Chapter Text
October 7th, 1996
Monday Afternoon
The hour is half-past three when a warm body of fur settles across the narrow of your right wrist.
Your eyes barely flit from the looping script inking the parchment to the intruder attempting to stall your productivity, merely shaking your hand in warning. A paw comes up to swat at the frayed ends of your quill, the quaint rumble of purrs vibrating against your knuckles. You want to be irate, truly you do, but can’t fend off the uptick of your lips or the ghost of a laugh settling behind your teeth.
“C’mon, Milo.” Your cat responds with a perturbed look, paws curling defiantly around the sleeves of your robe. You jostle your wrist again and he settles much more firmly in place to make a point. “I’m busy .”
Again you try to dislodge him, your opposite hand refreshing the ink on your quill to etch your completed sentence onto the page. Milo’s tail flicks, the cap to your inkwell skittering across the table to clatter loudly on the ground. To anyone else, it looks like the kind of condemnable accident pets were known for. To you, it's an unspoken challenge, solidified by the way Milo doesn’t so much as flinch when you sharply assess him.
“You’re a menace.”
He flicks his tail again in a lazy taunt, as though working on your extra credit essay for McGonagall’s joint curricular had anything to do with his desire for attention. Which, of course, it did. But you could hardly expect your pet to understand. Despite how much you lamented to him in the privacy of your four poster bed over your coursework, you knew there wasn’t an ounce of comprehension behind his happy purrs and unblinking, round eyes. The only thing that furry monster understood was his name and the sound of his treat pouch jostling around your cloak pocket in the evenings he was well-behaved.
He was but a cat after all, and you an overworked witch, ready to throw in the towel a mere month into the first term.
The Slytherin common room is aglow with a foamy wash of green, the sun muted through the lake’s waters, and surprisingly empty – not that you’re complaining. It wouldn’t last much longer, the afternoon classes sure to be wrapping up to accommodate for free periods and time to settle in before dinner. You had intended to take advantage of the quiet, to complete the bulk of your work before your pesky housemates came barreling in with pompous commentary and snide remarks.
Glancing between your smug, feline companion and your incomplete Transfiguration assignment, you had accomplished nothing of the sort.
“Whose idea was it anyway,” You murmur, reluctantly setting aside your quill to indulge Milo with your thumb, rubbing small circles across the fluff of his cheek. “To take so many N.E.W.T. preparation courses?”
Yours, unquestionably, but an assortment of other professors were partially to blame too – putting an uncomfortable amount of pressure on you after your exemplary O.W.L.s the year prior. ‘ Oh you simply must do this’ or ‘ Surely you’ll do that ’ and ‘I do hope to see you in –’ x, y, z course ‘ – this Fall’. There were some areas of study you hadn’t wished to further (Divination, namely) but otherwise, you had found it difficult to disappoint anyone’s expectations.
Still , you glance forlornly at the curling parchment before you, maybe I should have declined the extra credit…
It’s a straight-forward assignment, a joint effort between McGonagall and Flitwick urging students to consider the areas in which Charms and Transfiguration overlapped, to further identify potential consequences of rules and limitations gone unchecked. Many in the class had been quick to write off attempting it, especially with a due date so close to the weekend in four days time. But not you.
It’s not that you needed the extra credit, no one needed the cushion on their marks this early in the year – unless you were thick in the head like Gregory Goyle. You were nowhere near that level of empty-mindedness, but paranoia coupled with an urge to supersede last year’s performance overwhelmed your judgment in the moment.
You couldn’t fail to exceed anyone’s expectations this year – you wouldn’t .
Milo’s weight shifts on your hand, dredging you back to awareness before you can submerge too deeply into your thoughts. It’s the only warning you get before the stone wall shudders at the far side of the room. There’s the routine cascade of dust from the mortar contorting into the common room entrance, the glossy dark wood of a door Apparating into place. You see the gilded handle warping into its elegant curve and a faint babble of voices trickles through the keyhole.
Great, incoming.
Your cat must echo the sentiment because he darts off the desk towards the spiral steps of the girl’s dormitory, evacuating before anyone can attempt to coo and harass him. He’s never been one for outside attention. Tracey Davis had remarked just yesterday that your lack of social tact must have rubbed off on him after spending the summer home.
