If She Followed The Rules
Max scowled in frustration.
Kate elbowed her, and offered a reassuring smile. “Hey - what’s that scowl doing on my bestie’s face, huh?”
Max’s scowl softened into a smile.
And then vanished again with a sigh.
“Just… this is really frustrating.”
Kate reached forward, and pet the pineapple tap-dancing on her desk on the head. Or top, anyway. “Good job.”
Max sighed at her own pineapple - laying on the desk, completely prone.
“...I don’t get it,” Kate said, peering at her pineapple too. “You did the incantation right! You’re clearly putting lots of emotion behind it! And your wand movement is perfect! You’re really good at most types of magic - why can’t you do charms?”
“Tell me about it,” Max muttered. “Tarantallegra.”
Her pineapple didn’t even roll over.
“Tarantallegra,” she said again - a little more forcefully, this time.
Nothing.
“Hey - it’s alright, Max,” Kate murmured, patting her shoulder sympathetically. “You’re really good at transfiguration! I bet with just a few of those tutoring sessions, you’ll be at the same level as the rest of us! When’s your first one?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Well, I bet you’ll see a ton of improvement just from one!” Kate said, giving her a hopeful smile.
“Tarantallegra,” Max said, flicking her wand a little more sharply than was strictly necessary.
A chunk of the pineapple decayed. Green-and-blue mold grew between the crevices, and a thick, black liquid seeped from it.
Max sighed. Kate raised both her eyebrows, looking a little scared.
“...A ton of improvement,” she said again - though this time, she seemed to be more trying to convince herself than Max.
A tiny spurt of pineapple juice, tinted grey, burst from the fruit.
Max sighed again.
Once charms class finished, Max stepped into the closest closet - a slightly risky move in Hogwarts, but one that worked out - and sighed.
...Alright. Time to use this thing.
Her hands reached up to her neck, and pulled the time turner out from underneath her shirt for the first time all day.
She fingered the chord of it.
And sighed.
“...Okay.”
Her fingers wrapped around the hourglass. It seemed to burn in her palm.
She turned it once.
A pause.
She blinked.
...Nothing had happened.
She glanced down at the turner.
No cracks. No sand spilling out. No obvious malfunctions.
So… had it…
She opened the door to the closet - and nearly jumped three feet in the air at the wall of sound that hit her.
The hallway was full.
...Just like it had been an hour ago, when she’d gone to Charms class.
A shiver dripped down her spine.
Her eyes ran up and down the corridor - and found Brooke.
She rushed out - pushing through the crowd - and found herself next to her Ravenclaw friend.
Brooke glanced to her side - and her eyebrows darted up.
“Max? I thought you were in the dorms getting stuff for charms.”
“Oh. Uh, I took a shortcut,” Max said, grabbing Brooke’s arm to pull her along. “Come on, let’s get to History.”
“What? I thought I had History with the Slythe-?”
“The teacher made an exception. Go to them about it, if you’re curious,” Max said, shouldering through the crowd and making sure to temper her tone into something icy. Like Brooke was offending her.
“...Alright.”
Max barely repressed a sigh of relief.
“Let’s go.”
History was as boring as usual. Max took meticulous notes, of course, but she could barely stay awake for it. Her hand moved practically on its own, recording a whole four pages of tight script worth of pure boredom.
She stayed for the whole two blocks. Two hours of pure, unadulterated torture.
Her fingers found their way around the chord of her time turner more than once. Mind on nothing but how… sudden the shift had been. How unnoticeable. Her stomach hadn’t gone into her throat, the world hadn’t spun around her. Just… one moment in the future, the next, in the past.
It… wasn’t very scary.
Eventually, the sickening feeling that came with doing something that could be dangerous began to ease, as the universe didn’t start screaming at her for breaking its rules.
Everything was fine.
She never came close to encountering her past self. Nothing changed. When she met up with Kate, after class, she just asked where Max had gone. Max said she’d forgotten her ink, and had gone back to get it.
And then they all went to the Gryffindor dorms, to hang out and talk until six. When dinner came. Brooke went off to do… whatever Brooke did when she wasn’t talking to them. Steph dropped by with Rachel and was very excited to learn the muggle card game ‘rummy’. Unsurprisingly, though, Rachel ended up winning. Brooke usually won, purely because she had such a fantastic poker face, but Rachel had the smarts and instincts of a vulture. She gobbled them up like prey.
Chloe won a single time, too, because she managed to lose all her cards so quickly. Kate won a single time, too, through pure luck and a dumb discarding of an ace from Rachel. Steph lost horribly every round and barely had a firm grasp on the rules by the end, but she was so happy playing with them that she celebrated just as much as the winners by the end.
And Max pretended like she couldn’t see all of Kate’s cards and threw a game or two.
By the time dinner rolled around, Max’s anxiety had all but dissolved. The gentle weight against her chest felt like just that - a gentle weight. Not a burning hot coal or a steel anchor.
Maybe time travel wasn’t really that dangerous. Maybe if she just followed the rules, she’d end up fine.
She slept soundly for the first time since she’d gotten the turner.