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As usual, my business was being conducted from my habitual booth at the Leaky Cauldron. For half an hour, a man had been watching me from the bar. He looked harmless enough, with his monocle and thick, walrus-like moustache of white hair. Eventually I just became impatient and approached him at the bar.
“Hello,” I said.
“Oh, hello,” he said, “Hello there. Young woman. Uh, how do you do?” he blustered, his monocle almost dropping from his face in alarm at being caught out like this.
“My name is Lucinda,” I said, holding out my hand. He shook it awkwardly until I said, “But I suppose you already know that.”
“Uh, well, no! I didn’t. My name is Charles Wallace. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“You’ve been watching me for a while now. Is there something I can help you with, or are you just enjoying the view?” I asked with a smile. I admit I’d had a few pints, but every second I spent with this old fellow confirmed that he was totally harmless.
“Well, yes. Yes, alright, I’ve been watching you. I do apologise, my dear, but you understand that I need to be cautious.”
“Don’t we all?” I said, “Buy me a drink and step into my office,” I said, gesturing to my booth. The wooden seat creaked beneath his large, tweed-covered body as he sat down and pushed a pint of my favourite beer towards me. “You’ve been watching me closer than I thought. Thank you,” I said.
“I asked the bartender. Tom, I believe he’s called?”
“Really?” I said, shooting a judgemental sidelong glance at Tom. He’d been ready for it, and in the fraction of a second managed to both shrug and make the universal gesture for money – rubbing his thumb and finger together with a grin. Then he was back at work.
“I do apologise for being so forward. But I really do need some help, and I feel you may be the perfect witch for the job.”
“Perfection costs money,” I said.
“I’m aware of that. I’m prepared to pay almost anything.”
“You’d better tell me what you want,” I said, guardedly.
“I work for the magical department of the Natural History Museum. I’ve heard you follow the muggle news. Have you heard about the new find that was transported to the museum this afternoon?”
“No?” I said. I usually focus on the political news and finance updates. The science news is understandably irrelevant to me.
“We should have caught it days ago. But these damn new media, their internets and tweets and books of faces! They move so fast nowadays!” he muttered, but I got the feeling that if he had been in private it would have been a wail. I could sense the frustration, “They found an egg. A dragon egg. A geologist studying volcanoes in Iceland found one of the nests. We don’t even know how he made it into the reserve! But he was so excited to find something so impossible. How did he even make it out alive, escaping a dragon nest with one of their eggs without even noticing the mother? We don’t know!” Charles kept babbling, “Damn Icelandic wizards! They’re such damn bimbos!”
“Shut up,” I said firmly, and Charlie looked hurt, “What exactly is the problem?”
“A dragon egg arrived at the Natural History Museum this afternoon. It’s already high-profile, to such an extent that we can’t just remove it and use memory charms! If we submit a request for a full cover up, then...” he stopped suddenly, looking down into his dark ale and hiccupping with distress.
“Then everyone will know you dropped the ball, as it were?” I said.
“Exactly,” he said, gratefully, “I’m not as young as I was, and my staff are all young, listless dropouts or so completely incompetent they might as well be squibs, no matter how earnest they may be! My department can’t afford this kind of scandal. We’ll be wiped out in the next Ministry review, and we’ll all lose our jobs! We do good work normally, I promise!”
“Alright, I believe you,” I said, holding up my hands in surrender to his intense stream of consciousness. He subsided, and I drank my drink. “What do you need from me?”
“If we can remove the egg, maybe replace it with a basic geode or something, then everything will be alright. But it needs to be done quickly. They’re keeping it on ice, thankfully, but they’re performing their awful muggle tests first thing in the morning!”
“Wait. Where is it being kept?”
“Somewhere in the Natural History Museum,” he said.
“So… you want me to break into one of the biggest muggle scientific institutions in the world, at a moment’s notice, and replace it with a perfect copy of a dragon egg that is also a perfect copy of a geode in the middle? What the hell is a geode?”
“Oh, Merlin,” he said, burying his face in his hands. I’d seen him drinking quite a lot while he was watching me – glasses of expensive whiskey and that awful dark ale.
“It’s not impossible. I can just apparate in, swap the objects, and apparate out again.”
“No,” he said mournfully, “The anti-apparition field of my department, deep within the specimen warehouses, extends around the whole museum. Haven’t you ever wondered why Kensington is a no-fly zone?”
“So I need to break in manually,” I said with a shrug, “You’d better tell me everything you know about the layout, the charms, the security curses – everything !” I stressed, “Then maybe I’ll consider naming my price. How does that sound?”
“Oh, please, yes!” he exclaimed.
“Well, the drinks are on you then,” I said, tapping my empty glass.
“Should you be drinking when you have work to do?” he asked hesitantly.
“Should you be asking that, when I’m your last, best hope?” I replied.
He got up to go to the bar, already fishing in his pocket for money. He’d be doing a lot more of that before our business was concluded.
*
It was the late evening, around nine or ten, when I arrived at the house of one of my best friends. His name was Edward Grey, and he had recently moved into an old water mill at the point where a river spilled into a lake. The landscape was beautiful, even in the post-twilight darkness of the chilly autumn night. I could tell from the distance I was approaching that he’d been building outwards, and several new sheds, barns and greenhouses surrounded the mill. He’d also added a tall tower with an observatory dome, two other towers that I couldn’t discern the purpose of and a few second-story extensions that looked like they’d wobble in a strong wind.
As I got closer, I could make out his house-elf Hoppy in one of the gardens, muttering to herself angrily and swinging a watering can around like it was shooting fire.
“Hoppy?” I said politely.
“Mistress Baker? Is that you?” she asked.
“Is everything okay?” I said, intrigued by the furious expression of the normally cheerful, generous house-elf.
“Thank Dobby you got my letter,” she said, “He’s become much worse since this morning.”
“Letter?” I said.
“What?” she paused, then petulantly threw her watering can to the ground, “Damn these provincial owl-service stations! I keep telling him, if we have all these buildings, we should at least have a household owl! But no, he doesn’t see it! He talks about efficiency but lives in his own little inefficient world! So you didn’t get my letter?” she ranted, her French accent growing thicker with emotion.
“I didn’t,” I said.
“Well, go inside,” she gestured angrily, “You’ll see. He’s really gone too far this time. Too far!” she said as she picked up her watering can, “And now I have to refill this. I’m sorry, Mistress Baker. Make your own way inside. I need to tend to my gardens. He’ll be in that fucking basement!”
