Shadows of the Endless Day

Shadows of the Endless Day

Fraud's Truth


Despite all of the Wizarding World's supposed superstitions, none of the Hogwarts staff feared it enough to leave Severus alone on his honeymoon. He was barely two days into wedded bliss when Pomona tugged so vigorously on the bellpull that the banshee living in it managed to scream away her voice in a most unpleasant manner.

Unbolting the door was met with more rasping of the bellpull-banshee and finally, when Severus faced a very impatient Professor Pomona Sprout, he knew even without Sibyll's warnings from the day before that this meeting would be at best severely irritating. For one, Pomona informed him before even sitting down that the five points he had taken from Hufflepuff last term for the overdue book was considered unjustified, which meant they now tied with Slytherin. Secondly, the enormous spray of sweetbriar speared through her hat was wilting, shedding leaves all over his clean floor. She also carried with her a very large, leather-bound book that Severus recognised from Dumbledore's shelves. Glassy eyes stared from the book's spine.

"Albus will be here shortly. You might want to get Sibyll." She tried to set the book down on a table, but there was no space not covered by half-empty cups of tea and past issues of the Mugwump.

"She's still sleeping; she didn't get much of it last night."

"I suppose it much be quite a change from the topmost tower of Hogwarts," said Pomona.

Severus nodded, not bothering to correct her assumption.

Pomona opened the book and balanced it precariously page down on a patch of table particularly with teacups. The bleary, unfocussed eyes on the spine blinked slowly and swivelled around in its leather socket. It made the hairs behind of his knees quiver with unease; a very odd feeling.

The banshee rasped out Dumbledore' presence.

"Severus." He dipped his head in a stately greeting. The formality of the gesture made Severus more keenly aware of the severity of the situation discussed. Minerva followed, bowing her head with equal solemnity, despite the dishevelled status of her hapless bun which seemed to be doing a rather successful impression of a pin-cushion.

"Sibyll isn't awake yet, sir," said Pomona, agitated. The drooping flora in her hat sagged lower than before.

"I'm still not sure about this, Albus. Divination is, after all, the most imprecise branch of magic," started Minerva. "You don't honestly believe someone's going to die-"

"Tea?" offered Severus.

"You don't appear to have any cups free, Severus," said Dumbledore mildly.

"I could wash one..."

"But they're all still half-full, Severus."

Half-full. They had poured endless cups of tea on their wedding night, be neither to bring themselves to finish any for fear of what the tealeaves would say. Severus had never deemed himself superstitious, but seeing a foul omen glaring at him from the bottom of his teacup on that auspicious day of days could potentially mean loosing her. By nature of the night, he knew whatever prophecy she pronounced would be intensely personal. She feared what she would see in the future; he feared only her fears.

Vaguely surreal, his recollection of the night spent with endless cups of tea was distant. He could barely remember it, yet the half-empty - no, half-full - teacups stood as testimony of the inane night. He didn't know if he should be relieved to know himself still capable of fear or if he should be disgraced by the sheer insanity of it all. They had fretted a night over possibilities, over what could go wrong. Neither he nor Sibyll were inherently optimistic people, which made the idea of building some semblance of a future together all the more daunting.

"Severus, are you sure Sibyll's asleep?"

"Why?" he snapped.

"The eyes, Severus."

It took him a moment to realise which eyes Dumbledore was referring to. The eyes on the spine of the book had narrowed and stared on the some distant point underneath the floorboards.

"Sibyll?"

The stairs spiralled down and from where he stood he could hear the echoes rasp in a disembodied voice.

"...echoes of the future now played out in the past. The Riddle of Death remains unsolved yet could be for would be in the next turning of the glass..."

Severus darted down the stairs to fetch his wife and found her stumbling, disorientated towards him. He draped a gauzy green shawl around her and led her up to meet their colleagues upstairs. He growled at the clinking of the shawl's beaded tassels; the levity and cheer of the sound seemed to be mocking him. She seemed so frail this morning (he wasn't quite sure whether or not it's morning, really since the dungeons yielded no windows), as though that something of great enormity which she carried within her was gone, leaving her empty.

He was met with what must have been a long and weighty silence.

Sibyll shook herself and staggered to her feet. She gathered her shawl around herself, looking more like a glittering dragonfly than ever; who said dragonflies can't be sexy? She squinted at the crowd gathered in Severus' study and looked mildly surprised.

"Very sorry. I must have-"

"Too late. Too late..." said Dumbledore with a sigh. "Sit down, Sibyll, Severus. I'll explain."

"Surely that wouldn't be necessary, Albus, since Sibyll knows everything-"

"Minerva-" said Severus.

