Stealing Sheep

STEALING SHEEP

Chapter 17: Timeless

A soft sigh floated through dreams and roused James from his peaceful slumber. As he groggily brought his mind back to consciousness, he stretched and silently relished the unique feeling of the cotton sheets against his naked skin. He opened his eyes to see the bedroom was still awash with the dull gleam of night and wondered what could have awoken him. The second he spotted the figure standing at the window, he knew.

He could never sleep when she wasn't beside him.

James slowly got out of bed and took a moment to study her softly silhouetted shape in the moonlight. His heart soared and he couldn't quite believe she was his, she looked too magnificent to be real. Her scarlet locks gently waved in the sea breeze and a soft smile, a secret smile adorned her face as she studied the horizon. To him, she looked as majestic as a Celtic Goddess, at one with nature and the Universe. Once upon a time, he would have felt unworthy of her and of her beauty, but now he knew that, in some ways, he was her God as she was his Goddess.

James wrapped his arms around her waist and smiled into her neck at his luck in gaining such a wife.

Lily entwined her hands in her husbands and said softly, "I didn't want to wake you."

She felt his chuckle rumble in his chest. "I can't sleep without you. Damn woman. This is what you've reduced me to. Sirius was right when he said there would be Hell to pay if I married you. I slept like a log before you came along."

Lily smiled up at him mischievously. "Sirius only said that because he had one hundred Galleons resting on me not marrying you. And, my sources tell me, you spent an awful lot of time saying 'Lily, Lily' in your sleep then anyway!"

"I obj- Well, ok, yeah, that's true." He frowned and rested his chin on the top of her head in the way he liked to, just to reassure himself that they did, in fact, fit in every way. "Are you going to tell me what's wrong?"

He knew there definitely was something wrong when she began playing with his fingers and avoiding his gaze. "Why would there be anything wrong?"

"Come on, I'm not stupid. Ok, I am, but I still know when something's wrong. Is it a good thing or a bad thing that's kept you up?" he asked, knowing she would tell him. He was there for her, always, and she knew that.

Lily sighed, giving in. "Both, I guess. I can't wait but...I'm worried."

"Our little one's bothering you?" He grinned and patted her extended stomach. "That's my Q-"

She sighed, exasperated. "We are not calling him that."

"That's what you think."

She huffed and James knew she was working her way up to rant at him again about acceptable names etc. etc. So he interrupted before she could begin. "Are you worried about the birth?"

She frowned. "No. The medi-wizards and witches are great. It's after. How can we raise a child in this world? In the middle of a war?" she said, now wringing her hands with anxiety.

He softly covered her hands, calming them and hugged her closer. "Lily, I know it isn't the best of timing-"

"No kidding," she said, wryly. "Voldemort will be knocking on our back door and I'll be yelling 'Come on in, Dark Lord, grab some hot towels, I hope you've delivered a baby before!'"

He continued. "-And I know that the baby was pretty much a surprise-"

"Yeah, you couldn't talk for a full half hour after I told you- I swear, that's the longest I've ever seen you not talk." Her laughter pealed out. "I might tell you I'm pregnant again one of these days just to get you to shut up..."

James chose to not resort to an undignified retort and maturely ignored the jibe, deciding to get her back later. "As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted-" He sent a death glare through the top of her head. "-It's not a good time and we didn't plan on him, but he's here anyway. There's nothing we can do now except love him, protect him and raise him the right way."

Lily swivelled in his arms and he was surprised when he saw tears glisten happily in her eyes. He knew her hormones were all screwed up but he chose to believe his way with words was just that beautiful.

He didn't like to see her crying, whether tears of joy or sadness so he added glibly, "Just so you know- 'the right way' means 'into a professional Quidditch player'."

He'd judged correctly as she laughed at him and swatted his arm gently. "What is it with you and Quidditch? It's not even that good."

James' jaw dropped open in shock. In all their time together he had never heard her be so- so- blasé and downright mean about his altogether number one obsession (aside from her). "Take that back!"

"No." She stuck her tongue out at him, making him laugh with outrage. "It's rubbish."

"'No'? 'It's rubbish'? Excuse me? I think, as penance you should let me name the baby what I want to name him," he said, rubbing his hands up and down her arms in an effort to be persuasive. He actually thought he had a chance.

She glared at him. "You are not calling our son Queerditch."

"But-"

"I'm not stupid- I know its just a roundabout way of naming him after that horrendous sport."

"Hey!"

"Anyway, I've got the perfect name for him. Harry."

He made a face. "What? Why would you want to call him that? For God's sake, my dad's called Ha- oh." He frowned for a second then smiled brightly. "How about Eunice?"

