Parallel

1. Auburn

Despite the roaring fireplace, the air was noticeably chilly. The crackling of the flames, usually a sound of comfort and solace, possessed little calming power in the wake of a certain individual's disbelief.

"The Sword of Gryffindor, Ginny? Are you insane?"

"One hundred percent sane."

Eve Laurence gaped at her friend. "Um, clearly not! What do you even want the Sword of Gryffindor for? If you get caught, I bet you Snape would be more than happy to bring back that old punishment of hanging students by their toenails in the dungeons!"

"I'm not going to be the one to take the sword, Eve. You are."

Eve blinked, wondering if her hearing had just short-circuited. "Come again?"

"You're gonna be the one to take the Sword of Gryffindor from the Headmaster's office."

"Wha—no way. God, what are you saying? You pull me from the hallway and drag me in here to tell me this—this ridiculous idea?"

"Eve, you haven't even listened to what we've got to say!"

"You're right, Ginny—I don't know the logic behind whatever this is that you're planning, and I don't want to know." Eve plowed on before her friend could interrupt. "I don't even have to listen to your reasoning to know that somebody's going to get hurt. These little rebellious acts are getting out of hand—this isn't like graffitiing the walls at midnight or talking back to the Carrows in class anymore! You're talking about sneaking a Founder's artifact out of the Headmaster's office! You're smarter than this, Gin. Be reasonable, please—forget about this, and let's go onto living our everyday lives. God knows how long we've got of those."

"Eve." Another voice entered the fray, diverting Eve's incredulity away from Ginny Weasley and directing it onto the new speaker. Neville Longbottom held up his hands placatingly from where he sat cross-legged on the rug by the fireplace, right next to a serene-looking Luna Lovegood. "Just let us explain first, and then think about it."

Eve gave a hollow laugh, which reverberated around the room. "Think about what? Think about the fact that you want to send me on some 'mission' to retrieve the Sword of Gryffindor from Snape's office? I don't know if this is a prank or if the fumes from yesterday's Angel's Trumpet Draughts in Potions have wormed their way in your brain."

Ginny, who was seated opposite of Eve on the rug, grasped her hands and pulled her forward. "This isn't just another useless concoction of a plan to piss off the Carrows, Eve! This is about Harry! This is about the Ministry feeling as though they've got the power to take yet another thing from us! And I know it sounds like I'm just spewing a bunch of shite about 'fighting for what's right' and all that, but look at the lot of us!" Ginny swept her arms out in a horizontal arc, letting go of Eve's hands for a moment before reclasping them hard with determination, as if the intensity of her own words was igniting her strength. "This isn't so much a school as a bloody version of Azkaban! We've got dementors swarming around the castle, trolls patrolling the corridors, and students looking as though they're on the brink of death—and they might as well be—dragging their feet around because the Ministry dictates it all. That sword belongs to Harry, and it's more than just a possession—it's a symbol for resistance! Now Harry's on the run, fighting for his life, while the one thing left to him by Dumbledore is gleaming in the office of that snake, that-that murderer. We're here now, and if we've got a chance amongst all this to take back the sword, why shouldn't we give it a go?"

Ginny's breath was labored by the time she spoke her final word. Her shoulders slumped forward a small margin at the end, as if the passionate outburst had drained her and diminished the fervor she had possessed only seconds before.

Nobody spoke. Eve stared at Ginny, feeling the unexplainable whirlwind of conflict that had started brewing in her chest during her friend's speech intensifying further into a full-blown tornado.

She felt Ginny's desperation, felt the despair feeding off her friend. After all, wasn't that what was going through her mind daily too? Thoughts of rebellion, thoughts of revenge—it further fueled her hatred for the current authorities of the school, for what Hogwarts had allowed itself to succumb to.

Hogwarts wasn't Hogwarts anymore.

Instead, it was now a smoking battleground characterized by fear and persecution. With a plethora of new oppressive policies enforced by the Ministry, such as mandatory attendance by Muggle-borns, the political climate of the school seemed to loom over education. Daily tortures, beatings, and punishment for students—it was like a playground for the Carrows.

