Shadows of the Endless Day

Shadows of the Endless Day

Turning Time


It was like a realisation. Not the gradually dawning sort that he had often shared with her in overlapping sentences, the slow piecing together of the situation's shreds in the plush-lined common room that swallowed up their voices with all its soft furniture. It was like those scarce moments of pure epiphany that shine harsh light into night-time eyes, moments that don't meticulously whip and beat and fold his world like batter the way that Voldemort had systematically dismantled it with all the casual interest of making the Saturday pancakes, but, instead, shatter the entire mixing bowl on the floor, splattering gooey batter and porcelain shards everywhere.

Harry staggered forward.

There was a rush of falling. His stomach disquieted; his magic glowered.

Something with all the fluidity of water, but none of the dampness, washed over him: deluged him, folded around him, overwhelmed him. Cold, but bladeless, like and unlike the blusterous wind that rushes through flesh, swoops overhead, and deals blunt, almost physical blows.

He felt a hooked tendril of foreign magic on his tongue. It tapped on his teeth, the knocking of a patient guest at the door. It tasted metallic, but without the suggestion of blood that steel had always brought him. His tongue made it out to be like an elaborate knot of barbed wire.

Baited with vague promises, it seemed palatable; he swallowed-

His hands flew to his throat.

It slid down, down; his fingers, tightly curled into talons, bit flesh trying to dig it out again. His hands searched downwards, following its progress. His fingers tangled with the silver chain around his neck and the miniature sandglass that hung from it. The knot of magic, sunk deep within him, sprawled and blossomed hooks.

Light flickered, as though a child with restless hands had made the sun its plaything.

The current around him grew stronger. It grew breathless, laboured. He heard the low, rustling murmur, like that of leaves, but it felt oddly out of place, as though it had sounded on a windless day. Vaguely he knew that the distant mussitation came neither from dry, too-ripe leaves nor branches heavy-hung with foliage, the same way he knew that the heaving breaths the sky--if there was still a sky above him--gasped onto him were not just air moving from areas of high pressure to low.

Hands clutched fabric, searchingly. Numb fingers and biting nails knotted.

Like a grappling hook, the foreign magic anchored itself in him--in the very fabric of him. His own magic panicked; it reared and clawed the air with steel-bound hoofs like ambitions wave a towering cliff. It bared its teeth, allowed saliva to drool from blood-pink gums, and rolled low, resonant sounds from its throat, like the deep rumbling of the earth before an earthquake. It writhed just beneath his skin, waiting for the courage to surface and escape, but feared too much the wind-that-wasn't that grated its blunted knives on his skin.

Grip tightened. Clutched desperately. Skin too thick, too real.

The foreign magic buried long teeth into his mind, his memories, the defining moments that shaped his being. It wormed itself, vermiform, into him, unearthing morsels and moments as it went.

His mind squirmed.

It was the wrapping of one's mind around a new concept. It was that digesting of ideas and information, both new and old, into a mishmash of radical new thought, that fermentation of the dregs of one's mind into radical thought, that painfully slow process where everything ekes together, like the long wait for distant thunder after the lightning of revelation. Somewhat akin to when Hagrid had burst in and told him, with little flourish other than that his size and painfully pink umbrella gave him, that he was a wizard. Somewhat akin to when Snape swirled into the underground classroom and told them with infinite smugness that all that he had taught them for their OWLs, all that they had spent the past terms slaving on, was a lie. (Or rather, a gross simplification, as she had explained later. You'd hardly understand imaginary ingredients, sixth dimensional brewing, second-layer synthesis and solubility manipulation a year ago. As always, she had a point. He barely understood now why one would need to brew a potion according to the schedule of another dimension. It's like moonlight brewing only slightly more complicated. As you know, precision in the time of...)

He found it fitting that his quest for her should lead him here where his mind was stretched so. He remembered hours spent pouring over books with her beside the Arthurian tapestries of the Gryffindor Common Room, in the book-crowded library, where the many promises whispered seductively, each wrapped in their worn leather coats...

