A Time For Heroes

Chapter 4: Oversights

Penelope was already waiting for her. "Hi again," she said with a grin as Hermione came up.

"Hi," Hermione replied. "Sorry I'm late, the idiots in bookkeeping decided I didn't have quite enough annoyances in my life, and kindly decided to rectify that."

"Ugh," Penelope's shudder made it obvious that she also had experience with that particular brand of torture. "So, shall we go to the staff room? Only place we don't have to worry about being overheard and suddenly finding ourselves unable to speak."

Hermione grimaced, and nodded in agreement. She hated the sensation of telling her mouth to speak but being unable to do it. So they turned and walked down the hall to the cozy little room the Unspeakables often used for breaks. Sometimes they used it to talk about classified things, but often it was because Unspeakables had the habit of getting engrossed in an experiment and staying long after any cafes had closed for the night.

Once Hermione had even curled up on one of the chairs and slept there. She'd been working on a particularly engaging project, and had worked herself so hard that she'd accidentally fallen asleep. When she awoke she'd been so impatient to return to her experiment that she'd simply never left.

Ginny, she remembered, had not been amused.

"So what were they on your case about this time?" Penelope asked as they entered the room. Somebody had already made a pot of tea, and they both poured themselves a cup.

"I wanted an exact replica of Ministry records about time travel, and they insisted that since the content is freely available I couldn't actually need anything else."

Penelope smiled sympathetically as they sat down across from each other. "What records, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Stories about witches or wizards going back in time and killing their past selves, or their parents or grandparents or whatnot, or going into the future and being killed by their future selves. I've been working on the time travel contradiction issue and I just can't come to any conclusion." She let out a noise of frustration.

"I didn't know that those stories were actually officially released," Penelope said in surprise. "Isn't that sort of thing impossible?"

"Yes, it's called the 'grandfather paradox' and it's completely basic to time travel theory. I know that the records have to be false. I'm sure of it. But I haven't been able to prove it, and it's driving me insane." Hermione took a sip of tea and realized that she hadn't packed herself a lunch.

She hated to cause more work for the house elves, but she was quite hungry, so she excused herself to send off an order for a turkey sandwich. Penny, also without a lunch, stood up and followed her.

"But if they're not false," Penny said in confusion, "then you get a direct contradiction. Something did happen and it didn't."

"Yes," Hermione confirmed with an aggrieved sigh as she scribbled her order down. "It's ridiculous that they exist in the first place. Nobody working in the field of time travel could have actually believed them."

Penelope shook her head as she sent off her own meal request. They headed back to their seats. "That proves it though, doesn't it? If you start with a proposition and derive a contradiction from it, then the proposition is necessarily false. So you start with 'the records are true', you get that something happened and it didn't happen, therefore the records are not true. ...Right?"

They both sat down again as Penelope gave her final unsure query.

"In a complete system, yes," agreed Hermione. "But we don't have one, not even close. I'd go so far as to say that I'm not even sure our system is consistent, not without a scientific explanation for magic. And if it's not consistent, then we're back to square one. If you have any statement that's both logically true and false, then you have all of them."

"But the universe can't support a paradox!" argued Penelope. "It--it implodes."

"It makes everything possible," Hermione grinned.

Penelope gave her a withering look. "And everything impossible," she pointed out, wagging a finger at the other woman.

Suddenly, a plate with a sandwich appeared on the table in front of Hermione, and a bowl of soup appeared in front of Penelope.

Hermione looked contrite. "I know. But until we have a coherent explanation for magic, we're sort of feeling around in the dark." She took a thoughtful bite of her sandwich.

"It's internally coherent. There's nothing within magical theory that's inconsistent with itself, or contradictory." Penelope paused. "Well, that we know of."

"Yes, but it's entirely isolated from other truths we're aware of. It's a fault, you can't deny it makes it incomplete."

Penelope nodded with a sigh. "Maybe, but I think it's unavoidable. It's not a fault with magic; Muggles have the same thing with their science, they even seem to have a sort of system now where one of the properties of their laws is that they break themselves, or something."

"True; we have paradoxes even without magic or physics," Hermione agreed. "'This statement is false.' That's one, right there."

Penny paused as she considered that. "It doesn't matter, though, because it's just words, it doesn't change the nature of reality, so it doesn't have to follow the law of the excluded middle. That's a fault of the language, stemming from its artificiality, isn't it?"