Amycus and Alecto Carrow—Eve didn't like thinking about them. Siblings who'd joined Snape in presiding over Hogwarts at the beginning of the year, the Carrows ranked near the top on Hogwarts's current hierarchy of authority—meaning anyone who questioned them or their authoritative measures would be on the receiving end of multiple Crucios.

Amycus looked very much like a misshapen sloth, while Alecto bore a striking resemblance to an old snapping turtle. Defense Against the Dark Arts (now known as just the Dark Arts, though no student called the class that if they could help it) was now 'taught' by Amycus, but it had devolved from learning into just target practice: using the Cruciatus curse on students who'd earned detentions.

Not that Muggle Studies with Alecto was any better. A mandatory class for all students now, Muggle Studies consisted of nothing but the female Carrow comparing Muggles to dirty animals and verbally assaulting them in favor of wizards. In other words, it was one and a half hours of daily denunciation.

Eve hated those two lowlifes, who derived their power from abusing helpless students, but what she hated more was the fact that they could still inspire a small iota of fear within her.

Her other professors, like Flitwick and McGonagall, were equally as powerless as the students. The authorities of the school were now backed by the Ministry, an all-encompassing governing body that had become corrupt from the inside out, a rotting form of authority that nevertheless held all the power. There was nothing a small band of professors could accomplish against such an institution—and so they didn't try, continuing passively in their teaching roles at the school, where they could at least keep an eye out for the wellbeing of their students.

Eve's seventh year had so far felt more like a survival game come to life than anything else—her N.E.W.T. exams, which should've been her top priorities this year, were perpetually the last worries on her mind. Instead, constant fear for the safety of herself, her classmates, and her loved ones beyond the castle walls pervaded her brain like a pest. The atmosphere inside the castle was smothering, like widespread air pollution, carrying around a stench of fear that was now so omnipresent. Nowhere was safe anymore—even the Gryffindor Common Room, which had been Eve's safe haven for her past six years as a Gryffindor at Hogwarts, now felt compromised.

Often, Eve felt like how she'd often felt when playing chess with Ron—arbitrary and devoid of knowledge. Her chess skills were abysmal, though that hadn't ever mattered until the current time. Now, she was just another pawn in the game, navigating her way blindly across the chessboard as her opponent made swift and calculated moves, ones that could take her by surprise and corner her at any moment. It wasn't just Snape and the Carrows that Eve was up against—it was the entirety of the corrupt Ministry. It didn't matter that the Ministry was composed entirely of puppets, controlled and possessed—Eve and her classmates were just mere little pawns, hopeless against the tyranny unfolding before their eyes.

One would think that such an environment would've assumed a sort of artificial, lifeless quality to it, but no—everything was only amplified. The trepidation, the unknown, the radiating fear for the future—somehow, it felt all the more real.

Eve glanced around at her surroundings, her mind running at a mile a minute. She, Ginny, Neville, and Luna were seated on a wide oriental rug in front of a looming stone fireplace, intricate swirls of crimson wool running beneath their fingertips. The red velvet sofas lining the edges of the rug were embellished with golden embroidery, woven finely into the fabric. The red-gold color palette extended up the walls, evident by the Gryffindor banners strung high above heavy drapes and hanging below the stone ceiling. A roaring lion was depicted on one such banner, its mane gleaming to match the design of a twin banner nearby. Candles illuminated the areas of the room too far from the fireplace's reach, their flames flickering ever so slightly and causing their shadows on the walls behind them to dance. By one corner, a haphazard pile of books, looking to be on the verge of toppling over, rested on the wooden floor.

All in all, the Room of Requirement had molded itself into a flawless imitation of the Gryffindor Common Room.

