Even the Stars Can Be Moved

The light filtered into the forest dappled the clearing. Hermione supposed she was the first human to enter it. And the first to engage in their introductory rituals. One step into the centaur's meeting place. One, the number from which all numbers come. "What is your name?"

"Mione," she replied. Griot had agreed that she could use that name during her greeting entrances into the meeting places, lest it drop on less than friendly ears.

Two steps, now. Duality, and combination, and opposition. "What is your intention?"

"To learn what I can of the future from minds better equipped to understand it than my own." It was always necessary to imply they were superior to her, especially when Bane was present. Strangely, it was much easier to bear than pureblood claims of superiority. She supposed it was due to the fact that the centaurs were regarded as inferior by many wizards.

Three steps. Synthesis. "And what is your token?"

"Another book. This one is a modern history of the centaurs, written by one of your own." The first one had been a history of wizards; the second a history of muggles. She knew they had been waiting for this one, but the first bits of information were, to

her, the most vital.

"It is well," said Griot. "You may enter." A cool breeze entered the clearing with her. They were fully in autumn now. In the mornings there was frost on the ground. Hermione had been in the past for a full month. She had begun to forget the exact timbre of that last battle; its afterglow was nearly fully faded.

She sat across from Griot, and two other centaurs. Both were white and silver with age. She knew they were perceivers, those with different impressions of time.

"Tell us again about your friend Harry Potter." Other centaurs were mingling about in the meeting place, some watching with interest, others paying no mind at all to the proceedings.

"He disappeared on September the 25th and reappeared on February the 21st. Between those times, no one ever found out where he was. Not even Dumbledore."

"Eerht semit si eno-ytnewt. Evif semit evif si evif-ytnewt," muttered the centaur on Griot's left. Griot nodded at this.

"Do you know anything else about his disappearance?" asked Griot.

"He was kept by Voldemort."

Griot nodded.

"Voldemort exists by half, now, not far from this," said the centaur on the right.

"Yes," said Hermione. "He is who Tom Riddle will be, in a decade or two."

"No," said the white and silver centaur. "They exist apart, for now. They are linked, but separate."

Hermione pressed her lips together at this, unsure what to make of it.

" Sdrow emas keeps yeht. Eno lilts si retal eno dna erofeb eno. Eerht si eno era owt," said the centaur on the left. Hermione realized now that he was speaking not another tongue, but backwards. How interesting.

Griot leaned his head back. "Hmm. Yes. They speak the same words. A moment, if you please, Hermione, Iado. I would like to speak further with Uru." He turned back to the backwards-speaking centaur. Hermione and the other white and silver centaur, Iado,

rose. Hermione walked along the edges of the meeting-place, knowing that most of the centaurs here were still suspicious of her presence. After a moment, she realized that Iado was walking by her.

"Oh," she said, looking at him. "I-I should thank you. For helping me."

The centaur turned to her. "You have experienced war," he said softly. It was not without accusation, but perhaps that was a projection of Hermione's. She would always carry her murder with her. "I can see that you have seen blood come away from a body violently. It is in your eyes."

A breath caught in Hermione's throat, and she turned away from him. Her lips moved, but didn't seem able to be able to find the appropriate sound to make.

"We centaurs have never known war, except at the hand of the humans. For them, it is inevitable. They struggle so hard to separate themselves from the animal parts of themselves that, when those parts arise again, they arise stronger than in animals themselves. That is what you humans call evil."

Hermione nodded.

"You are not like that. You have caused death, and learned from it. You strive for peace as others strive for war. You have lost much for it, nearly all you have."

"The thing of it is, I might not lose-"

"No," said Iado, "though you may regain them, you have still lost them. You will lose more, little foal."

Hermione turned back to him, tears breaking over her cheeks. Iado stretched out a pale hand to touch the tears. His hand was cool on her cheek.

"Let yourself cry, and let yourself go on. For you will do what you mean to do, accomplish every last bit that you hope to. You must remember this. Your

sacrifice will be worth it."

