it hurt oh god it hurt and she was going to die
harriet harriet can you hear me say something please
hurt it hurts dying fire coming apart shattered broken
lavender's gone for madam pomfrey harriet can you hear
it hurts mum
"You didn't say the spell was dangerous!" Granger kept saying, over and over, her voice only slightly muffled by two walls and partly open doors.
"It's not!" said Patil in a choked, sobby voice. "M-mummy was the one who told me about it! Professor Trelawney—"
"Oh yes, because she's got all the sense anyone could ask for!" cried Granger, and for the hair's-width of a moment, Severus' constant desire to wring her neck suspended itself.
"Oh, shut it about Professor Trelawney!" Brown yelled. "You're rubbish at Divination, only you think if you're bad at something, it's because it's rubbish!"
Severus wanted to shout for Pomfrey to chuck them out of the ward—no, to do it himself—but he couldn't get up, and Dumbledore had gone to see to Miss Potter (Severus had ordered him, on pain of death). He'd left the door open, and Severus could hear every squawk of those bloody squabbling teenage girls, every word that made him want to hex them over and over.
What the fuck had they been doing, that had landed Miss Potter in the hospital wing yet again? If they'd been careless—if she'd been hurt as the result of their stupidity—he'd have them in detention for the rest of their half-witted lives.
He heard Dumbledore's soft, swift footsteps in the hall, saw the shadows warping. Then he heard the Headmaster speaking to Miss Potter's hysterical dorm-mates:
"I very much need the three of you to tell me what happened. One at a time, please," he added, almost before they all three broke out babbling at once.
Patil: "—we did the ritual, just like the spell said, and were doing the chanting—"
Brown: "—don't know what happened, we had our eyes shut—"
Granger: "—I left the room, and when I came back, Harry was—"
Brown: "—bending herself backwards off the floor, it was so scary—"
"Thank you," said Dumbledore, and they shut up. "I understand."
"I brought the book, sir, this is the spell," said Granger breathlessly.
"It sh-shouldn't have gone like th-that," Patil said. "I looked into it, for a month. It's not dangerous, it shouldn't have h-happened!"
"Is Harry all right?" Granger asked. Severus pictured her hands twisting together.
"I cannot tell you," Dumbledore said, and Severus' heart seemed to crackle with ice. "We are not even sure, yet, what has happened to her. But we are doing everything in our power."
The silence that followed was thick and choking, broken only by the muffled sounds of Patil, the sniveling idiot, starting to sob again.
"Forgive me," said Dumbledore gently. "I must ask the three of you to return to your dormitory. There is a great deal of work to be done."
"P-please, sir," said Granger in a wavering voice, "may I stay?"
Dumbledore did not answer right away, but when he said, "This once, you may," Severus was not surprised. "You may sleep out here. Madam Pomfrey has been explicit in her instructions that no one may see Harriet before she's satisfied that she's out of danger."
Granger appeared to accept that, for Severus heard no reply from her; and as he could no longer hear Patil blubbering or Brown jibbering, he had to assume they'd gone.
He lay in an agony of agitation, waiting for Dumbledore to return.
Hermione did think that Divinations was rubbish. Maybe it was only a Muggle prejudice (fortune-telling was so ridiculous) or maybe it was mostly Professor Trelawney, who was too fixated on dark and disturbing futures, none of which ever materialized, for Hermione to take her seriously; who was in the game to predict death and dismemberment, not honest outcomes; who psychologically tormented her students to titillate herself—Professor Trelawney, who was the first teacher Hermione had ever disliked and not respected. (She didn't like Snape, biased bully that he was, but at least he wasn't an utter quack.)
And Lavender and Parvati, with their stupid spell—
She'd made copies of the relevant pages in Parvati's book, and pored over them while Madam Pomfrey and Dumbledore worked in the quarantine ward. It was almost midnight, but she did not sleep. She had to figure out what had gone wrong.
It took her a while to realize she'd wound her fingers in the chain round her neck. Not her friendship necklace: the time-turner. And like a wisp of smoke drifting from a snuffed-out candle came the thought: If I can go back and time and stop it. . .