Something had clearly gone wrong with the Grey household. I’d never heard Hoppy swear before – not during her master’s imprisonment in Azkaban, not during the last war or the Dark Lord’s coup, not during the long years while her employer made his dream of landing wizards on the moon a reality. But now she was swearing. With some trepidation, I walked up the stone steps to the heavy, wooden front door and pushed it open. The ground floor of the house looked fairly innocent, with the occasional empty wine bottle or quirky moving artwork on the wall. At the far end of the open-plan living and dining room there was the basement door, and there was light spilling out of every gap, shining out. I hesitated briefly, testing the door knob for heat before drawing my wand and opening the door.
The basement had once been where the waterwheel had turned the gears and axles of the mill. Now it was his workshop. As I descended the stairs, I was dazzled by all the moving lights flitting amongst the obsolete mill machinery. Some of it had been adapted to his own purposes, and along with the tinkle and swish of magic I could hear the magically muted noise of turning gears as the water wheel span. Amongst these large, grinding mechanisms there were bits of paper and glowing symbols flying through the air. Each symbol was followed by others, swimming through space like schools of fish – bright equations floating around, interacting with each other, flowing off again. Papers and long ribbons of scroll also floated around, tangling themselves sometimes and emerging with new marks. Sometimes the glowing symbols would flock around a piece of paper, or vice versa, and the papers would swim away with new markings on them. I didn’t understand half of the symbols, nor how they were interacting.
“Hello?” I asked.
“What do you want?” Edward’s voice growled from somewhere in the workshop. I darted through as many of the equation-swarms as I dared, making my way to the centre of the basement where Edward was working. He was surrounded by three chalkboards covered in scribbles As I watched, an equation solved itself and formed a new symbol which glowed brightly and struggled free of the board. It swam away through the air to join a specific math-flock, and Edward nodded with satisfaction. Every time he moved, chalk-dust floated off him like a thin mist. He looked at me in surprise, pulling his eye-patch over his eye. He’d been using it as a hair band, to keep his long, greasy hair out of his face. His hair was sticking up messily even without the restraint. His normally tidy beard was wild and dirty, and he was wearing a huge cardigan over pyjamas and slippers. In one hand he had his wand, in his other a stick of chalk.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realise it was you. I thought it was Hoppy,” he said, distractedly looking at me then turning back to his chalkboards. His lone eye scanned them feverishly.
“What’s all this, then?” I asked.
“It turns out there are like, twenty-five or twenty-six dimensions of space. Up and left and forwards and then, and or, or maybe even just maybe. Can maybe be a dimension? Damn, maybe is a dimension now! There are like nineteen more to define! Fuck, I’m going to need new words!” he exclaimed, dropping his chalk, “Maybe we should talk in numbers!”
“So this is fairly advanced then, I suppose?” I asked, standing aside as formula-flock swam past, “It’s got Hoppy very distressed.”
“It started out as moving between then and now, but then I wondered what happens if you change things. The further back you go, the more divergent the cause-effect stream becomes. Don’t you see? Everything that can ever happen is all happening at once!”
“You’ve finally cracked then? You’ve gone mad?”
“Don’t say that!” he snapped angrily, turning on me with his eye full of madness.
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” I said, holding out my hands apologetically.
“I’m talking about the whole universe! We can move through it now, in every direction, not just these stupid three that we were born with! All I need to do is build the machine!”
“Oh no,” I said, finally starting to understand, “You’re talking about a time machine?”
“Not just a time machine! The fourth dimension is just one! Everything that can ever happen, or might ever happen, it all exists! It’s just waiting to be found! We can get there by going backwards and forwards and accessing different cause-effect streams!”
“You mean… change the past?”
“No, not at all. There is no past or future. There is no different universe! We’d just be moving in a different direction in an infinite space of directions, a different twenty-six-dimensional map!” he ranted, “Moving through the maybe, rather than the up or the left! We’d move through the maybe by way of the then! Who knows how many more directions we’d be able to discover! True exploration!”
“Do you remember what happened the last time? You built a time-turner that killed a guy. Then you went to Azkaban. But gangsters took your eye along the way.”
“Yes, I was young then. I was stupid. It shouldn’t have happened. I understand what I did wrong now,” he said, making marks on the chalkboard to his left. He rubbed one out angrily, “Look, just leave, would you? You’re distracting!”
“How long have you been down here?” I asked.
“Time doesn’t exist,” he muttered.
“If I asked Hoppy how long you’d been down here, what would she say?” I demanded. Looking around at the basement, I could see there were no windows or clocks.
“Maybe a week. It’s hard to tell.”
“When did you last see Hoppy?”
“I was working on the ultra-spatial relationship at the time, so maybe…. Lunchtime? What time is it outside?”
“Its night-time outside,” I said.
“Really? Then it might have been the morning, local time,” he said with a wry grin, making another chalk mark on a different board. Another symbol took off and floated away to join its friends.
“How confident are you about this new machine?” I asked, dodging another swam of symbols.
“The machine is flawless. The designs are perfect. It’s just the navigation algorithms!” he whined suddenly, erratically. “It’s all way too fucking complicated. The universe is fucking huge ! How do you map infinity? It’s like I’ve built a car in my garage but I’ve never, ever seen a road – or like, left the garage before.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that, maybe, you’re not as smart as you think?”
“What?” he said, finally pausing, and looking at me uncertainly.
“Sure, maybe you can build a proper time machine, but to know what you’re doing with it you’ll need some help, surely. Maybe consult a few other experts?” I said, hoping that the other experts might be able to talk some sense into him.
“But that takes so long, though.”
“I remember you were confident about that old time-turner. Fool proof, you said. Absolutely guaranteed. So how confident are you that this will work?” I said, batting aside a flock of equations irritably.
“One hundred per cent,” he said uncertainly.
“How long has it been since you had a drink?” I asked gently.
“Time doesn’t exist,” he muttered, “But I think it’s been a week and three days.”
“How long since you had a cigarette?”
“Eighteen hours,” he said grumpily, and appeared to look around him for the first time.
“Good grief,” I said, “And when did you last eat?”
“It was when I realised that space is actually cubed to be power of eight and two thirds. Hoppy delivered… breakfast? Yesterday?” he asked, wobbling slightly.
“Merlin’s beard, when did you last sleep?”
“I’m not sure. Everything looks the same in my dreams,” he said, poking a floating symbol with his wand idly and then closing his eye, “I do feel very tired. Maybe I need a break.”
“Yes. You definitely need a break. Come upstairs, have some toast and a glass of wine, okay? I’ve got something I need to talk to you about.”
“Okay,” he said feebly, and I put my arm around his waist with one hand on his elbow as he slouched suddenly, his energy disappearing. He sniffed exhaustedly then made a disgusted noise, “Wow, I stink!”
