"One of Those Quirky, Paradoxical Time-Travel Things"

Chapter Three

"I've failed him," Thursday said.

"Why do you think that?"

It was a hot day in June. The sun was high in a blue sky, and shone down upon green grass and a rainbow assortment of wildflowers.

Thursday had taken off her heavy Victorian cloak and sat, in her more accustomed chinos and shirt, on the grassy bank overlooking the Greenway just outside the village of Bree.

The man sitting beside her wore long brown robes covered with hayseeds and dust, and held the buckle-end of the reins of a horse, equally dusty, that cropped the sweet grass a few feet away along the bank.

Radagast the Brown spoke again. "Why do you think you have failed Severus?" he asked; and his voice was gentle, his eyes kind as he looked at Thursday.

She heaved a sigh as deep as any Snape had given on the wild and wet October night when he had met her in The Prancing Pony.

After he had Disapparated, and a call into the fire had not brought him back, Thursday had opened her copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, hoping she could read herself into another meeting with Radagast, who with Gandalf had opened the portal allowing her to read herself into The Prancing Pony that night in The Return of the King. To her overwhelming relief, it had worked, and here she sat in the backstory, where Radagast was awaiting the approach of Gandalf along the Greenway.

The Brown Wizard was quite a contrast to the pale and dark man who had sat beside her, and stood before her, in the common-room of The Prancing Pony. Radagast seemed as tall as Snape, but was not so gaunt-looking. His cheeks were rosy, in a suntanned face, his eyes the green of leaf and grass and the blue of the sky and the clear brown of river water. He reminded Thursday in some ways of her brother Joffy: though Radagast seemed much more solemn, he had so far been as easy to talk to.

"He needed my help," Thursday said. "He asked for it four times. And then--just when I was about to say OK--he left. Just like that." She snapped her fingers.

"But why do you think you have failed him?" Radagast persisted.

"I've just told you. ... Oh." Thursday peered into the wizard's twinkling eyes. "You mean why didn't I agree to help him the first time he asked me."

"No," Radagast replied gently. "I mean why do you think you have failed him. Let us work that out first; and then, if need be, we can sort out the other question. We have time, I think, before Gandalf arrives. My horse will be grazing further along the bank when he appears."

Radagast drew a pipe from a pocket in his robes, and a pouch, and began to fill the pipe with some roughly cut, fragrant weed.

"Is that pipe-weed?" Thursday asked.

Radagast nodded, smiling. "It is indeed. Galenas Mixture, I call this blend. And now, Thursday?" And he raised an eyebrow, with a look so like and yet unlike one Snape might have given her, that she sighed again.

"I think I've failed him because I think he really needs my help. He can't go back and forth, from time to time, in the books; he isn't like Rochester of Jane Eyre."

Thursday looked questioningly at Radagast--did he know Jane Eyre?--the wizard nodded, now drawing on his pipe; and she went on:

"He said he doesn't know why Rochester can go back and forth; he said he knows little about Muggles and less about their books. But I think it's because Rochester is the master in Jane Eyre. It isn't his book, but Thornfield is his, and he can go back to the time when he and Jane first met, or forward ... although I don't think he could go back, say, to Lowood school," she added, pensively. "Snape said that perhaps Jane can help Rochester, it being her book ... and she is in love with him.

"But nobody loves Snape. Not in the books, at any rate. I don't think anyone's ever loved him, outside fanfiction--and only in some stories there."

"No one has ever loved Severus," Radagast said quietly; and he sighed, blowing out a stream of smoke that smelled as sweet as the grass-scented, flower- and horse-scented, air.

"Not in the books," Thursday repeated.

"Ah. Then on to your question. Why, do you think, have you failed him?"

"Because I didn't meet his expectations. He saw me as a rogue. Like my father. Like himself. He said he knows little of Muggles or of Muggle books; yet he knows I changed the ending of Jane Eyre. He seems to know I went against orders in the Crimea when I went back to rescue our people. What he doesn't seem to understand, or to care about, is that I'm now head of Jurisfiction, and a mother."

"Ah. Somewhat like Edward Rochester, then," said Radagast. "Master of Thornfield, and father to Adèle."

Radagast smoked in silence for a moment, only one quirked eyebrow giving evidence that he was waiting for Thursday to respond to his comment.

"Yes," she said, and sighed again. "Only Rochester didn't have to risk them ... "

"Did he not?" asked Radagast.

"Yes," Thursday acknowledged. "And he lost Thornfield in the fire.

