The Time-Turner
James was more of a practical person when it came to the past and the stories he carried with his name. She wasn’t. Late at night, she would keep her eyes open and fantasize of the stars adapting their melodies to her wishes. If things had been different…
“Don’t do that.”
While growing up, her mother’s words on the war had been few and limited. On time, Aurore recognized it was not because of the lack of thoughts she had to share, but because they would fly away from her mother’s reach before she could realize. Her father, on the other hand, didn’t have any trouble to retain his memories on the war, but he was particularly wary on those. He never refused to answer Aurore’s questions on the subject, but Aurore could notice the change on his voice and the avoidance on his eyes whenever he unleashed his tongue and recalled out loud the years previous to the Liberation Front. After that, he would fight shy of her for days and Aurore wouldn’t know what to do to fix the split between her father and her, so she had stopped asking.
She tried to find other means to fulfill her need to understand the horrors in the war. Books weren’t enough. There were thousands of them that would speak of the war, and not only historical compendiums. Every month, someone would publish a book portraying some important and very specific event of the war, or one biographing just another unfortunate victim of the Repopulation Program. Yet, she would always hold them with somewhat disappointment, as if her hands were quite empty. There was always something the authors had said wrong and something they hadn’t say at all.
She looked at James. “It’s so unfair.” She murmured, fondling the time-turner between her fingers. Her words flew on the air, stood between her and him like a snitch flapping its wings. “I know you think about it, too. If things had been different…”
He was looking at her carefully, holding her eyes into hers as if she was a delicate thing to treat. Aurore supposed she was. She had been on James’ position only a few years ago, when he confiscated the time-turner from Yaxley. Then he had been the one deliberating the way things could have been. Better. Happier. He wouldn’t be a martyr’s son. He’d still have a father. Her mother wouldn’t shed tears over her family album, running her finger through the six siblings she lost in the war. She wouldn’t stand petrified when walking on the Great Hall, where her mother had seen her children die.
“Ro…”
“We have the chance to write a new story, James.”
Her fingers were holding the time-turner tentatively. James was looking at it too. It would be so easy. She had read about it on books. How she had to turn the clock hand and wait. Normal time-turners could only go back in time a few hours, but those no longer existed. The one Yaxley had created would travel with her to as many years as she turned the clock hand, or so she hoped. 1996, she thought. The year her father committed her first murder.
She had meditated about it largely. There were plenty of events that could have been the war’s detonating. Tom Ryddle was born in 1926. Why not kill him right there, when he was nothing but just a new-born? As cruel as it might appear, Aurore doubted anyone would miss him and she was sure that the world would be a better place without him. To kill a new-born was no sin if to let him live meant the death and torture of thousands. Yet, Aurore didn’t want to risk the time-turner and break it in the attempt to turn its hand the equivalent of over a century.
So, she accepted that Voldemort would get the chance to grow up and to become who he became. And she embraced the fact that the First Wizarding War was going to take place because, if James’ grandparents didn’t get together, the Chosen One wouldn’t have been born and Aurore was unsure of the course the war could follow. She preferred not to take such risk and called James’ grandparents a necessary loss. She went on, crossing out years. Voldemort had reappeared in 1991, but James’ father had defeat him. And he had tried to take control of Hogwarts’ through the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets in 1992, but he had also been defeated. 1994 was a tricky year to decide on. Aurore had to admit it was the year in which Voldemort regained most of his strength. Still, he hadn’t regained power and once again, James’ father got to survive, even when Cedric Diggory didn’t. She also called him a necessary loss. 1995 could have been the year, but Aurore considered it long enough to find the multiple flaws in her plan.
Then came 1996. It was simple, clean, and quick. There wouldn’t be dead. There wouldn’t be murderers. All she had to do was to help her father from pronouncing the Death Curse on Albus Dumbledore and it’d be done. All of a sudden, the History books wouldn’t have her last name written in frightfulness. There’d be no book named Draco Malfoy: the High Reeve and Voldemort’s Hand. For a start, there’d be no High Reeve.
“We have discussed this, Ro.” James reminded.
“What do you think your mother would’ve been?” She asked, ignoring James’ excessive concern on her fingers playing with the time-turner.
“Well, she’s the DADA teacher.” He said, frowning. His eyes wouldn’t lose sight of the time-turner.
She rolled her eyes and left it on the railing, driving off her fingers from the artifact.