"Well," Hermione thought for a moment before answering; it wasn't really her area of expertise. "Specifically, I think, it's a symptom of the fact that our language isn't a complete system, as I was saying before."

"Let's see." Penelope was still concentrating on the Hermione's paradoxical statement. "It's a contradiction because if it's true, then it's false, and if it's false, then it's true. Oh, I remember! Sorry, it's been a few years since seventh-year Arithmancy. Paradoxes have to be self-referential, don't they?"

Hermione nodded. "Well, yes, of course, for something to be both true and false it must refer back to itself at some point."

There was a beat, and both of them looked at each other. Hermione's eyes lit up, and Penelope's followed only a fraction of a second later. Penelope was the first to manage to collect her thoughts enough to speak.

"But if you kill your past self--"

"--then that is self-referential," Hermione exclaimed, feeling her excitement rise as her thoughts began to snap into place.

"And instead of being a fault in the language..." Penelope breathed.

"It would be a fault in magical theory itself." Hermione felt her adrenaline begin to rush and, despite the fact that it was stemming from an intellectual exercise, she felt the need to move and do something. She reached down to take a bite of her sandwich to try to satisfy this urge.

"But that just means that the files are wrong," Penny repeated questioningly. "You just said it a few minutes ago."

"Yes, I did, but suddenly I'm not so sure." Hermione took a moment to chew her sandwich as she tried to organize her thoughts. "It could mean the same thing as it does in language, really. So it would be our own magical incompleteness proof."

"Well, let's think about this thought-experiment style," Penelope suggested. "Maybe you're just taking the--what did you call it? The grandfather paradox--as so basic that you're missing something."

Hermione nodded. "Okay."

"If you went back a few years and killed the younger you--what would happen? Unless the universe is self-aware it can't purposely stop you. There's no particular reason you couldn't go back and shoot 'Avada Kedavra' while you're sleeping. Something must happen as a result."

Hermione shrugged as she pressed her lips together in thought. "Well, at first glance, you die, but then you never went back in the first place, so you're alive after all, so you killed yourself after all. But that means you didn't. And so on." She spread her hands helplessly. "Causality is messed up, so that the effect of each action creates the impossibility of the preceding action."

"Well, what are the varying theories about it?"

"For one, if we can change the past, it necessitates parallel universes. You could make changes and kill your past self or your future self could come back and kill you, but the future traveler would just be from some possible future, because by killing the past self, that future could no longer exist. But the future person came from somewhere. So on some level, it had to have happened, but it never happens in our reality. Hence, parallel universes."

Penelope nodded.

"Best explanation for this would be that each time you make a decision, a new parallel universe is created. Going back in time would just create a new universe, just like any other decision."

"The problem with that being that if you go back and change the past, then you're no longer in your own universe, so you haven't changed anything in your 'home reality', so to speak?" Penelope was certainly clever. "Ouch. That would probably leave you living in a universe that isn't really yours. No, thanks."

"We can't rule something out because the concept is distasteful to us." This was an important precept in theoretical magic that Hermione had found superficially obvious, but in practice very hard to follow.

"Yes, but it doesn't quite seem to work out, does it?" Penelope leaned her elbows on the arm of her chair and propped her head up to the side. "That would leave us with disappearances of people who had gone into the past and ended up in a different reality."

"Except that there could be other realities from which that person left, and they ended up in ours--or created ours, remember, they could be branching off so that several different futures could actually count our reality right now as part of their 'home reality'--and we never know the difference."

Penelope nodded. "Okay, I think I have a handle on the parallel universes possibility. By that model, people going back and killing their past selves would create no problem, right?"

Hermione pursed her lips and took a bit of her sandwich. "My research suggests that there are not a lot of parallel universes. It's complex, but basically, it has to do with the balance of matter and energy, as well as the implausibility of a structure that leaves us without any unexplained disappearances, as you said before. It sounds neat in theory, but it would be virtually impossible for it to work out so well randomly."

"Okay then. Other theories?"

"The other main possibility is that you actually couldn't kill yourself, or your grandfather, etc, that it's simply impossible. Basically it would be taking away free will."

"Would it? Why not think of it that you still have free will, but obviously because you remember things a certain way, that's how they happened. You have a choice, but if you'd made a different choice, then you'd have a different memory. Things are as they are." Penelope's eyes flicked up to meet Hermione's as she blew lightly on her soup and took a sip.

"But in that case, the future would have already happened. So it's already written."