She was probably right.
The door swings open and your housemates come piling in with the kind of jovial glee that chaperones the promise of time to relax, a mix of underclassmen by the look of their youthful faces. No one your year had looked that unbothered in quite some time. You breathe out a sigh of relief as they clamber into place, chatter of their day filling up the silent spaces between them and you.
To say you weren’t in the mood to deal with your fellow sixth years is an understatement. Invisible and unimportant as you were to them, you didn’t have the patience to evade Greengrass in all her magical glamor, Pansy and her smug, pug face, or worse – Malfoy and whatever perma-cloud of angst he had storming over that perfect blonde head of his.
No, you were just fine not being graced by any of them, if only for the reprieve it offered you to gather your things. Standing up, you push your chair back and slowly begin to roll up your incomplete assignment.
“Leaving so soon?”
You nearly tear the parchment in half from how hard you jump.
Leona Blake sinks gleefully into the chaise beside your table, the picture of satisfaction with her upturned lips and almond eyes crinkled at the corners. Her hair, curly and bold and dark, compliments the smattering of freckles that dot her brown complexion. You know her as a vicious fourth year with a staggering capacity for Potions and a smile that’s all teeth, too wide, yet somehow disarming to anyone that didn’t catch the green on her robes.
She also has an affinity for catching you off guard ever since she scared you so badly, you sloshed pumpkin juice all over yourself at breakfast the morning after the entrance feast. You haven’t known peace since.
“Leona,” You tip your head in a tired greeting, expression drawn into careful neutrality. “Pleasant day?”
“Oh yes, I just came from Herbology.” She has a look of content on her face that told you she had gotten into something absolutely devilish with whatever poor, unsuspecting student she’d been partnered with. “We were procuring Bubotuber pus today.” Your face must have fallen into a knowing grimace because Leona laughs loudly, drumming her fingers on the arm rest. What a frightening fourteen year old.
“I hope you didn’t send that Hufflepuff friend of yours to the Hospital Wing.” You say absently, tucking your rolled parchment into your bag alongside your textbooks. She had mentioned his name to you in passing once before, you were sure of it… Wheaton, Wheatley, something along those lines…
“Wesley Simmons,” Leona quips as if privy to your thoughts and you’re acutely aware of the way she watches you pack up. “And no, I didn’t. He wasn’t in class today.”
Despite her airy tone, it was difficult to miss how hard she was trying not to sound put-out about Wesley’s absence. You reckoned she had a crush on the stammering Hufflepuff, given how brazen she was to seek him out in the Great Hall during breaks, but had kept that deduction distinctly to yourself. She’d fess up to it eventually without your prodding.
“Shame.” It came out half-sincere, with you more preoccupied in drawing your wand than her pining. Silently, you maneuver it in a subtle motion, brow pinching in concentration as you wordlessly cast a summoning charm. The cap to your inkwell comes zooming from where Milo had knocked it away, narrowly missing the tip of a third year’s nose. Your trajectory is off though, and instead of it whizzing to your open palm, it flies past for Leona to snatch from the air.
Lips pressing into a firm line, you regard her warily before offering out your hand. The fourth year only hums, fixing you in place with a pensive stare. The cap twirls deftly between her fingers.
“You’re done for the day, right?” You ignore that the question, lofty in tone, is said more as a statement. From around your neck, the gold chain tucked under your robes buzzes with the anticipation of use, as if answering Leona’s demand for you.
‘Certainly not!’ You imagine it crying out. ‘The day is hardly linear and far from over!’ But you weren’t about to dangle the time-turner in her face just to make a point.
Rather, you give the barest shake of your head with what you hope is a pleasant, firm smile. She can probably see it, the fatigue starting to creep into your awareness, but as her senior it’s hardly any of her business. You wonder where she got the gall to pry.
Accio ink cap!
This time the silent spell rings true, the lid freeing itself from Leona’s grip, soiling your waiting hand with wet smears of ink in the process.
“No, sorry.” You’re not at all as you seal your well of ink and lodge it deep into your bag. “I’ve got another few inches to go on my assignment and some books to return. Madam Pince’ll have my head if I don’t get them back before dinner.” She won’t, but it’s a believable excuse.