"But that was my fault, Radagast. Acheron Hades got into the story, and set fire to Thornfield--though that was an accident, perhaps; but if it hadn't been for me, none of that would have happened. I rewrote the ending of Jane Eyre to make up for that, because Rochester was so unhappy, because he loved Jane so, and she loved him."

"And does Severus love no one?" Radagast asked.

"I don't know." Thursday shook her head, and sighed again. "I thought ... but perhaps he really does care about the fanfic writers and readers who ... "

She paused, remembering that Snape had spoken those last two words to her, and trying to recall the words that had preceded them in his utterance. She pictured the common-room in the inn, and the firelight, and the man who had sat beside her there. He had tilted his head to look up at the lamp that Barliman Butterbur had trimmed. The lamp had been bright, its light almost blinding, causing both Snape and Thursday to blink ...

And he had said, before looking up at the lamp, "I've broken more than laws. I've broken trust with the readers who--"

Who what? she had wondered then.

Who what? she asked herself now.

"Some of the readers love him," she said aloud. "Some of the fanfic writers love him, and want him to not be a murderer. They want him to have not killed Dumbledore."

"Ah," said Radagast again. "Albus Dumbledore."

And in his voice as he said it, and in the look in his eye, Thursday recognised what she had heard in Snape's voice, and seen in his eyes, when she had told him she did not want to be spoken to as if she were one of his students--which had been her response to his remark that he did not want to have to ask her again to help him.

"I've failed him because I've misunderstood him," she said to Radagast. "He may not be a parent--in the books--but he has been Potions master at Hogwarts, and teacher of Defence Against the Dark Arts. And in that sense he does have children--'thousands of 'em,' as Mr Chips would say. And even if none of them has ever loved him, Albus Dumbledore has."

"Then I suggest you read yourself into Harry Potter and get a Time-Turner," said Radagast, watching a perfect smoke-ring drift away upon a soft summer breeze. "Into Prisoner of Azkaban, on the morning after the last day of term. As the Hogwarts Express leaves the station, Hermione tells Harry and Ron that she returned the Time-Turner to Professor McGonagall before breakfast. Jump into the backstory, into the Entrance Hall; make certain that Minerva is at breakfast in the Great Hall; and then go backwards, into her office after Hermione has handed in the Time-Turner. Miss Havisham did teach you how to jump into a backstory, did she not?"

Thursday nodded, thinking with sorrow of her lost friend from Great Expectations, and then, with curiosity, of how Professor McGonagall had often reminded her of Miss Havisham.

"But can I do it?" she asked. "Read myself into a magical book? Snape said I couldn't--"

"He also said that he knew little of Muggles and their books." Radagast smiled. "You will have my help, Thursday. And Gandalf's. I shall tell him what I have told you.

"Here he comes now. Go."

And following Radagast's gaze down the Greenway, Thursday saw a cloaked rider approaching on a tired-looking horse. She wanted very much to stay and meet Gandalf--but Radagast seemed as full of tension now as Snape had been in the inn. So she stood up, wrapped herself in her cloak, and took out her TravelBook, to which as Bellman she had added the six published Harry Potter books, just in case. She turned to Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter Twenty-Two, "Owl Post Again," and began to read.

"As the Hogwarts Express pulled out of the station next morning, Hermione gave Harry and Ron some surprising news. ..."

The scenery around Thursday blurred. The grassy bank shifted beneath her feet; and she found herself in a compartment in a train carriage, with smoke and cinders blowing past outside the window.

The three other occupants of the compartment were too intent upon their conversation to do more than glance at her; perhaps they thought she was just another magical adult, not unlike Professor R.J. Lupin, travelling on "their" train.

Thursday turned to Chapter Seven of Philosopher's Stone, and once more began to read:

"The Entrance Hall was so big you could have fitted the whole of the Dursleys' house in it. The stone walls were lit with flaming torches like the ones at Gringotts, the ceiling was too high to make out, and a magnificent marble staircase facing them led to the upper floors.

"They followed Professor McGonagall across the flagged stone floor. ... "

Thursday looked up from the page at the sound of footsteps. A tall black-haired witch in green robes was crossing the Entrance Hall, moving towards a doorway beyond which Thursday could hear the hubbub of what sounded like hundreds of voices and the clatter of hundreds of knives and forks against hundreds of plates. ...

The witch opened the door, and passed through into the Great Hall. Thursday looked up the marble staircase ...

... and jumped.