In contrast to the warmth exuded by the setting, however, the Room's four occupants possessed only the worst of emotional turmoil. Eve didn't need a mirror to know that the expression now constantly on her own face was one of perpetual conflict. She observed her friends, noting the plain exhaustion on their faces. Neville was sporting multiple bruises and healing cuts on his face, gifts from his propensity to speak his mind in the Carrows' classes. They were easily-healable injuries, but Neville insisted on a natural mend, as though his intention was to wear them like badges of honor. Ginny's red hair—once so full of life—was lank, the spirit reflecting in Luna's heavy eyebags, which were shadowed purple. Her signature radish earrings were nowhere in sight.

A raw sort of desperation hung in the air, suffocating the room like a thick blanket, as if the ubiquitous helplessness of the castle had merged and squeezed itself into the room. It was a heavy, unbearable feeling, more so than ever before, as though Eve was finally at the precipice of drowning into the sea of despair she'd been wading through for so many weeks.

Perhaps that was what led her to then take a deep breath and punctuate the silence:

"Why me? And-and the old bat never leaves his office! How am I going to . . . to sneak in when he basically camps out in there twenty-four seven?"

Her words constructed no more than three sentences, yet the immediate shift in the air was palpable.

Neville, who had been hunched and clenching his fists during Ginny's monologue, straightened perceptibly. He scooted forward, and Eve could make out a small, hopeful gleam in his eyes. "Our plan is to carry this out during the Halloween feast, which, as you know, is a week from now. Obviously, now that Snape is Headmaster"—he said the word with a grimace—"he can't just skip out on the feast. Everybody's gonna be there: the students, the teachers, the Carrows. Snape and the Carrows are going to expect the entirety of Hogwarts to show up, which means that there won't be any troll security in the corridors during it, 'cause there'll be no students for them to patrol for in the first place."

Neville's proximity to the fireplace caused the left side of his face to appear washed with an orangey-gold glow, like shadows dancing across his skin. Eve was suddenly struck by how different the Neville in front of her was from the shy, nervous boy she'd befriended in her first year. "And why me? Why not Luna? Or you?"

He shook his head. "Ginny, Luna, and I are going to have to be at the feast, because I guarantee you the Carrows are going to keep an eye out for us three. They know us—they know it's us three who've been leading all those D.A. resistance movements from before."

Eve filled in the blank. "And since I've never publicly supported that stuff, they don't care about me. They won't be looking out for me during the feast."

"Exactly."

"The Nargles say that they'll help by swarming around Professor Snape's head during the feast." Luna spoke for the first time since the whole impromptu meeting had begun. "They don't like him either." She tucked her hair behind one ear and folded her hands in her lap, fixing her luminescent eyes upon a spot somewhere above Eve's shoulder.

Ginny gave a firm nod in Luna's direction. "And a thank you to them for that."

Meanwhile, Eve was frowning at Neville. "How long have you three been planning this?"

He shifted uncomfortably, pulling at his red-and-gold Gryffindor tie. "Um . . . a while." He shrugged apologetically. "Sorry, Eve. It's just . . . we knew you'd shut it down immediately if we told you at the start."

That was understandable. Anyone who knew Eve knew that she would've rejected the idea the moment she heard it.

It wasn't that she hated rebellion or standing up for her beliefs. No—quite the opposite, actually. Rather, she preferred operation through practical level-headedness over the brash Gryffindor impulsivity that always seemed to consume her friends throughout said rebellions; doing the background work just always appealed to her more than charging head first into action. In Neville's graffiti operations, she was the one to obtain the graffiti. When a Carrow said something especially angering in class, she bypassed direct confrontation in favor of sneakily charming said Carrow's soup to explode at dinnertime.

In the grand scheme of things, she was the 'behind-the-scenes' crew—safe away from the heat of the action, but contributing just as much. And, thus, the preferences of Eve's mind regarding her approach to action had subjected her to many years of affectionate debates by her friends.

"Eve should be in Ravenclaw," Harry had teased one day at breakfast during sixth year. "She's got none of that stupid impulsivity we do."

"Nah," Ron had said. "No Ravenclaw would be brave enough to sneak into McLaggen's trunk and Vanish every single article of clothing he owns just for Hermione's honor. Bloody brilliant, that was."

