A Whisper in Time

A Whisper in Time

By

The Heir of Paravel

Dedicated to my muse, Jon Clift

Whose whisperings have never failed to inspire

I pushed open the door to the staff room and peered inside. It appeared to be deserted. “So much the better,” I thought. It had been a long day and now, at its end, I was looking forward to an hour or two of silent brooding over a cup of tea in front of the staff room fire. Collapsing into a tatty armchair, I breathed a long sigh. A low fire glowed before my unseeing eyes. Staring absently into the flames, I was startled slightly by an odd wheezing sound emanating from a chair nearby.

Glancing up, I saw the aging figure of Minerva McGonagall. Her chin had dropped to her chest where it seemed to be resting contentedly on the faded tartan of her robes. Smiling, I realized that it was she who had made (in fact was still making) the unusual little whuffling sounds that people make when they are fast asleep. Once my teacher, Minerva McGonagall was now my colleague. I had come to Hogwarts only recently and had been surprised at the change in her. She had been “old” when I was in school…but now; she was getting to be rather ancient.

I reflected on my other colleagues and as I did so, my mind lingered on a particularly loathsome professor – a professor who was single-handedly trying to make sure that I had a bad time of it during my initial year on staff. I had just come from his office where he had refused to accommodate one of my more outstanding students, and had then gone on to lecture me at length about wizard law and how foolish I had been to even approach him. I kicked moodily at a tassel on the threadbare carpet and made a derisive noise.

“Something troubling you?” said a drowsy Scottish voice from a nearby armchair. I felt my cheeks flush.

“I’m terribly sorry Professor; I didn’t mean to wake you.” I said, mortified.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, waving a hand impatiently at me. “But I would like to know what’s bothering you.”

I considered for a moment whether or not it was worth even mentioning, but – since she had asked… “I just had a bit of a run-in with Deputy Headmaster Snape. He…um…denied my request for a time-turner for the young Haversham girl.”

Professor McGonagall leaned forward in her chair so that her square spectacles glinted at me. “The one who is particularly bright?” I nodded. “I think that young lady is especially promising.”

“I agree,” I said, flatly, “but Professor Snape doesn’t seem to think that her innate abilities justify the use of a time-turner so that she can take more than one class at once. He went on and on about–”

Just what he went on and on about, Professor McGonagall was not to know. For at that precise second, a whirling shape in the fire caught both our attention. Revolving slowly to a stop, facing Professor McGonagall, was the hook-nosed visage of Severus Snape. His hair hung in greasy grey snakes around his heavily lined, but still sallow face.

“It doesn’t surprise me in the least to find you here,” he said archly to me, then glanced meaningfully at Professor McGonagall.

“Well, as it the staff room and as I am staff…” I began – only to have him cut me off.

“I see you have been unable to break your family’s annoying habit of circumventing authority. Trying to go around me, were you?” he said coolly. I glared, a heated retort forming on my lips when Professor McGonagall spoke.

“No one respects your authority more than we do Severus, I assure you. But I must ask you to leave us. We are in conference.” Her voice was businesslike and seemingly unruffled, but from where I sat, I could see her spectacles flashing.

He regarded her, his eyebrows lowered, lips twisted into their familiar sneer. “No good shall come of this. Mark my words.”

“Just as you say, Severus, now…if you don’t mind?” She was brusque.

He disappeared with an angry “pop.”

“He’s wrong you know,” she said thoughtfully. “Once upon a time, something extraordinarily good, even miraculous happened at the hands of a student with a time-turner.”

Her voice softened as she sank back into her chair. In her eyes, I saw a faraway look. “Here it comes,” I thought, “she’s about to wax nostalgic again…no, more accurately, she’s about to wax Hermione.” Although certainly not in her dotage, Minerva McGonagall had developed the old person’s habit of reminiscing about the past to anyone who would listen. Her favourite subject was one Hermione Granger, with Harry Potter and Ron Weasley running neck and neck for a close second. I braced myself to hear for the twelfth time what I was sure was going to be the story of how Hermione and Harry had used a time-turner to save the life of the hippogriff, Buckbeak, and of Harry’s godfather, Sirius Black.