He was in a familiar door-lined corridor, but longer, darker, more winding than the one that had haunted his dreams. Vaguely he knew himself to be still firmly rooted in the backroom of the British Museum, he saw it all in a curious overlay of images, like a garish special effect from a bad Muggle film.

Behind each door would be--was, he knew it with an undeniable certainty--roomfuls of battered cardboard boxes with worn corners, each full of knickknacks and bric-a-bracs; whatnots, whatchamacallits and whatsises; the sort you would find in an old ladies' attic, after a lifetime of accumulation with the motto "you never know just when it may come it handy."

He wandered down the corridor, or perhaps the corridor moved whilst he stood still; he wasn't sure. The heavy silver weight around his neck was his only solid anchor, everything else was a blur. The foreign magic wormed deeper; his own never felt further away.

A door yawned open and indeed the boxes stood on guard in their haphazard rows, like a rabble army standing on attention, a baby's citadel toy bricks. There was a grudging organization to it all, as though someone had been forced to inflict some order onto the place and hurried through the process.

Contents spilled themselves into his hands and he found himself holding two armoured figurines on horseback with streaming banners and tilted lance, though somewhat greyed with darkness (odd; the room was merely hazy, not dim--yet the knights were shadow stained). He found a handkerchief smeared with pink, sticky, sickly-sweet-smelling icing, though he knew without opening his mouth it was without taste; a toothpick; a pair of woollen socks, which were all heels.

It took a moment for him to recognise them. There were the tin knights he had set charge against each other in the dark space of Dudley's spare room; he had never seen them in light bright enough for the colours to register. This was the pink smear of Dudley's twelfth Birthday cake, the one Dobby had heaped on Mrs. Mason's head; he had never tasted it, since he washed it off his hands straight away, but the saccharine smell lingered for days. The shapeless socks were Christmas presents from the Dursleys, which had been permanently been occupied by all manner of objects, save his feet.

Memorable, but not treasured.

The things stacked themselves back into the box, onto the shelf and another box emptied itself. The doll-sized orange jumper he knew immediately, the one Aunt Petunia had tried to force him wear. There fistfuls of hair from numerous haircuts; a collection of toothpicks (presents from the Dursleys); pages and pages of History of Magic notes, filled with increasingly messy scribbles that dissolve into funny-looking dots (where he had fallen asleep from Professor Binns' droning); a smoosh of damp grey clothing that resembled more an elephant-skin than a uniform.

Memorable, but not unforgettable.

The next box contained a birthday cake, which was somehow both flat, drawn on a dirt floor, with fingermarks lighting the candles and real with green icing and chocolate layers (his mind and somehow melded the two cakes into one; so intermingled they were); a chocolate frog card with Dumbledore smiling enigmatically; Ron's spello-taped wand, still covered in slug-slime.

Unforgettable, treasured, but not pivotal.

He sorted through hundreds of boxes as that foreign magic probed deeper and deeper into his mind, into the pivotal moments, the ones that defined him.

Another room further down the corridor, another boxful of memories spilled out: the splintered remains of his Nimbus Two Thousand; a small mirror, forever empty, divorced of its twin; a photograph album of memories that were not his own, moving snapshots of his parents, each a pocket of hope, of what could have been; the Triwizard tournament trophy, shiny, but in the reflection he could vaguely make out the faces of the dead, of those who should have died.

Cold, distant pain. He heard a hiss of sadistic satisfaction from the foreign magic.

Another room. Another box. This time it spat out an eagle-feather quill; handfuls of hippogriff fur; his old glasses, much abused and often mended; a page torn out of the library's book of beasts, describing Basilisks, with the word pipes written in the margin; a small cauldron of potential Polyjuice Potion (his most lingering memory of that month was sitting in the out-of-order toilet, watching her at work).