She withdrew from it in horror. No—she couldn't—Professor McGonagall had forbidden—
It wouldn't work anyway. If she'd succeeded, Harriet wouldn't be in the hospital wing now. Whatever she did, things would play out this way, because if she could have stopped it, she already would have.
True, said a cold, unimpressed voice in her mind. But you're flexing your logic primarily because your first thought was a teacher told me not to.
Tears stung her eyes. She shook her head, but that voice was relentless. Does Harriet end up in the hospital because you were too scared of what your teachers would say to go back in time, or because you went and there was nothing you could do?
Gritting her teeth, telling herself to shut up, she flapped the copied pages out straight and shoved them closer to the lamp for reading.
Yes, go on, do research, stare at a book. That's all you're good for—
"Shut up!" she cried. Her voice echoed in the empty ward. The up-up-up sounded like sniggering laughter.
"Fine," she hissed a moment later, crushing the note pages in her hands. "I will get into so much trouble, I might get expelled, and it won't accomplish anything, because if it were going to, it already would have—but fine! I'll go—"
Before she could talk herself out of it, she twisted the time-turner, spinning the ward back through time.
"What happened?" Severus demanded, craning his neck to see Dumbledore's face as he entered the room. "What's wrong with her?"
"She appears to have taken part in a spell calling upon Hecate, and using the power of three—twice," Dumbledore said. He looked older than he had earlier. He shouldn't look older, and Severus didn't mean because only an hour or so had passed.
"Do I look like I studied that bloody rubbish in school?"
"Hecate," Dumbledore said, almost as if to himself, "in her capacity of three. . . and three young women pooling their powers, to achieve insight into their pasts and futures." Carefully, Dumbledore laid the book on the same cabinet as Miss Potter's flowers. "I very much regret to say that we may guess what Miss Potter saw."
You know what I hear when Dementors get close to me? I hear Voldemort murdering my mum—
With a chill that traveled slowly to every part of him, Severus wondered what it would do to your mind, if you saw your own death.
He closed his eyes.
When the hospital wing solidified around Hermione again, sunlight filled it to the vaulted ceiling. For a moment, she stood paralyzed with panic, for it was midday, surely she'd be seen. How could she have been so careless? She knew Harriet had gone to the hospital wing during Charms class—
But the ward was as empty of people as it was full of light. Even Madam Pomfrey was absent (checking on Professor Snape, perhaps).
Not wasting her phenomenal luck, Hermione dashed out of the ward, shoving the time-turner down the neck of her blouse.
She'd spun it too far, gone back too early. What good was she going to be during the middle of the day?
Checking her watch, she saw it was just before Charms. Maybe she could meet Harriet in the hospital wing after all, talk to her, try to convince her. . . ? Not that it would do any good. . .
Wait. Wait. Harriet hadn't gone to the hospital wing first, she'd gone up to the dormitory, to retrieve the pain potion she'd stashed there. . .
Hermione took off running. All their shortcuts brought them through areas of the castle that would be densely populated at this hour; she'd have to go the long way round.
Several minutes later, clutching a stitch in her side, she staggered through the Fat Lady's portrait, raced across the empty common room, and hiked up the stairwell. She flung open the door to their room, and blessed her lucky stars to see Harriet was there—swearing, over the sound of smashing glass.
"Dammit, Hermione!" she said angrily. "That was the only bottle I had!"
"Sorry," Hermione panted. "Sorry—I didn't mean to startle you—I just had to tell you—whatever you do, don't do that spell!"
"What?" Harriet scowled as she pulled a goopy hairbrush out of her dresser, and swore in that new way that Hermione absolutely hated, wherever she'd got it from. She held up her hand, which had a long gash on the outside, nasty enough to make Hermione wince.
"The Divinations spell, with Lavender and Parvati—you can't do it, please swear to me you won't—"
"I'd rather not, you know." Harriet had folded up a handkerchief and was dabbing at the cut on her hand. "I'm not planning on telling them I got it today—ugh, this is such a rotten mess. Look, I've got to see Madam Pomfrey now, I'll see you later—"
"Promise me!" Hermione begged, hurrying after as Harriet stomped out of the dorm.
"What are you on about?" Harriet asked in no very welcoming tone. But she did look pale and ill. She'd looked pale and ill for the past week and more, in fact; moody and withdrawn.
