Chapter Text
It was a Tuesday afternoon when The Box arrived. It was about half the length of Harry’s forearm in height and an ornate wooden thing that glowed, faintly, when opened. It seemed bottomless. All objects dropped in The Box had either disappeared if magical or was rejected, violently, if not.
All in all, it had spiced up the slightly depressing eighth year.
Every seventh year student of Hogwarts had been required to retake their year part time, mostly due to the fact that there had been a war and a Voldemort running about. Careers were started on predictions of grades, although Harry would admit that when he’d inquired after the Department of Mysteries they’d practically tripped over themselves in desperation to have him, and a year’s worth of classes was packed carefully into a Time Turner ridden schedule and a hell of a lot of Apparating.
But nothing happened. Harry, who was by this point extremely used to things Happening, found himself half wishing for Voldemort to show back up if only to take away the tedium of studying for his NEWTs.
And then The Box.
It had started out a secret, but it was difficult to keep a secret in a dorm room, and from there it sort of slipped out. Harry had grown fiercely protective of his box, which seemed to sing to him, and had taken to carrying around with him like a baby and hissing at anyone that got too close. The teachers mostly found this amusing, after it had been pried from him for a few painful hours to scan for curses.
“You have,” McGonagall proclaimed, “one extremely powerful but seemingly harmless box. I’m sure your colleagues would be interested in it, so I suppose you’re working in the right place.”
Harry hissed at her, snatched his box from her hands, and ran back to his dorm.
The thing he hadn’t told anyone was that The Box grew warmer when he touched it. Sometimes, at night, he heard a voice saying something softly—comforting, even if he couldn’t quite make out the words, and confusingly familiar—and even felt a hand brushing his hair from his face.
Harry’s work at the Department of Mysteries meant that he did understand the concept of an item being attuned to its owner and/or target, but this didn’t feel malicious. Whoever had made this box had done so out of love.
He hoped, anyway.
It was one morning at breakfast that Harry’s Time Turner fell out of his shirt, as it was wont to do, despite the fact he was supposed to keep it below the collar to obscure it from younger years. On this morning—also Tuesday—his Time Turner graced the top of The Box with a particularly loud thunk, as it was not wont to do.
And then he understood, with clear and crystal clarity, that this box’s strange magical signature was time magic, and that it needed a Time Turner to function, and that it specifically needed Harry’s Time Turner to function because it was attuned to Harry. How he understood all that he did not know, but he got the sense that The Box had been waiting to tell him and was fondly amused that it had taken him so long to get a hint.
Naturally, Harry immediately unclasped his Time Turner and made to put it in The Box.
“Mate?” Ron said, slightly baffled. “What on earth are you doing?”
“I’m putting my Time Turner in my box,” Harry said, reasonably.
“Why are you putting the Time Turner in the box?” (Ron did not capitalise The Box when speaking as he ought to.)
“The Box wants me to put my Time Turner in The Box.”
“And,” Hermione interjected, raising a single eyebrow, “you decided that listening to it was a good idea?”
“It’s a nice box,” Harry said.
“What.”
“It’s nice!”
“Okay.” Hermione shook her head. “But, maybe, when it starts asking to eat your Time Turner, you don’t listen to it.”
“It’s an experiment.”
“We’re all going to die.”
“It’s literally nice,” Harry said again.
Ron turned to Harry. “How long, exactly, has this box been speaking to you?”
“The whole time.”
“And you didn’t think to mention it?”
“I obscured the truth so I got to keep my box.”
Hermione’s head made contact with the table and Harry seized his opportunity and shoved his Time Turner into The Box right in the middle of the Great Hall.
Every head in the hall snapped over to Harry when The Box began to glow with a bright golden-white light. They all began to shout at Harry when the light exploded from the box, burning a hole clean through the Gryffindor table and knocking everyone up against the walls.
It was, however, too late for anyone to stop the experiment, the Time Turner floating gently above the box before emptying itself of sand and disappearing into the light, which begun to make a horrible noise that drowned out everything else.
And, from the noise, voices.
I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself, thanks—it’s just Tonks, don’t even say the rest—Sirius, I’m a werewolf—Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs—I killed my parents today. Quit your nervous laughter, it doesn’t suit you, and I’m serious—I’m beginning to rethink the name Knights of Walpurgis—Salazar Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four—I’m telling you, Grindelwald is bad news—Ariana is dead because of you—my daughter is dead—Helena!
And from the cacophony, a set of voices began to travel, crystal clear.
“Now isn’t the time,” the first hissed, to muffled laughter. “We have a funeral to attend—for Rowena’s sake we have to look like we didn’t just—”
“Canoodle?”
“Please rephrase.”
“Shan’t.” With this word, the outline of two figures almost intertwined began to take shape within the light, which had expanded from the box until it was about the height of a door. “I grieve for Helena just as much as the rest, but she’s still here. She’s going to attend her own funeral. It makes it hard to take it seriously.”
The broader figure laughed. “Salazar—”
“We’re attending the funeral of someone we spoke to this morning.”
“It would be disrespectful—”
“No one is even wearing black.”
Colours began to seep through the light: the figures were roughly the same height, although with remarkably different statures. One was broad and muscular, with frizzy red hair, and the other was significantly less so, though with black hair of considerable length.
“Salazar—”
The dark-haired figure ducked his head to press a kiss to the side of the other’s neck. “Come now, my sweet Gryffindor,” he purred in what was probably meant to be a seductive tone but got him lightly thumped.
“Only if we’re quick, my cunning snake.”
The dark-haired figure—who may or may not have been Salazar Slytherin himself—straightened up, pressing a kiss to the other man’s lips. “Shall we make it a race, then, my cowardly lion?”
“Cowardly? I said cunning!”
“And here I thought we were using adjectives that fit the situation well,” potentially Salazar Slytherin said, leaning in again to kiss the other man, who may or may not have been Godric Gryffindor. This was, naturally, when The Box decided to drop them the remaining two foot or so to the floor, where they both jerked apart in surprise.
“Um,” Harry said, considering everyone including two probably-the-founders-of-Hogwarts were now staring at him. “The Box told me to.”