He tasted pain again. A different sort. Not the resigned bitterness of losses to death, not the distant pain already numbed by time and acceptance, half-healed by revenge, almost reconciled with the Elysian knowledge. This was the pain of a more tangible hope, something he had held but let slip through his fingers like the wild wind that he had once tried to bridle. This was the pain of his own folly, the knife-twisting agony that he had later washed away with relief in the Department of Mysteries, when she had collapsed--seeming dead--amid fireworks of dangerous magic.

He felt his hands shake as the memories came back, but it wasn't until the box yielded sheaves of notes and homework that he wanted to stop. Pages upon pages filled with his messy scrawl, seven years worth of work. These, however, were different from the ones he had first found. Written neatly in the margins and in the little gaps between the lines, was Hermione's handwriting. The thin, precise lines of her lettering breathed so near, almost grazed the thicker, blacker marks of his words. It was wire, spined with poison, spangled with the diamond tears of early morning, surrounding some unapproachable secret amid a barren field that belonged to no man. The neatly arranged tangles that invited that fatal touch. Occasionally, they would cross, bite into each other in a small blot of darker ink, too small, too brief.

He almost dropped the quill made of a peahen's feather, with a rainbow still trapped in its barbs.

The foreign magic gave a soft shudder of triumph. It stabbed itself into the core of him, and unearthed the more abstract memories: the two Hs that she had sketched with leaking magic; the soft whisper of her skin on his; the deceiving almost of gilded firelight; the half-melted snowflakes that beaded her hair; the weight her petrified hand in his...

The silver chain bit into his flesh; the sandglass that hung from it was leaden weight.

And then there were her memories, the ones that she had given him: the faded flowers that she had awoken to (he had consistently changed them though the stagnant magic around the petrified killed them all immediately); the time-turner that she had worn around her neck all of her third year; the ingredients from Snape's cupboard; the long conversations with House Elves; piling toast onto a napkin in preparation of breakfast outdoors...

Yet, they were more than her memories; they fitted next to his to form a complete whole: her initial disappointment over the faded flowers complimented her discovery through the sharing magic and memory that he had tried to keep them fresh; the familiar weight of the time-turner matched their sharing of it in the freeing of Sirius and Buckbeak; the swift collection of breakfast followed by the shared lake-side morning...

The magic snatched.

The non-wind that had never ceased, but merely slowed to a trickle when he examined his memories, stopped altogether with frightening stillness.

He held his breath.

It sliced through air when it began again, in the opposite direction. It was sharper this time, faster, all sense of rhythm and control lost in the folds of its breath.

The world spun. Stars wheeled overhead.

His magic recoiled with a disembodied panic--a panic that he knew he felt rather than actually feel it course through his skin, rippling gooseflesh and calling each hair to attention. He observed it as a remembered emotion, something too distant to examine properly. He only knew to cling onto the imprint of what had been snatched away. His fingers closed around that shadow, already fading.

A phrase of phoenix song--or what a phoenix would have sung if given not only notes, but words.

Fog descended.

He still fell. The ground simply wouldn't come.

His mind wouldn't focus. It was as though it had tried to encompass an idea too vast, like the theory behind Summoning Charms, but more complex, more profound. It had tried to down something too big, something that did not fit into these three and a half dimensions and it had given him mental indigestion.

He was searching for....

"Did she leave something? Anything."

"I'm not sure-"

They had exchanged some pleasantries and apologies, looked at some moving photographs with people whose smiles seemed almost forced, and eaten stew made of a creature he wasn't sure existed.

"Sorry, Harry, don't mind the mess. I like working on the kitchen table... Let me get you some more tea."

"I thought it was the windows."

A window covered in words of black wax, mostly symbols too archaic to decipher.

"That too."

"Isn't it-"

"No. Saves me cleaning the windows." A shrug.

More pleasantries and a question aching to come out, waiting, just waiting by his tongue. He asked about something else, someone else...

"They don't know yet. Not really. Mum keeps trying to marry her off to a nice Hufflepuff-"

"Hufflepuffs are very nice, Ronald. They were related to dinner."

