Unofficial Portkey Archive

I am not the creator of Harry Potter, nor do I see money from his adventures on page and screen. I just like to write not-for-profit accounts of the love life he could have had if he had chosen what was right instead of what was easy.

Chapter 4: The Couer de Temps

"No matter what I do, no matter what I say
No matter how I try, I just can't turn the other way
When I'm with someone new, I always think of you
Guess my heart has a mind of its own."

-Connie Francis, Guess My Heart has a Mind of Its Own

"You're keeping something from me." Hermione looked at the disheveled, firearm-wielding man sitting across from her without the slightest hint of fear, as she could quickly disarm him with her wand at any time and worry about the obliviation that would be necessary to make the Muggles sitting around them forget all about it later. Instead, she regarded him with a small measure of pity. There was such pain and desperation in his bleary eyes that her curiosity overruled her natural sense of self-preservation. Hermione would not use a disarming spell on her unwanted dinner companion yet, although her wand remained pointed in his direction underneath the table. "Something that wants to be with me. Something that calls out to me, screaming in my head, night after night…"

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," Hermione assured him, shaking her head in confusion. "Maybe you could put that away," she said, pointing to the weapon in his hand, "and we could talk about this like normal, rational, unarmed…"

"You know," he told her stridently, his voice now a cold whisper. "You came here to hide it from me, but I found it anyway. Can't hide it from me, not ever. It beckons me, always…" Hermione looked away from him then, somewhat guiltily. "So you do know what I'm talking about, don't you? Take me to it. Now!" the man growled through clenched teeth. Then in a much softer voice, he added, "It misses me."

Although Hermione was now aware of just exactly what it was that the man wanted, her confusion had only deepened. "So…you've actually seen it? You know what it is?"

"Don't be foolish, little girl," the man said with a wolf-like predatory grin. Hermione now noticed that he had a light, scruffy beard and looked vaguely familiar to her. "I was chosen to guard it. I kept it close to me for years… someone had to keep it warm after you threw it away. It never did forgive you for that, you know."

"You're not making sense," Hermione told him, a deep frown creasing her brow. "I've only had it for a few hours…"

The conversation ended abruptly as a right cross landed solidly against the man's jaw.

When he came to again, the man who had held Hermione at gunpoint was no longer in the Hotel Narcisse's French restaurant. The room he was now being held in had few distinguishing features apart from being small and poorly lit. A team of Aurors stood around him doing their best to look imposing, but his attention wasn't really drawn to them at all. Sitting in front of him was the wizard who undoubtedly had knocked him cold and strapped him to the chair in which he now sat, the one who he had been half-hoping and half-dreading to meet here. "Harry Potter," he said aloud, his voice slurring slightly.

"Alonzo Caswallawn," Harry replied with a slight nod of his head. "Now that we know each other, maybe you'd like to tell me why you tried to kill my best friend."

"Wasn't going to kill her," Alonzo muttered, affecting a slightly pathetic, whiny tone. "I'm a squib, not a simpleton. Can't kill a witch with a gun. Not a witch like her, anyway."

"You were trying to sell her the gun, maybe?" one of the other Aurors, a husky man with a thick red beard, asked with a sarcastic chuckle. "So pointing it at her was…what? An aggressive sales pitch?"

A scathing glare from Harry Potter silenced the man instantly. "You were picked up last year for inciting a riot at Leicester Square, along with a half-dozen or so witches and wizards who admitted to being End-of-Timers. You, however, kept your mouth shut, made bail and disappeared." Harry leaned forward in his chair, which was sitting directly across from Caswallawn's, his wand held casually, almost carelessly, between his fingers. "Now no matter what else happens, you're going back to England to stand trial for that. Whether or not you'll be charged with anything else…say 'attempted kidnapping' or 'attempted murder'… is entirely up to you."

Alonzo Caswallawn looked up at Harry with a thin smile and defiant eyes. "What do you want from me?"

"Right now I'm looking down at a puzzle that's missing so many pieces you can't even tell what kind of picture it's supposed to make," Harry explained, his voice tight but not entirely unfriendly. "Thirteen dead teenagers in Manchester, just after a major disaster was predicted by your gang of doomsayers. 'Scope' Hubble, formerly in charge of that case and the wizard who was originally assigned to protect Hermione while she was in Switzerland, also murdered. And now you, someone with obvious ties to the End-of-Time movement, pull out a Muggle weapon and threaten her. Somehow everything I've just said is related. The pieces fit together perfectly, I'm sure of it. If you'd like to take the time and show me how, I'd be willing to go easy on you. If not…

"Well, if not, we actually have a bit of a legal gray area. You see, waving a gun around isn't exactly a crime the way the MLE figures things and yet we can't turn you over to the Muggle authorities because of your knowledge of the wizarding world. It's sort of a legal limbo that squibs can fall into when they perpetrate Muggle-style crimes against witches and wizards. You'd be amazed how long you can be held without even being charged with anything…"

Abruptly, Harry stopped speaking. What had begun as soft laughter from Caswallawn had become jarringly louder, drowning out every other sound in the room. "You really have no idea what's happening, do you?" he asked rhetorically, his eyes bugging out maniacally as he spoke. "The house is burning down all around you and you're wasting your time searching for who spilled red wine on the living room carpet." Alonzo's jovial attitude vanished in an instant. "It's all coming to an end. Soon. Sooner even for you than for anyone else, Harry Potter. You're the next to go after the seventeen in Manchester."

Sensing a threat, some of the other Aurors moved in to flank him, but Harry waved them off. "Seventeen? Are you saying there were more people killed who we never found?"

Alonzo Caswallawn gave a single bark of contemptuous laughter. "Can't find bodies of people who never were. Ghosts without faces; rows of blank headstones and no one to mourn the loss."