Hermione swallowed a sob. It stuck in her throat. "And what do you see, Iado?"

"The thing most precious to us," he replied. "The future."

"Can you tell me-"

"I can tell you what the future holds for you, because you are standing before me, or as much as is safe to say. I can tell you the greater portions of the movements being set into motion, but I can only tell you the individual motions if the individual is before me. There is no other way for me to focus my perceptions."

Hermione drew in a shaky breath. "Oh."

"And now, little foal, it is time to return to Griot."

Hermione brushed her tears away with the back of her hand and followed Iado back to the place where Griot and Uru sat. Griot was watching them expectantly. Iado resumed his place to the right of Griot, and Hermione sat once again before them all, trying to calm herself.

"There is a way," said Griot, "to tell where your friend will be."

And then the tears, once again, the foolish things, broke free, and a dozen sobs rose up from her throat. "Thank you," Hermione managed. "Can you. Tell me?"

"We can find the place where the captured one is, if you bring the capturer to us. For all the things he might or might not do are already in his head."

*

This may not end up shaping up as the best day, Hermione couldn't help thinking as she walked into O'Bleeke's office not two hours later. She had been dreading this meeting; O'Bleeke had been ignoring her ever since the now infamous class wherein she had defended Tom's solution. She sighed when the professor did not turn from the model of the Time Machine glittering in the air before him. A pensieve sat to his side; he must have been comparing the model to her memory. The model didn't look exactly right, although Hermione wouldn't have been able to explain it if asked. If she

looked at a particular metal line on the machine, it matched at all the right points; intersected with the other lines where it should. Still, something about the whole of it (Gestalt came to mind, from her muggle readings) didn't mesh with her memory, which hadbecome remarkably sharp where the time machine was concerned, due to her repeat viewings of it in the pensieve.

"Professor O'Bleeke," she offered tentatively.

He turned. "Oh, Miss Potter. As you can see, I've got the basic architecture of it down."

"Actually, there's something a bit off about it, if you don't mind me saying so."

He gave a smile that didn't quite match his eyes. "You are growing fond of correcting me, Miss Potter. Or is it simply your true character shining through? Are you one of those students who lives to show up their professors?"

"Are you speaking of myself, Professor O'Bleeke, or of Tom?"

"Is it Tom, now?"

"Professor O'Bleeke, perhaps we should talk about this in order to get on with the work without distraction."

"Yes, perhaps we should, Miss Potter. I do not appreciate insubordination from my staff. As hard as it is to believe, I have more experience than you have-"

"And far more knowledge, I am sure," said Hermione. "I find it very unfortunate that your prejudice against bloodlines prevents you from utilizing your considerable knowledge at times."

"Miss Potter-"

"If it was anyone but Tom who was responsible for that proof-anyone pureblooded, that is-you would have immediately seen the proof to be correct, I am sure. It is vital that you understand that I am not insulting your intelligence, merely your prejudices."

Professor O'Bleeke let out a labored sigh. "You have been raised by idealists, Miss Potter, and you are yet too young to see the tendencies of the world. I have been a professor at this school for over half a century, and it is an unfortunate maxim that

pureblooded wizards and witches tend to do better at their subjects than muggle-born ones-"

"Rubbish," Hermione muttered heatedly, dearly wishing she could proclaim her own heritage at this juncture.

"If you would think on it without emotion, you would see that there is a reason for this. The developmental window during which any young child learns the most occurs before his or her enrollment into any school. If that child is brought up in the Muggle world, he or she learns quite a bit about muggle things, which are not valueless, I am sure. Still, it leaves them with a certain impediment compared to a wizarding child who has been exposed to magic during this window-"

"Leaving aside the fact that your argument is ironically based on muggle psychology, how does that explain Tom Riddle? He's at the top of every subject, even yours--"

"And he would be a great wizard had he been raised in this world. As it is, his impediments leave him bitter, and arrogant, and driven to learn in order to prove himself rather than in order to become a great wizard."