The two had then demonstrated their spectacularly short attention spans, moving on not even five seconds later to discuss Quidditch, while Eve and Hermione had continued to quiz each other for the Charms test they had later in the evening. It had been a nice day, now a fond memory floating in the back of Eve's brain archives.

Maybe Ron was wrong. These days, Eve barely felt like a Gryffindor anymore. Even her participation in all those previous D.A. rebellions, like the nightly graffiti projects, had been more so for the sake of doing it than because of courageous or defiant sentiments. Her motivation was waning; she had become just another ducked head in a maze of terror.

It was almost shameful.

Now, as Eve looked into the hopeful and determined eyes of her friends, surrounded where they sat by the illusion of a safe haven long lost, she felt a spark of that Gryffindor bravery flicker back to life within her. It was like her body was buzzing; the tornado within her had spread throughout every limb, that sentiment of conflict now transformed into one of determined resolution. It was long overdue, honestly.

Eve flexed her fingers and leaned forward.

"Okay, what's the plan?"

—

As Eve laid in bed that night after having spent four hours of her day reviewing the Operation Greasy Bat Lair Infiltration (as Ginny liked to refer to the Eve-stealing-back-the-Sword-of-Gryffindor-from-Snape's-office plan as) tactical machinations following her agreement to participate, she ruminated.

It wasn't that she was worried about getting in trouble for stealing the sword (which, of course, was inevitable, but that was another matter).

It was more so about the growing desperation permeating the Hogwarts student body that led to such a rebellious scheme being formed in the first place. Hopelessness was a standard now, but—to Eve—it had obviously crossed its threshold, leading students like Ginny, Neville, and Luna to turn to such dangerous measures to make a statement. Such an extremity of desperation bred damage.

It was a blatant recipe for disaster staring Eve straight in the face. People were only going to get hurt more. She wasn't eager to wake up one day to the news that a fellow classmate had been taken by the Ministry due to defiant behavior bordering on the extreme, or something like that.

Things are escalating, and it's only going to get worse from here.

Eve rubbed at her eyes, kicking off her blanket and sitting up from where she'd been musing in her bed. It was around one in the morning, and with such thoughts running loops around in her head, the last thing she could do was fall asleep.

At least her dormitory wasn't in the dungeons like the Slytherins' was (a bit of knowledge garnered from a specific second year anecdote from Harry). Eve didn't fancy her nightly lullabies to be in the form of anguished, tortured screams—after all, the Carrows had set up their 'torture station' in the dungeons, so the consequences of the multiple Cruciatuses cast throughout the days in there were most likely very audible to Eve's green-donning classmates.

She sighed and ran one hand through her hair, which was a knotted mess from all the tossing and turning she'd been doing in bed. Her fingers caught in a particularly tangled bit of hair, and her facial expression contorted into a grimace as she tried to force her fingers through the mess.

A light bit of pressure pressing into the side of Eve's neck paused her attempts. Frowning to herself, she carefully extracted her hand from her hair, reaching instead to the necklace chain straining against her skin.

Her hair was caught in the chain, she realized, and she reached towards her bedside table for her wand.

With a quiet "Lumos" (she made sure her bed curtains were drawn and Muffliato was cast so as to not disturb her roommates—after all, Lavender could be extremely cranky when she didn't get her full nine hours of beauty sleep) and some nifty one-handed work with her hair, the dreadful knot was no more within half a minute.

With her hair smooth once more, Eve reached behind her neck to unclasp the culprit, eager to avoid any more hair fiascos for the night. With a small click, the chain split at its fastener, and the smooth material slid down Eve's skin on both sides of her neck. It pooled into her awaiting palm, a small heap of metal.

Eve looked down. The tiny golden hourglass in her palm twinkled back up at her.

—

"Colloportus!"

The door sealed shut, Hermione's spell sealing her, Eve, Neville, and Harry in the new room, which was unfamiliar yet much welcomed by the four when compared to the setting from where they'd just escaped from.

Harry was whipping his head around in panic. "Where—where are the others?"