Harry had precious little patience for this man spouting gibberish. "Can you tell me who killed them? Who killed Hubble?"

"A shadow and the one chasing after it," Caswallawn answered with a knowing smirk. "It doesn't matter, though. Everyone's time is coming. The end is near. The end of everything."

Just as Harry wanted to tear his hair out in frustration, he was reminded of what Scope had told him the night he died: interrogating an End-of-Timer made Professor Trelawney's Divination class seem 'lucid and informative by comparison'. He was now beginning to see just how right Hubble was. "You've all been spouting that same nonsense for years now. It's not going to do you a damn bit of good and, quite frankly, I don't have time for it. Now can you give me a name or not?"

"I could give you loads of names," the smug squib retorted, the cat-who-ate-the-canary grin never leaving his face. "Fakes you'd recognize, real ones you wouldn't. They're just letters arranged a certain way. What you've done is far more important in determining who you are."

Harry slammed his fist against the wall in anger, refusing to unleash his fury on Caswallawn while he still might have information worth extracting. "This is your last chance, Alonzo. Tell me something useful and I'll ask them to go easy on you."

The squib shook his head 'no' in a continuous small jerky movement. "Not interested in lighter sentences or comfy prison cells, empty promises of hard time spent softly. I only want what I came for. I want the Couer de Temps. If you give me that, there are things I could tell you. Wondrous, amazing things…"

Once he mentioned what he was after, Alonzo Caswallawn watched Harry Potter's eyes light up. Clearly his interest had been piqued, just as the squib had planned. "Would you take your men outside for a moment, Billings?" Harry said in a deceptively calm voice to the red-bearded man who had spoken out of turn moments earlier. "I'd like to continue interrogating Mr. Caswallawn alone."

"Cor, Potter, you know that's against Gavindale's new policy on…" The look Harry gave the Auror made it perfectly clear what he thought of Roger Gavindale's new policies. "I wouldn't have a problem with it at all, honest, if it weren't such a huge safety concern."

"The only weapon in the room would be my wand and Caswallawn is a squib," Harry reminded the other Auror briskly. "I can't imagine how he could possibly pose a threat to me."

Billings looked somewhat sheepish. "'S not you I'm worried about. If he claimed abuse…we all remember what happened with the Bannerman case…"

Harry held his hands up, palms open, in a gesture of reassurance. "He won't have a scratch on him when I'm thru, I promise."

Billings rubbed his beard in deliberation for a moment, then nodded curtly. "Fine. But my men will be waiting right outside if anything funny goes down." With a gesture from the ranking Auror on scene, the other Aurors filed out of the room, leaving Harry alone with Caswallawn.

"Funny things have been happening for years now," Alonzo Caswallawn offered out of the blue. "But I've been the only one in on the joke. Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cry. That's why I need it so, you see. It tells me…"

"I need you to tell me exactly what you're talking about," Harry interrupted him sternly. "This item you keep blathering over. It's something of Hermione's, I gather."

For the first time, Caswallawn's eyes grew stormy. "It isn't hers. She couldn't stand to keep it; gave it away to someone else. Someone unworthy. Someone not me. Once it was with me, it was so happy…" he trailed off dreamily.

"Tell me what it is," Harry said, feigning a casual tone. "What does it do? Why do you want it?"

"Someone has to keep it safe," Caswallawn assured him as he struck something of a gallant pose. "It's been abused…lied to…there've been terrible things done to it…"

"I want to know about it," Harry cut in, this time more insistently. "What does it look like? What does it do?"

"It feels pity," Caswallawn attempted to explain, his manner dazed yet oddly serene. "It feels…everything. It's a heart, after all. That's what it was made for."

"A heart?" Harry queried, a puzzled expression replacing his typical gruff Auror 'game face' he used around the usual suspects. "Are you talking about a real heart or…or is it a jewel or a stone of some kind?" He had seen something out of the corner of his eye in Hermione's room earlier; something that she had been trying to hide from him. Harry was now beginning to suspect that what this loon was on about was exactly what she hadn't wanted him to see.

Alonzo's eyes widened and a goofy grin formed on his face. "You've seen it, haven't you? Take me to it, please. I never meant any harm…never meant to hurt anyone…certainly not her…it still cares for her, in spite of everything…"

"I'm not letting you anywhere near her again," Harry told him, his expression instantly fierce and protective.

Caswallawn smiled coyly. "They weren't able to take it all from you, were they? You still defend her with your life."

"And always will," Harry told him confidently. "You'd do well to remember that."

"I'm the only one who remembers anymore," the squib End-of-Timer grumbled to himself. "It's because of the Couer de Temps, you know. It showed me how not to forget everything that happened…" Caswallawn looked up at Harry pleadingly. "Talk to her. Tell her I didn't mean it. Tell her I need to see it again, to hold it just once more…"

For a fleeting moment, Harry considered lying to this man, telling him that he could have this thing back from Hermione and that he could keep it once they were through. However, nearly two decades spent as an Auror had taught him not to deceive a suspect in such desperate straits…not even a squib. Besides, there was just something so deeply sad about the man, something in his eyes… "I'm sorry, Caswallawn. That just isn't going to happen." Harry exhaled slowly, trying his best to maintain a patient demeanor. "If you won't talk sensibly to me about anything else, can you at least tell me about the End-of-Time movement itself? Does it have a leader? Was someone involved with your group responsible for the murders in Manchester?"

"You want to know about the Great Prophet," Alonzo Caswallawn told him in a singsong voice. He giggled giddily. "You'll meet soon enough. Once you have one, how could anyone resist trying for the matched set?" Just as Harry turned away from him with a low growl of muted frustration, Alonzo continued, "You've been waiting. Waiting your whole life to become who you were meant to be. You won't have to wait much longer, Harry Potter. Once you meet the Great Prophet, everything will become clear."

