The Magic of Time

The duo spent the months leading up to winter break researching everything they could about the time of Voldemort’s second rise to power and his eternal downfall. They both figured that if they were going to go back and save Teddy’s parents, then they might as well be prepared for what they may have to face. But the more time they spent together and the closer the break got, the more irritated they both seemed to become. Whether it was from nerves, stress, or simply just their constant presence around the other, it seemed as though all they ever did was fight. It wasn’t until the very week before they left that they finally did agree to remain civil, and even then it was difficult for them.
“I think we should leave next week,” Teddy announced as they both poured over their books in the Room of Requirement. Victoire’s head snapped up and she stared at him in shock. He rolled his eyes, looking away from his book for only a second to acknowledge her. “Don’t give me that look, Vic. We only have about two weeks left until break. If we don’t do it next week, we never will.”
Too used to him snapping at her now, she simply narrowed her eyes and replied in a falsely calm tone, “Well, don’t you think it’s a little sudden? I mean, we’ve hardly even thought about it.”
“That’s why I’ve given you a week’s notice to think about it,” he replied, slamming his book shut with a loud clap. “But if you don’t want to go, that’s fine. I can go by myself.”
“Oh, don’t be stupid, Teddy,” she snapped. Instant guilt washed over her, and she took a deep breath to relax herself. “Like I told you before, we’re in this together.”
She watched Teddy’s jaw clench momentarily before he sighed, his hand running through his uncharacteristically dark brown hair. “Sorry. This whole thing’s been taking its toll on me lately.”
“You and me both,” she agreed, her eyes moving to look at the floor in front of him. “But don’t ever say that I should just stay behind. You know that I’d never let you do this on your own.”
A small smile flitted across his face. “You got it, Vic.” An awkward silence fell between them and he drummed his fingers along the spine of the book he’d been studying. “So, next week? Just before we leave for break?”
She drew her knees to her chest and rested her head atop them. “I don’t know, Teddy. I mean, it’ll be here so quickly…”
“Please?” he asked, his eyes becoming larger and changing the color to a dark brown, becoming the most heart-wrenching pout Victoire had ever seen.
“Using Metamorphmagus abilities are cheating, Teddy,” she complained, though she did manage a chuckle. “Fine, next week.”
He scooted over to her, enveloping her in a tight hug. “You really are the best, you know that?” he told her, pulling back, a lopsided grin on his face. She could hardly help but return the smile.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now we just have a lot to plan with a little less than a week to do so.”
He shrugged. “We’re Vic and Teddy. We can do anything.”
Teddy’s statement only proved to be true as they spent their remaining time until departure preparing. They finished learning the necessary information, practiced dueling spells in case they were sucked into battle, and Victoire even dug out her old beaded bag that Aunt Hermione had given her as a birthday gift in the event that they were stuck there a little longer than they had planned. Teddy was amazed to find that it could fit virtually anything inside of it.
“Where’d you get this?” he asked, examining the bag with interest.
“Birthday present.”
“From who?”
“Aunt Hermione.”
“How does it work?”
“Undetectable expansion charm. Grandpa Weasley told us he used the same spell on his old Ford Anglia when Uncle Harry was in school, remember?”
“Not in the least.”
It was amazing to see how considerably their spirits had lightened since deciding on the date they would leave. Even on the night of their departure, though they were both bundles of nerves, excitement still coursed through their veins, for Teddy especially. In just a few hours, he would see his parents again and he would be responsible for saving their lives. No thought was better to him.
So, at half past six in the afternoon, while everyone else was at dinner, Victoire and Teddy snuck off to the Room of Requirement. Victoire’s beaded bag was filled with clothes, shoes, and money just in case things went awry and Teddy had memorized most of the facts in the books they’d read.
Now there they stood in the center of the Room of Requirement, hearts pounding faster due to adrenaline. Teddy reached a hand into his pocket and pulled out the timeturner, resting right beside his wand. Silently, he took the chain and hung it around both of their necks.
“Ready?” Teddy asked her, holding out his hand.
Victoire looked up at him, grinned, and took it. “Ready.”
“How many times should I spin it?” He held the timeturner up to eye level and narrowed his eyes.