"Well, yes, I suppose."

"But if the future is written, then it's only the illusion of free will," Hermione said decisively. "Anyway, theories of the can't-change-the-past school tend to rely on the block model of time--that it's all already there, somewhere, we just haven't experienced it all yet. It's the only way to get around the complexity of counter temporal causality."

Penelope nodded. "Okay, then, with that in mind, what do the records say?"

"They're terribly unspecific," Hermione lamented, easily changing tracks from the lofty theory to physical evidence. "Though come to think of it, most of the paradox-causing issues aren't usually someone from our particular present going back and killing themselves, but rather of someone from the present traveling into the future and being killed by their future selves."

"Do we have records of the other side of that?" Penny queried. "Someone from the present coming upon their past self, and killing them?"

"Well, it's the same event, so they're all filed together."

Hermione was quiet for a while as she ate her sandwich. After a while she voiced her thoughts.

"In our third year," she said slowly, "Harry and I went back in time three hours to save Sirius Black--I'd been using a Time Turner all year--and there was a point where he saw what he thought was his father. But it turned out that it was really himself, from three hours later, traveled back in time. He was able to do the Patronus then, which he hadn't quite been able to do before, and he said it was because he knew he could do it because he'd already seen himself do it. And he knew that it didn't matter that he'd seen himself, because he already remembered it had happened, and he'd thought it was his father."

Penelope had a thoughtful look on her face. "So he did it because he knew he had. Seems like a bit of a loop, doesn't it? What if he hadn't done it then? Where did its... its happening come from? What was the cause, what was the effect?"

"I know, it bothered me too, even then, but I couldn't figure anything out," Hermione admitted. "So I just forgot about it, until I started this job. I just have no idea." She sighed and finished off her sandwich.

"Do you think the records will help?" Penelope asked.

"I thought so, but if they're true, I'm not sure how much help they'd be."

"You've checked our archives, of course?"

Hermione nodded. That was always the first place anyone would check when faced with a problem that ought to have come up before. "They're not there. That's part of why I thought they had to be a lie in the first place, though most of the instances are old enough that archives may have been lost, or destroyed, or they didn't bother to keep them."

"That's odd." Penelope finished her soup, and the two women stood up to leave their dishes on the counter.

"So are you very familiar with Muggle astronomy and physics?" Hermione asked as they walked across the room.

"There are some overlaps. To put a fine point on it, I know more about Muggle astronomy than the average Muggle, less than a Muggle who's working as closely with the subject as I am, and more than more of my coworkers."

Hermione nodded with a laugh. "Do you find it useful?"

"Definitely useful in the theoretical aspect," Penelope said, "but not at all in dealings with divination or the best times to collect potions ingredients. Some aspects of it have subtle impacts on the performance of spells at certain times, but that's only recently been explored, as I guess you know if you've read anything by Al Phagamma."

Hermione began walking back to their seats, but Penelope hung back and glanced at the clock. "I think my lunch break is over, not that it actually matters, but I've got something I really should get back to."

Hermione nodded. Though most of them kept their own schedules and when they worked didn't matter as long as they put in the hours and produced results, it was generally easier to stick to predetermined hours, so as to pace themselves and not take on too much overtime.

"I'm sorry, I completely forgot that you had questions about astronomy to ask me, I got so wrapped up in asking you questions," Penelope apologized.

"No, it's fine, you've given me new ideas. I would like to have a chance to talk to you about that, though."

"Maybe over a cup of tea?" Penny offered with a smile. "I'm busy tonight, but tomorrow would be good? Lunch?"

Hermione hesitated, trying to figure out how to voice her thoughts. "Penny... I would like to, certainly... but you should know that I'm not over Ginny yet. What happened a few nights ago..."

She did not want to call it a mistake, but the words were hanging there unsaid. Thankfully, she did not have to actually vocalize them, as Penelope nodded quickly.

"Yes, I understand. Just as friends, really," she said earnestly.

Hermione sighed in relief, and gave the other woman a grateful smile. "Wonderful. Though, actually, I can't do tomorrow. I have to spend all day with my parents tomorrow, it's my birthday."

"Oh, happy birthday!" Penny exclaimed. "How old are you?"

"Twenty four," Hermione told her. "Thanks. Sunday would work for me, though?"

Penelope nodded. "Sunday is fine. I'll stop by your flat?"

Hermione agreed, and both of them headed to their labs.