Hoppy was waiting expectantly in the living room, brushing mud from her tiny shoes. She had a bottle of wine open and waiting, and his pipe and tobacco pouch were next to it. Then she sniffed, and took her shoe-polishing to her bedroom. As he sat down at the dining table and poured himself a large glass of wine, he said, “Wow, it’s pretty late. What’s brought you here so urgently?”
I explained tonight’s job – breaking into the Natural History Museum’s specimen labs and replacing a dormant dragon egg with a geode. I was vaguely familiar with the building, but Charles Wallace had explained more of the layout and I had a quite detailed map sketched out. I explained to Edward that I needed his forgery talents, but he looked in no state to help me.
“Actually, I probably can,” he said as he packed his pipe, lit it with his wand and blew a long plume of blue smoke into the high ceiling. His face visibly relaxed, and he started to smile softly in an unfocused way, “I’ve got a few bits of kit I can give you, and I know a guy who owes me a massive favour. He’s the best guy you could get for this job. He’s working as a diviner for one of the big goblin mines, tracking down veins of precious minerals. Geological magic is highly underrated, but he’s devoted all his time to it. I know him from Azkaban,” he said, blowing smoke into the ceiling again to distract from the memories.
“And he’s safe, is he?”
“I saved his life while we were in prison,” he said.
“Well, I suppose that’s a pretty big debt. How do I get hold of him?”
“I can bring him,” said Edward, whisking his wand around and summoning his patronus. It was a silvery bear that cast a slightly silver shine over everything in the room. Following Edward’s unspoken command, it turned and galloped across the living room, speeding up and turning into a dart of silver light that vanished through the far wall. “Should be about ten minutes,” Edward said, drinking.
I tried to avoid talking about his ridiculous time-travel plan. We started talking about his neighbours, the centaurs in the nearby wood, and I told him about a few bits of recent business. He was working his way through the wine very quickly, and with each sip or gulp he seemed more relaxed. By the time his friend turned up, he looked almost content.
“Mister Swan for you, master,” said Hoppy, having answered the door, “How are you feeling?”
“I feel like I need a bath and a decent night’s sleep, Hoppy. And I should probably tidy up my workshop” Edward said, getting up. Hoppy’s face brightened, her ears perking up.
“Does that mean you’re over this foolishness?”
“I suppose it can take a back seat,” he shrugged, “How are you, Alan?”
Alan Swan was coming through the front door, folding his travel cloak over the back of an armchair and wiping his boots on the large doormat. He was skinny and tall, with dark and close-shaved hair and stubble. His blue eyes sparkled with irritation and curiosity as he looked around the house.
“I was asleep. In my bed. Like a normal person,” said Alan, grumpily.
“Well, thank you for coming at such short notice. We need your help. This is Lucinda Baker.”
“Good evening miss,” he said.
“He says you’re an excellent forger?” I said, cutting to the chase.
“Would anyone like anything?” said Hoppy, enthusiastic host once more, “Master? A sausage sandwich?”
“Yes, please,” said Edward, rubbing his belly, “Anyone else?”
“I’m a vegetarian,” said Alan.
“Really? Good greif, I had no idea,” said Edward, “After all this time. Maybe a potato sandwich? Or something? What do vegetarians eat in sandwiches?”
“How well do you know this man?” I snapped.
“Well enough,” Edward said in reply, sitting back down, “Alan, Lucinda, sit down.”
“What’s all this about?” Alan demanded as he sat down, refusing Edward’s pipe and wine.
“Relax. Time is nothing,” Edward said, looking up at the sound of sizzling sausages.
“I’m on a deadline,” I muttered.
“Oh good grief, this again,” Alan sighed heavily.
“Has he done this before?” I asked, looking at Hoppy in the kitchen. She shook her head.
“In Azkaban, he drew all sorts of nonsense on the walls of his cell,” answered Alan.
“What sort of nonsense?”
“Really advanced arithmancy,” said Alan, “The Dementors were afraid it would open a magic door or something, so they kept wiping it off.”
“They didn’t understand,” Edward muttered, drinking, “It wouldn’t have done that. Wormhole magic usually requires two destination points. Beacons in the first three dimensions, anchored relative to each other in the fourth, shortcutting via non-consecutive space. Probably in the ninth dimension-” he rambled, until I interrupted.
“Well, how could they know that? They’re Dementors, they hardly understand written language let alone arithmancy,” I said. Alan gave me a strange smile.
“He kept talking about dimensions and space-time and lord knows what. It was a damn nuisance to listen to,” said Alan, “Sometimes I’d try to distract him, but it was only ever for a short while. He would never bloody shut up.”
“I’m familiar with that feeling,” I said.
“How he goes off on a tangent without any warning?” he said.
“How he stops listening?” I said.
“How he tries to stay up for days?” he said.
“How he doesn’t even realise he’ll think better with a bit of food?” said Hoppy, putting down a plate piled high with sausage sandwiches.
“How he’s sitting right here?” snapped Edward, picking up a sandwich.
“Sorry,” Hoppy said.
“So he says you’re an excellent forger?” I said again.
“He’s still sitting right here,” Edward said, “And yes, he’s an excellent forger. Explain what you need, Lucinda.”
I explained tonight’s impromptu mission once more. Alan looked intrigued about the Natural History Museum, but became much more so when I mentioned that I needed to replace a dragon’s egg with a geode.
“What happens to the egg?” he asked.
“I’ll take care of the egg,” I said with a grin, “And anything else we find.”
“Well, I can do it. Making a geode would be damn difficult for anyone less than me, though. You were right to bring me in,” he said, a touch smugly.
“Well, go on then,” I said, “Prove it before I take you with me.”
He got out his wand – a longer-than-usual, silvery length of wood – and started muttering as he drew it in circles around the table in front of him. With his eyes closed, concentrating, a ball of rock appeared and began to grow. It crackled and clicked as it grew, making a grinding noise like gravel. Edward puffed on his pipe, looking at the spectacle like a little boy. I was more critical, pondering how long it took and how noisy it was. Then it was done. Sure enough, it was shaped like an egg. He lifted it up and handed it to me, and I inspected it without knowing what to look for. It was surprisingly light.
“So that’s a geode then?” I said, and Edward laughed. He leaned over and tapped it with his wand. It split open, revealing a hollow interior lined with rich purple and silver crystals. I set the two halves of rock back on the table, nodding approval.
“Excellent. Edward says he can give us a few tools, and then we’re away, alright Mister Swan?”
“Wait, what’s in it for me?” he said, “Don’t I even get a cut from selling the egg?”
“You get to pay back the debt you owe me. How’s that?” Edward croaked through a lungful of smoke.