Harry opened the door and gave a hand signal to Billings. "I think we're done here. You'll be taken back to England for trial…"

"So will you," Caswallawn interrupted him, his tone calm but fierce. "But yours is the one that really matters." Two Aurors unbound him, seized each of the squib's arms and began to lead him out of the room. "The stars look to you now, Potter. Never forget that. The stars look to you."

After Alonzo Caswallawn was led out, screaming and raving, Harry stood alone, trying his best to remember just where he had heard that particular turn of phrase before.

***

Hermione Granger-Weasley was beginning to feel like a prisoner inside this hotel. A pair of Aurors stood guard outside her room, presumably waiting for someone else to attack her, although she found that to be an incredibly unlikely possibility. 'All this fuss over a squib with a gun that I could have effortlessly turned into a toad the first moment he sat down beside me,' Hermione thought scornfully. She hadn't wanted the man arrested and interrogated by Gavindale's goons; she'd wanted to find out what he knew for herself. He certainly seemed to know things that she didn't about the Couer de Temps.

'Could he really have been the one who found it?' Hermione asked herself idly. 'Could he have been the one who had it all this time?' It would certainly make the legend surrounding it seem to be little more than a poorly concocted fairy tale.

Hermione looked up but said nothing as Harry entered the room, concern written all over his face (although not literally, of course). "Are you alright?"

Hermione shook her head yes as Harry sat down on the bed beside her. "I don't see the point of having those Aurors outside, though. I was never really in any serious danger."

Harry frowned. "Someone just tried to kill you, Hermione."

She rolled her eyes in response. "A squib pointed a gun at me, Harry. I came closer to being killed the time Rose tried to levitate a pair of scissors into her bedroom."

"Is that why you didn't disarm him?" Harry asked her probingly, his eyebrows rising slightly as he waited for her reply. "Because you didn't think he was a threat?" Instead of answering, Hermione rose from the bed and walked away from him to face the window. "You've seen him before, haven't you?"

Hermione nodded again. "He looked familiar when I first saw him, but I couldn't place from where. Then I remembered that he delivered some personal items to my new office yesterday."

"Did he do anything out of the ordinary? Did he say anything to you?" Harry asked her gently.

"He lingered in the room for a moment or so after he had brought everything in," Hermione told him with a soft, innocent smile of remembrance. "I thought he wanted a tip…"

"But that wasn't what he wanted, was it?" Harry asked, his tone of voice now much graver. "Did he see it in your office? Is that how he knew you had it?"

"No, he couldn't have. I wasn't even given it until…" Hermione's voice stopped suddenly as she realized that Harry had tricked her into giving more away than she had wanted to. Much more. "What did he tell you?"

Harry shrugged. "A bunch of rubbish, mostly. Although he did mention something he called a 'care day tom'. Something he was under the impression you had stolen from him."

She turned around to face him then, a deceptively calm smile set on her face. "Well, since that's obviously nonsense, too, it was all a bunch of rubbish, then, wasn't it? You know, we never did get anything to eat…"

"You really should stop trying to distract me with food," Harry advised her kindly as he put his hand over her waist to stop her from heading for the door. "I'm not Ron, you know." Hermione gave him an obviously genuine smile of affection. "You're keeping something from me."

Hermione closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. "I wouldn't be doing my job if I wasn't."

"And I wouldn't be doing my job if I wasn't trying to get to the bottom of all of this," Harry countered. "I'm supposed to be protecting you. How do you expect me to do that if I don't know why you might be attacked?"

Her eyes opened again and looked at Harry accusingly. "But you weren't surprised when I was attacked, were you?" Hermione asked him, rounding on him as if she were trying to take back some of the moral high ground in this discussion. Harry's hand dropped away from her abruptly, as though it had been burned. "Do you really expect me to believe that you replaced the Auror who was supposed to be my guard because you wanted a trip to the continent with an old friend? Didn't you think I would find it odd that a team of Aurors were ready to move the moment Caswallawn threatened me?" Harry swallowed nervously, but did not respond. "You're keeping something from me, too."

"The Auror who was supposed to guard you was murdered," Harry admitted without further hesitation, making Hermione's jaw drop in surprise. "Last night."

Hermione shook her head in disbelief, making her bushy hair sway back and forth as she did so. "Do they know…do they have any suspects?"

"None that I know of." Hermione sat down next to Harry on the bed once again, taking the time to smooth the comforter down with her hand before doing so. "Gavindale's taken over the investigation himself, so there's really not much more I could do. Nothing, of course, except for taking the last case he'd been assigned on the off chance that Hubble was killed so that you wouldn't have anyone to protect you."

"Harry, you don't think it's related, do you?" Hermione asked worriedly. "Hubble's murder and…and the attack on me, I mean."

"I don't think Caswallawn murdered Hubble, for what that's worth," Harry answered her honestly. "As to whether or not the two are connected, I think that's still up in the air." He shot her a knowing half-smile. "Of course, you could tell me why you were really sent here in the first place…"

"I'm not supposed to," Hermione replied, using the same tone of voice she had used at Hogwarts when she was reminding her two partners in crime, as well as herself, of what the rules said only moments before she agreed to break them. "The information is classified."

Harry patted Hermione's knee. "I hate to break it to you, Hermione, but I stumbled upon some of your classified information while interrogating an insane squib deliveryman. I don't think it's as much of a secret as your boss would like."

"It's not that I think it's such a well-guarded secret, or that I don't trust you," Hermione admitted with a slight moan in her voice. "It's just that…the Ministry has ways of keeping its employees from sharing state secrets. Magical ways. Nothing like an unbreakable vow, mind you, but if I told you all of the particulars…" She got up from the bed again and began to pace about the room, clearly deep in thought.