She laughed. "You do know that's a girl's name?"

"She was a bloody good Seeker!"

Silence.

"Moantrimmer?"

"No."

"Chudley?"

"No."

"Bloody Hell, woman why the Hell not?"

And that was when everything changed.

The tapestry was unwinding.

Hermione Granger looked through the magical magnifying glass at the minute fray in the enormous wall hanging and couldn't believe her eyes. One strand unravelling happened sometimes- people with time turners messed up and inadvertently changed things and, it was her job to sort it out. But this was no time turner accident. The one strand beginning to fray was expanding, affecting other Threads and the ripples were slowly stretching out towards present day. One glance through the magical magnifying glass had answered her questions.

Without a word, she ran from the Time Room and made her way through the complicated maze to the lift taking her from the Department of Mysteries to Law Enforcement.

Hermione knew he would be there, even though it was nearing 7 in the morning. He was always either sat hunched over his paperwork, concentrating fiercely, or out pummelling bad guys. After all, The Job was his life.

As she stepped out onto the floor she immediately saw him, as predicted, hunched over a foot high pile of papers.

He glanced up and smiled. "Hermione, what are you doing here?"

She rushed over and said breathlessly, "You have to come with me, now." She slammed a hand down on his desk, making papers flutter to the floor.

Harry simply looked mildly surprised at her dramatics and slowly rearranged the scrolls before him. "What's the matter? I have a lot of work to do."

She had no time for this! If they didn't hurry, everything would change and all because Harry had 'too much work to do'. "Listen to me, this is extremely important. Life or death."

He shrugged.

"For God's sake, Harry, you can do your damn paperwork later!"

His eyebrows shot North. Hermione never swore, even mildly. It must be something serious. "Ok, ok, I'll come, calm down."

Harry stared down the intimidating corridor that used to invade his dreams. It looked ordinary, unthreatening, but it still swamped him with memories of that night. That night had been the beginning of the end for Voldemort. Although the war had not even begun in full force, it had given him the determination to master his talents and exceed all expectations. That night had set Harry on the course he was on today- vanquishing Voldemort, ending the war and working every night, falling asleep at his desk in his empty bid to battle away his inner demons and dissolve his guilt at letting so many people die before he could put an end to the reign of fire.

Hermione had said that she had a big problem and it was something to do with him. He knew that she worked in the Department of Mysteries and, as an Unspeakable, had never before been able to give even a hint about what she was working on, let alone require his help. To be honest, he was both dreading re-entering the network of top-secret rooms and curious. He couldn't understand how her work was to do with him.

"It's your parents," she explained as she lead the way into the ticking room, and through the desks to the hidden wall hanging beyond.

"My parents?" He stared at her, shocked, as she studied the enormous tapestry. It was a jolt he hadn't been prepared for.

"Yes," said Hermione in a rush to explain. "The tapestry is unwinding at exactly the year 1978 and the position on the map indicates it's the path of their relationship that is the problem and if it continues it will have disastrous consequences in the present. Life as we know it will not exist!"

Harry stared at her. "What does that translate to in English?"

She frowned at him then tapped a finger against her chin, thoughtfully. "I suppose you'll need to know about this first." She gestured to the hidden wall hanging. "This is the Tapestry of Time. It's a map of sorts that charts everything that has ever happened from the beginning of time."

"It's a timeline?" Harry asked, amazed.

"Yes, exactly! And part of my job here is to study it and make sure no irregularities occur and if they do, fix them immediately. Well, about an hour ago I found this." She led him over to the far end of the huge hanging and pointed to a tiny fray in the material.

"So?" Harry was still extremely lost in the complexity of what she was telling him and despite his natural intelligence, was finding it hard to grasp. Maybe it was because she talked so fast, her words tripping over each other, a mile a minute, not allowing him o process anything she said.

"I'm getting to that. Now look closely at the material but whatever you do, don't touch it," she warned.

Harry hesitantly focused on the material. To his amazement , the billions of tiny threads that made up the tapestry were all complexly interwoven and flowed together like a million gyrating snakes dancing to a silent pulsing beat. He was soon mesmerised. "Hermione? What-"

"Those-" She smiled like a proud parent. "-Are the Threads of Time."

He couldn't help it. His hand snaked out to touch one of those entrancing strands.

Hermione quickly slapped it away and ordered "Don't touch it! Listen to me, Harry." She continued when he yanked his gaze back to hers. "They are beautiful, I know. Each Thread is a life, a person, and it glows with all the goodness of the human spirit. But if you touch a Thread you are dragged into that persons life and can't escape."

Harry was horrified. "Dragged in?"