“You say that now, but I know you. As soon as you need something else, you’ll bring it right back up again,” he said grumpily, “Probably using me as a guinea pig into the fifteenth dimension or some bollocks.”
“Well, maybe I didn’t need to save your life. Maybe you’re immune to sharp objects,” Edward said, so bitterly and sarcastically that I was surprised, “Maybe I should have let that Death Eater kill your kidney, or take your liver, and left you there bleeding on the floor, eh? Like you were prepared to do for me?”
“Alright, fine,” said Alan softly.
“So like she said, I’ll give you some tools and then you’re off.”
“Is that alright, Mister Swan?” I said again, somewhat coldly.
“Call me Alan,” he said.
“I’ll be right back,” said Edward, lurching to his feet and pottering down into the basement, “I’m just getting some things. I’m not going to even look at an equation, alright?”
“So how long have you been a vegetarian?” I asked Alan while Edward thumped down the stairs.
“All my life. I hate the idea of eating something so vital and alive,” he said.
“What about insects? Edward once told me that he ate flies and spiders sometimes, while he was in Azkaban.”
“Yes, well, that’s Edward. The gruel they served us inside was just oats and potatoes and watery milk.”
“What about mandrake?” I asked.
“I try to avoid it,” he said, “Making potions is more difficult that way. It’s a nice challenge, at least.”
“I’m sorry if I’m asking too many questions. I don’t think I’ve ever met a vegetarian wizard before.”
“It’s fine. It’s a fairly unusual ideology in a world where meat and mineral are interchangeable, right?” he joked.
“Especially tonight,” I said with a grin.
Edward came back from the basement carrying a thick leather bundle in his arms. I managed to pick up the plate of sandwiches as he unrolled it, revealing a large array of modified wands, weird little silver balls and a dozen other gizmos that looked dangerous and useful.
“This is for cutting through glass,” he said, pointing at one of the wand-like instruments, “This is for cutting through brick or masonry, up to three feet. It’ll leave any wires or pipes intact. This is for cutting through steel, if you find any. This one is for wood. These silver balls are sleep-grenades in case you find security guards. Hide behind a wall or desk, or shield yourself with a charm, and you’ll be fine. I think that’s all you’ll probably need,” he said, giving them to Alan and me, “These are adapted darkness bombs from Weasley’s Wheezes. And these are fire grenades.”
“We don’t want them,” I said, pushing the fire grenades carefully back towards him.
“Well, okay. If you’re sure.”
“We’re sure,” said Alan.
“That’s everything, then. If you give me some time I can probably enchant some clothing to be invisible to muggles, like the Ministry entrances, Hogwarts or the charms they used on the world cup stadium before the war?”
“How much time?” I said impatiently.
“It will be more difficult if they’re shielding moving forms. But it’s basically an adaptation of the charm from the Knight Bus. Two hours at least.”
“Too long. We need to go.”
“I’ll get my cloak,” said Alan.
“Before you go,” Edward muttered to me, so that Alan couldn’t hear, “Here’s another little tool. It’s a very miniature time-turner.”
“No.”
“Listen, it might come in useful. Obviously avoid using it if you can, but you might need it.”
“No.”
“Just take it, even if you don’t have to use it. My theory and arithmancy is perfect now,” he said, pressing a small silver circle into my palm. It was only as big as a coin, but there was a small dial on top.
“We’ve been over this,” I said.
“Seriously, take it,” he insisted, staring at me with slightly drunk intensity.
“Alright, fine,” I said, shoving the little coin-sized mechanism into one of my least-used pockets. I fully intended not to touch it until I could give it back to him.
Alan and I walked away from Edward’s house into the cold night air until we could apparate. Our breath fogged in the air as we left Hoppy’s prodigious garden.
“So, I’m not sure how to ask this, but do you do this kind of thing often?” asked Alan.
“It’s sort of my job,” I explained.
“An interesting job,” he said, trying not to stumble in the darkness. We were climbing across a stony path, between the forest and the lake. I could hear the wind in the trees on one side, while the reeds waved in the water on the other.
“There are perks.”
“Is this one of them?” he said. I could feel his hopeful grin in the darkness.
“Just focus on staying safe, doing your job and not endangering anything, alright? Follow me and keep silent.”
“I’ll follow you very tightly,” he said.
“Good grief, rock boy. Try and keep it professional, okay?”
“How close are you and Edward?” he asked.
“Does that affect our mission somehow?” I replied as we reached the apparition boundary finally.
“I suppose not.”
“Then let’s go,” I said, grabbing his arm and vanishing into thin air.
*
We appeared near Kensington. It was pitch black night, but as usual in the city there was still some foot traffic. We followed the signs to the Natural History Museum and stood outside the wrought iron gates, looking up at the ornate Victorian architecture looming above us. It was lit by orange light, highlighting the prominent tourist attraction for passers-by. The red brick and ornamental windows were high above us. It was a matter of moments to stride down Exhibition Road, turning left to the back of the museum.
The buildings in this district of London were all connected. The museums and galleries were especially connected – the Science Museum and Natural History Museum shared a lot of spaces, staff and expertise beneath street level. They were basically the same establishment, but they had two separate brands and identities. However the Natural History Museum had less security between the rooftop and the basement laboratories, so we levitated ourselves up to the tall, ornate buildings. They were plated with old lead, but the weather was dry. They presented no problem – Alan slipped once, but I was quick enough to catch his arm and yank him back to his feet silently. He looked apologetic and I put my finger to my lips, motioning him onwards.
Climbing across the nearly ancient buildings, we arrived at a point we could climb down into an inner courtyard of rooftops. The buildings around us were taller than the roof below us, giving the old and modern windows a view of a strange urban ecology based entirely on a zig-zag landscape of slate and lead. I held onto a tall weed sticking out of some guttering as I descended magically, trying to make out the shape of Alan in the dim light – the windows surrounding us were all dark, but in the tall windows of a modern wing of the gallery there was some fluorescent light that gave us a highlighted outline to work with.
I charmed my boots to stick to the lead. Alan copied me. We made our way around the edge of the rooftop, freezing against the old brickwork behind us as a guard strode through the modern wing giving us light. We watched him walk through one of the exhibits, read some text for what must have been the hundredth time, then look out of the glass walls at us. He shone his muggle torch around the rooftop, and I could actually hear Alan tensing up behind me. His feet ground against the slate, and his breathing sped up.