"I suppose…" Hermione said thoughtfully, rubbing her chin as she spoke, "yes, there must be someone out there right now reading it…a scholar or a child from a really old wizarding family…there's no way they could track them all…"

Harry was now utterly befuddled. "What are you talking about, Hermione?"

Hermione pivoted on her heel to look Harry in the eye, her expression more lively than he'd seen it all day. "Have you ever heard of something called Merlin's foe box?"

"No," Harry answered. After waiting a moment to see if Hermione were serious about this, he continued, "Should I have?"

"Oh, I suppose not," Hermione admitted ruefully. "It would have made things easier, but…it's a very old legend, older even than the tales of Beedle the Bard, although the stories from the foe box were combined with Beedle's in some of the earlier editions."

"So these are children's stories?" Harry inquired skeptically.

"Yes," Hermione said, "but then again, so was the Deathly Hallows. There can be a lot of truth hidden in the stories a society tells its children."

Harry conceded that with a nod and allowed himself to relax slightly. "Alright. Tell me about Merlin's foe box."

"Legend has it," Hermione began as she moved one of the room's more comfortable chairs so that it was now sitting directly across from Harry and sat down in it, "that there was an enchanted chest where Merlin kept a large assortment of magical items he'd captured from his enemies over the years. As you might imagine, he had quite a few of them."

"Gee, I wonder what that's like," Harry muttered under his breath. Then in a louder voice he added, "Wait, d'you mean dark magical objects? Why would Merlin want to keep those?"

"By and large, it wasn't really anything like that," Hermione reassured him. "The things Merlin kept in this chest weren't necessarily objects used in dark magic, but they were powerful enough that he worried about whose hands they might end up in after he died. Transforming himself into various large sea creatures as he went, Merlin took this 'foe box' full of items he'd captured from his vanquished enemies into the deepest part of the ocean he could reach, leaving it there with wards around it designed to make sure that only a wizard as powerful as Merlin himself could ever retrieve it."

"What does this have to do with what's happening now?" Harry asked, his expression thoroughly conveying his confusion.

"Patience, Harry," Hermione replied as she did her best to hide a smile, but didn't entirely succeed. "Good stories take time to tell. Now, where was I? Oh yes. Francois de Beaumarchais. I take it you haven't heard of him either." Harry shook his head 'no'. "He was one of Merlin's most persistent foes. After twice having his wand destroyed and finding himself rather humiliatingly banished to the South Pole, de Beaumarchais swore that he would forge a new wand, one Merlin couldn't destroy. A wand of fire."

"He made the wand from fire?" Harry asked quizzically. "Is that even possible?"

"It is just a legend, Harry," Hermione reminded him chidingly, "and actually he made it from the branch of an ash tree and something he had to trade a fair amount of wizard's gold for…phoenix ashes. De Beaumarchais planned to use them as the core of this wand. Even if Merlin found a way to destroy it, it would regenerate in a burst of flame…"

"Just like the phoenix does," Harry finished for her, as he was suddenly intrigued by the idea. "Quite brilliant, that. I wonder if Ollivander ever thought of it…"

"Perhaps," Hermione said after considering it for a moment, "but I'd imagine he would have thought better of it had he heard all of what happened to de Beaumarchais." At that, Harry fell silent, waiting for Hermione to finish before he made further comment. "His first mistake, of course, was in seeking out Merlin for revenge. The ensuing duel was one of the epic battles of wizard legend…but only ended in a draw. Once Merlin walked away from it in one piece, however, it didn't take him long to figure out where to go.

"There was a jeweler that had done Merlin many favours over the years whose name was Romulus Goldsmith. By all accounts, he was the most widely sought after maker of rings, necklaces and other bejeweled magical objects in all of wizarding England. Instead of simply approaching Goldsmith as a friend and asking him for another favour, Merlin decided to be somewhat devious. He disguised himself as a peddler who needed a special gilded cage for his pet phoenix, as it seemed that whenever his phoenix burst into flame while he was traveling he had a hard time keeping all of the ashes from being scattered by the wind. He wondered whether or not Goldsmith could devise a cage that would magically contain and bind the ashes of a phoenix. The wizard jeweler instantly agreed.

"After weeks of equally brilliant spellwork and metalwork, Goldsmith presented the peddler with the finished product. Merlin paid him double what he had originally promised, took the cage to his next encounter with de Beaumarchais and managed to capture his 'wand of fire' with a simple summoning charm, containing it effortlessly in the birdcage Goldsmith had made for him. The French dark wizard spent some more quality time in Antarctica and all seemed right with the world again. It should have been a happy ending. It wasn't.

"It didn't take a genius to figure out who had made the phoenix cage for Merlin…which was quite fortunate for de Beaumarchais, as he obviously wasn't one. He was evil though, evil and petty and scheming. He had plenty of time to plot his revenge as he endured the long, arduous journey back to England. His knowledge of Romulus Goldsmith was limited to the two things everyone in the magical world knew about him: that he was a master of his trade and that he was also madly in love with his wife, Matilda.

"Because of the great demand for his services Goldsmith traveled extensively, which would keep him away from his beloved wife for weeks at a time, a prospect that both of them loathed. To make up for it somewhat, Romulus would send Matilda a sample of the local wine from everywhere that he went in a magical decanter that he had devised himself. It functioned as something similar to a pensieve; with every drink, Matilda Goldsmith could experience Romulus' memories of his trip. She could see the Sphinx or the Alps just as easily as if she were there standing next to him. She could be with him in his memories even if she couldn't be with him in person. It brought her great comfort.

