Sacred is the Windswept Time

Sacred is the Windswept Time

By C.K. Blake

One: A Potion Blunder for all Time

It was Tuesday, and Harry Potter really hated Tuesday. Hated it with a passion. After breakfast, which was usually a delicious meal of eggs, various pastries, and sausages, he was forced to accompany his fellow seventh year Gryffindors to the dungeons for Double Potions with the Slytherins. Recently Severus Snape, snarky Potions professor, and all around Greasy Git, had taken a real disliking to him, as opposed to the previous years of merely being unable to tolerate anything "reeking" of Potter as he'd once so elegantly put it, because for the last few weeks Harry's Potions partner was none other than the most feared individual in a Potions classroom, Neville Longbottom, who could botch a potion simply by looking at it crossways.

Harry groaned as he took his seat at his worktable, wondering what in all of his young life he'd ever done to deserve Neville Longbottom as a Potions partner. At least Hermione was usually patient with Neville. It wasn't that Harry didn't like Neville. That wasn't it at all. Neville while unable to remember certain things was a rather decent bloke; he just wasn't cut out for Potions. How he did well enough on the Potions O.W.L. to actually remain in the class was beyond anyone's guess, still he was in the class. Harry closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and mentally began to brace himself for the hazard to his all around good health and temperament, as Neville Longbottom scuttled into the classroom, and quickly took his seat next to Harry.

A few moments later the Greasy Git, also known as Professor Snape stalked into the classroom, his long black robes billowing around him dramatically. Harry swallowed thickly as he had a particular nasty feeling that the Potions professor really had it in for him today. Apparently Hermione and Ron had similar notions as they both turned in Harry's direction and gave him looks of pity, while shaking their heads in sympathy.

Snape took his usual position behind his podium and looked about his classroom, a particularly nasty expression on his face this Tuesday morning. He narrowed his eyes and glared over at the Gryffindors and then raised a black brow and smirked at his Slytherins, before finally straightening up and clearing his throat as he began to speak. "Now, before we begin, I suppose I owe you one final lecture, just to get it through to your small and still developing intellects. First I think I should test your knowledge of the potion we are about to begin making. Can anyone tell me why Thyme is not be used in the making of the Sleeping Draught of Prophetic Dreams?"

Snape looked around the classroom, frowning immediately at the sight of Hermione Granger's arm being flung about in the air in her desperation to show off her massive intelligence. He rolled his eyes before snapping, "Miss Granger, will you cease and desist that foolish arm waving before you poke someone's eye out! And Mr. Malfoy, proceed to tell us the answer."

Draco stood up and looked smug as he explained, "When the herb Thyme is added to the Sleeping Draught of Prophetic Dreams it acts as a catalyst to the Agrimony present in the potion. Agrimony is used to slip away in dreams unnoticed, however when mixed with Thyme it acts as a time travel agent, and as everyone is aware, Time Travel is strictly limited, and Time Travel Potions are banned by the Administration of Potions, under bylaw 9673, sub-indexed 4."

Hermione rolled her eyes as she sent a glare in the arrogant Slytherin's direction, and immediately heat flooded her cheeks as Malfoy's Potions partner, Blaise Zabini, winked at her and blew a kiss in her direction. Ron of course was completely oblivious, and Harry was curious at the interaction he'd witnessed between his friend and the quiet Slytherin, but quickly buried that thought as they were now being directed to bring out their cauldrons and gather the supplies and ingredients for the potion.

Harry would later wonder what on earth had possessed him to allow Neville to get the potion ingredients.

"Don't worry about setting up the cauldron, Neville. I've got it. You just get what we need," Harry said, as he set up the fire with a quick flick of his wand and, "Incendio."

Neville looked up to the line of students and found himself behind Goyle and in front of Malfoy. Neville should have known this was a bad place to be, but he was too worried about getting the correct ingredients for the potion. He was determined not to botch this one up. After all it wouldn't do to have both Professor Snape and Harry Potter yelling at him.

Finally Neville was at the table where the ingredients for the Sleeping Draught of Prophetic Dreams were methodically laid out. Everything that he needed: a bottle of Yellow Rose water, the toenail of a Cornish pixie, bay leaves, hibiscus blossoms, honeysuckle blossoms, lilac blossoms, juniper, fig leaf, laurel, lavender, mugwort, rue, wormwood, vervain, anise, and agrimony.

Once Neville had everything gathered he began to walk back to his worktable where Harry had the cauldron set up, but there was a hand on his shoulder as someone stopped him. "Here, half-wit," Malfoy said as he handed him a few leaves and sneered. "You forgot to get some of this. It goes in right before the agrimony. Wouldn't want you to muck up your potion and have it explode on me as I have the misfortune of the worktable behind you."