Horror dawned on Eve when she noticed the glaring absence of Ron, Luna, and Ginny, who'd been ahead of her—she'd assumed that they'd be waiting in this room.

"They must have gone the wrong way!" Hermione whispered in terror, taking a hesitant step forward. Neville quickly grabbed her shoulder and paused her movement, holding up a hand.

"Listen!"

A cacophony of footsteps and shouts was becoming audible from beyond the door Hermione had just sealed. The mixture of the Death Eaters' voices was enough to make Eve's entire body tremble.

"What do we do?" she asked no one in particular. Her voice sounded shaky even to herself.

Harry, who had his ear pressed up against the door, answered: "Well, we don't stand here waiting for them to find us, for a start. Let's get away from this door. . . ."

So they ran, quickly and quietly, Eve taking care to exert less pressure on her left leg, which had been grazed by an unidentified flyaway spell earlier. They ran past a shimmering bell jar where a tiny egg was hatching and unhatching, towards the exit into the circular hallway at the far end of the room.

They were almost there when Eve heard something large and heavy collide with the door Hermione had charmed shut.

"Stand aside!" said a rough voice. "Alohomora!"

As the door flew open, Eve gave into her first instinct and dived under a desk, sure that Harry, Hermione, and Neville would do the same. From where she was crouching, she could see the bottom of two Death Eaters' robes drawing near, their feet moving rapidly.

"They might've run straight through to the hall," said the rough voice.

"Check under the desks," said the other Death Eater.

Eve saw the knees of the Death Eaters bend. She gripped her wand tightly and took aim, ready to fire a spell.

"STUPEFY!" came Harry's voice, sounding as though it had originated from a few desks away from her. Sure enough, a jet of red light from the second desk over from Eve hit one Death Eater; he fell backward into a grandfather clock and knocked it over. There was a clatter from Eve's right: Neville had overturned his desk in his anxiety to help.

Eve inched herself forward next to Neville, using his overturned desk to hide herself as she carefully took aim at the second standing Death Eater. He was now pointing his wand at Hermione, who'd similarly crawled out from under her desk for a clearer shot.

The Death Eater sneered. "Avada—"

There was a blur of movement—Harry launched himself across the floor and grabbed the Death Eater around the knees, causing him to topple and his aim to go awry. Before Eve could utter a spell to help, Neville leapt over his overturned desk and, pointing his wand wildly at the struggling pair, cried, "EXPELLIARMUS!"

Both Harry's and the Death Eater's wands flew out of their hands and soared back toward the entrance to the Hall of Prophecy; both scrambled to their feet and charged after them, the Death Eater in front and Harry hot on his heels.

Oh no—Eve immediately scrambled to her feet and charged after them, refusing to allow Harry to potentially face a Death Eater wandless. She heard Neville's hurried sprint from behind her.

There was no time—the Death Eater was mere feet away from where his own wand laid.

"Get out of the way, Harry!" Eve screamed, taking aim as Harry flung himself sideways and—

"STUPEFY!"

"ACCIO!"

A jet of red light whizzed past Eve's ear and right over the Death Eater's shoulder, hitting a glass-fronted cabinet on the wall—it started falling to the ground, a scene that suddenly seemed to play in slow motion in Eve's vision, and then—less than a second later—before the cabinet could make contact with the floor and no doubt shatter in a million shards of glass, Eve felt her colorless Accio make contact.

But no—the cabinet remained where it was, continuing its descent downwards. Instead, a small golden object was zooming through the air, looking as though it was headed straight for Eve—it slammed into her chest, the impact strangely substantial for an object of such small stature.