"One day when Romulus was off selling warming bracelets in Kievan Rus', Matilda Goldsmith received his decanter by owl post. As she began to drink its contents, however, she was tormented by awful memories, all of them false of course: Romulus cheating on her with another witch, Romulus dying in a plague, their home burning to the ground. It was poisoned. Francois de Beaumarchais had managed to intercept Goldsmith's magical decanter and his owl, using the confundus charm to fool it into delivering the poisoned wine to Matilda, just as it had a hundred times before.

"Romulus Goldsmith returned home to find his wonderful, beautiful wife dying a slow, agonizing death. He tried everything he knew of to fight the poison and keep the woman he loved alive. He was only prolonging the inevitable. After three months of ineffective healing potions and strengthening charms, Matilda Goldsmith died. Francois de Beaumarchais had his revenge.

"To say that Romulus Goldsmith didn't take his wife's death well would be a terrible understatement. He devoted his life and considerable magical prowess to bringing his beloved Matilda back to life again. He met with necromancers and practitioners of the dark arts, but was…dissatisfied would be putting it mildly, with what they could offer him. Ultimately, Goldsmith became determined to find a way to travel back through time in order to prevent his wife's murder from ever taking place. Unfortunately, however, he had no idea how he was going to do that."

"Sorry to interrupt," Harry interrupted somewhat meekly, "but why couldn't he just use a time turner? Or didn't they have those back then?"

"Don't tell me you've forgotten the rules of using a time turner already, Harry," Hermione replied teasingly. "While you can change the past when using a time turner, you can't alter the way you originally experienced it. That's how wizards have gone mad, you know." For a moment, Hermione seemed lost in thought and reluctant to proceed with the tale. After a few seconds, however, she shook her head and continued, "Romulus Goldsmith spent every waking hour with his wife before she died. It simply wasn't possible for him to use a time turner. He needed something that would let him change his own past.

"Goldsmith spent nearly a century searching for a way to accomplish this seemingly impossible feat. He traveled to every corner of the world, researched countless legends and myths and met with hundreds of wizards who turned out to be little more than braggarts and madmen. Finally, returning home in despair after decades of fruitless efforts, Romulus Goldsmith happened upon a secluded village in France that held something extraordinary…something he soon became sure held the answers he had been looking for all along. A group of secretive, reclusive wizards had discovered it and were keeping it cloistered inside in what might pass for their 'monastery', far away from the world and its temptations. Goldsmith had no idea what it was at first, but he seemed to sense its power almost instinctively. He later said that it called out to him by name…"

"What was this thing, exactly?" Harry asked, his body tensing almost involuntarily. He got the feeling that whatever answer Hermione was about to give him, it would shed more light on the situation at hand than anything else had thus far.

"Goldsmith only knew it by the name it called itself," Hermione answered him. "'Le Couer de Temps.' The heart of time: a collection of magical energy without form or substance, but with such a strong effect on those around it that no one could possibly doubt its presence. Once they became properly introduced, Goldsmith poured his heart out to it, so to speak. The Couer de Temps soon learned of his quest to travel back to the past and save his beloved wife from an untimely death.

"It was fascinated by Goldsmith's story, by his years of desperate searching, but most of all by his undying love for Matilda. Sheltered from the outside world by the French wizard monks who found it, it had never seen or experienced love. It wanted…needed… to learn more."

Harry shook his head in confusion. "I'm sorry, but…how? Did it write him notes? Or could this thing…this 'heart of time'…talk?"

Hermione let out a soft sigh of exasperation. "I don't know if I can adequately describe it to someone who's never felt it for themselves…that is to say, someone unfamiliar with the story," Hermione corrected herself quickly. "It's as though it seeks out what you feel, what your deepest desires are, and connects with them. Your heart is filled with a strange, satisfying warmth and your mind with thoughts that aren't entirely your own…"

"You're beginning to sound like that lunatic Caswallawn," Harry informed her warily. When Hermione shot him an offended glare, he decided to be diplomatic. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for." When Hermione seemed to be somewhat mollified by his apology, he asked, "So what happened next?"

Hermione's expression grew distant as she continued. "Although the Couer de Temps yearned to learn more from Goldsmith it wasn't able to leave the monastery. The wizard monks had set up powerful wards around it, binding it inside. They feared what it might do or what use it might be put to, left on its own out in the world. For the time being, no pun intended, Romulus Goldsmith was forced to leave empty handed. Once reunited with the tools of his trade, however, he was able to forge a pendant made of gold and rubies with a miniature portrait of Matilda Goldsmith inside, a shell that the 'heart of time' would be drawn to and where it could be held inside safely, away from the prying eyes of the monks. Goldsmith promptly smuggled it out inside the magical piece of jewelry underneath his robes and apparated away to England."

"He was that sure that this 'Couer de Temps' was what he was after?" Harry asked, a hint of disbelief entering his voice.

"I can only imagine the things it must have shown him," Hermione replied, her eyes glossing over slightly as she began to picture what Goldsmith had seen. "Wonders of the ancient world. Great wizards of history and fables. Perhaps even the beginning of time itself." Her focus returned quickly and her eyes met Harry's again as she added, "He was convinced. This was the very thing he had spent most of his life looking for."

"So did he do it?" Harry asked her bluntly. "Did the Couer de Temps take Romulus Goldsmith back through time?"

"Yes," Hermione replied after a slight pause. Her last chance to keep Harry from learning everything had passed now. Whether or not she had done the right thing by telling him was now a moot point. There was no turning back. "The Couer de Temps was able to take Romulus Goldsmith back decades into his own past, to the time when he was still a young wizard. To the time when his wife Matilda was still alive."

"So was it like going back with a time turner?" Harry asked with an inquisitive sort of frown set on his brow. "Were there two of him walking around now?"