Neville swallowed thickly and took the leaves that Malfoy held out to him, unaware of the smirk alighting Malfoy's face, before scurrying back to his worktable with Harry, who was perusing his Potions textbook. Harry looked up from his book and noticed that Neville was back with everything and looking rather flustered. Harry rolled his eyes and hoped that he could make it through this class unscathed and with his cauldron in tact as he took the bottle of yellow rose water from Neville and poured the sweet smelling liquid into the cauldron, allowing it to come to a boil, while he ground the Cornish pixie toenail into a fine powder in preparation to be added next along with five grams of chopped bay leaves, three cut hibiscus blossoms, seven honeysuckle blossoms, two lilac blossoms, and eight grams of juniper.

Once Harry had added the first few ingredients he prompted Neville to stir the contents of the cauldron, which smelled surprisingly sweet and earthy.

"Now, remember Neville stir it counter clockwise twenty-eight times," he reminded the boy, and then smiled as Neville nodded and began to stir the potion with a large wooden spoon, counting the number of turns aloud, so that Harry could keep track of how many turns as well.

Harry stopped Neville on the twenty-eighth turn and sucked in a deep breath. The potion was actually a fair shade of pale lilac, which was correct. Harry then added one fig leaf, six grams of laurel, and nine grams of lavender, only to let it simmer for ten minutes as the directions in their textbook stated.

While waiting, he prepared the rest of the ingredients and once finished, his eyes ran over the warning at the top of the page in his textbook:

Warning: Under no circumstances is the herb Thyme to be added to this potion. Thyme in combination with the herb Agrimony would act as a catalyst and make a time traveling potion, which is illegal under the Administration of Potions, bylaw 9673, sub-indexed 4.

A tremor ran up his spine as he read over the warning a couple of times. He shook himself wondering what that had all been about, and then he noticed the accredited name listed below the potion: -As written by Cassandra Baine of Wiltshire, 1783.

Strange, that name seemed familiar to him. He tried to recall where he'd heard of it before, but it simply niggled at his brain. Finally tiring of working his brain to recall the name of some old witch that had probably been dead for a couple of centuries, he returned to his work at hand. Keeping Neville from bungling their potion.

Once the ten minutes had passed Harry looked over the potion and was again pleasantly surprised to find that it was a milky white color, which according to the instructions was, again, correct. Harry couldn't help the smile that spread across his face. He was actually managing to make a potion correctly with Neville Longbottom as a Potions partner.

Deciding that it was safe as the potion ingredients were laid out in the correct order on their work table, and to make it look as though Neville had done more than simply stir their potion, Harry decided to be generous and let Neville add the final ingredients. He watched for a few minutes as Neville began to put in the next ingredients, knowing how everything was laid out, as Harry had cut and measured all of the ingredients in the previous ten minutes.

Neville added ten grams of crushed mugwort, thirteen grams of ground rue, and five pieces of chopped wormwood precisely one and three quarters of a centimeter in length. He then gave the potion three turns clockwise and immediately added the five grams of vervain, followed by eight grams of powdered anise. The he stirred the cauldron's contents five and a half counter clockwise turns as per the instructions. Harry trusting that Neville could handle adding the final ingredient, the agrimony, failed to notice that Neville had something else in his hands, which he dropped into the cauldron first. When Harry did look up, Neville was adding the agrimony. Harry looked into their cauldron and the first thing he noticed was that it wasn't a translucent light shade of yellow, but a bubbling, deep, bright red. The second thing he noticed was the noise, as an explosion filled the room and knocked him backwards. There wasn't a third thing to notice for him, as he was soundly unconscious.

----------

"Bloody hell!" the Potion Master growled as he took in the wreck that was his classroom. He rolled his eyes as he saw the various students coming out from under their tables, having originally dived under them to avoid the exploding cauldron.

"LONGBOTTOM!" Snape roared. "EXPLAIN YOURSELF NOW!"

Neville was frightfully pale, and looking about him, his eyes wide in shock, before he looked at the angry professor and cowered in fear. It was Granger that brought Potter's absence to Snape's attention.

"Where's Harry?" she asked, her tone filled with worry.

'Damnable simpleton!' Snape thought as he looked at the cowering boy before him and then gingerly looked into the still spinning cauldron that the two Gryffindors had been working with. How it had remained intact was a mystery to the man. Suddenly Snape's cold black eyes widened, and his jaw slackened, much to the shock of most of the students in the room. "You stupid IMBECILE!" Snape raged at the poor cowering Neville Longbottom as he fixed a terrible glare on the poor boy. "Of all the potions you could have brewed correctly it had to be the bloody Windswept Time potion? Everyone clean out your cauldrons now, and I want you out of this classroom in five minutes! Any stragglers will be serving a week's detention with Filch! MOVE! Longbottom! Don't even bother cleaning your cauldron," Snape spat as he pointed to the exit of his classroom. "I want you out NOW!"

Neville gulped as he quickly gathered up his schoolbooks and ran out of the classroom, almost colliding with the heavy oak door in his haste to wrench it open and leave the horrible dungeons behind him.

Hermione looked after Neville and then to the Potions professor before finally she felt brave enough to speak, "Professor, what happened to Harry? Where is he?"