"I—I've just got this horrid feeling something is going to go very, very wrong," Hermione said desperately.
"Professor Trelawney must be getting to you," Harriet said, shaking her head. "It's just a dumb old spell. I've got to run—aren't you going to be late to Charms?"
And she took off, leaving Hermione stricken and frustrated and angry with herself, and not a hair closer to preventing her best friend from ending up raving in madness and in fear.
Hermione retreated back to the dormitory to castigate herself. What a stupid plan (if plan it could even be called, which surely it couldn't). Surely she was cleverer than to think such half-baked rubbish would work! Clearly she failed to stop the spell from happening, because it did happen. However much she hated it, logic dictated as much. And aside from that, she'd been wearing different clothes and acting far too differently than she ought, before or after—
She repressed a stab of uncharitable gratitude toward Harriet's occasional plank-headedness. If Harriet's face-value acceptance of her bizarre behavior led to a paradox's not being created. . .
She had no business putting on airs about her own intelligence, not now. Now, her job was to hide and wait out the intervening hours until she could try again.
She knew she was safe from discovery by Lavender, Parvati or Harriet during Charms, but theoretically, anyone could walk into their dorm and find her where she shouldn't be. She needed a place to stay completely out of sight. . .
Her eyes fell on her wardrobe. She grimaced, but the idea was sound. She needed to be nearby.
But it was stuffy and uncomfortable in the wardrobe. She draped some of her clean school robes on the floorboard to make the space feel not quite so punishing, and propped the door open a crack, to let in enough light so that she could squint over her notes.
She tapped the book with a spell to modernize the language, banishing words like "proiected" and "vncouered":
Calling upon the Goddess Hecate, The Spell of Unity celebrates a witch's power and your unique insight into life's sacred cycles. At the height of your magical cycle, when life's forces are in flow within you, and the blood of the past month is expunged to make way for the new, the Spell of Unity may allow you to delve into experiences of your past which are of great moment and illuminate the fate they will write in your future. The memories found and fate projected will depend upon the witch in question, but they will be part of the sacred cycle of your own life, for you are part of the cycle of life itself.
The goddess Hecate reminds us of the importance of change, helping us to release the past, especially that which hinders our growth, and to accept change and transitions. She may require us to let go of what is familiar, safe, and secure and to travel to the darkest places of the soul.
New beginnings, whether spiritual or mundane, may fill us with reluctance and with fear, but Hecate places herself as your guide, illuminating the path before you. Familiar with the process of death and dying as well as that of new birth and new life, the goddess Hecate is wise in all of earth's mysteries.
She loans her farsightedness for you to see what lies deeply forgotten or even hidden, and helps you make a choice and find your path. Oft times she will shine her torch to guide you, in dreams or in meditation. Call upon her, and know the sacred mystery of her guiding hand.
It explained the ritual, the trance-state. There was no part detailing what to do if the spell went wrong.
For the nth time, Hermione saw how stupid she'd been to let Harriet do a spell that opened windows to her past and her future. She knew the Dementors dredged up memories dreadful enough to make Harriet faint (memories of the night her parents died, Hermione was certain, though Harriet had never said); and her future, linked to a defining moment in the past, mapping the course of her life, would surely have to do with You-Know-Who as well. But she'd been so certain that the spell was nothing (not that this stupid book helped), that Divination was a risible branch of magic, imprecise at best, that Lavender and Parvati were talentless ninnies—so certain of all that, she'd been content to sit by and demonstrate how very above-it-all she was.
And now, with this knowledge of her own failure, she'd have to watch herself fail yet again.
They were right, those witches and wizards who'd warned that time-turners were a curse.
Lavender and Parvati returned first. They came in, grumbling, because Harriet had run off somewhere. Hermione remembered her slipping away after dinner, though she hadn't asked where she was going. To get away from everyone, she'd assumed. The Sirius Black business had upset her so much.
Eventually, she heard herself come back. It was so odd to listen to her own voice and know it wasn't coming from a recording.
Idiot, she chastised herself. Idiot!
When at long last she heard Harriet come back, she learned another lesson: that something you'd been impatiently waiting for could be even more painful than the wait itself.
