hugged and then parted ways, hurrying to get into position.
It took Harry a while to get to his fireplace, but he finally made it down to the one marked 'United States.' Knowing that he didn't have time to waste, he grabbed a handful of Floo Powder and left the United Kingdom behind.
The American Floo Port was organized similarly to the one in Britain, with rows of fireplaces that could take you just about anywhere in the world. It was a bit more brightly lit, however, and had cement floors and walls made from red brick. There were fireplaces that could take you to different parts of the country, of course, but the port itself was located in New York City, which was why the city had been chosen for the dropoff point. Now Harry had to get to the coordinates where the portkey would be sending the cauldron.
Dumbledore had shown them a spell that would point them in the direction of the portkey's coordinates, but Harry knew that it would be somewhere in the Bronx Zoo. The zoo had been chosen because it was likely that there would be some sunny spots there, which were harder to come by in a city with so many unbelievably tall buildings. So, Harry began by making his way there. He hid out nearby until his Polyjuice Potion wore off, and changed into some clothes he'd brought with him to blend in as one of the muggle children who frequented the zoo. And once he was inside, he began to use the spell to point himself in the right direction. He had to be careful about it with so many muggles around, gripping his wand beneath his jacket as some magical force turned it from side to side, showing him which way to go.
"What's that?" a young girl asked as Harry walked by.
Harry was so focused on navigation that her voice caused him to jump. Apparently she had spied his wand despite his best efforts to hide it. "It's… a drumstick. I'm in a band," he said quickly.
"You talk funny."
"I'm British." And Harry walked off without another word, having no time for this conversation.
A few minutes later, Harry found himself staring into the Bronx Zoo Bison Range. His wand wanted him to go in, past the fence that separated him from the massive, horned creatures, but he really didn't want to do that. Still, it seemed that this couldn't be helped, as the cauldron was, in fact, going to appear amongst the bison very soon. Harry sighed.
Thankfully, Harry had brought the invisibility cloak with him. He slipped into a nearby restroom, wrapped the cloak around himself, and hoped that no one noticed as the stall door opened, but seemingly no one emerged. Then he made his way back to the Bison Range, and began the difficult task of climbing the fence while under the cloak. His strategy was to press himself against the fence, holding onto the top of the cloak and holding it over his head so that it draped behind him, covering him from view from anyone walking behind him, though the bison would have a full view of him. In this manner he climbed the fence, ensuring that his hands remained above his head at all times. It was no easy task, but he made it to the top, quickly wrapping the cloak around himself as he jumped down. There was no longer any barrier between himself and the bison, but he just had to hope that they were in a friendly mood. He had no desire to go head to head with those horns.
Once inside, Harry continued to follow the point of his wand as it led him to the place where the cauldron would soon appear. He moved as slowly and quietly as he could, trying hard to not attract the bisons' attention. They seemed to be minding their own business, just standing around and occasionally nibbling on some grass. For the time being, anyway. Finally, he reached the spot and sat down on the ground to wait, the invisibility cloak draped over him. He was a good way away from the fence at this point, which was probably a good thing. It meant that the zoo patrons were less likely to notice if he slipped up and accidentally exposed a foot or something. Of course, it also meant he had a long way to run if anything went wrong.
Finally, and right on cue, the cauldron appeared beside Harry in the grass. He quickly held out an arm to use the cloak to block it from others' view. Glancing down at the cauldron's contents, it seemed that everything was going well. In his unprofessional opinion, the ingredients were drying out in the way that Hermione had described, working through the process of pressing together into a single stone. And so Harry had three hours to sit amongst the bison, feeling very much like a zoo exhibit as people walked by and stared through the fence. He knew that they couldn't see him, but that didn't stop him from feeling like he was constantly being watched. It reminded him of a long ago trip to the zoo for Dudley's 11th birthday, when he'd first talked to a snake. Actually, marooned in time as he was, that trip to the zoo hadn't really been that long ago at all.
After a while, Harry's limbs began to feel cramped as he meticulously worked to remain hidden, while also keeping the cauldron in the sun. But finally, according to his watch, the cauldron was minutes away from making its departure. So, Harry removed the cloak and tied it around one of the cauldron's handles. Then he sat still, trying to avoid drawing attention to himself. And for a moment, it worked. But then it didn't.
"Hey!" shouted a man in khaki shorts and a matching button down top. "Who let a kid into the Bison Range?"
Harry's heart leapt up into his throat, and he knew that that was his cue to go. He jumped up and sprinted toward the fence, dodging bewildered bison as he went. And as he scaled the fence and swung back over to the other side, he looked back and saw that the cauldron had disappeared.
Hermione found herself lounging on an Australian beach at sunrise, waiting for the cauldron to arrive. She almost felt bad, having clearly been assigned the most luxurious portion of their plan. Granted, given the time difference between Australia and Scotland, it was going to feel as if she was pulling an all-nighter. But if there was ever a good place to pull an all-nighter, it was on an Australian beach during a sunny day. She just hoped she didn't get a sunburn.
The cauldron appeared right on time, along with Harry's invisibility cloak, and Hermione made quick work of utilizing the cloak to conceal the cauldron from prying eyes. Things seemed to be progressing well, which was encouraging. She had no idea what she would do if this didn't work. After all of the stress of the past several months, it was comforting to know that they had a plan that was still on track.
So Hermione sat in the sand, watching the waves, and waited out the last leg of the 24 hours. And at the end of it all, a shiny, yellow stone sat in the cauldron.