"Yes. You follow their life, like a shadow, from birth until death before you're returned to your own body at the exact instant you left it. Its quite interesting- we've found that when people report the feeling of having a Guardian Angel watching over them its simply been-"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute! What has this got to do with me?" With each passing moment, he was getting more suspicious that he was about to be pulled into another adventure, another unrelenting mission and that inevitably he would be in danger. Again.

She opened her mouth to explain lengthily again and he cut her off. "Just give me the bottom line."

"Ok," she said, wringing her hands. "The bottom line is that this-" she pointed to the frayed thread. "-is you."

Oh.

Hermione continued quickly the second she saw his face pale. "But I think I've figured it out! Its not just you- look." She pointed to the surrounding Threads that also seemed to be unravelling. "This is me, this is Ron, this is- well, its spreading forwards and backwards in time so...well, this is Sirius," she said softly, as if she thought he'd break.

He'd gotten well past the stage where he would crumble inside at his godfather's name but still he had to force down a lump of pain. "Sirius is in there?"

"It's not him, Harry. Not really. Its just a recording of his life." She put her hand on his shoulder, comfortingly, and they stood for a moment, thinking of the loved ones they'd lost since Sirius. It seemed an age since he had disappeared through the Veil, and many more had fallen in action, disappeared, been murdered, commited suicide...the list of the dead was endless.

Finally, Harry broke the silence and forced his thoughts to focus on the issue at hand. "Have you found the source?"

"Yes." She sighed, knowing this would be the difficult part. "It stems from just two. As far as I can tell every strand effected has either a direct or indirect link to these." She pointed to two small Threads joined at the base but utterly separated as they grew to full length.

"Let me guess," Harry said with a sinking feeling. "My parents?"

"I'm afraid so." Hermione frowned at him seriously. "The only way this could've happened is if someone has been tampering with time. If we don't change it then eventually everything will be different- you won't even exist! So we need to make a plan- be clever about this, not go rushing through the circuits of time like a bull in a china shop..."

"Hermione? Any chance you could explain?"

She began to pace in frustration. "I'm going too fast. Basically, someone in the past has altered the path Lily and James- you parents- were meant to travel so that they no longer got married and therefore you were never born, Voldemort was never defeated and countless other lives were lost."

Harry grabbed her by the arms, mid-pace , interrupting her flow of words. "What do you mean I was never born? You can't just ignore the fact that I'm standing right here!"

"It doesn't work like that." She studied him, wondering how best to put it. "Time hasn't caught up with itself yet. Your parents never married and yet you still exist- for now."

"How long have I got?" Harry said quietly, strangely composed. He was facing the prospect of ceasing to exist, yet he was not worried. He'd been in danger that often, that it felt slightly odd when he wasn't in mortal peril. Anyway, his Auror training taught him to keep calm and objective in every bad circumstance, every hopeless situation. This was probably as bad and hopeless as it was going to get, but he would survive. He had to.

"I don't know, it could be any time. But we can't give up." She smiled at him triumphantly. "I have a plan."

Time was unravelling fast.

James was replaced suddenly by slithering arms that coiled around her, repulsing her, but before she could react the scene was changing once more. Unwavering tendrils of fire and ice erupted behind her eyelids, smothering her mind, drowning her thoughts until she had no sensation but of overwhelming, unbearable oppression...

The He was there. The Viper. The Snake. The Dark Lord.

"Stand aside, you silly girl," he spat out with a disgusted sneer.

Once she had been a defiant, determined warrior, fighting optimistically for the victory she knew would come. Now, her husband murdered only moments before, the prospect of herself and her baby joining him loomed closer. She finally broke, giving up all her dignity, her pride and spoke the words she had vowed never to utter. "Please...have mercy...have mercy..." she begged, for her child.

The perverse pleasure Voldemort took from seeing her beg was evident. He sneered at her broken spirit, and raised his wand derisively.

Lily steeled herself and forced away the aching of her heart for her broken family. She would be with him soon enough.

In a last act of defiance, the epitome of motherly love, Lily Potter placed herself calmly in front of her son and stared into the wand of death and the words 'Avada Kedavra'.

There was a moment- no, less than a moment- when time seemed to freeze in its tracks as the deadly green haze leapt from its barrel and began to race towards its victim. A thousand emotions and thoughts, memories and wishes flashed through her mind. Pain, sorrow, relief, images of happy times, times when they were a family, times when James had yelled at her, when he laughed with her, when he had stood by her...But in that age before the life was ripped her from her and her limp body fell, broken and empty to the harsh floor, a single word clutched at her heart and left a soft smile on her face. She had won. She had saved him with her sacrifice.

Harry.