"Still, it does disproves your implied theory that a muggleborn is inevitably a poorer wizard-"

"Though there may be an exception or two, those exceptions never adjust to wizarding society in the way they would had they been born into it."

"Of course they don't, if the society won't let them adjust!" she cried. "Are you even aware of the Muggle war, and what they are fighting about, and how very much you sound like the muggle dictator that Grindenwald has allied himself to?"

O'Bleeke waved his hand in the air as though he was swatting at a somewhat annoying fly. "The Muggles have always had their quibbles over Gods, it is one of the things that separates them from us."

"They are shoving Jews into ovens! They are burning them and torturing them and killing them en mass, whether they are practicing or not, whether they are grown or not, Professor! There will be six million dead by the time it is put to a stop."

"Is that so?" said the Professor. He furrowed his brow at this news, seemingly losing interest in arguing with her. The diagram of the Time Machine hovered behind him. "That is terrible, I had no idea, but I don't see how it applies-"

Hermione glared at the diagram, a bit of an idea forming about the Time Machine's structure. "It's the logical conclusion to your ignorant theorizing, Professor. Perhaps you'll realize it by the time our own war comes," she said calmly, moving towards the

diagram.It was worth a try, she thought, thinking of those theorems Dumbledore had handed to her. "But there's no mathematical proof of the ignorance of your claims. Suffice to say, there's a very good argument against them in this room that I can't even bother with, and I don't expect to hear another thing about it while we work on this." She drew a polar plane in the air with her wand, beside Professor O'Bleeke's diagram. "I am certainly not your staff. I am your partner, and without my help you wouldn't even know

where to begin on this project, so please do try-" After she drew the polar plane, which provided a backbone to the diagram, she drew a line in the air that corresponded to the first line in the first of the theorems she'd brought with her from the future."-to keep your prejudices to yourself. It's not really pertinent to this field anyways, except if you force them into it, which is what you did with Tom." She drew a second line, a third. One, the number that all numbers came from; two, for duality, and correspondence, and opposition; three, for synthesis. The first theorem consisted of just three lines, and served as the axiomatic basis of the others. Its lines in the air corresponded to the overarching structure of the time machine. It looked similar to Professor O'Bleeke's diagram, but the differences between the two were clear.

Professor O'Bleeke was enough of an arithmancer to find this breakthrough more interesting than their previous line of debate. He, too, was staring openly at her diagram. "The rest of the theorems will fill it out, of course," he breathed.

"Have you ever seen magic embedded into the very architecture of a thing like this?" asked Hermione.

"No. I don't suppose I have."

"With the time turners, there's magic embedded into the material that composes them, but the architecture really doesn't matter. the turning motion sets the spell into motion, of course, but the hourglass and the encasing globe are just symbolic. There've been several versions of the time turner. There can be no other version of this Time Machine."

"Fascinating," said Professor O'Bleeke.

"Yes, quite," Hermione agreed, content enough to leave their argument behind. The Time Machine would prove to be argument enough against a war whose logic progressed along the same lines as their argument.

*

After Hermione's breakthrough, Professor O'Bleeke, although still a bit cool, found no need to ignore her any more. They worked together on implementing the architecture, and consulted Professor Dumbledore on the appropriate material for the Time Machine. Whether or not it was still necessary to embed spells in the substance composing the machine was as yet unclear, and O'Bleeke and Dumbledore entered a period of constant meetings and commiseration. Hermione was left to take the reins of the Arithmancy class into her hands for a week. Luckily, the plans for that week concerned triangulated calculations, which she had always been exceptionally good at.

Alicia Silversmith approached her after one of her classes as she was gathering up her materials. "Miss Potter-"

Hermione turned to her. "Yes?"

"I was wondering if I could speak to you."

"Of course," said Hermione, rolling up the third of seven rolls of parchment she had concerning the day's lesson.