Eve stopped and instinctively reached upwards with her free hand, fumbling with the object and managing to get a tight grip on it. She held it to eye level, squinting as she tried to make sense of what it exactly was and why she'd summoned it instead of its parent cabinet—

There was a loud smash, jarring Eve out of her trance and prompting her to leap back into action, because she was in the Ministry and she was in the midst of a battle with Death Eaters after all, and the small golden object was shoved into her robe pocket and forgotten about in the moment. As Eve sent a Stunner towards the Death Eater, who'd snatched his wand back up, she could make out a bizarre phenomenon from the corner of her eye—the glass-fronted cabinet had burst apart in an explosion of glass (which indicated the origin of the smashing sound Eve had heard), but no—it sprang back up onto the wall, fully mended, then fell down again, and shattered—

Later, when a horde of Ministry officials had arrived on scene, all scrambling around in panic after Voldemort's surprise appearance in the Department of Mysteries, the last thing on anyone's mind had been to check the robes of a schoolgirl who'd clearly been in need of medical attention. Eve had hence been carted away to St. Mungo's, her body drained from exhaustion and her newly-acquired possession safely tucked away on her person.

It had turned out that the dark spell that had grazed Eve's leg had spread up to her thigh exponentially during the time from when she'd received it to when she'd arrived at St. Mungo's. While it hadn't been too serious of an injury, it had meant prolonged hospital time for adequate healing. This then had meant an extension of free time for Eve, who'd spent the first few days of her stay at St. Mungos entertained by her visitors, whether they had been her classmates or her mother. Eventually, though, as the days had passed on, the modes of entertainment available to Eve had decreased drastically, leaving behind a bored girl confined to a boring hospital room, which had provided ample opportunity for her rediscovery of the little golden object in her robe pocket.

It had been a boring weekday morning, and Eve had just finished her sad little hospital breakfast of orange juice and eggs. She'd been bored (naturally), and it had been just her in her room, and she'd just happened to accidentally pat down on her robe pocket, and she'd felt a small bulge, and—with a start—she'd remembered the strange little golden object she'd hurriedly stuffed into her pocket during the battle, which had totally escaped her mind after the chaos of everything (Voldemort in the Ministry!), so she'd reached curiously into the pocket, eager to finally examine the object, and she'd pulled it out by its chain (while thinking, it has a chain?), and there it had been, gleaming in her hand.

That was how Eve Laurence found herself in possession of a Ministry-owned, illegal Time-Turner—and possibly one of the last functioning ones in Britain, based on an offhand detail Bill Weasley had mentioned to her about the Ministry's smashed case of Time-Turners when the Weasley family had come to visit her in St. Mungo's (she'd put two and two together after that).

Eve had later reflected on the Department of Mysteries battle itself, mostly the specific instance during when she'd acquired her Time-Turner. In retrospect, she realized how stupid the plan she'd been acting upon had been—naturally, she'd been panicked during the fight, and in the spur of the moment, she'd zeroed in on the Time-Turner cabinet, which had been lined up perfectly with her and the Death Eater. It had been the perfect parallel line: the Death Eater stood in front of Eve, and the cabinet loomed behind the Death Eater.

In her mind at the time, it had all made brilliant sense: summon the cabinet, and it would smash straight into the Death Eater. Never mind the fact that—had Eve's foolish plan actually come into fruition—the cabinet would've crashed into the man, yes, but it most likely would've then continued along its path and slammed right into her as well.

Honestly, she owed Neville a gigantic thank you for the fact that his Stunner had reached their dual target first. It was by the tiniest sliver of luck that her Accio had hit the cabinet after the glass cover had shattered but right before it had hit the ground and subjected itself to a never ending loop of bursting and mending.

Eve's intention, however, hadn't mirrored itself in her spell. She hadn't summoned the entire cabinet; instead, she'd managed to only summon one of its small inhabitants. And, while Eve was glad that that was what had occurred (both due to the avoidance of the disaster that most definitely would've followed had the cabinet been summoned and due to the unexpected gift that had been bestowed upon her because of her backfired spell), she was still confused as to why.