Knowing that these prototypes were much more powerful than the old ones, destroyed when Uncle Harry was in school, Victoire took a moment to think about it. “Try five times,” she replied. “We can adjust if we need to once we stop.”
Teddy nodded and took a deep breath. Slowly, he turned the timeturner five times and the effect was damn near immediate.
The ground quaked beneath their feet suddenly, causing the timeturner to slip from his fingers. The world in front of them seemed to move in a blurred vision. It appeared as though the timeturner was doing its job until the shaking below their feet turned into violent jerks, more frequent and worse than the first time. Teddy held onto Victoire’s hand instinctively and pulled her close to him so that he was able to cover her with his own body.
“Teddy!” he heard her shout over the whooshing sounds around them. The longer Teddy stared at his constantly changing surroundings, the sicker he felt, so he closed his eyes and tried to focus on only Victoire’s voice amidst the chaos. “What’s happening?”
“Hold on, Vic!” he instructed her, his arms tightening around her slight frame protectively.
At the very moment he said that, the ground seemed to vanish beneath them and they were suspended in midair. The rush of wind whistling past their ears, mixed with Victoire’s (and admittedly Teddy’s) screams, filled the air as their suspension broke and they fell straight down. Though both tried to hold onto the other, Teddy found his hands losing their grip on Victoire’s. Teddy shouted her name and was sure he heard her shout his back, but her voice was already muffled by the wind. He outstretched his hands as far as they could go to reach her, but she was already gone, leaving him grasping the air instead.
And just as suddenly, it was all over.
Teddy hit the ground with a hard thud, his back landing so hard against the grass that the air momentarily left his lungs. He coughed a few times and sat up; trying to preserve whatever breath was left in his body as well as keep the new breath that was slowly refilling his lungs steady. Was he imagining the bright white sun above him or did he really somehow land outside? And where the hell was Victoire?
Trying to decipher where he was and how he would get back, his fingers immediately went to his chest to grab the timeturner. The lack of the cold chain on his throat, however, only proved his suspicions to be true. He had lost it.
Great. Just great. He decided silently that he would have to conduct a mass search for it later, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to do it just yet, what with the massive headache that was slowly growing.
He blinked a few times, letting his vision focus and causing the black spots obscuring his eyes to fade. The first image he saw was that of Hogwarts castle and he sighed with relief.
Good, he thought. At least I didn’t go wandering off too far. But that just brought another troubling thought to his mind. What if Victoire did?
Teddy scrambled to his feet and made toward the castle, his head especially aching by this point. “Victoire!” he shouted. There was no response – not even a sound. Finding the dense silence peculiar, he looked around him for the first time. There was nothing, not a student, nor a teacher in sight; only the castle and the lake.
Oh dammit. What did I just get myself into?
“Victoire!” he shouted again. He heard a muffled call back from inside the school and, without thinking, he took off toward it in hopes of finding her, continuing to shout her name.
If she was injured, if something had happened to her, it was his fault. He convinced her to do this. She was only trying to be a good friend and help him. But if she was hurt…
His thoughts were brutally interrupted when he collided with someone. He and the stranger fell backward, Teddy knocking his head on the ground for the second time that day.
“Shit,” he heard the other mumble. Teddy rubbed the back of his head, groaning, and propped himself up on his elbows to get a look at who he’d struck.
The person he knocked into looked very familiar with his messy dark hair and tall, skinny frame. The guy leaned down and picked up his discarded glasses on the ground, placing them back on and groaning. That’s when Teddy froze in shock, realizing exactly who he resembled so greatly.
“Sorry, man. I was just coming to see what the shouting was about?” said the guy.
Teddy still looked at him in surprise, blinking a few times to make sure he wasn’t just hallucinating from hitting his head so often within the hour. Once he was sure that he wasn’t, he stammered out, “H-Harry?”
The guy’s face contorted into one of confusion. “James, actually. James Potter.” He held out his hand to help Teddy up while the color seemed to drain from Teddy’s face. James seemed concerned. “You okay? You hit the ground pretty hard.”