“Relax,” I said loudly, knowing that the guard wouldn’t hear me.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
The guard was gone quickly enough, and we continued our circuit of the rooftop to a vulnerable window. Most of the windows were all alarmed to some degree, but a few of the older ones for administration offices were simple enough to vanish. No strange muggle alarms went off, so we climbed inside. I found I was pulling myself onto a desk, pulling my legs up onto a desk full of papers and muggle computers. My footprints were distressingly muddy across the papers and sticky notes as I climbed down onto the carpet. I waited until Alan was standing beside me to clean everything, removing our dirt and mess, putting all the papers back and returning the frame of glass to the window. As if we had never been there.
Then we lit our wands and wandered through the dark, open-plan office. The door to the corridor was unlocked, so we slunk down to the stairwell. It was lit with neon fire-safety lighting, so we rushed down to the ground floor, our footfalls echoing around from the top to the bottom. The door into a main museum space was locked, but it was a matter of seconds to unlock it with magic. Then we had to wind our way through exhibits of dark, barely-lit stuffed animals and fossils. Our wand lights flashed across the dead faces, and we found ourselves almost tip-toeing amongst skeletal dinosaurs.
“Which way to the damn basement levels?” Alan whispered at me, looking up at a rearing prehistoric armadillo twice the size of him.
“This way,” I whispered in reply, sounding more certain than I felt.
I remembered enough of his map to get into the basement levels, through the darkened wing holding samples and specimens in jars. It was sort of a prelude for what was to come, for the tourists. We went through a secure door, charmed open once more, and down a flight of stairs. Beyond a makeshift airlock, we were surprised by a low-ceilinged room full of shelves. The temperature-controlled space was slightly chilly – by no means warm, but not freezing either. Each shelf was stocked with jars, three deep in some places. Each jar had a strange, still specimen of fish inside. They were preserved indefinitely by the tailored solution of medicinal alcohol, but each one was obviously dead. Our wand-lights shone strongly from the glass surfaces, reflecting dimly around the chamber.
“Come on,” I told Alan, who was peering into the jars. He was shining his wand directly into one, trying to discern a shape amongst the squashed flesh and matted fur.
“It’s grotesque,” he whispered.
“It’s science,” I replied, and we strode on across the room.
The space beyond the doors ahead was the same, shelves full of jars holding fish. I paused by one cabinet – it held jars bearing the name Beagle, and Darwin. The names were vaguely familiar to me, from various muggle studies lessons in school. Either way, these jars were obviously older than the rest. I started to appreciate how valuable this huge collection of specimens must be. In some dim section of my mind, I was aware that Edward would have said that with time travel we’d all have been able to gather an infinite number of specimens.
Our footsteps echoed amongst the jars as we hurried through their ranks, assembled around us like silent guardians. Each door we pushed open felt like a roar, the vacuum-sealed doors brushing open noisily. In the darkness, I started to feel like some of the jars were looking at us. Certainly a few dead eyes were watching us from their eternal, medically-preserved graves. Fish, reptiles and small mammals stared out at us with wide-eyed expressions. Some of them seemed hungry, others seemed angry.
There were more rooms of specimens than I had expected. Each of them was dark and cold – not enough for our breath to fog, but enough to chill our skin. There were square jars full of octopus, tiny jars stuffed with snails, tall skinny jars with twisted eels, large squat jars filled with tiny shellfish. I expected some of them to wriggle or move suddenly, shockingly, within their glass prisons. But none of them did – all of them were dead.
Not everything dead is immobile, however. Some parts of this sprawling complex dated back over one hundred years. That was enough time for at least a few ghosts to build up. We burst into one room and were startled to find a transparent figure floating amongst the jars. It came towards us silently. Behind me as always, Alan raised his wand. I glanced angrily over my shoulder, and he had enough sense to lower it. When I looked back, the ghost’s face was inches from mine. I couldn’t make out his exact features – it was glowing strangely in the darkness, and had lost much of its shape. But I could feel the chill coming from its presence.
“Oh, it’s you,” the ghost whispered, then turned and floated away just as simply. It vanished amongst the jars, light reflecting and refracting as it passed through them. Then it was gone, and the room was suddenly darker, lit once more by only our wands.
“Come on,” I told Alan, who was reasonably stunned.
We finally made our way to a room with a gigantically long perspex jar. Inside were the preserved remains of two squid – one squat half-preserved Colossal Squid, and a much longer, stretched-out Giant Squid. It was strange seeing these gigantic, majestic, deadly creatures locked away in tiny spaces filled with artificial water. I’ve spent a lot of time with merpeople, and various underwater cultures. I’ve been privileged, amongst wizards and merpeople alike, to see these giant aquatic monsters in their natural environments. They were eerie enough that even in death I was suspicious of their presence in this room. We moved past them, but I refused to turn my back on the world’s spookiest creatures.
That was how the first security guard came upon us, pushing open the vacuum door at the end of the chamber. When I heard the door and his gasp of shock I span around, my wand coming up as he pulled out his truncheon.
“Hold it! Freeze!” he bellowed.
At the same time, I stupefied him. He fell to the floor, paralyzed. I didn’t have time to wipe his mind before I heard other guards responding to his shout. They were on the stairwell, somewhere above us.
“Move,” I hissed at Alan, who started sprinting towards the opposite door.
We were in the second room, pushing open the door, when I saw torchlight flashing against the far door we’d just come through, leaving the prone security guard. I could hear shouts and reports being relayed back up to the museum floor, echoing through the galleries. I dropped a darkness grenade into the room as we vanished through the door, pushing through the white corridor and past a long line of glass offices. I was barely aware of microscopes and other muggle equipment inside the offices as we rushed past, seeking out new doors to hide behind. I dropped another darkness grenade, barely escaping its effects as we hurried into a room full of huge metal cupboards.
“We just need to knock them out,” I said as we rushed down the long library of specimens.
“All of them?”
“Shit, maybe,” I said, motioning him to retreat into one of the avenues of shelves.
“No, no, no,” he was muttering, but he did as he was told. We both hid in non-parallel avenues, waiting to stun the guards as they came past. But they weren’t as stupid as I’d hoped – they paused as they entered the room, shining torches towards the door at the far end of the room beyond a long, long avenue of tall cupboards. They knew we could be hiding behind any of them. Now I knew they’d go carefully. Even inexperienced security staff has a bit of common sense. I had one of the sleep grenades ready in my hand, but in order to tell Alan to be ready I’d have to circle around the back of the shelves and find him. As I did so, I saw one of the guards at the far end had been far too sneaky for his own good and was circling the edge of the room. He saw me just as I saw him, and he’d shouted just as my paralysing curse hit him. I was moving away as the other guards rushed to him, exchanging questions with each other about what the hell weapon was being used against them.