“I know that.” She retorted. “I mean, if the war wasn’t a thing. If it hadn’t happened… If things had been different…” She added, guiding James’ attention to her voice and progressively far from the time-turner. “What do you think your mother would’ve been? Not because of obligation or because some moral duty but because she dreamed of that when she was little, the way you dreamed of being an auror.”
James seemed to be trying to recall something but was unable to. “I always assumed she wanted to teach DADA.” And before Aurore could say anything, he added: “It’s not like it was her only offer. She could’ve been anything she wanted after she killed Voldemort. You know, she even got an offer from the International Confederation.”
“It was the bare minimum.” Aurora pointed out. “She was the last member of the Order. It’s kind of a deadly remark of their incompetence. If they had intervened before and done the job they were supposed to do, the entire Order wouldn’t have died.” Aurore wasn’t an ignorant to the fact that her father had hunted and murdered most of them, but she found it to be irrelevant. Her father had done what he had to do. “There can’t be heroes where people already have martyrs. It’s easier to praise the dead.”
Abruptly, James looked somewhat tired and annoyed of Aurore.
“I know. I was just saying that my mom did chose to be the DADA teacher.” He defended himself.
James looked uncomfortable. Aurore and him had actually talked about it day in day out while growing up, but there had been a moment to stop. They couldn’t live dwelling on a past that wasn’t even theirs. It had been a special occasion when James showed up on her room with the time turner years ago. They had talked for hours until Aurora had convinced him to give her the time-turner. And now was a special occasion too. The only difference was that Aurora was harder to convince than James. Her mother would always say she had inherited her parents’ stubborn personality. Once she clasped her fingers around something, there was little to do. She simply wouldn’t let it go.
“Ro, there’s really nothing we can do about it.”
There was. It would only take thirty turns to the clock’s hand. She had made the calculations. The plan was so easy, so perfect. There’d be no war. No losses. No Repopulation Program. Her father wouldn’t be a murderer and her mother’s mind wouldn’t be teared to pieces. It only takes a piece to overthrow the domino, and Dumbledore’s death was that piece.
“My father could’ve been a mediwizard.” She said instead. He had denied it, though. Only her mother would admit it, admiring his temple while repairing the injuries Aurore would rarely manage to get. “It’s a big contrast. You know, with the High Reeve title.”
James nodded. “He do is great at healing. I still remember the first time I fell off the pear three. He practically made me a new leg and even promised he wouldn’t tell anything to my mother.”
Aurore let go of a small laugh. “You wouldn’t stop crying, it was so funny.”
“You were crying too” James retorted, indignation creeping around his tongue. “, and unlike me, you didn’t have your leg torn to pieces.”
“Unlike you, I knew how to climb trees without destroying essential parts of my body to mobilize.”
“Liar.” James said, pride inflating his words. “You were way too scared to even follow my courageous lead.”
She laughed with him. He was right. During her first years, Aurora hadn’t done much but to follow her father around the house like a shadow. When she grew up enough to mark the pace of her own steps, she decided to follow James’ instead. Yet, James had always been way too adventurous for his own good. She needed to take some precautions. Though from time to time she would dare to take unnecessary risks to prove something, most of the time she would simply remain on the edge of the drama. Close enough to assist James in case he got hurt and far enough not to be the one who got hurt.
As their laughs started to fade, a contemplative silence installed between them. She saw James’ peeking at the time-turner, that was still laying on top of the railing. The darkness of the night was starting to recede, clearing the path for the first splashes of light over the horizon. Aurora choked a yawn in her throat.
“What about your mother?” James asked. The question took Aurora by surprise. “What would she have been?”
Aurora didn’t know. There weren’t many things her mother still remembered before the war. Her father would sometimes fill those empty lines Aurora had about her mother, but Aurora could notice it was also a though subject to dive into for him. Most of the times, he would only allow himself to talk about things Aurore already knew of her mother. Of how she needed to keep her mind occupied. Of how she would ace everything she got into. Of how she could create anything her mind could dream of, of how she could make it work no matter how impractical it sounded. Of how she would catch him off guard because she was always one step ahead, one page ahead. Sooner than later, it became a tale Aurore already knew of memory. Those were such abstract knowledges to keep about her mother. Aurore had to search for the other pieces of her somewhere else.
Her mother had been a healer before the Repopulation Program, but Aurore had never actually seen her healing something. She would barely practice magic anymore. Aurora would constantly feel it as a loss of her own. She couldn’t imagine what it would feel to be deprived of her own magic, her own gifts.