"Yes," Hermione answered quickly, "and no." Harry's frown did not go away. "Going back through time with the Couer de Temps isn't like using a time turner, Harry. In order for you to re-experience and reshape past events you've already lived through, it sort of has to 're-make' you. The you that existed in the present is destroyed by the Couer de Temps only to be recreated in the past, along with the Couer de Temps itself." Harry's frown now seemed to be permanently etched on his face. "Think of it as being reborn."

"Or born again?" Harry offered, only slightly tongue-in-cheek.

Hermione smiled thinly. "You could see it that way, I suppose. The Couer de Temps disrupts causality, allowing the prospective time traveler to be freed from the chain of cause and effect that shapes our normal temporal reality." Realizing she had probably lost Harry somewhere back there, she added, "Theoretically, Romulus Goldsmith could have gone back in time and killed his parents years before he was ever born without causing a time paradox." She thought that over for a moment. "Of course, if Goldsmith had given that as his reason for wanting to change the past, I doubt the Couer de Temps would have been quite as sympathetic."

"So if the Couer de Temps 're-made' Romulus Goldsmith, did it change him any? Was he still the same wizard when he arrived in the past as he was when he left?" Harry questioned.

"A very astute question, Mister Potter," Hermione retorted playfully. "Ten points to Gryffindor. But you're getting slightly ahead of the story. Once he arrived in the past, Romulus Goldsmith discovered another slight side effect of traveling through time. A problem of basic physics, really: two objects can't occupy the same space at the same time, or in this case, two identical magical cores can't exist at the same time."

Harry shot her a very strange look. "Meaning what exactly?"

"Meaning that both Romulus Goldsmiths were sharing the same pool of magical ability, much like two Muggle teenagers sharing a malt," Hermione explained, "and since much of our magic is connected to the words we speak and the thoughts behind them, the brains of both the younger and the older Goldsmith were interconnected."

"My brain is starting to hurt," Harry complained jokingly. "Are you sure all of this came from a children's story?"

Hermione blushed sheepishly. "Well…no. Some of it is my own theory based on what the written account says. I suppose it is a bit much, given that my source material is a centuries-old cautionary tale for children entitled The Stolen Heart of Romulus Goldsmith. Perhaps it would be safer for everyone if I were to stick to the story at hand.

"Suffice it to say, the younger Romulus Goldsmith now knew everything that his older counterpart did, including what was going to happen to his wife. Working together, the two wizards dispatched Francois de Beaumarchais in short order and saved the life of Matilda Goldsmith. Once again, it should have been a happy ending. And once again, it wasn't.

"One Romulus Goldsmith walked off into the sunset with his beloved wife, now alive and well. And the other, the older, the one who had spent years looking for a way to restore her to life was left with nothing. The woman he loved, the woman he changed all of time for, was with another man."

"But…the other man was him," Harry pointed out, his expression utterly puzzled.

"In a sense, perhaps," Hermione conceded. "But to Romulus Goldsmith, it wasn't enough. It was torture knowing that the woman he loved, the wife he'd given up everything for, wasn't with him. She wasn't in his arms every night. It made it worse, much worse, that he could hear the thoughts of the other Romulus Goldsmith, feel his heartbeat accelerate every time he was with her and know firsthand of the love they shared, without experiencing it himself. It nearly drove him mad."

"Sounds like he was a bit mad already," Harry remarked. "I take it this didn't end well."

"What kind of a cautionary tale would it be if it did?" Hermione asked rhetorically. "Romulus Goldsmith the elder confronted the younger, demanding that he be allowed to see his wife. The younger, knowing full well what kind of deranged thoughts had been wandering through his older doppelganger's head, naturally refused. The argument grew heated, curses were exchanged and in a matter of minutes the younger Goldsmith lay dead on the floor."

"He actually killed himself?" Harry asked, his eyebrows rising dramatically in disbelief. "His other self I mean?" When Hermione nodded sadly, he asked, "What could he have been thinking?"

"He thought he would take his younger self's place, of course," Hermione answered him, her tone now low and somber. "He deluded himself into believing that Matilda would come to love him, just as she had before. Instead, she despised him. She told him that he wasn't her husband, which, in an odd sort of way, was true. He was certainly no longer the wizard she had married. He was little more than an old man who had taken his love and his grief and turned it into an emotionally crippling lifelong obsession. You asked me before whether or not the Couer de Temps changed Goldsmith." Harry nodded. "Maybe it did. Maybe it left something out when it remade him; some of his humanity. But somehow I get the feeling that the real tragedy of the story is that Goldsmith couldn't ever let go of the past. Not even after he changed it."

"What happened to the Couer de Temps?" Harry asked, his voice deliberately calm despite the anxiety welling up inside him.

"Goldsmith considered using it once more, to go back through time again and set things right. After thinking the matter over for a few days, he decided to drink a vial of poison instead. Before he died, he sent his owl, the same bird that had faithfully delivered his specially-made decanter to Matilda for years, to Merlin, carrying the Couer de Temps. It was sealed in Merlin's foe box the very next day, never to be seen again." Hermione looked as though she had closed a book in her mind. The story was over.

"Except, of course, that it has been seen again," Harry pointed out, as anger and frustration that had been building throughout the story began to spill over. "By Caswallawn. By you. By others in the Ministry." Hermione turned away from his glare, rising from her chair to stand once again by the window so that she could stare out at the snow-capped Alps. "How much of the legend is true? Can this 'Couer de Temps' really change the past?"

"I've already told you everything I can," Hermione replied with a sigh of finality in her voice. "There isn't really anything else worth knowing about it. You're just going to have to let this drop, Harry."