Turning on your heel, you catch Leona’s lips purse in your peripheral, a sour expression dipping between her brows before she smooths it out to one of indifference. She ignores the half-wave you toss over your shoulder as you weave through the underclassmen unwinding, and you leave whatever concern she had budding back behind the entrance to the common room closing after you.
The dungeon corridor that gave way from the Slytherin common room is void of students. You expected as much – after six years navigating the familiar passageways, predicting the lull in crowds came easy to you. Sometimes there were stragglers from Hufflepuff, first years that missed their turn-off the corner prior for their own common room, but otherwise no one cared to venture this deeply. It was uncomfortably chilly and damp, the floor slick in some spots courtesy of Peeves and his desire for mayhem, and the torches did little to brighten the dismal tone.
Six years ago the ambience had captivated you, made you feel as though you were cradling a precious sanctum in the depths of the castle. Now, it sometimes felt as though you were being locked away.
The Ministry’s handling of political affairs and widespread uncertainty played a part in that, the barely suppressed rumors of plotted attacks and whispers of Death Eaters giving more reason than usual for the other three houses to side-eye Slytherin in its entirety. But it had been Dumbledore’s speech at the beginning of the year that had made the dislike more tangible and tense.
You dip right down the corridor, silently treading past the Potions classroom to the narrow staircase at the end of the hall.
The headmaster’s words still hung in the air, like a Weird Sister song you couldn’t shake out of your head. He had stood at the owl podium like every year prior but with a blackened hand slung discreetly against his sternum and gloom hanging over the silver drapery of his cloak.
‘Once there was a young man who, like you, sat in this very Hall…Walked these castle’s corridors. Slept under its roof…’ His words had been spun like the beginning of a precautionary tale, something to inspire thought and compassion. But to you and your housemates, it only served to paint a larger target on your backs. ‘...He is known all over the world by another name.’ And now, you sigh heavily, your acquaintances looked at the green lining your robes like it deigned you the next dark wizard to curse the century.
There’s a scuff of footsteps on the stone behind you and you’re quick to turn, heart leaping high into your throat. Professor Slughorn’s expression mirrors your own wide-eyed shock, his rumpled form caught halfway out the door of the Potions classroom.
Since the start of term feast, you hadn’t been able to shake the idea that Slughorn was avoiding you. It left you feeling bemused since you’d never met the man a day in your life prior to his sudden replacement as Potions Master. His strange behavior was hard to ignore though. He never met your eyes when you asked a question in class and it always felt like he was talking above or around you, never direct with his body language.
Professor Slughorn chuckles nervously, fixated with something that must be terribly interesting about his door knocker. You clear your throat.
“Good afternoon, professor.” He startles and Merlin he really is a terrible actor , your brow furrowing at the way he pretends to only just notice you.
“Oh, ah – um,” He fumbles over your last name. “What a surprise seeing you down here.”
“I’m a Slytherin, sir.” You say plainly, letting the silence that follows speak to his oversight.
You weren’t sure what you did to earn this…aversion of his. Potions might not have been your strongest class but you hadn’t melted the bottom of your cauldron off yet or brewed anything abysmal – not like several others you could name off the top of your head. Sure, you weren’t the most… charismatic out of your classmates, but you were easily the hardest working. Rumors passed along the Great Hall said Slughorn put faith in that sort of thing and appreciated the extra effort from his students. You couldn’t help but think that to be decidedly untrue.
“Right. Yes, well,” He clears his throat a little too loudly, smoothing his hands over the front of his ghastly yellow and brown vest in a fluttering sort of way, almost like he was patting around for something important. “Since you’re here…” His words tumble off into indecipherable mumbles and your curiosity starts to ebb into impatience. You really did have better things to do than loiter in the hall and this exchange wasn’t presenting itself with anything of promise. “Might I ask a favor from you?”
You blink, shock washing away the agitation. “...A favor, sir?”
Professor Slughorn looks as uncomfortable with the concept as you feel surprised, crossing the distance to you in the hall with hurried, loud footsteps. Finally, he locates whatever he was feeling around for, drawing a sturdy, tightly bound set of envelopes from the breast pocket inside his equally tasteless, chestnut overcoat.