At that moment, I started to realise that I had a massive job ahead of me. The best case scenario was that I could stun them all with a sleep-grenade, but even then I’d have to adjust their memories. We needed to finish this quickly. I found Alan and threw a shield around us as I threw the grenade. It landed in the centre of the cupboards and erupted in a silent flower of light. Its energy waves spread out in straight lines in every direction, fading out of the air slowly. In the silence that followed, I could hear a few bodies fall to the ground with loud thumps. I winced, imagining the bruises, possibly even fractures and concussions that would need to be explained away as I edited their memories. But even as I heard the thumps, I heard other voices shouting about it. Some of the damn guards had been sheltered behind the cupboards and shelves, damn it.
I was dragging Alan through to the next room as I let off two more grenades – one of them a sleep-stun grenade and the other a darkness bomb. We hid behind the doors as they went off, and I heard a few more bodies fall to the floor. From the sound of the bumbling footsteps coming towards our heavy doorway, there were only a few left standing. However, I could hear them trying to radio those on the upper floors.
There were was nothing to hide behind. The room was a thin, long corridor lined with huge specimen jars. I had my last darkness grenade in my hand as we sprinted down the corridor, but the doors behind us didn’t open. I thought for a second that the guards had finally realised their foolishness in trying to chase us, but that was even worse. We needed to re-program every single one of the guard’s minds in order to make our alibi tight, and we couldn’t do that if muggles went wandering off.
“This is totally messed up, isn’t it,” asked Alan, slowing to a walk as we paced down the long corridor.
“It’s messier than I would like, yes,” I muttered.
“What do we do?”
“Hell, I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I’m just a geologist,” he snapped, “You’re the bloody burglar!”
“I’m not a burglar,” I replied calmly, “I’m more of an intelligence agent for hire.”
“Informant, then? A spy?”
“Whatever. Listen, do you hear anything?”
“No?” he said, pausing. We both stopped rushing, and turned back towards the door we’d come through. We could see it far away in the darkness, at the very edge of our wand-light – it looked much further than we’d come, nestled amongst the jars and glasses full of spirits. The silence filled the air, punctuated by the breathing of Alan and me. The longer we waited, the more pronounced the silence became.
“What’s happened? Have they gone for reinforcements?” Alan whispered.
“The darkness-bomb should have cleared by now,” I said, “Let’s… let’s go back and see what damage we need to fix.”
“You know these collections are absolutely priceless?” he muttered.
“Yes, I suppose so. I was at least trying to be careful,” I snapped.
We walked in silence through the darkness to the doors we’d come though, and I pushed them open a fraction of an inch before letting them fall back. Alan followed my lead and pointed his wand at the doors. Nothing happened. Eventually we plucked up the courage to push open the doors and actually go through – there was still darkness inside, but it was natural darkness rather than the enchanted darkness from a grenade. I shone my light around the room and found that there were a great many bodies lying on the floor, all of them paralysed or sleeping. Between each alley of cupboards and lockers was a security guard, until the final one at the end. There was something written on the wall in dark lettering. ‘Must go back. Gun on stage,’ the message read, ‘It begins when Sloane says answer. See you in a few hours - LB’
“What does it mean?”
“I know what it means,” I sighed.
“A gun? But none of the guards were actually armed,” Alan said, rubbing one of the letters with his finger, “I think this is lipstick?”
“Yes. It’ll be my lipstick,” I said, fishing in a pocket and digging it out. I compared it to the wall.
“It is. What’s going on?” Alan asked, looking from the wall to me with amazement.
“There was a muggle playwright that once said if you put a gun onstage, it should go off by the third act. It was also used as a phrase by Kingsley Shaklebolt, during the war, remember? In that speech he gave before they stormed the Ministry building, at the very end? It means exploiting every element available, and never introducing an element that you don’t intend to use. Before we left Edward’s house, he gave me a time-turner.”
“No,” said Alan immediately. I held up one hand – I was doing my best to map out events in my mind, and memorise their order. Then I attended to the coin-shaped device in my pocket.
“Go through that door,” I said to Alan, pointing at the door to the left amongst the large jars.
“What?”
“When I disappear, go through that door. That’s where I’ll be. Then we can get on with things, okay?” I snapped.
“You know what happened to the last man who used one of his-”
I was already going backwards. I had pulled on the tiny dial and discovered a delicate chain that I looped around my neck. I figured I had already arrived safely if I’d left the writing on the wall, but as I turned the dial I couldn’t help remembering the remains of Edward’s ‘victim’. He’d been in several pieces. One leg was nearly fossilized, recovered centuries ago without understanding who it had belonged to. Parts of the rest of his body were remarkably aged, others were infantile. In the room the time-turner had been activated there was a roped-off section constantly guarded by a Ministry agent. It was hoped that the rest of the victim would materialise in the future. Yes, he had bought the time-turner in good faith, and Edward had supplied it knowing that such unlicensed artefacts were illegal. But who knows how stupid the victim had been? Who knows if other spells were interference? Was it Edward’s fault that the man had been too cheap to use an official time-turner, instead paying both Edward and me for a black-market version? None of this meant that the faults in the old one had been corrected, of course. But it was too late for doubt. He’d said it was perfect.
There was a cold, sick lurch in my stomach as time sped backwards around me, even as I was thinking these thoughts. All I really saw were flashes of light in the darkness. I was travelling backwards through the skirmish I’d just fought. A sleep grenade exploded in reverse, followed by a darkness bomb. Guards charged past me backwards, their pale uniforms and dark ties swishing through the dark storage space like neon lights. Then I saw Alan and myself rush past, backwards. Evidently I was invisible to them – this was the first time I’d ever travelled back in time. I hadn’t been sure how far I’d turned the dial. Bloody Edward hadn’t given me enough instructions! That was when panic truly set in, and I started to whimper in fear.
I waited a good long while, during which nothing happened and I was still zipping through time in the dark room full of unmoving jars. When a tour group entered the room in reverse, I looked down at the time-turner and tried to hit stop. I turned the dial back to where it had been, and the stupid device returned me to the normal flow of time. The tour group only noticed my appearance when I let out a laugh of relief. There were dozens of them, each listening earnestly to a pale, narrow-nosed tour guide explain the details of the specimens in the jars around them; more than enough to conceal my presence. I was grateful the tour group was so large.
I silently slid through the door behind me, leaving them behind. The rooms were all lit by neon strip lighting now. Obviously I’d materialised during the day shift. Part of me wondered exactly when I’d arrived. I took a brief trip upstairs, found a bunch of ticket stubs. I figured out it was only a few hours earlier in the day. I had only travelled back by six, seven, maybe eight hours – I wasn’t sure of my departure time. That was when the shock started to sink in. I had travelled back in time.
