Chapter 135 — Three Turns

Hermione drew a fine chain from beneath her collar. Two small copper rings hung at its end, with an hourglass between them; the thing looked scarcely more imposing than the watch I had chosen with Luna. Harry leaned forward and began reaching for it.

‘Please don’t touch the glass,’ she said. She drew it closer until he took his hand back. ‘One turn takes us back an hour. I have to control it.’

‘Really back?’ Harry looked towards the clock, then at the small amount of sand in her hand. ‘To before any of this happened?’

‘Earlier today, if I turn it three times. We would still have lived these hours.’ Hermione looked at each of us as she spoke. ‘There would be another Harry, another Oswald and another me going through the afternoon. We mustn’t meet ourselves.’

Ron stared at her. ‘That’s how you get to all those classes?’ he asked, shifting against the pillows to see the glass better.

‘McGonagall arranged permission at the end of second year. I’ve been using it for my third-year timetable, and I wasn’t allowed to tell you.’ She kept the chain gathered in her other hand. ‘It’s called a Time-Turner.’

I remembered the permission for her impossible timetable and the explanation she could not give us. The little glass made those separate conversations fit, but I still had to look at Dumbledore to reassure myself that we were discussing a real object. He was listening while Hermione described what she had been taught.

‘People panic if they see themselves,’ she said. ‘They can think they’ve found an impostor and cast before anyone explains. We stay together, keep out of sight and leave the glass alone once I’ve turned it.’

‘How do we come back?’ Harry asked. He was still leaning towards the device, though he kept his hands on the bed now.

‘By waiting. We live through those three hours again and return here when the versions of us in these beds have just left.’ Hermione checked the clock as though it were the most ordinary part of the explanation.

‘A quarter past seven,’ Dumbledore said. ‘You would arrive at a quarter past four, before your visit to Hagrid.’

I pulled back my left cuff and compared my watch with the ward clock. The hands agreed closely enough to show how little time we had before he meant us to begin, and how much of what we had done was supposed to fit into those three turns.

‘What do you want us to do?’ I asked. Hermione lowered the glass slightly, waiting for his answer with me.

‘Look at what happened outside Hagrid’s hut. There may be more than one innocent life you can help tonight.’ Dumbledore turned towards Harry. ‘Black is in the upper room of the Dark Tower. The Aurors intend to leave him alone after seven, with the door watched from the landing.’

Harry looked towards the windows. Dumbledore waited until he turned back before continuing, his voice quiet enough not to carry beyond the curtain.

‘If you find a safe means of bringing him out without meeting them, it will give us time to pursue the evidence. If you cannot, return here. You are not to fight your way past Ministry officers.’

‘And you’ll still be here?’ Hermione asked. She held the glass still between her fingers rather than beginning to unwind the chain.

‘I shall.’ Dumbledore let the answer stand while Harry glanced at the dressing visible at my collar.

‘Can you go?’ Harry asked me. I moved my feet to the floor and waited for the room to remain steady before trying to stand.

My knee hurt, but it held. The shoulder would allow less than I wanted from it, and the short sleep had not made the afternoon disappear from the rest of me.

‘I can walk,’ I said. ‘I’m not fit for another battle.’ Dumbledore said he was not asking me for one, and I looked at Hermione’s hand around the glass before deciding.

‘We stay clear of our other selves. Nobody touches it except Hermione, and if one of us can’t keep going, we stop and get help.’ I waited for Harry and Hermione to agree. ‘Then I’m coming.’

This story has been stolen from NovelPhoenix. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Ron shifted towards the edge of his bed, looked at the support beneath his leg and stopped himself. For a moment he seemed ready to argue anyway, but he settled back against the pillows instead.

‘Three hours for you,’ he said. ‘A moment for me?’

‘If we come back when we should.’ Hermione extended the chain, checking that it would reach around the three of us. ‘You need to stay here, Ron.’

‘I know. Try to make it the right moment, then.’ He watched me fasten the pouch at my waist and put a hand on the sound side of his mattress.

‘We will,’ I said. I checked the flap once more; the two new Patronus pieces were in their dry covers, unspent. Dumbledore rose to meet Pomfrey, who was speaking to somebody beyond the curtain, and took the statements with him.

Harry stood beside me with his own wand. We bent our heads so Hermione could put the chain around all three of us without dragging it over my shoulder, and I watched the long hand on the ward clock reach the mark.