“Might you deliver these to Professor Dumbledore for me, please? I trust he’ll be expecting them today but I haven’t got the time, you see.” He chortles, waving his hand at his empty classroom as if that provides an answer for the confusion bubbling within you. It doesn’t.
“Er, sorry professor but I’m a bit…” Busy doesn’t begin to cover how unavailable you are to complete this task this evening. You had to revisit three o’ clock for your last lesson of the day and then the pile of homework that awaited you after…surely it would be more convenient for him to take the letters to the headmaster himself?
Before you can articulate your rejection, the man stuffs them into your apologetic hand. “Thank you, I greatly appreciate it.” Professor Slughorn looks harried, already turning back into his classroom before your protests can stammer out. “Five points to Slytherin for your kindness –”
“Wait –Professor, sir –”
“Off to the library with you, yes, you’re very welcome for the points!” The door snaps shut behind him, the crisp motion ruffling your bangs with a soft ‘floof’. You stand frozen in place, one hand stretched out and the other weakly holding on to the letters fastened in twine. That definitely was going in the books as the most awkward interaction you’ve ever had, right next to the time Carmen Gigelio, the Gryffindor you shared a textbook with in Charms, third year, vomited in your lap after a poor Depulso incantation.
You’re tempted to slide the parcel under the door where you’re certain Slughorn is still pressed against, given you hadn’t heard him trample any further into the classroom, but it’s a petty thought you aren’t capable of following through with, all things considered. You settle for jamming them into your pocket, promising to smooth them out later before delivering them to the headmaster, and for now relishing in how good it felt to listen to them crinkle. You’ve never said ‘no’ to a professor outright and you weren’t going to start now, even if you were a bit miffed.
Hastening your pace, you’re halfway up the stairwell at the end of the hall when it dawns on you that you never told Professor Slughorn where you were headed for the evening.
The library is a quiet shuffle of papers and near empty tables when you arrive, the golden hour of the sun bursting low and warm through the cathedral windows. There are a handful of students, older like yourself, busying themselves in their private corners with their noses tucked deep into their dust lined tome of choice. It’s no one you recognize and you navigate deeper into the towering shelves to your preferred alcove.
It’s nestled somewhere between the Historical Fungi and Brilliant Brews, Baths, and Bakes for the Dull, nonsense books that no one would seek out for their own leisure or classwork (unless under the guidance of a professor seeking easy torture and fun). You don’t have particular interest in the books themselves, but the table fitted against the wall favored a pleasant view of the grounds and gave you privacy without depriving you of natural light.
One could only study under a lake for so long before the moodiness of the common room stopped being productive and instead contributed to feeling sluggish and down. Or maybe that was just you and your preference for the sun.
(You didn’t question or even regret being sorted into Slytherin, but you wished Salazar himself had been more conscious of his students requiring actual light to function when he chose the founder’s space.)
The chair beckons kindly despite its plain veneer finish and lack of cushion and you are happy to slump into its rigid frame, textbooks giving a dull ‘thud’ when your bag slides to the stone floor. It’s easier to focus like this, the discomfort of the seat keeping you more aware than the high-backed velvet furniture in the common room. Easier, if not for the letters now burning a hole deep in your pockets, another deadline to keep track of. But you are determinedly not thinking about them right now.
In earnest, you fish out the half-finished assignment from your things along with the textbooks you had hand-picked earlier this week. You might need another source to add some bulk and weighty opinion to your essay, but you think you can get another five inches with what you have thus far…
Your gaze slides to the window, observing the halo of the sun starting to crest at the horizon, tangerine reflecting off of the lake’s surface in the distance, and then down to the delicate gold chain tucked into your robes. A frown works its way onto your face. Thanks to your little hang-up in the dungeons, you’re left with less time than you thought…a half-hour, maybe twenty minutes before you have to slip into Snape’s lecture seamlessly. A hazardous look to your rolled up parchment and you slouch forward onto your elbows, fingers tangling in your hair.
“ Shit. ”
It was tiring, jumping around like this. You knew you should count yourself lucky , to be one of the few granted Ministry approval for a time-turner given the precarious state of the Wizarding World right now. You had various professors vouching for you, making it possible for you to lunge back and forth between classes during the day and take on a larger workload, and yet you didn’t feel lucky.