-------

The next morning Hermione rummaged through her bottom drawer, where she kept her Muggle clothing. There wasn't much there. She put on a pair of jeans, and they fit her just fine, but all of the shirts had been bought years ago, and were tight across her chest and waist.

Finally Hermione settled on a black tank top. She had her wand crammed inside of her pants, and it looked a little awkward, but she didn't have anywhere else to put it and she couldn't leave her house without it.

She Apparated down to the street below and stuck out her wand to catch the Knight Bus.

The problem with visiting Muggles, she reflected as she endured the bumpy ride, was that it would be easy enough to Apparate there; the issue was that she could never quite be sure she wouldn't be seen. Even if she Apparated directly into her parents house--they didn't know how impolite that was, after all--they might have company. Then she would have to contact Obliviators and keep the Muggles there before they began telling people and it would just be a huge, inconvenient mess.

So she had to go the long way around.

The Knight Bus arrived after only a few minutes, and Hermione did not even realize the absurdity of considering a four-minute ride the 'long way around.' She stepped out onto the lawn in front of the familiar suburban house from her childhood. She walked across the yard and rang the doorbell.

"Hermione!" Her mother exclaimed in surprise as she swung the door open and saw her daughter. "We weren't expecting you. Happy Birthday! Please, come in."

"Hi, Mum. Thank you," she said as she entered. Her mother closed the door behind her.

"Richard! Hermione is here!" she called. Her father came down the stairs.

"Hermione!" he said, striding over to give her a hug. "This is unexpected! Did we miss an em--er, an owl or something?"

"No, I just thought I'd stop by to see you, that's all," she said. "I haven't spent my birthday with you in..." she paused unsurely, "er... thirteen years."

The room suddenly felt slightly oppressive, and Hermione cleared her throat.

"So, how are both of you?" she asked, making good use of her well polished forced smile.

"We've been good," her mother said.

"You know, same old, same old," her father agreed.

Truth to tell, Hermione realized that she didn't know, but she just nodded and kept smiling.

"I wish we'd known that you were coming, I would have made something special for your birthday," her Mum said.

"Sorry, I just thought I'd surprise you," Hermione replied.

"Well, it's nice to see you." Was it her imagination, or did her father's smile look somewhat faked as well? "Why don't we all go sit down? No need to stand around in the foyer."

They went into the living room and sat down on the couch. Hermione pulled her wand out of her pants first so that it wouldn't dig against her skin. Her parents eyed it as she held it in her lap.

"Actually, why don't we have a nice birthday lunch for you?" her mother asked, leaping up. "I have a few things I could whip up."

"Okay, do you want me to help?" Hermione asked, standing as well, though she knew perfectly well that she had no idea what she could do to help.

She wished that she could whip up something wonderful for her parents; it would be a nice gesture, and she thought they would like to see a demonstration of what she'd learned in her seven years at Hogwarts.

Unfortunately, magic in front of Muggles, even if they were Muggles who legitimately knew about the Wizarding world, was illegal unless the Muggles were in an officially Wizarding area. It was a stupid law, but with her career Hermione did not want to have crimes on her record, and performing magic in front of Muggles was an automatic offense, impossible to hide.

"Oh, no, no, you sit here with your father and catch up. It'll be ready soon." Her mother hugged her quickly. "It's nice to see you, sweetie."

"Nice to see you too," Hermione murmured as her mother left the room. She sat back down to made small talk with her father.

"So, how's work?" she asked him.

"Same as usual, really. Not all that much changes in the dentistry business, after all."

Hermione nodded.

"How is work for you?"

"It's good," she said with a smile. "I really like it. I'm working on some exciting things."

"You're--what is it--an Unspeakable?" her father asked.

"Yes," she said with a little laugh, "it's a research position, really, but really top secret. There are loads of spells to stop me from talking about it."

"Okay," he said.

She cast around wildly for something else to say, and with a feeling of relief came up with something. "So, I'm actually beginning to look into Muggle science for work," she told him.

"Really?" her father asked.

"I can't explain too much, of course, but I'm probably going to be working with Muggle physics, actually-- with Einstein's equations, and with the affect of gravity on the curvature of spacetime. It's quite funny, really, as I'm using Einstein's equations to affect my work in the same way that they affected his work."

"But, sweetie, Einstein, he helped create the atomic bomb, right?" he asked blankly. "Surely he didn't use magic?"

