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

Chapter Five

"'In the Outland murder is morally reprehensible, but in [the Bookworld] it is a narrative necessity--without it and the jeopardy it generates, we'd have lost a million readers long ago!'"

--Harris Tweed to Thursday Next, The Well of Lost Plots

" 'Professor McGonagall told me what awful things have happened when wizards have meddled with time ... loads of them ended up killing their past or future selves by mistake!'"

--Hermione Granger to Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

* * * * * * *

"I can't stay here," said Snape. "Someone at the School will descry me."

It was another sunny, warm day, and Snape and Thursday were sitting with Radagast on a high, round, green hill overlooking a town built on a small bay that opened out to the sea.

What sea it was, Thursday did not know; but she knew that the town was called Thwil, and that it was the home of the School for Wizards here on Roke Island. It was of this School, not Hogwarts, that Snape had just spoken, and Thursday thought he was right in saying that he could not stay here. The Doorkeeper of the School might be busy just now with the newly arrived boy, Sparrowhawk; but sooner or later some wizard of Earthsea would see that Snape and his companions were here.

Yet Radagast did not seem worried. If anything, he was treating this bookjump as a school outing: a picnic, Thursday thought, seeing how he lay stretched at full length upon the grass, propped on one elbow, his head resting on his hand. His horse had not come to the island with him, but goats were grazing peacefully nearby, and a bright butterfly was perched on the toe of one of his boots, opening and closing its colourful wings as if it were fanning itself lazily, contentedly.

Thursday felt no more contented than Snape sounded. He was much more composed than he had been back in Professor McGonagall's office, but he was anything but calm. Professor McGonagall had indeed returned the Time-Turner to the Ministry of Magic; Thursday and Snape had heard her saying as much to Professor Flitwick as the two teachers had walked along the corridor towards the closed office door. Snape had frozen in the process of restoring his flushed and tear-stained face to its normal appearance. For a split second Thursday had thought her father was about to appear; then she had heard the approaching footsteps, and a woman's voice saying, "I wish I had known you wanted it, Filius. I would not have returned it so soon. But Miss Granger handed it in to me on her way down to breakfast, and I thought it best to put it back where it belongs. Do you really think that Miss Lovegood--?"

Snape had not waited to hear more. Pocketing his wand, and Rochester's handkerchief, he had Disapparated. Thursday had whipped out her TravelBook and begun to read herself into Order of the Phoenix, at the point where Harry Potter first sees the corridor in the Department of Mysteries.

And she had found herself here, instead, on this green hill above a town and an ocean, feeling as disoriented as no doubt Snape had felt upon finding himself unexpectedly in his colleague's office.

Neither Thursday nor Snape knew yet how he had come to be there. Radagast had said that it had not been his or Gandalf's doing.

"I did bring you here to Earthsea," Radagast had told her, "at Severus' request. I apologise for doing so with no warning."

"Don't worry--it's fine," Thursday had replied. "But if you could bring me here, why can't you take Mr Snape back to Half-Blood Prince and ... "

"Rewrite the ending?" Radagast asked, when Thursday's voice trailed off as her eyes fell before his shrewd, twinkling gaze. "I will not break the laws of literature, my dear," the Brown Wizard continued.

"But--"

"There is no law that forbids wizards to help people in need," Radagast went on. "No doubt there are wizards and witches in the Harry Potter books who would help Severus go back and right a wrong, if they could, and if the seventh book was completely written at this time. But they cannot go forward in time any more than they can go back."

"Then you do believe it was a wrong," Thursday said. "The"--she glanced at Snape--"the death, and the making of the vow. It's not OK, even as a narrative necessity? Is that what you're saying? After all," she added, "Gandalf came back, in The Fellowship of the Ring."

"Yes," said Snape. "Gandalf came back."

"Is that why he, and you, are helping us? Helping Mr Snape?" Thursday asked.

Radagast returned their looks evenly, his own eyes smiling. "There is no law," he said, "that requires wizards to help people in need."

"But you have done," said Snape. "You are. You will."

"Ah, Severus." Radagast heaved himself up into a sitting position. He smoothed his robes decorously, and then waited while the butterfly, which had fluttered up from the toe of his boot when he had moved, settled back again onto its leather perch.

"I may not break the wizarding laws that are," he said. "I cannot rewrite the last chapters of Half-Blood Prince; nor can I help Thursday infiltrate the Ministry of Magic in order to steal a Time-Turner."

"But you can help me into Half-Blood Prince," said Thursday. "I can't read myself into it without your help, because of the wizarding laws that are. But once there, I can rewrite the last four chapters."

"Can you?" Both wizards spoke at once.

Thursday looked from one of them to the other. Snape looked hopeful; Radagast, very much like a teacher.

"You have done such a thing only once," said Radagast, "and that with the help of Acheron Hades. Can you effect a contretemps such as would spark a whole new sequence of events that would result in the life of Albus Dumbledore? Can you prevent Severus from making the Unbreakable Vow?"

"I can try," Thursday replied, "if you can get me into Spinner's End."