They started the ritual. Parvati lit the incense and Lavender hung the burner from the ceiling, clanking the chains. Harriet would be sitting on her bed, knees drawn up, watching the other two with a tired, resigned expression. Hermione should have been comforting her, not poring over her Arithmancy book and dwelling on its superiority to Divination. What sort of friend was she? All this year, while Harriet had been under threat of murder, Hermione had been studying Muggles!
Now they were drawing lines on each other's hands and foreheads. . . now lying down. . . now starting that ridiculous chant. . .
The little half-a-heart dug into Hermione's palm when she gripped her necklace tight.
Through the thin gap she'd left in the wardrobe door, Hermione saw her other-self closing her book with a look of thick disgust and finally, finally, leaving the room. Hermione was elated, though she couldn't stop the bitter thought that maybe, if she'd stayed, she could have seen something was wrong from the first and put a stop to it immediately.
Well, that was what she was here for now. Better late than never, they said.
They probably hadn't had time travel in mind.
Lavender and Parvati continued to chant, but Hermione couldn't hear Harriet's voice any longer.
Then, as if a cord had been pulled, the voices of the other two simply stopped in mid-sentence. The sudden silence prickled along Hermione's scalp.
Now.
Holding her breath—even though she knew nobody saw her—Hermione eased open the door and climbed down from the wardrobe. Her bare feet made no sound. In fact, now their chanting had stopped, there was no sound in the room at all. Parvati and Lavender lay peacefully with their eyes closed, their hands stretched out toward each other.
And Harriet was staring open-eyed at the ceiling, her face frozen and contorted, like she was in agony, like she was seeing something that terrified her; and yet there was a blankness in her eyes, as if they were fixed on something Hermione couldn't see.
Hermione knelt over her and grabbed her hand, trying to wrench it off the floor. It wouldn't go—as if it was locked down in that triangle with Lavender and Parvati's.
Her scar was an angry, blistering red, like it was burning, like there was fire behind it. Her whole body was rigid as bone, Hermione couldn't even hear her breathing.
I've got to do something—What if I do something wrong? The book didn't say—Then you'll have to figure something out on your own, won't you? Aren't you supposed to be clever?
The skin on Harriet's forehead was starting to split around her scar, like the shell of an egg.
Hermione gagged; tears splintered her vision. Then, raising her wand, she shot the incense burner down from the ceiling with a spell.
And when Lavender and Parvati jerked up and pulled their hands away, Harriet screamed like she was being pulled apart. Her back arched off the floor, more than a foot above it, so only the crown of her head and her feet were touching, and she screamed and screamed—
"Get Pomfrey!" Hermione shouted, and Lavender was off like a rabbit.
Then Hermione bolted. She jumped into the wardrobe just as she heard her other-self slam back into the room, crying, "Harriet? Harriet!" and Parvati was weeping too hard to notice Hermione was in two places at once—
Hermione slid to the floor of the wardrobe, breathing out through her nose. She didn't know if she'd helped at all. She may not have. How long would it have been before she came back to the room, if there hadn't been that commotion? How long would Lavender and Parvati have lain there, trapped in the spell?
It could have been not long at all.
It could have been ages.
She pressed her forehead against her knees and listened to Harriet wail, like she was so terrified she'd lost control of herself. Tears stung her eyes and blame and grief twisted her heart, because Harriet was the bravest person she knew.
Hermione was finally free of the wardrobe past two in the morning. When she slipped back into the hospital wing, Professor Dumbledore was sitting beside the bed she'd abandoned, reading the spell-book she'd given him hours and hours ago.
Hermione walked toward him without pausing. She'd never thought she'd face the probability of her own expulsion so stoically—so indifferently. At this moment, she wasn't sure she would even care.
Professor Dumbledore glanced up at her without a trace of surprise. "Well, my dear?" he said. "Any insights?"
"I don't know, sir," she whispered. "I—didn't know what to do."
"All the same," he said gently, closing the book, "it is better that you tried."
"You aren't—angry? Sir, I broke the rules—"
"I always knew you would. It would take a far duller soul than yours, Miss Granger, never to use an object of inherent fascination such as that for any purpose besides study."