A grin. "Badgers. That was a hog-nose sand badger in the stew. Foreign delicacy."

"It was very... interesting."

Idle leafing through piles of parchment. Restlessness.

"This is her handwriting." He still couldn't say her name. He wished he had now; he might remember it now.

"That fragment is about a thousand years old, Harry."

"It is her handwriting. No one does their Hs like her and the little curl at the end of the-"

"I don't think-"

"Look!" The paper passed hands, but his hands hovered close to the imprint the acid-ink had burned into the parchment. He wanted it back.

"Artorius!" An exclamation. The closest thing that strange girl with bottle-top earrings ever came to swearing. "It is her."

"Where-?"

"It's hers, I suppose. She's always studying musty old things. Something about that king with a sword in a stone and-" Another shrug.

"Ronald! This is important."

"It's just the fault of that barmy old wizard who couldn't keep his mouth shut. And to think you've got about thirty five of his chocola-"

"Thirty two, Ronald. Thirty two since last Saturday. I traded you-"

An embarrassed laugh. "Don't... I don't collect chocolate frog cards anymore. It's childish..."

"Ronald." A warning.

"It's for the children. They'll be very valuable one day..."

The tangent shot off. Fingers danced across the parchment, tracing the archaic words he could barely read.

"Don't drop the subject. This is important. That was her handwriting."

"Luna, why is it so implausible that someone back then wrote a little like Hermione?"

"That someone wrote like her is plausible, Ronald. That she wrote this is implausible."

"I'm glad we agree."

"But I believe the latter."

"But... but..."

He stopped listening. The conversation was steered away from the scrap of paper, but he pocketed it as the thought wouldn't let go. Sometimes implausible things...

His mind was still spinning, still hurting. The shards of a glass broken bit, like shrapnel. The only immovable thing was that weight around his neck.

The non-wind continued, but shifted, took him for its eye and wrapped its violent folds, each bristling with blades, around him. It whipped against his skin, brought its cold, cold lips to his ear and howled long notes of indecipherable wordlessness.

"Ah, yes, I remember..." An old voice. A new voice. No; voice new to his mind, but had come from an old throat. A man who had glimpsed memory that was not his own, unearthed it from the residue of the past.

"Thank you."

The many shelves, boxes again of ancient things, lost fragments abandoned by their long dead owners...

"Lovely girl... interested in the old tales: Morgana, the Lady of the Lake, Gwenhwyvar the Fair, the knight of the dragon, the Bear King..."

"Bear King? Wasn't it..."

"Dragon King is a much later title. He is said to be the embodiment of the Bear Stars. Ursus. Uthyr..." The man rambled; he was only vaguely aware. That question again. The one he could not bring himself to voice.

"About this parchment..."

"Yes... I think I have something in the back room. I'll be right back. Don't touch anything." The man--the curator--wandered off behind the curtain.

A glimmer snared his eye, like a well-laid trap.

It was a small sandglass of tarnished silver hung almost negligently among a number of other trinkets. The silver winked at him, catching the light just on its bottom rim. The shape of the bright crescent was soon eclipsed, but he who had once scorned the prophesies that moulded his life, foretold his doom, and meted out justice.

His hands closed around it. A small yellowed tag stated its origins and purpose in faded ink: c.320 P.P.; 542 S.XX.H; 1290 K.T.C.D.; Very early prototype of time-manipulation device, employs sacrificial magic, untested...

The non-wind quieted to a gentle breeze and the air rippled like the pebble-broken surface of water. The ground finally came with numbing solidity.

He smelt burnt flesh around his neck, his hands, but the pain was still distant. The many scattered pieces of him were again reassembling into his skin. His magic was kindling again inside him, giving a comforting growl of reassurance.

He staggered to his feet, light blinding, grasped for something to stable himself against something. There was an urgency to move, to search for something--someone--her...

His fingers met leather. Warm, worn, almost welcoming.