"Well... no," Hermione said, blushing a bit. She had assumed that her father would be familiar with anything Muggle, which was clearly ridiculous now that she thought of it. She was fairly certain closed time-like curves were not covered in dentistry school, and even if he'd learned about theoretical physics in university, it had been a long time since then. "Really, his equations weren't complicated, they were just a paradigm shift. I'm not using them for magic, exactly, but just for creating a different way of seeing the way things work."

"Ah, I see," her father said, who clearly didn't. "I guess you can't explain any more than that?"

Hermione opened her mouth and attempted, but all she got out was "No, sorry."

"Oh, that's fine," he said with a nervous sort of phony laugh, "and your friends, how are they?"

"Good," she said with a strained smile, "and, er, yours?"

"They're doing well. Kathy and Michael Hawkin are having a baby boy."

"Oh." Hermione tried to remember who they were, but for the life of her, she could not. "That's nice."

The conversation went on like that, quite superficial and meaningless, until her mother called them in for lunch. Hermione stood up gratefully and went to the kitchen.

There were bagels with lox on the table, which had been one of Hermione's favorites as a child. A carton of orange juice was also on the table.

"Mum! That looks great! Thanks," she said with a smile as she sat in one of the chairs.

"I figured we could have a brunch," her mother explained as she took a seat as well. "You used to like it so much as a child."

"I haven't had bagels and lox in years," Hermione grinned, reaching for the cream cheese.

She was glad to have something to do with her hands and her mouth, so that there was no pressure to talk. They ate in somewhat comfortable silence for a few minutes.

"So, ah, how is that girlfriend of yours, Ginny, is it?" her father asked. His voice was too casual, and Hermione could tell that despite his efforts to be tolerant, he still was not quite comfortable with the idea. At least relationship issues were something that her parents could understand just as well as a witch or wizard. Hermione felt a little guilty that her orientation had taken away even that comfort area from her parents, and even worse that all she could have now was bad news.

Hermione grimaced. "Actually, we broke up recently," she told them.

"Oh, poor baby," her mother exclaimed sympathetically, reaching out and laying her hand on her daughter's. "What happened?"

Hermione sighed. "She left me for Harry," she admitted.

"Oh sweetie!" her mother cried, and stood up so that she could hug her daughter properly.

Hermione closed her eyes and hugged her mother back, tightly. It had been so long since she'd really experienced a mother's hug, and she was surprised to find that it comforted her, and made things feel safe, even now when she was an adult and rarely saw her parents.

"How are you holding up?" Her mother asked as she let go. Her mother slid back into the kitchen chair, but kept a concerned gaze on Hermione.

"I'm doing the best I can, but it's hard," Hermione said, "especially with all the reporters and everything bothering me."

"Reporters?" her father asked, who had been silent until now, clearly trusting his wife's ability to comfort her daughter on matters of the heart.

Hermione rolled her eyes, taking great effort to try to be casual. "Yes, they're following me around all the time, trying to get pictures and ask questions and all. Plus there are all the readers stopping me on the street to tell me how sorry they are. It's absolutely horrid." She took another bite of her bagel.

"They're following you around because of Harry?" he asked.

Hermione shot her dad a very confused look. What? "Well, because of all three of us."

"Didn't you tell us that homosexuality was quite acceptable in the Wizarding World?" her mother asked.

"Yes, it is." Hermione blinked in bemusement at the apparent non sequitur. "I mean by sheer numbers the assumption is that someone is straight because there are so many more, and there are some subtle prejudices, but certainly less than being Muggleborn, for instance." She winced slightly, as she always did when she mentioned to her parents that being Muggleborn gave her problems, but they didn't seem to notice.

"Well, then, did the two of you have a very public fight or something?" Dad asked her.

Hermione still felt confused as she shook her head. She stood up, deciding that she wanted some water. She answered as she walked over to the cabinet that held the glasses. "No, we've been as quiet as possible to be about the whole thing."

"Then, honey, why are reporters covering your breakup with your girlfriend?" Her mother finally asked, looking puzzled.

Why were her parents asking her such silly questions all of a sudden?

"Well, I am a war hero, you know," she reminded them with a small laugh as she took a glass out of the cupboard and twirled, heading for the sink.

Her parents glanced at each other briefly.

"Sweetie..." Her father spoke slowly, in an odd, strangled voice. "What war?"

Hermione froze, and dimly noted the sound of shattering as her glass slipped from her fingers.