*
The first thing I realised was that it would probably be several hours until Charles Wallace made contact with me in the Leaky Cauldron. I think I did well – establishing the pattern of events once more, tracing the narrative in my mind. I found the staircase the security guards would eventually descend, hunting us, and I hid behind it. The main thought occupying my mind was the immense potential of owning my own time-turner. It was free and unlicensed, one that worked without sending quarters of me to every era of the Earth. I wondered how far I could go, how many people it would accommodate. But while I thought about this, the guards were clearing the guests out of the galleries and the museum was closing.
It was probably best that I didn’t go wandering throughout time. Who knows what kind of damage I could wreak? Best that I stuck to the immediate task, which was sitting still and being bored. I waited for all the noises to die away – the children’s cries and excited shouts, the squeaks of shoes and thumping doors. The museum was closed, and I had smuggled myself beyond opening hours. I emerged and took up my station.
The staircase in question was one of those rare ones with no back to them. It was a series of flat steps with no vertical barrier, just an empty space. The horizontal platforms were supported on metal girders, and that was all. As the lights went out throughout the museum, it was the perfect place to hide. It was also a ridiculously easy place to ambush the guards as they charged down towards the impending alarm.
“Who are you?” whispered a voice in my ear, making me jump just as I settled in. I span around with my wand raised. The lights were still on in the stairwell, but the space I occupied beneath the stairs was striped with thick darkness and strange slits of light. I couldn’t see anybody.
“Why are you still here? The museum is closed,” whispered the voice, and it felt so close that it almost tickled my ear.
“I have a job to do,” I said defiantly, just as the door above me opened for the first time. It was only the first tour of the ground floor guard; it was still twilight somewhere above. There were still several hours to tick past patiently until I could emerge. That was even if I’d picked the place to hide – it did occur to me that whatever self-fulfilling time-loop I’d established, I could make it a paradox with a single idle mistake. I smiled to myself as the guard strode down the steps – I had at least picked up some knowledge from Edward’s babbling, the long hours of his court case, the rambling letters and indeed his idle comments over the years; time-travellers almost always end up causing their own future. Or was that successful time-travellers? Whether by accident or on purpose, there’d be no way to tell until after the fact. But what he’d been trying to say during the evening was weighing on my mind. If I changed things, I’d exist in a different reality to the version I had departed. I’d occupy a different reality, while in this one I’d have just vanished like a bubble. I found myself wondering whether that wasn’t how the universe compensated for paradoxes, but my cosmic thoughts were quickly snapped back to reality when the guard open the door to the basement and wandered inside. It sucked shut behind him, and I was alone again in the darkness with the ghost.
“Lucinda Baker,” it said, floating inches in front of my face.
“Fuck!” I exclaimed as the pale, transparent figure hovered around, “How do you know my name?”
“Welcome to my collection,” moaned the voice.
“I’m not part of your collection. I have a job,” I said irritably.
“Everyone here,” moaned the ghost in near-silence, “Everyone here has a job.”
“Who are you?” I asked the apparition as it floated through me - the ultimate passive-aggressive ghost manoeuvre, not lightly undertaken by any spirit.
“My name is unimportant.”
“You poor thing. You probably don’t remember, do you? I’ve seen this before,” I muttered, pulling out my wand.
“I know who I am. This is my collection. I have created a legacy that will last for thousands of years.”
“What’s your name?” I snapped.
“My name was once Hans, or Sir Hans. I was a member of the Invisible College and the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. Do you know me?”
“No idea,” I said, hearing the guard approach once more from beyond the doors.
“What! Never heard of Sir Hans Sloane!” he moaned as the guard pushed open the door. The ghost fell silent, dropping away through the floor. I froze, unmoving in the darkness beneath the stairs. I watched his shoes through the gaps in the steps, clomping upwards out of view until he pushed noisily at another door.
“I’ve been warned about you,” I whispered vaguely, addressing Sloane, “Is there any reason you’d say the word ‘answer’?”
“I have certainly amassed quite a collection, even after death. It all started so small, you see? I used to like frogspawn, in particular. But this has all grown out of my interest in anatomical specimens!”
“The collection includes… answers?” I insisted.
“What? Why do you ask such foolish questions? It includes all manner of animals, as you no doubt have seen!” moaned the ghostly figure of Sir Hans.
“It doesn’t say your name anywhere,” I said to him, wary of making any noise.
“Of course not,” he muttered, floating up through the stairwell.
I spent another hour crouched beneath the stairs, hiding in the deep shadow of the fire-lighting as the ghost of Hans Sloane floated around me, moaning incoherently. The guard came past a few times, clumping and pottering along on his rounds. I stayed hidden each time, as did Hans.
“I’ve just seen you in one of the far store-rooms,” he whispered eventually as he floated up behind me, “The specimen rooms full of fish. Is this some more of your wizardly magic? How can two of you be here at once? What exactly is your mission?”
“I’ve come to hide a dragon egg,” I said.
“Oh, the thing that turned up this afternoon? I’ve never understood why we must keep natural science and magical biology separate. It’s very illogical,” he muttered, “Not sure how your people missed it, to be fair.”
“Our worlds are too different,” I said, repeating the old dogma.
“We exist in close parallel,” he moaned, floating through a wall. He returned, “I feel we could teach each other a great deal.”
“What, you and me?” I muttered, cocking an eyebrow.
“Our schools of thought,” he said stiffly.
“So you were a muggle in life?” I asked. In all my years of dealing with underground sources of knowledge, I’ve never met a muggle ghost.
“I dislike that name that your kind has for mine,” he said.
“Well, none of us particularly enjoy having to hide from you,” I said.
“Why does this segregation exist? Nobody has ever given me a decent answer,” he wailed as he floated up the stairwell once more. I leaned out from beneath my hiding place, watching him go.
“Wait, what did you say about answers?”
“Nobody has given me a decent answer!” he moaned, vanishing into the ceiling several stories above me, “Imagine the specimen collection we could build if we just combined our knowledge!”
Sure enough, that was when a security guard started coming down the staircase, his heavy boots thumping. I could have stopped him here, presumably, but I didn’t want to make things more complicated. I remembered the note I had left myself – it would begin when Sloane said the answer. I briefly wondered why I had left such a vague message, rather than step by step instructions, but I’d probably figure that out as I got closer to the event. In the meantime, the security guard in front of me was going through the double-doors at the bottom of the staircase. According to my vague sense of location, he would go through this set of doors, another set, and then be stunned by a spell from a different version of me. I readied myself for the charge of the guards above me. Sure enough, the guard was stunned in the room beyond just after he shouted out. There were shouts above me, but I remained hidden while several of the guards climbed down the stairs. No sense in giving myself away prematurely, obviously. I saw them gather in a large group, looking at each other in alarm until they decided silently to go through the doors.