"As I was saying," said Dumbledore, as though neither Minerva nor Severus had interrupted him. "Alistair was speaking with Professor Binns and some of the other ghosts yesterday and most noted a change the taste of death. After a lot of searching they found the ghost of Pete-"

"The Lindow Man, Albus? Are you sure he's-"

"Quite reliable? Yes, Minerva, quite. Most of us have misgivings about men bearing the name of Pete Moss, but he has been dead a lot longer than any of us here at Hogwarts."

A chill at the back of his neck told Severus that Professor Binns had just floated in through one of the walls and was nodding quite enthusiastically.

"Someone has travelled back in time. But not just anyone and not just any-when or anywhere. Someone's travelled very, very far back using a very old form of sacrificial magic."

"Virgin's blood or the classic white bull, Albus?" Impatience coloured his voice; Severus had little patience for the Headmaster's dramatic flairs.

"You know better than I do that the sacrifice of another cannot feed your own magic. Any trade that seems to succeed is the darkest of our Arts and in the end, it is you who will pay the price of power. Just as Voldemort had to."

Severus looked away quickly, trying to choke down his most shameful memories. Sibyll's hand gave his a squeeze and let go, resting it just beside his; she knew he wasn't fond of physical contact. Her eyes promised him that something horrible would to happen to Albus Dumbledore on his way out.

"Apparently this man (though it could well be a woman) traded his memory for time," said Binns. "He would have sorted through his past and dredged out his most precious, most defining moments and given those up to pay for the travel back in time."

Dumbledore nodded. "I don't know what he would have to forget, but considering how far back he must have travelled, he probably wouldn't remember enough to come back. He might even have forgotten the reason for his journey."

"The Department of Mysteries allegedly sends witches and wizards back all the time, Albus. Surely this is of equal danger, or rather safety."

"That Department is so cloaked in the substance of that their namesake that we cannot estimate how dangerous or safe what they tamper with is. As far as I know, they only send witches and wizards back in very controlled environments, without the use of sacrificial magic or this much magic, for that matter. The bureaucracy keeps everything well documented in triplicate on time-proof paper as to prevent any changes in history, so we oughtn't further burden ourselves with their little projects. Their dealings aren't tangible to the dead, which should be good testament of their subtlety and caution."

"How far? How far did this wizard go? History could be changed irrevocably."

"A tie-seller once told me that there were two ways of looking at time: that it is elastic and no matter what you do to the past, the present always bounces back to the way it is now. Or that it is fluid and the premature death of a prehistoric butterfly could cause the next apocalypse."

"What does a man who sell ties know about time?"

"Yes, what would he know? He just sells ties. But, Minerva, that is the least of our unanswered questions right now."

"Albus and I have deduced that this man would have been using a contraption not unlike the one on page seven eleven of that book-" (Binns gestured a translucent hand to the eye-spined book.) "-and considering how far back he went, it is highly likely that this is an accidental use. At that moment, he probably wanted to go somewhere or do something or find someone more than anything else. The sandglass would have interpreted that a temporal destination. Say it was their life's dream to go to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. The sandglass would have taken them back to 1889 to meet Alexandre Gustave Eiffel and see it being erected."

"But why would anyone want to see the Eiffel tower that much."

Binns shrugged. "It was just an example. A dead spouse or a lost dream of some sort. A missed opportunity long ago or a lifelong obsession. It could be anything."

Dumbledore nodded. "We'll need to find out who this person it to track him down.

"And secondly, that amount of magic used always has... serious repercussions. We all know about that crater in the middle of Egypt. Luckily, that was amid a desert and the sand dunes, albeit still seeming a little odd in shape and slightly charred underneath, has covered everything up quite nicely."

"You mean Britain will be reduced to a triangular crater."

"Slightly smaller than that, hopefully, and probably less regular, more akin what should have been a Christmas-tree-shaped biscuit after too much baking powder, but yes. The magic released will echo and when we hear the words..." Dumbledore's voice trailed off ominously.

"Sibyll's prophecy should have given us clues as to who it was, where he was and when he travelled to. The Department of Mysteries only allows those who are directly affected by the prophecy to review it, and I doubt that includes any one of us. All that's clear from what I heard was merely a play on the volatile nature of time.

"Professor Binns, start looking though the history books for any change in the past. Minerva, will you alert the Order, though there may be precious little they can do at the moment. Ask Arthur to try his contacts within the ministry. His son is a lot more flexible than you all imagine so long as you approach him the right way. There should be a register of all the sandglasses of this nature somewhere in the Ministry records and if he could pry anything at all from the Department of Mysteries... And Pomona, will you research with Poppy about time damages. Send word to Hagrid; he's on better terms with the centaurs than I am. Alistair and I will be looking at patterns of magic and the possible repercussions of that magic. Severus, keep both eyes and both ears on your wife. Any whisper of prophecy will be of great use. That book will be useful, I hope. Firenze wrote it before he died."

And then, Dumbledore hit his head on the low ceiling on his way out.