"Well, I've been interested in an arithmantic apprenticeship - like you, and I was wondering if you would supervise the thesis I intend on submitting?"

Hermione turned to her. Alicia was a tall girl who was strikingly pale from a distance. What she hadn't noticed until now was that her eyes were a pale mixture of pink and blue. She was, literally, an albino. "Hmm. Have you any general ideas for your thesis?"

"I was interested in doing a historical investigation into the attempted proofs of Jasper's last theorem."

"Ambitious," Hermione murmured. She regarded the girl. There was no doubt that she was sincere, but it was equally obvious that Alicia was using this opportunity to do what Adrian had asked her to in the library; namely, to check up on her. Well, there was that saying about keeping your friends close. "The most interesting and controversial area of arithmantic theory."

Alicia smiled, breathing out as she did so. "So you will?"

"I'll be honest with you, Miss Silversmith. I'm quite busy lately, and it's the first time I've taught, or apprenticed for that matter, so I haven't much time to spare. But what time I do have is at your disposal. I'm rather enamored of that theorem as well."

Alicia clasped her pale hands together. "When can we meet?"

Hermione slung her bag over her shoulder and began to walk towards the door. It seemed a bit silly to be tutoring someone who stood nearly a foot taller than oneself. "If you can be prepared by Sunday, we can meet," she finally replied.

"Yes, of course," Alicia said from behind her.

Hermione nodded, and Alicia waved and departed for lunch. Most everyone was already gathered in the Great Hall. Hermione turned away from its direction and instead ascended the nearest stairway. Conversation and laughter echoed from a long way away.

Hermione went up the stairs slowly, leaning against the banister. She felt. homesick. That was the only way to put it. Homesick for this very castle, but as it would be in the future. With the people who would populate it in the future. She turned at the top of the staircase and headed down the empty corridors for Ravenclaw. The windows revealed a sky dark with clouds and waning light. The days were getting shorter. It only added to the urgency of the situation. Hermione looked down at her shoes, eyes stinging. Stress tears. She'd gotten them throughout third year. School and that awful fight with Ron and Harry. She'd thought she'd be without friends again. Luckily, she'd had her time turner, and had managed to hide her tears, except of course when she was with Hagrid. Somehow, it felt good to have a good cry with Hagrid. Maybe it was because he cried so easily. Pity Hagrid wasn't here. He'd have been consolation, however small.

Thumph.

She didn't know who had thrown it, only that she'd blocked a spell from behind her. She turned quickly, furiously, and found Pendrake Malfoy standing behind her, wand drawn. He looked happier than he should for someone whose spell had just been blocked.

"What do you think you're doing?" she murmured in a warning tone. "There is a reason I'm on the staff of this school. You can't throw a spell my way and get away

with it." She raised her wand, ready to cast a binding spell if he ran.

Pendrake smiled. "I was so hoping you would say that." He held up his hands, palm up. "I have been hoping to run into you at an appropriate moment to demonstrate just that. I am incapable of dueling you and coming out on top. I cannot best Tom, and perhaps a dozen others in this school. I am only adequate in the area of defensive and offensive dark magic." But he was smiling, and on the last sentence he took a step forward and his tone changed. "However, there is something I am better at, than anyone." He was closer, and Hermione realized he had purposefully guided them into using low voices.

"Oh, yes," Hermione said loudly. "Do tell us." Some of the occupants of the paintings near them turned around and looked at them.

"Clever, clever." Pendrake leaned towards her ear. "Do go about this quietly, my dear. You see, I have some information, and there is nothing you can do about it with your skills and brains. It is as simple as this: a little pet of mine will take this information to - you can choose - the school administration or Tom."

Hermione tried not to cringe away from his breath in her ear. "What information?" This, she said quietly. After all, she didn't want anyone to know this was about information. There was far too much sensitive information about these days for her to be careless. Even though she wasn't looking at him, she could positively feel Pendrake gloating.

"There is no, and has never been, such a student as Mione Potter at Beauxbatons."