I heard the darkness grenades go off, rather than seeing them. They sounded like glassy, tinny smashes even at this distance behind several doors. When a lone guard came down the staircase, I stupefied him and quickly levitated his body behind the stairs. Then two more arrived from somewhere upstairs, and I stupefied them too. Eventually it seemed that everyone had arrived, with only a few guards being left upstairs to guard the exits and fire escapes. So I set off, following the guards, picking them off silently when I could. I hid sufficiently from the battle as it raged between my earlier self and the guards ahead of me.
I was pursuing them, and myself, through one of the galleries of cupboards when I remembered the first sleep grenade. I managed to pull a shield charm over myself, but it attracted attention and I had to respond quickly, knocking out another one. By that time, I was sure almost every security guard in this corner of London was lying unconscious somewhere in these basements. When Alan and I went through the door leading to the long corridor full of jars, there were many guards that rushed after us. I watched them go, vaguely disturbed by the glimpse of myself vanishing into the darkness. I wondered what I’d do if I met myself – or indeed what the universe would do.
It was a very strange experience, knowing that I could just walk up to myself. I imagined that it was like an out-of-body vision. I wondered whether I would indulge in a threesome with myself, or even more intimate one-on-one sex – it would be incredible, I would know exactly what I wanted. I wondered if my two versions would argue, the future-self becoming irritated by my past self’s ignorance. Would I make myself laugh? It seemed impossible, since nothing would be spontaneous, everything would be ordained by foreknowledge. Scripted, even.
I snapped myself from my idle ponderings and remembered the second sleep-grenade following the darkness bomb just in time – if I knocked myself unconscious with a curse, who knows what would happen. As the darkness cleared away, I cursed the few remaining guards and then it was over. I knew I only had a short moment to write my message on the wall. I couldn’t remember the exact wording, but I scribbled what I could to make our purpose clear. I needed to think of something that would instantly make it clear that I was her, that we shared a mind. I knew I’d never trust a simple note just saying ‘use the damn time turner to take the guards from the rear’, and I understood why the message I’d read had been so cryptic. I scribbled down something, hardly pausing to think as I rushed. My lipstick was ruined on the harsh texture of the wall, but I stuffed it into my pocket and rushed through the door I’d pointed out to Alan Swan, hours and hours ago. Then I simply waited for him, resting against one of the shelves and catching my breath. I could hear my past self and Alan arguing about the note I’d left. I grinned at the sound of my own voice.
“When I disappear, go through that door. That’s where I’ll be. Then we can get on with things, okay?” I was snapping in the next room.
“You know what happened to the last man who used one of his time-turners! No!” Alan said, and I realised my earlier me had already vanished. Sure enough, he came bursting through the door looking affronted.
“Well, you’re in one piece, at least. How do your insides feel?”
“Perfectly normal.”
“How long have you been gone? What did it feel like?”
“I’ll tell you about it later. Come on,” I said, urging Alan forwards. We wound through the dark maze full of jars once more, more confident now that I’d taken care of the security.
At long last, we arrived in the room full of freezers marked on my map amongst the other rooms and corridors. Our wand light shone off the metal surfaces of the freezers, and the cheap-looking handles. There were post-its and sticky notes, blue-tacked print-outs and laminated licence documents on almost every surface of the freezers. Some of them were freezer cupboards, others were chests. I managed to find the one chest that was most covered with paper documents, some of them in plastic envelopes. I opened the chest – inside there was almost nothing but ice. Digging amongst the fragments of ice, I found a sphere of black stone about the size of my fist. It looked strangely glossy, but also porous. It was so cold that it almost hurt to hold it. I held it out to Alan, who shifted it uneasily from hand to hand before resting it on the neighbouring chest.
From inside his jacket he pulled out a pair of pince-nez which he balanced carefully on his nose. He inspected the dragon egg closely, and I couldn’t help but notice how the delicate glasses and intense focus suited his face quite well. He performed the magic ritual, summoning up a round stone the exact size and shape as the dragon egg. He handed it to me silently for approval then I stuffed it deep into the ice. I looked at him expectantly.
“And the egg?” I said, holding out my hand. He drew back, one hand wrapped around the egg and the other pointing his wand at me. “Don’t be a fool, Swan. This is hardly the time.”
“The egg, or the time-turner. Either way I’m getting paid for being dragged along on this crime, alright?”
“I’m not giving you either,” I said.
“Don’t even think about getting your wand out,” he said.
“Give me the egg,” I said simply, stepping towards him. Swan stepped back.
“Stay where you are.”
“I said give me the egg,” I said again, stepping forwards once more.
“And I said stay where you are!” he retreated back towards the door. I couldn’t help but smile slightly.
The door behind him swung open, and a curse appeared out of the darkness. It sent Swan’s wand spinning from his hand, getting lost amongst the jars. I stepped forward and took the egg from Alan’s hand just as a paralyzing curse hit him, from beyond the doorway. As he fell to the side, I saw his assailant standing behind him.
“Thanks,” I said to myself with an ironic smile.
“You’re welcome,” my future self replied, “Now it’s your turn. You’ve got a long night ahead of you.”
*
It was indeed a long night’s work. There were the security cameras to wipe, the memories of the guards needed modifying, any burn or scorch marks from our spells had to be removed. The lipstick especially needed to be wiped away. I even tidied up the fragments of the grenades. All on my own no less, since I’d left Alan lying on the floor. Then I had to levitate his paralysed body out of the damn building, but we could leave through the loading bay since the security staff had been taken care of. By the time I slunk out of the long, dark corridors full of jars and preserved specimens, it was as though nothing had ever happened. At the very core of the underground complex was my small contribution to the grand conspiracy – a black geode in a freezer chest.
I left Alan on the doorsteps of St Mungo’s, since I didn’t know what else to do with him. True, he’d tried to betray me, but he’d also been quite useful, and there was something about the intensity of his eyes when he worked. By then it was dawn, so I grabbed a coffee and met Charles Wallace to exchange good news for payment. He looked almost as tired as I felt. Apparently he’d been awake most of the night, worrying. The last thing I did was return Edward’s time-turner – he was still in bed, but Hoppy took it and offered me a cup of tea. I could barely mumble a grateful refusal as my tiredness started to catch up to me. I stumbled as I apparated back to my own home, with just enough energy left to stuff the dragon egg into my fridge, between sausages and half a loaf of bread. Then I collapsed onto my bed. I’d done several nights’ work in the space of one. Time travel is exhausting.