“I may have mentioned to you before that a former student of mine, Hermione Granger, was once in possession of a time-turner, have I not?”

I nodded dumbly, then began weaving dreams of tying sheets together and escaping out of a nearby window. But, as there were no sheets handy…

“In her third year, an extraordinary thing happened to Miss Granger, through which she changed the course of history as we might have known it.”

(Author’s Note: You are hereby warned that this tale involves some of the mind-wrenching paradoxes of time travel. If slipping along through time streams, changing lives, and re-writing history is not your thing, stop reading now... I see you’re still here. Have you got your paddle? You might need one, you know. Oh, good. Right then, off we go.)

I could have recited the story off by heart. “Make off with a doomed hippogriff…conjure a Patronus… fly hippogriff up to Flitwick’s office, ‘Alohomora’ and hey presto ‘more than one innocent life saved’…” I was sorely tempted to tell her that I’d heard the whole thing before, but there was no use interrupting her once you ever let her get started.

~*~

Hermione ducked into the girl’s bathroom and glanced at her schedule, ‘Arithmancy next,’ she thought. “Right, right,” she muttered under her breath, “Arithmancy.” She peered under each stall, checking for feet. It was essential that she be alone. Satisfying herself that she was the only occupant of the restroom, she drew from the neck of her robes a thin gold chain. A tiny object bobbed and sparkled at the end.

The object was, of course, an hourglass – a time-turner. Hermione grasped it gently preparing to give it its customary single turn backward when the unthinkable happened. Millicent Bulstrode and a gang of her Slytherin cronies burst unexpectedly and boisterously into the bathroom. As Millicent barged through the door, she ran straight into Hermione, knocking her off her feet and into what promised to be a less-than-graceful sprawl on the tiled floor.

Hermione seemed to be falling in slow motion. She clutched desperately for the time-turner and missed, sending it spinning wildly forward. Frantically, Hermione tried to count the rotations…once, twice, three times…before it became a blur. The bathroom became a wash of colour, like a motion pictured played too fast. Hermione experienced the unmistakable, sickening sensation of being pulled forward through time, and was horrified.

She hit the floor with a crash. The world and the time-turner had ceased to spin. A terrible thought struck her – what if the time turner had broken when she fell? Hermione scrambled into a sitting position and patted the front of her robes. It was there – whole and intact. She breathed a long sigh of relief and clutched at it as though it were some sort of temporal lifeline. All she had to do was turn it back and this nightmare would be over.

A cold chill swept through her. She had no idea how many times to turn it back. She had lost count in the fall. Hermione Granger had been unwittingly swept into the future and had no idea how far. Another student might have panicked, but not our Miss Granger. She took a deep breath and then embraced the only option left open to her. She was going to have slip into the halls of this future Hogwarts, determine the exact date and time, then return with all due speed to her proper place in history.

~*~

“Hang on,” I interjected, “I thought she and Harry went backward in time and only by three hours or something…”

“Haven’t you been listening?” Professor McGonagall said, a trifle testily, “This is a different story. I have more than one you know.” I could have sworn I detected the trace of a smile, but perhaps it was wishful thinking. Satisfied that she had put me in my place, Professor McGonagall continued.

~*~

Hermione got to her feet and brushed the dust from her knees and elbows. ‘No bones broken at least,’ she thought wryly, observing the bruises on her shins that were already blooming into purple glory. She crossed quietly to the bathroom door, putting her ear to it to listen for noise in the hall. To her surprise there seemed to be quite a bit of noise – people shouting and running up and down.

Several thoughts occurred to her. It could, of course, be a Saturday. She could be hearing the excitement of a Quidditch match about to begin or, more likely, one just ending, with victors shouting gleefully in the halls. Alternatively, Fred and George Weasley could have set off a volley of dungbombs, an act sure to send people scurrying for their common rooms.

Gingerly, she pushed the door open and peered into the hallway. Sure enough, people were dashing madly along the passage, but not in victory, or even the high spirits born of an excellent practical joke. They were running in pure terror – in absolute and utter panic. Hermione stumbled into the hall, drew her wand and began looking for the source of the pandemonium.