"Fine," Harry replied, his voice tight. "If that's the way you want it."

"At least now you know something of the reason I'm…" she began, but could say no more before Harry whipped out his wand.

"Accio Couer de Temps!" As an expression of horror enveloped Hermione's face, the heart-shaped gold trimmed brooch flew from its oh-so-clever hiding place (in the closet under her shoes) and sped toward Harry's wand. Hermione attempted to grab it as it flew, but Harry's free hand beat her there, snatching the precious artifact from the air. He gave her a thin, victorious smile, as though they were rival seekers playing Quidditch and he had just captured the snitch.

"You don't know what you're doing, Harry," Hermione warned him, anger and surprise mixing in her voice as she spoke. "Give it back to me!"

"I will, but only if you answer my questions," Harry assured her, his tone almost parentally patronizing, as though he were speaking to Albus, James or Lily. He held the Couer de Temps high above his head, well out of Hermione's reach, gambling that she wouldn't try and use another spell to take it from him. "Can this really do what that story you told me says it can? Could you go back in time and change the past with this thing if you really wanted to?"

Hermione glared daggers at Harry. "Yes," she hissed. "Now give it here!"

"D'you realize what a dark wizard could do with this?" Harry demanded, his expression now grimmer and his voice deadly serious. "Or a former Death Eater? They could go back in time and bring Voldemort back. They could make sure he won instead of me."

"This isn't some Muggle science fiction time machine that you can program to do whatever you want," Hermione countered huffily. "It wouldn't ever let anyone go back unless it felt sympathy for them…for what they wanted to do. Nobody can go back through unless it's for love…"

"How do you know it wouldn't be sympathetic to someone like the Malfoys?" Harry demanded. "Or someone who 'loved' the way things were when Voldemort was around? It's been in a box for a thousand years. I'd wager it's probably not up on the latest news of the wizarding world."

"I…I just know it wouldn't ever do that. You have to believe me," Hermione said. She had calmed down somewhat, but her seemingly desperate need to get the Couer de Temps back had not diminished. "Besides, we're not even really sure how it works. I think there's some sort of catalyst that we're missing…"

"You should thank Merlin for that," Harry told her. "Probably literally." He shook his head sadly. "I can't believe this thing's in the hands of the Ministry."

"I know you don't much care for Minister Maladie…" Hermione began, but Harry cut her off quickly.

"It's not about who's in charge," Harry explained as a sense of urgency crept into his voice. "No government should have this kind of power. Think of all the mischief it could get into."

"But you're not thinking of all the good it could do," Hermione retorted. "We could go back and cure outbreaks of magical diseases, prevent wars, save lives…"

"Or start new wars and new plagues, killing generations of witches and wizards who otherwise would have led safe and happy lives." Harry crossed his arms, tucking the Couer de Temps underneath one arm as he did so. "Awful things happen to wizards who meddle with time, you know. Or don't you remember telling me that?" Hermione grimaced, but did not reply. "Do you know why The Stolen Heart of Romulus Goldsmith was called a cautionary tale? Because it was supposed to be a big, bold glowing 'danger' sign that says 'Do not use this to go back and change the past. Best regards for a happy and time travel-free life, Merlin.'"

"What would you do with it then?" Hermione asked sharply.

"Well, since keeping it in a box underwater for a thousand years didn't make it any less dangerous, I'd say the only option is to destroy it," Harry replied earnestly.

Hermione made a sweeping gesture toward the Couer de Temps with her arm. "If that's really how you feel, Harry, then go ahead. Use the reductor curse and blast it to pieces." Harry's eyes narrowed as he examined Hermione carefully, trying to gauge whether or not she was truly serious. "Well, go on. I won't try to stop you."

Harry removed the gleaming gold-trimmed ruby brooch from under his arm and cradled it in one hand, holding it in front of him as though he were Hamlet examining Yorick's skull. True to her word, Hermione did nothing as he pointed his wand at it, fully intending to try every destructive spell he knew and blow it to smithereens. Just as the magic words were about to spill from his lips, however, a strange sensation came over him. Peace. Serenity like he'd never known. But most of all he felt love: warm, comforting and strong. He was soon intoxicated by it.

Suddenly some of what Hermione had said began to make sense. "I could go back and save Dumbledore…Remus and Sirius…my parents…" As he looked down at the Couer de Temps, mesmerized, he could hear the faint whispering of unfamiliar voices echoing through his head, telling him of the marvelous things it could do for him, if only he would let it.

"Harry?" Hermione tried tentatively. Her voice knocked him out of his stupor. As if stung, he flung the Couer de Temps aside, although Hermione managed to catch it before it fell.

As Harry collapsed on the bed, with cold sweat beading up on his forehead and a pale, shaken look on his face, Hermione looked him over sympathetically. "You see now what it is, don't you? Not what it can do, that's almost incidental, but what it is." She leaned over and put her hand on Harry's shoulder, rubbing it gently. "It's love, Harry. Pure and untainted by lust or jealousy or pride or anything else we usually muck it up with." She sat down next to Harry and wrapped her arm around his shoulder. "I'm sure you see now why neither you nor I nor Merlin nor Romulus Goldsmith was able to destroy it. It would be an unspeakably monstrous thing; a crime against nature.

"I understand why you wouldn't trust the Ministry with something like this, Harry," Hermione went on, her voice soft but full of conviction. "I wouldn't ask you to do that." With the hand that wasn't currently wrapped around Harry, she held the heart-shaped item aloft. "What I am asking you to do is to trust me with the Couer de Temps. I'm the one who's responsible for it now. And…I may be sounding a bit like that raving loony Caswallawn, but…I think we have a connection. It feels safe with me.