But how close she'd come to doing precisely that made Hermione feel deeply ashamed, repulsed with herself.
"How is she, sir?"
"Very ill, I am afraid." There was no trace of a smile on his face. In fact, he looked quite old all at once. "Miss Patil is right; the spell should have been perfectly innocuous. And yet. . ."
Maybe what she saw was too much to bear. A cold shiver rippled through Hermione's heart.
"How ill is ill, sir?"
Professor Dumbledore looked at her a moment, as though debating the wisdom of telling her. Then he said, with a gentleness that terrified her as much as what he said next:
"She may go mad, Miss Granger. She may already have done."
If Severus had ever cursed anything with as much violence as he did his situation during those next few days, he'd forgotten what it was. Knowing him, there had surely been something; but his fury at the frustration of being trapped flat on a bed, in an agony both physical and mental, while at the same time bereft of all mental stimulation, was matched only by his hatred of his own futility in the same situation. He had nothing to do, there was nothing he could do.
Citing the threat of Sirius Black, Dumbledore did not remand Miss Potter into the custody of St. Mungo's Healers, though he called on them. They tramped through the quarantine ward, bleating uselessly, and Severus didn't even have the option of excoriating them because Pomfrey had locked his door and thrown up a silencing-spell.
So, too, came Mrs. Patil, a so-called Divinations expert. She was luckier than the rest that Severus couldn't get up, or he'd have torn into her for being so witless as to sire daughter so fool-headed she exposed her friends to spells that drove them to the brink of madness, with no indication, after three days, that they might ever return from it.
"Mrs. Patil," said Professor Dumbledore, "thank you for coming."
Hermione was seldom in awe of people who weren't authority figures or intellectual giants, and Mrs. Patil was only a professional fortune-teller. But there was something so grave about her, and she was so genuinely beautiful and elegant, that Hermione found herself feeling quite shy and inadequate. She berated herself for being such a ninny. What did it matter if Mrs. Patil was beautiful?
It matters because you aren't.—Shut up.
"Headmaster," said Mrs. Patil, her voice as grave as her eyes. "I am deeply sorry for what has happened."
"Thank you," Professor Dumbledore said, matching her tone. "It is a tragic business. We were hoping you might have some insight into the matter—what could have gone wrong, or what can be done."
Instead of protesting that she had no such intelligence, Mrs. Patil replied, "I would be honored," and followed him into Harriet's room.
Hermione went with them. Professor Dumbledore had allowed it (to Madam Pomfrey's resigned displeasure).
Her heart ached whenever she saw Harriet, who lay on the bed, twisting in the magical restraints Madam Pomfrey had thrown across her, her hair snarled and soaked with sweat, muttering, her eyes half-open, only the whites showing. For three days she had been like this. She didn't even sleep. She just kept on muttering and twitching, occasionally shouting, but no one could understand a word and she never appeared to notice they were there.
St. Mungo's healers hadn't been able to do a thing for her. Even their advice had conflicted. One had said to put her in a healing sleep; another had recommended a potion; a third had said she mustn't be given magical aides to sleep or regain lucidity; and a fourth had advised their calling on him in a few days to see how she was getting along.
"It's beyond me, Headmaster," Madam Pomfrey had whispered to Professor Dumbledore, when they thought Hermione was asleep (although how she could possibly sleep, Hermione didn't know). "I don't even know where to begin helping her."
Mrs. Patil was the next resort.
Hermione tried not to think the last.
Mrs. Patil sat in a chair beside Harriet's bed and for several minutes simply stared at her. Then she stretched out her hand, fingers spread wide, and passed it through the air a foot above Harriet's body, from her knees to her head. At last she laid her hand slowly, gently, on Harriet's forehead, closing her eyes when her palm at last rested on Harriet's skin.
Hermione halfheartedly scoffed inside, but she was too worried to work herself into a state of full-blown disdain. And if these methods saved Harriet, what did it matter how corny they looked?
"She is trapped in a state of temporal flux," said Mrs. Patil as she opened her eyes.
"You will have to forgive my ignorance in matters of Divination, Ma'am," said Professor Dumbledore courteously.