Once outside the bathroom, she could see through the windows what appeared to be bonfires towering in a rapidly darkening sky. Pressing her face to a dirty pane, she squinted to see more clearly. Through great clouds of billowing smoke, she saw that the leaping flames were not coming from bonfires, but from Hogwarts itself. The most prestigious school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world was burning. In the fading light of sunset, the engulfing flames cast a lurid glow upon the figures that were swarming across the grounds - figures that were, oddly enough, swarming toward the castle, instead of away from it.

A silent scream escaped Hermione’s lips as she recognized the dark robes and masked faces of the Death Eaters. They were marching on the castle – streaming out of the Forbidden Forest and into every conceivable door. There was only one thing for it. She ran – blindly at first, until she realized that out of instinct she had been heading for Dumbledore’s office. As she rounded a corner, the gargoyle that marked the entrance to the headmaster’s office appeared in the distance. Her heart leapt even as her feet flew along the corridor.

So focused was she on her destination, that at first she failed to notice the sudden chill, the killing cold. It was only when she realized that she could no longer hear the sound of panicked students that Hermione’s brain registered the presence of Dementors.

‘The spell…the spell…what was it Harry had been practicing? What had Lupin said on the train when he had driven away the first Dementor she had ever encountered?” Hermione cast about desperately for the words. “Expecto….Expecto…” she muttered desperately as the knot of fear in her stomach grew ever larger. Even if she remembered the spell…would it work? Harry had been practicing for weeks. And she had never even….

Her train of thought had been forcibly and irrevocably wrenched from its rails at the sight of them. Three hooded figures, towering menacingly above the suits of armour that lined the hall, were drifting weirdly along the stone floor. The spectacle of these hellish phantasms, these wraiths, these fiends, barring the entrance to Dumbledore’s office filled Hermione with abject terror. So much so, that it was perhaps a full minute before she realized that their sinister gaze was directed not towards herself, but at something or someone in an adjoining passage.

“Expecto Patronum!” roared a voice from the connecting hall. She gasped. It sounded like Harry’s voice; it was the sound of hope. A shining silvery stag thundered in silent splendour toward the Dementors, lowering its pronged head to charge them. They crumpled under this direct attack from Harry’s Patronus, swept away by the force of his spell. No longer threatening, they were suddenly as insubstantial as the fabric of a nightmare.

Hermione heard running feet and stepped from behind the statue of Wendelin the Weird where she had taken temporary refuge. Her heart soared in her chest as she saw Harry sliding to a stop in front of the gargoyle. “Fizzing Whizbee!” he shouted and the gargoyle sprang obediently to one side, revealing the circular stone steps rising to the headmaster’s office. Harry shot through the opening and up the stairs. He hadn’t seen her. And it was a good thing too, she thought, the blood draining from her face…for the Harry she had heard, the Harry she had seen, was not the thirteen year old wizard she had been in class with mere moments before.

The Harry that had just fought off three Dementors was clearly much older. He was taller, his shoulders broader, his voice deeper. He…he…had to be at least sixteen or seventeen. Hermione’s brain sagged under the weight of this revelation. She hadn’t travelled hours into the future, or even days. She had been swept years into the future. Hermione felt the blood drain from her face. ‘Dumbledore’ was the only thought that registered clearly. She needed Dumbledore.

And so, just as the future Harry had done…she raced up the circular stairs, not waiting on them to carry her, escalator-style to the door of the headmaster’s office, but taking them two at a time as they rose. Even before she reached the top, she heard a sound…a sound that increased her fear and terror a hundred-fold. High cold laughter echoed from the chamber above…its brittle tones exactly as Harry had once described them to her. Voldemort was in Dumbledore’s office.

As she reached the landing outside the headmaster’s oaken door, she could hear shouting.

An agonized voice shouted “No!” The voice belonged to Harry.

“You sentimental fool!” Voldemort hissed in malignantly. “Did you actually think you could save her?”

Hermione edged across the threshold, pressing herself flat against the frame of the door. Steeling herself, she inclined her head forward slightly so that she could see into Dumbledore’s office. Waves of sickening dread and fear washed over her, but she shoved them aside and forced herself to gaze on the scene unfolding inside; it was horrible. She thought she would wretch or scream at the apocalyptic nightmare she beheld.