In a testament to how profoundly the Couer de Temps had effected Harry, he could not bring himself to scoff at her remark. "I know we've kept things from each other, and I know…I know we're not as close as we once were. But I want you to know that I still trust you, Harry. With my life and more besides. With the fate of the world, if need be. If after everything you've heard, everything you've seen and felt, you're still convinced the Couer de Temps needs to be destroyed, then we'll do it together. Just say the word. But if you think I can be trusted to keep it safe, to work on it without being tempted to use it, in short, Harry…if you feel as though you can trust me…"

Hermione stopped speaking as Harry removed the Couer de Temps from her hand, placed it gently on her lap and then took her hand in his own. "I'll always trust you, Hermione. Honestly, there's no one I've ever trusted more." Hermione's eyes shone with pride. "I'm sorry you had to go through all of this."

"I'm sorry I wasn't entirely forthcoming from the beginning," Hermione added, her eyes dropping almost bashfully to stare at their joined hands. "I suppose I let my job get in the way of our friendship. Stupid, really. It won't happen again, Harry, I promise." Hermione gave Harry's hand an affectionate squeeze as she said the word 'promise'.

"I reckon I could demand an apology," Harry said with a chagrinned half-smile, "except I'd feel like a heel, seeing as I did more or less the same thing. I think we've been friends long enough that we should be able to put something like this behind us." He cast a furtive glance at the door. "Do you think we could maybe finally go out and have dinner? This time without a deranged maniac threatening to kill you?"

Hermione laughed then, a joyful release of pent up tension as much as anything else. "That sounds quite nice, actually." Once she had a look at her wristwatch, however, her face fell. "Oh, but it's so late. That French restaurant's probably closed by now."

"I think I could persuade the hotel management to make us something to eat," Harry said somewhat suavely. "After all, as far as they're concerned I'm the leader of a team of Interpol agents working to keep an important official in the British government, that would be you by the way, safe from a cold-blooded killer."

"About your team of 'Interpol agents'," Hermione interjected, "d'you think you could send them away?" When Harry frowned, she added, "You can keep them on stand by, of course, just like they were before, but…I'd kind of like to enjoy myself tomorrow, maybe do some skiing…and I don't much fancy having a half dozen clueless wizards tumbling down the slopes behind me with their skis on backwards, thinking they're doing it to keep me safe."

Harry had a hard time not laughing at the mental image that conjured. "Done. I'll just have to keep a closer eye on you myself." As they both got up from the bed and headed to the door, he added, "Although I wouldn't get your hopes up about me joining you on the slopes. I'm rubbish at Muggle sports."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Harry, they have first-rate instructors here…" The two of them proceeded to have a perfectly mundane conversation that included absolutely nothing about ancient time travel devices, Merlin's foes or people who wanted to bring their dead wives back to life. Harry relished every moment of it.

***

Themistocles Hale was just about to go home for the night, to be greeted by the very welcome sight of a warm bath and a hot toddy, when the red Muggle telephone he kept on his desk began to ring. With a weary sigh, he flicked his wand toward the receiver, making it fly into his hand. "Yes, yes, what is it now, lad?"

"I'm sending the other agents packing," Harry informed him casually.

One of Hale's eyebrows rose. "These would be the same Aurors you begged and pleaded with me to divert from the Silver Ermine investigation in Alsace-Lorraine?"

"Yeah," Harry confirmed. "I think I can handle it on my own from here." Before Themistocles Hale could think up a snide quip to make his profound displeasure known, Harry asked, "Did you find anything on that name I gave you?"

"The hotel desk clerk with your last name, you mean?" Hale replied and then, without waiting for Harry to answer, continued, "Yes, I think I did find something that might interest you. She's not only the desk clerk. She owns the hotel. But, in my oh-so-humble opinion, it's the nothing I found that really speaks volumes about the woman."

Themistocles Hale could almost hear Harry's frown over the phone. "What d'you mean?"

Hale's bifocals slid down his nose slightly as he studied the parchment in front of him. "Her birth certificate, her education degrees…really, lad, everything a person accumulates over the time they live in this world right down to her dental records are obvious fakes. For some reason they were sealed by someone working for the Harefoot government, but once they saw the light of day it would have been plain as day even to a first-year student at Durmstrang that they weren't on the up and up…"

"So you're saying Chloe Potter…isn't Chloe Potter," Harry reasoned aloud.

"You always were quick to catch on to these sorts of things, lad," Hale told him with a chuckle. "Still certain you can handle it on your own?"

"No," Harry conceded as he exhaled deeply. "But until I know more I still want the Aurors gone. For now, at least."

"Things going better between the lion and the bear?" the older wizard asked half-teasingly.

"Much," Harry confirmed with a chuckle. "I'm about to have dinner with her. Right now, in fact. Keep in touch, Agent Orr."

"You do know that I completely loathe that name, don't you?" he asked, but Hale was now only speaking to dead air, a Muggle term he found most descriptive. With a 'harumph' he flicked his wand again and returned the phone's receiver to its cradle.

As the old wizard grabbed his cloak and once again prepared to leave, one of the Ministry's most irritating screech owls flew hurriedly past his desk, depositing a rolled up piece of parchment with the word 'Urgent' scrawled on it. Deciding his journey home could be delayed for a few more seconds, he deigned to unseal it and was immediately glad that he did. As he examined its contents, both of Themistocles Hale's eyebrows now rose. "What have you gotten yourself into now, lad?"

Considering that I had to burn the Midnight Oil (and their beds, which were burning to begin with, but I digress) in order to have this chapter in by my own deadline, I'm not entirely certain I'll have Chapter Five up in three weeks. I will give it the old college try. However, given that my college days were filled with rampant procrastination and laziness, I'm not sure how much stock I'd put in this promise.

InsaneTrollLogic

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