When she moved into London and people started seeing her mother in her, she had felt out of place first. She would always have to pretend she didn’t know who she was being identified it, deny her own mother. After a few encounters, she discovered it was a great way to discover who her mother used to be. Most people who took her for her mother were people she had studied with or people she had healed during the war. However, they would always describe someone exceptionally good at her tasks. The best witch of her class.
Lavender Brown, who lost an eye during the war, shed tears through her remaining eye while reminiscing of her at the Three Broomsticks. Aurore had put on glasses and pretended to be doing a memorial for the Daily Prophet. Ms. Brown had shared room during her Gryffindor years and had so many stories about her mother. She could tell how many nights she would keep her wand lit up to illuminate her books and how many nights she had escaped her room only to fulfill some adventure with her best friends Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. Ms. Brown could even tell that she would never be late to class, but in third year she seemed to have some trouble to cope with her horary and she barely slept at all.
She laughed with sadness when she remembered how jealous she had been while helping her to prepare for the Winter Ball in fourth year. Viktor Krum had been the most desired boy to all the girls in Hogwarts and Aurore’s mother had been the one he invited her. How much wouldn’t Ms. Brown give up now just to have the chance to go back to that moment and feel joy for what she had been given. To be sorry for not being nice enough, for not being thankful enough. Even remembering her jealously, Ms. Brown enjoyed the memory of her talking to Aurore’s mother in her room about Viktor Krum. It had been a bright day. The world had become a tougher place after that.
“I never got to talk about something like that again.” Ms. Brown had said. “Not to her. We weren’t that close, but… I shared room to her for years. She… she gave me a book on third year, for my birthday. Charms and Potions for Beautiful Witches. I learned this spell that would make my hair go pink and I used it until the war started.” She paused and closed her only eye. Inevitably, Aurore’s eyes traveled around Ms. Brown’s hair. It was light brown colored, almost blonde, but it was starting to go white in some parts. She gave Aurore a smile crooked in pain. “We barely had time or energy to dwell on superficialities during the war. Then she went to study and become a healer and the only place you would find her was the hospital. The emergency hall. One just wouldn’t sit and catch-up there.”
“I don’t know.” Aurore finally said. She didn’t know what her mother would’ve been if things had been different. She could’ve been whatever she wanted to be. She was smarter than anyone. “She never got the chance to be anything but what the war demanded of her.”
There wasn’t much rest of her anymore. Aurore had seen her mother’s own memories consume her until she started to resemble an empty shell. Hers was a cruel way to survive. She took the time-turner from the railing and hold it on her left hand. Rather distantly, she noted that the sky was clearer than it had been five minutes ago. The sound of the waves crashing against the rocks had intensified.
She looked at James. Five years ago, he had been crying in front of her to convince her to play God and re-write the story. That James was older and had kissed her as if he needed her to breathe her soul. That James had looked into her eyes as if he needed to make sure she was still real and had hold her as if she was going to disappear beneath her touch any second. The one who was sharing the rise of the sun with her seemed rather sad.
Aurora released the air her lips were holding in a heavy sigh.
“Don’t you ever think…” She started. “We could be something else too, if things were different?”
James doubted. “I guess we would.” He spoke. “But I wouldn’t want to risk what we already are.”
“It could be better.” She simply said, in a hollow attempt to convince him.
“You wouldn’t know. Ro… just think about it. The fact that our parents survived was almost a miracle. Everyone died. Do you really want to take for granted our lives? Risk them for the possibility of something you don’t even know?”
Aurora looked at the time turner. Her thumb was patiently resting on the clock hand’s surface. Only five turns. It would be enough. It would take her with the James who was already convinced. The one who would agree with her: there was something better waiting for them, far away from the war’s aftermath they had been born in. Five turns.
Instead, she looked at the boy she had in front of her. Her James. The one she had grew up with. The one she had sent letters to for years, the one who had visited her every summer and every Christmas after he moved to London. The one she had talked for hours right on that balcony, standing below the moonlight. She knew this James like the back of her hand.
“Kiss me.” She said then. His expression changed, bewildered. “Please, James.”
“Rory, I don’t want to… You know I don’t…”
“Please.” She repeated. The pleading tone swam in her eyes.
James didn’t seem to consider much after that. One of his hands was raised to brush her left cheek while he drew his face closer to his. Aurora closed her eyes, waiting for it.
When James’ lips crashed against hers, the clock’s hand began to turn.