Snape looked at the girl with a sharp look in his sable eyes, as he said rather roughly, "The question, Miss Granger, is not where, but when."

Hermione exchanged a concerned look with Ron, as they quickly cleaned up their workstation and then hurried out of the Potions classroom before they could get stuck serving detention with Filch for a week. Once they were safely out of the classroom, Ron piped up, "Hermione, what do you think the Greasy Git meant when he said when? And isn't it amazing that he was so ticked off he forgot to take away house points."

Hermione swallowed thickly, her toffee colored eyes filling with tears. "This is more important than losing house points! Harry's gone, Ron. If Neville brewed the Windswept Time potion, then we may not see Harry for a long, long time, if we ever see him again. I don't know how he could ever be brought back. There's no telling where in history he could have ended up. Oh, sweet Circe, I hope he'll be all right."

"What the bloody hell do you mean, 'If we ever see him again'? Of course we'll see him again. I'm sure he can be brought back! I mean Snape will tell Dumbledore and then they'll work on fixing this. That's what they do," Ron said.

Suddenly Hermione's eyes widened as she looked at her ginger haired friend. "Oh no. If he's in a different time, he could change things!"

"That wouldn't be so bad if he strangled You-Know-Who at birth, you know," Ron replied, and promptly yelped when Hermione smacked him on the back of the head.

"No, you dolt! Have you any idea how bad this could be? If he does one thing to alter anything in the past, even so much as squash a spider, it could alter what is his future, and what is our present, right now! That is why Time Potions are strictly prohibited!" Hermione practically wailed. "Harry could alter our society as we know it!"

"Always thought he would change the world some day," Ron said with a shrug.

"What aren't you getting Ron? This is serious! Not only is Harry probably in huge danger wherever or whenever he is, but with him being in the past in a time that we don't know, our lives could be irreparably altered!" Hermione ranted.

Ron sighed and rubbed the back of his head as he said, "So what you're basically saying is that we're doomed because Harry squashed a spider?"

Hermione slapped her forehead at Ron's simplistic nature and stormed off down the corridor, up two flights of stairs, and didn't stop until she was facing the gargoyle that guarded the entrance to the headmaster's office before giving the password, "Canary Creams." She was very grateful to the fact that as Head Girl she was privileged to know the password to the headmaster's office. She then stepped onto the stairs that rose to the headmaster's office. Upon reaching the door, she gave a knock, and let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding as she was told to come in by the soft voice of Professor Dumbledore.

He looked up from his desk with a cheery smile on his face, as he held out a dish full of different colored candies wrapped in plastic. "Jolly Rancher, Miss Granger?" he asked. "I find that I'm rather partial to the yellow ones myself."

She politely declined as she took a seat in one of the comfortable chairs by the headmaster's desk and then opened her mouth. The incident during Potions came pouring from her lips, and the twinkle in the headmaster's eyes faded as he realized the graveness of the situation at hand.

"I will see to it, Miss Granger," Dumbledore said as he stood up after she'd finished her story. "Now I suggest you go to Transfiguration, and don't worry about being late. I'll give the excuse to Professor McGonagall regarding your tardiness. Try not to worry. I will do everything in my power to see that Harry is brought safely back to us."

"Thank you," Hermione said with a nod, as she gathered her book sack and headed out the door.

When the door closed behind the girl, Albus through a pinch of floo powder into the hearth and then summoned Severus Snape to his office immediately. This was met without complaint, as Severus knew the seriousness of the situation, and decided that recovering Potter before the boy did anything stupid was more important than his free period.

Upon receiving the headmaster's summons Severus took a deep breath, bracing himself for anything. He threw a pinch of floo powder into his own hearth and was in the headmaster's office within moments. He brushed the soot from his robes, and shook out his long black hair, before he looked up at Dumbledore.

"Well, Albus, I suppose you've heard about Longbottom's latest blunder in my classroom," Snape said.

Dumbledore nodded and held out a candy dish to the Potions Master. "Care for a Jolly Rancher, Severus?" At the Potions Master's withering glance, the old man shrugged and said, "I only thought you might be open to trying the green ones."

Severus rolled his eyes and stalked further into the room. "Forget about bloody lemon drops or whatever it is you're eating this week! What are we going to do about recovering Potter?"

"You know there is nothing that can be done. Eventually the potion's effects will fade, and he will be brought back to this time. You know that as well as I do," Albus replied.

"Damn it, he was covered in it before he disappeared! And we have no idea where exactly he is in the past! Who knows how long he will be stuck in whatever time he's in, and it won't be long before he finds trouble, and alters the world as we know it!" Snape growled.

"Be that as it may, there is still nothing that we can do about it," Albus Dumbledore replied calmly.

"Then why in bloody hell did you call me to your office?" the irate younger man snarled.

"I thought you needed someone to rant at before your next class began. It wouldn't do for you to terrify that nice group of Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff first years you have third period, anymore than you already do," the headmaster answered with a small smile, his twinkle returning as a stream of vulgarities erupted from the dark haired man standing in his office.