"There is not only one timeline, Headmaster." Her voice was simple, straightforward, quite unlike Professor Trelawney's misty intonation. "Each living thing has its own store of time—humans, trees, flies, even mountains. In this world, human bodies and minds tend to be anchored in the present, though we always feel the inexorable pull of the past and the magnetic fascination of the future. Time presents an incredible influence over us all. It is important to observe its natural boundaries. Even the slightest variation in our natural timeline can pose a great danger. To put it more simply, when our time becomes disrupted, bad things happen." She brushed Harriet's head off her forehead. "This girl's personal time is in chaos."
"Do you mean that Harriet has no notion of where she is within her own timeline?" Professor Dumbledore asked.
"For one professing such little knowledge," she said, with the flicker of a dry smile, "you master it quickly. Yes. Hers has entangled itself."
"But this shouldn't have happened," Hermione said desperately, "should it? The book didn't say anything about it going wrong—"
"The Spell of Unity often distresses those who have had painful experiences in their past," Mrs. Patil said even more gravely than before. "I wish Parvati had told me she meant to include Harriet Potter. From only the little I know of her past, I would have forbidden it."
Hermione steeled herself to ask the next question. "Could this have happened because I disrupted the spell while Harriet was still under it?"
Mrs. Patil looked at her, and in her silence Hermione read her own condemnation. She couldn't stop the feeling that Mrs. Patil saw a great deal more than Hermione would have liked.
"It could be so," she said at last, "but it should not be. At best, any interference should have left Miss Potter with only a headache. For her to be reduced to this state, the three of them would have needed to channel power enough to overcome the natural influence of time. I cannot possibly comprehend three thirteen-year-old witches being capable of that. The spell does not even require it."
But Hermione felt numb. She'd done this. It was her fault.
"The future can be changed," said Professor Dumbledore, "but the past cannot. We alter our futures with every breath, but we can do nothing for the past. Am I correct, Mrs. Patil?"
"You are," said Mrs. Patil, looking faintly surprised.
"The past can only be learned from," said Professor Dumbledore. "Though it is most commonly revisited with regret. Thank you, Mrs. Patil. Is there anything to be done for her?"
"As I have said, our timeline is anchored in the present. If the damage has not been," the tiniest pause, "irreparable, hers should right itself in time. I am afraid you can do nothing but wait. Our timelines cannot safely be altered by any outside force." She tucked Harriet's hair around her ears. "This you see before you. . . this is the result of that."
"Thank you," said Professor Dumbledore, bowing to her.
Professor Dumbledore escorted Mrs Patil away, but Hermione stayed beside Harriet. She filled a porcelain bowl from the sink and carried it to the bed with a flannel, to wipe the sweat off Harriet's forehead.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered, and wiped away the tear that fell onto Harriet's cheek.
Professor Dumbledore's voice, though soft, startled her. She hadn't heard him return. She bent her head down so he wouldn't see that she'd been crying.
"If you grow tired of sitting with her," he said gently, "you may call on Madam Pomfrey at any time."
"Yes, sir." I won't.
"Yesterday is today's memory," Professor Dumbledore murmured. "And tomorrow is today's dream."
Then he left, shutting the door soundlessly behind him.
Now that he'd gone, Hermione wiped her tear-streaked face with the damp flannel. She sniffed. She'd been hoping that Mrs. Patil would make it better. For all her scoffing. . .
But she was the one who'd proved herself weak, ignorant, and ill-judged. She had lied to Harriet about the time-turner because she was afraid of what Harriet might want to do with it, and it was her own actions who'd placed her best friend in this situation.
"Harriet. . ." She soaked the flannel in the bowl and wrung it out, gathering strength, or trying to, from the solidness of it. She laid the flannel on Harriet's forehead. Madam Pomfrey had healed her, but her scar was still an angry red.
Mrs. Patil had placed her hand here, like this. Now, Hermione wondered if it hadn't been part of some ritual or test, but some attempt at giving Harriet comfort.
"Harriet," she whispered. "At the beginning of the year, Professor McGonagall gave me a time-turner. That's how I've been getting to all my classes. She made me promise not to tell you. . ."
And she told Harriet all of it. She pretended it was practice for when Harriet was herself again: that the second recital might be easier, more cleansing, than the first.