In the centre of the headmaster’s circular office, a shaft of sinister green light washed the room in venomous glow. Suspended in the beam, her limbs rigid in a rictus of pain, was a girl - her face contorted in a frozen scream. Her long hair flared around her in the fashion of Medusa – magic acting on it much like static electricity, only far more powerful and deadly. The figure revolved slowly in the paralysing beam was seemingly oblivious to what was happening around her, oblivious to the fact that a younger version of herself lurked in the doorway. Hermione stared transfixed at the face of her seventeen-year old self, twisted in pain – at her seventeen-year old frame, bobbing in a magic suspension like the disgusting specimens that filled the shelves in Snape’s office. Clammy and nauseated, Hermione shook with uncontrolled fear.

Meanwhile, the future Harry was blasting away at the beam with his wand. Curse after spell ricocheted off its impregnable sides. Voldemort cackled nastily at him. “You’ve neither the skill nor power to free her, Harry. Give it up.”

Harry turned on Voldemort. “Let her go! Let her go. It’s me you want.”

“Actually, it isn’t” he said in an oddly triumphant voice, “it’s both of you I want.”

A blast of red light erupted from Harry’s wand and he rolled behind the headmaster’s desk. Voldemort deflected it easily, returning a jet of green light that sent splintered shards of mahogany flying in all directions.

Hermione was unable to tear her eyes away from the war that was raging throughout the headmaster’s office. So intent was she on the two combatants that she failed to notice the headmaster himself phasing quietly into view. And though Harry and Voldemort were oblivious to her presence, Dumbledore was not. Far from being jarred at the incongruity of a thirteen-year old Hermione staring at an imprisoned seventeen-year old Hermione, Dumbledore looked rather relieved, as though he had been expecting her - as though it were not uncommon for visitors from the past to turn-up in his office. In three strides he reached her, propelling her backward out of the doorway and onto the landing.

He seemed to grasp her situation fully. “The time-turner?” he said in clipped tones as explosions of magic from Harry and Voldemort continued to ignite behind him. Hermione nodded mutely at him. She tried to see around him, but he deliberately shielded her view. “Pay attention, Miss Granger. Unless the time stream is altered, our fate is sealed. Do you understand? He will win.” Tears streamed down her face and she shook her head, denying his words, denying that Voldemort could ever defeat them. Dumbledore took her by the shoulders. “You are the only hope for this future, do you understand? You can prevent what you have just seen…you can undo it.”

She stared at him wide-eyed. “How? How can I…”

He bent down and whispered something hastily in her ear. She gaped at him.

“But Dumbledore…I don’t understand,” she cried, her voice rising in desperation.

“You will,” he said calmly, apparently confident that she would work out his cryptic whispering in time to save them all.

From deep within the folds of his robes, he drew out the oddest-looking watch Hermione had ever seen; there were twelve hands on the face, as well as an assortment of strange looking dials. He consulted it briefly, the muttered, “Yes, that should do it.”

Raising his wand he said, “Good luck, Miss Granger,” and then he tapped the time-turner sharply. She vanished in an instant.

Dumbledore straightened and took a deep breath. Had it worked? Had she done it? His calm confident manner had been entirely for her benefit, for truly, he felt that there was little or no chance of her succeeding in unravelling the grim reality that was the present.

The silence from his office filled him with dread. Was it over? Was he too late? He stepped cautiously across the threshold. Light tinged with the rose and gold slanted through high windows...light from the still burning fires or…from something else? He crossed quickly to the window to see a glorious sunset illuminating a perfectly intact Hogwarts. The sound of voices made him turn sharply from the window. Still wary of the presence of Voldemort, he held his wand outstretched. Moving in the direction of the voices, he heard the sound of quiet laughter - the cheerful tones of unconcerned conversation.

Easing around of the spiral stair that lead to his private observatory, he saw what simply could not be. His vision swam slightly before coming into focus. Seated at a gate-legged table in an alcove under a window were Hermione Granger and Harry Potter. The table had been laid for what was clearly going to be a sumptuous tea, and judging by the number of cups set out, Harry and Hermione were waiting on one other to join them.