If Teddy was correct (and one could usually count on him to remember his facts) then the James Potter that wasn’t Harry’s son was Harry’s father. And given the age that he looked, that would mean that he and, hopefully, Victoire were way before the year that they had intended to land in. But that was not the most important thought in his mind at that moment (though, admittedly, it was extremely significant).
“Have you seen a girl around here? She’s blonde with blue eyes, about this tall –“ he demonstrated Victoire’s height with his hand “– and answers to Victoire.”
Much to his relief, James nodded. “Yeah, Evans – the Head Girl – and I just ran into a girl like that a few minutes ago. I just left them when I heard you shouting. Last I checked, Evans was taking her up to the headmaster’s office.”
Teddy sighed from relief. “Can you take me there?” he asked, his tone almost begging.
“Yeah, sure,” James said, shrugging. He began to walk and Teddy took this as his cue to follow.
He stayed a pace behind James at all times, taking in his surroundings, the man leading the way, and how much trouble he had gotten himself and Victoire into. After a few minutes of silently walking together, he noticed James casting a long, sideways glance at him.
“So that Victoire girl…is she your girlfriend?” James asked, searching for conversation after finding himself caught.
Teddy shook his head. “No, she’s my best friend.”
“Oh.” James nodded. “She’s cute. I was going to say that you were probably going to have to watch the other boys around this school. They’d be after her pretty quickly.”
“We shouldn’t be staying long, so it won’t be an issue hopefully.” He was still holding onto the shred of hope that Victoire may have somehow acquired the timeturner.
James nodded again and straightened up slightly; appearing to finally get to the question he had been waiting to get an answer to. “Yeah…so why are you here?
Teddy nearly laughed at James’ inability to be covert. Nearly. Until he remembered that revealing the real reason he was here would probably land him in a psycho ward at St. Mungo’s. “She and I are looking at different schools around the country. We’re thinking about transferring from ours.”
“Oh,” he said, obviously satisfied with the answer. “Where are you transferring from?”
Teddy faltered a bit on the answer, hardly knowing any other wizarding school, so he said the first one that came to his mind. “Uh…Wizarding Academy of Dramatic Arts.”
“Nice,” James replied, impressed. “What were you there for?”
Teddy opened his mouth to stumble on yet another reply, when a shout came from the end of the corridor they had just turned onto.
“Potter!” the voice yelled toward them. Teddy looked up to find a girl with bright red hair and Harry’s green eyes making her way toward them. Something told him he was about to meet Harry’s mother.
“Evans,” James acknowledged. The red-head rolled her eyes and stopped in front of them, tapping her foot impatiently.
“Where have you been? Not even twenty minutes after Dumbledore tells us to try and stick together, you run off!”
James smirked. “You sound concerned,” he noted. She narrowed her eyes and folded her arms across her chest. James immediately sighed and backed off. “I told you while you were helping that girl, Evans, I heard shouting from outside. I went to go check it out and found…” He looked at Teddy, eyebrows furrowed. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Teddy,” Teddy replied quickly, wanting to go up the staircase to the headmaster’s office and see Victoire as soon as possible. “Can we –“
“Where did you come from?” inquired Lily, switching her gaze to Teddy, her expression becoming somewhat softer.
“I-I came here to look at the school with my friend – the girl you brought up to the headmaster’s office – but she and I got separated on our way here.”
At least it was half of the truth.
Lily nodded slowly and turned back to James. “Let’s introduce him to Dumbledore then, okay?”
James agreed and stepped in front of Lily toward the gargoyle guarding the entrance to the headmaster’s office, which miraculously stayed open for all of them to pile back onto the winding staircase. Teddy filed in right after Lily and climbed the stairs as quick as the pair would let him. They had hardly even opened the door when a flash of Victoire’s blonde hair shot between James and Lily and she threw herself into Teddy’s arms.
Victoire was shaking, obviously from worrying about Teddy and where they ended up, but she pulled herself together enough to whisper in his ear, “Have they told you who they were?”
Teddy breathed back, “Yes.”
They pulled apart and looked at each other long and hard in the eyes. Every fear, every trouble, every apprehension was completely readable to the other. Their ultimate question was just as obvious to the pair as well.
What the hell have we done?