You felt burnt out.
The average sixth year student was taking seven core subjects; you were taking twelve . Even Snape had seemed dubious about it before reluctantly signing off on your schedule at the end of last year. While your head of house was unimpressed with everything, he had never questioned your academic aspirations until then. Afterall, you consistently gave Granger a run for her Galleons during exam season. Last year had been the first time he had quirked a brow at you, the flicker of something other than disdain in his cold expression.
“Do you not care to see your family this upcoming term?”
You’re sure then he had meant it as an exaggeration, something to dissuade you from such an arduous load of material. Little had he known that was exactly what you intended, to be so busy you couldn’t write home, couldn’t leave on Christmas break to inconvenience them .
What you hadn’t intended was to be so occupied you didn’t have a moment to actually breathe.
You exhaled harshly through your nose, eyes squeezed so tightly shut you were seeing spots. The option to drop a couple unnecessary classes was always there, so long as you volunteered before the cut off date bordering Halloween weekend. You weren’t keen on failure though and that’s exactly what ridding yourself of a few extra lessons would feel like – failing.
All you wanted was a few minutes, a few minutes to shut your eyes without consequence.
You slump further forward, forehead pressing into the cool surface of the table, and hands settling into the messy twists of the bun at the nape of your neck. Like this, you could fancy yourself a nap. It was sorely tempting, especially if you were meant to attend Defense Against the Dark Arts looking somewhat prepared for notetaking and wand-work, and then to the headmaster’s office as an errand girl. At the moment, you couldn’t even recall the curriculum for the lesson - defensive spells, was it? Or, no, maybe technique improvement for counter-curses… Either way, you were positive Snape would dock ten points from his own House if you showed up in such a sorry state.
Just a few minutes, you think, the setting sun warming your backside pleasantly. That’s all, just…a few…m…inutes…
When you jerk awake, the library is pitched in near darkness. The sky outside has dimmed to a deep blue to welcome the night, a halo of pastel colors bleeding into navy overcast. Besides you, candlelight flickers, the yellowed wax charmed to light after the afternoon gives way to evening. Dread runs ice cold in your veins, hands frantically untangling from your hair, and you whip your head around dumbly in an attempt to understand your surroundings.
You fell asleep. No, no, you overslept .
The curse that slips past your lips is anything but quiet, your mind stirring too slowly from its slumber to understand the automatic urgency you’re moving with. So much for your Transfiguration homework, for appearing presentable to Snape for your lesson - you needed to go .
Nearly tripping over the leg of the chair you’d slept in, you stumble to the end of the aisle to wildly peer at the ticking clock high on the archway three rows down. Through the darkness you squint and can see the soft, moving hands counting down the limited time you had to rectify the situation.
Seven-thirty.
“Thank, Merlin.” The respite is slurred with sleep as you hurry back to your belongings, jamming what you deem important into your bag. You haven’t got much time to turn back to two forty-five and effectively transition into the swarm of students without colliding into your past self meandering down to the dungeons. Book, wand, bags — you do a hurried once over and wrestle the time-turner out from where it was resting warm against your chest.
“Alright, alright,” Fingers fumbling over the quaint hourglass and the tiny little knobs, you talk without awareness, doing the mental math as you rotate the device. “Four turns reverse and a quarter spin –”
The time-turner suddenly runs hot, burning the pads of your fingertips, and it’s the first inkling you get that something is very, very wrong.
The second sign is that the circles themselves don’t stop spinning. In fact, they spin faster , the gold rings thrumming with a magic that feels foreign to your own, stronger than the usual waves of time distortion you’ve grown accustomed to. Sparks fly, sputter, and spit from the device, the blistering heat coiling up and around the chain. You cry out at the sudden blaze against your neck, panicked hands scrabbling for the clasp and flinching away at the intensity of the sting.
The third and final notice you have is that, instead of breaking and falling to pieces as an object that fragile ought to under such magical duress, the time-turner holds true and coats you in a bright glow.
And then you’re gone with a distinct ‘pop’ , smoke curling in the spot you’d been standing in above the faintest of scorch marks – the only proof you’d ever been there at all.