Still dazed by the alteration in landscape of his office, Dumbledore was nonetheless aware of the fact that Hermione and Harry were putting to good use the moment of leisure and relative privacy that had seemingly been afforded them. Dumbledore stood transfixed as Harry, whole and unscathed, leaned forward to take one of Hermione’s small hands in his own. She smiled shyly; her features alight with love and with the first flowering of womanhood. Harry was on the point of doing more than simply gazing at the delightful creature across the table from him when Dumbledore wisely chose that moment to clear his throat.

Harry jumped spectacularly, and hastening to get to his feet, nearly knocked his chair over. “Professor Dumbledore…we…were just waiting on you, sir,” Harry stammered, his normally pale cheeks slightly pinker than usual.

For the first time, Dumbledore allowed himself to believe that his plan might have worked. It was only when Hermione, a knowing look on her face, rose to her feet and hugged him impulsively, that he knew. Clinging to the Headmaster of Hogwarts, she whispered a heartfelt “thank you” in his ear.

Detaching himself from her, Dumbledore said, “I think it is I who should be thanking you, Miss Granger.” Hermione, blushing, dropped back into her seat.

Dumbledore glanced at Harry, curious to know how he might be reacting to what must surely seem an odd exchange between headmaster and student. To his surprise, he saw that far from confused, Harry was grinning broadly and even went so far as to wink.

Chuckling softly, Dumbledore said to Hermione, “You told him?”

She bit her lower lip. “In the end, I had to…I needed his help, it was the only way,” she began in a rush, “You see, sir, what happened…”

Knowing instinctively that the story was about to spill out of them in disorganized bits and pieces, Dumbledore raised his hand for silence. “Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we? It seems I have three years worth of catching up to do. Miss Granger, would you be so good as to pour?” Dumbledore said, lowering himself gingerly into the remaining vacant chair.

Having settled himself comfortably and allowed himself a swallow of tea, he asked the burning question that was foremost in his mind, “I simply must know…who won the Quidditch cup in your third year?”

~*~

I stared at Minerva McGonagall open-mouthed. “You…you can’t be serious.”

“Indeed I am. Quite serious, in fact,” she said, her spectacles gleaming.

“But what?...How?” I exclaimed, nearly incoherent.

Professor McGonagall was apparently used to this sort of apoplectic reaction and went on smoothly, “It took Miss Granger the better part of two years to work out what Albus had told her, and then, only with the help of Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley was she able to act on the information. But act they did…and this,” she said gesturing around the room “is the result.”

I looked around, half expecting to see the legendary trio waving at me from a corner of the staff room.

“Hogwarts is still standing, and of course you know what became of him”.

She was referring to Voldemort, of course. His reign of terror had been so great and had lasted for so long, that even now, decades later, witches and wizards who had lived during those dark years still hesitated before they said his name aloud. My parents were among the few who referred to him by his actual name, and, more often than not, they simply called him “Tom Riddle” instead of the malevolent title he gave himself in later years.

“I never knew…I can’t believe they never told me,” I said in whispered wonder.

The thin line of her mouth now twitched into an unmistakable smile. “Ask them when next you see them, and now about your student, Miss Haversham….”

I watched, puzzled, as she withdrew from a pocket in her robes a tiny sparkling hourglass dangling from the end of a fine gold chain. Handing it to me, she said, “You will give Miss Haversham all the proper precautions? You will make it clear to her that she must not be seen, won’t you?”

“Yes, yes I will,” I said, disbelieving, “but what about Professor Snape?”

“Where’s the fun in being in being Headmistress of Hogwarts if I can’t overrule Severus from time to time? Off you go then; unless I’m much mistaken, you have a student to find and an owl to send.”

“Thank you! Thank you, Professor.” I rose to leave, but as I reached the door, she called me back.

“Miss Potter, in bestowing that time-turner on Miss Haversham, you will be using it as wisely as your mother once did, won’t you?”

I hardly knew what to say, so rather than saying anything, I winked, and pulled the staff room door closed.

~*~ Finis ~*~

Author’s Note: Special thanks to Jon for suggesting “A Whisper in Time” as the name for this piece.