‘Now,’ I said. Hermione turned the glass once, twice, then a third time, and the hospital wing moved around us.

Ron blurred into a shape I could not hold in view. His bed seemed to empty and fill, figures flashed through the space beside the curtain, and light shifted across the floor too quickly for me to decide where it came from. My stomach lurched; I stayed still because I had no idea which direction I would fall if I moved.

The room settled around an empty bed. Ron was gone, the curtain stood open and the windows held a little of the afternoon’s colour. Hermione checked the clock before taking the chain off our necks.

‘Quarter past four,’ she said. I looked at my watch, which still showed quarter past seven, and held it out to her.

‘You brought it with you,’ she explained. ‘Set it to that clock. We’ll use the time here.’

I pulled the crown out and turned the hands back three hours. It was such an ordinary adjustment that it took me a moment to understand what I had done; then the movement tugged at my shoulder, reminding me that I had brought the dressing and the wound with me too.

Harry looked at Ron’s empty bed. Somewhere else, our friend was still on his way to the hut, with a leg that had never been bitten by Sirius Black.

‘We should go before somebody comes in,’ I said. We listened at the door until a set of footsteps passed and faded towards the stairs, then slipped into the corridor.

It looked exactly as I had expected, which was harder to accept than the moving room. We took the quieter way down, pausing at each turn and waiting for two students arguing over an essay to clear the floor below us. By the end of the covered passage, I had almost begun to treat this as an ordinary attempt to avoid a teacher.

Then I saw Hermione on the slope with her wand raised. I stopped so abruptly that Harry caught the back of my robe, and the Hermione beside me drew a sharp breath.

I pulled him behind a stone pillar and made room for her. Below us stood my own back, close enough that I could have called to the boy wearing it; believing the explanation in the ward had done very little to prepare me for the sight.

‘Leave it,’ I whispered when Hermione’s fingers closed round her wand. ‘I mean him. Me. I’ll get there.’

Harry pressed his mouth shut. Down the slope I stepped between the other Hermione and the boys, and from here I could see her anger more clearly than I had when I was standing beside her. We watched in silence until Malfoy turned towards our passage.

‘He’s coming here,’ I said. We moved off the path and crouched behind the low wall bordering the grass, Harry steadying my elbow while I found a position my knee would tolerate.

Malfoy’s voice passed close, followed by Crabbe’s heavier footsteps. I stared at the earth beneath the wall until all three had gone, and Hermione waited a few more seconds before looking over. When she signalled that it was clear, the four of us below were already walking towards Hagrid’s hut.

I watched Ron’s uninjured stride until my other self knocked on the door. Then I led Harry and Hermione down by the fence, keeping the hut between us and the windows facing the slope. This walk was slower than the first one; I had to think about where every foot went.

Harry saw Buckbeak before I did and touched my sleeve. The hippogriff stood beyond the vegetable patch with his chain running to the post, tugging at the earth with one talon. He lifted his head at a sound inside, alive and impatient.

I stopped behind the fence. I had heard an axe and Hagrid’s shout, then watched a rat run towards Ron; I had never seen the blade strike Buckbeak. Everything else had happened inside my own head.

‘More than one innocent life,’ I said. Hermione looked from me to the hippogriff, and her hand tightened on the fence.

‘He meant Buckbeak too.’ She glanced towards the slope, already looking for the men who would come down it.

‘We can get him away,’ I said. There was room to approach from the other side of the hut, where Hagrid would not be watching, and we knew when the officials would go indoors. For the moment we had a little space outside the afternoon everyone else remembered.

‘They’re coming,’ Harry warned. Dumbledore had appeared with Fudge and the executioner, whose axe moved against his leg as he walked. Harry began to rise, and I caught his sleeve.

‘Wait until they’ve seen him,’ I said. ‘If he’s gone when they arrive, they’ll blame Hagrid. Let them see him here, then wait until Hagrid’s with us on the path and they’re looking the other way.’

Hermione followed the fence with her eyes. ‘Behind the pumpkins,’ she said, pointing out the cover between us and Buckbeak.

‘If he’ll follow me.’ I lowered my head when he glanced towards our movement and waited until he looked back at the hut. On the slope, the executioner adjusted his grip on the axe, and I watched the distance he still had to walk.