The most likely explanation for it, after much research on Eve's part, was her muddled mind, which had been spiked more with battle adrenaline than spellwork focus at the time. To cast Accio accurately, one must utter the spell clearly and arc their wand in a semicircle to the right. However, to summon the intended object accurately, said object must be clear in the caster's mind beforehand. Eve had been successful at point one (clearly), but it was point two she must've failed at. It made sense—she'd been in panic mode and had tried to summon the cabinet on a whim, which couldn't have been great for her concentration. Furthermore, at the time of the spell being cast, Eve wasn't familiar with the cabinet. She had had no idea what it was—only that it was a glass cabinet large and heavy enough to potentially squash a murderous Death Eater. That lack of knowledge of the object being summoned must've obstructed Eve's spell, as she hadn't been able to form a concrete idea of the cabinet in her mind before casting her Accio.

But why the Time-Turner? How come she didn't summon a bolt or screw or something insignificant from the cabinet instead? Perhaps it had something to do with her line of thought at that moment—maybe she'd been thinking along the lines of I don't have time! when she'd cast the spell, and maybe this relation to time in her mind had created some sort of connection to the Time-Turner. Eve really didn't know, and, to be honest, it sounded like a bit of a stretch, even to her (but then again, who knows? It was magic).

It was all conjecture, anyways, and she'd stop guessing possibilities after it had started to make her head hurt.

That had been two years ago. And, as always with passing time, things change. Now, in the present, the Time-Turner was more of a lifeline for Eve than a source of confusion and stress.

It was strange, in a way—she went from burying and keeping it in the very depths of her trunk to wearing it concealed on her person daily and being almost dependent on it in a way.

She'd had no use for it in sixth year, choosing instead to place it beneath piles and piles of her clothing in her trunk as though she could pretend that it didn't exist. It had been easier that way—she could live life as though she didn't own an illegal Time-Turner, and thus there would be absolutely no reason for her to ever get into trouble with the Ministry.

Of course, it had been scary—for the first few months after the Time-Turner had come into Eve's possession, she'd go and double check her trunk at least four times a day in fear of its discovery by somebody and, subsequently, her arrest (or whatever the Ministry did to Time-Turner thieves, if that was a regular thing).

Naturally, she'd considered returning it, which would've been the 'right thing to do.' But that option was quickly crossed off—it came with the difficult hassle of dealing with the Ministry that she was keen to avoid. A Hogwarts student walking into the Atrium to return the (possibly) last functioning Time-Turner in Britain would've only buried her further into the already-complex mess, seeing as she also had broken into the Ministry with her friends in the first place.

How did you get it before the cabinet smashed? Why did you get it? Did you do it on purpose? How come you stuffed it into your pocket instead of leaving it in the room? You summoned it? How come? Was this part of some sort of plot to break into and rob the Ministry? Young lady, we're going to need to conduct a full investigation on you.

Yeah, no. Returning it wouldn't have been a good idea. And, for a brief second, Eve had entertained the notion of divulging the secret to her friends and close ones, but she'd immediately rejected that as well. Even now, Eve could practically hear the responses her friends would've delivered had she followed through: Hermione's eyes would've widened comically, and she'd have said, "Eve, you need to return that to the Ministry right now! It's the right thing to do! I'll alert Professor McGonagall immediately!" Ron, no doubt, would've said something along the lines of, "Blimey, Eve! Can I give it a go?" while Harry would've been either excited or disappointed: "Wow, that's a real Time-Turner?" or "Eve, how come you didn't say anything earlier?"

Seventh-year Eve couldn't be more grateful for her past self's sensible decisions. Within the first week of seventh year, Eve had abandoned all resistance to using the Time-Turner and had dug it back up from the bottom of her trunk, using it to rewind time on two separate occasions.

The first time had been only the second day of school. The Carrows had already implemented the Cruciatus punishment the day before, and word of the brutal treatment had been spreading around the school like wildfire.

So, during lunch, when Ginny had grumbled about the detention she'd earned from Amycus for mouthing off at him in class, Eve had wasted no time to mutter a quick excuse, dash up to her dormitory, delve into her trunk, and pull out the Time-Turner. From the abundance of research she'd done on Time-Turners after coming into possession of one herself, she had known that they had a five-hour time limit, and she wasn't going to waste a second of it.

So, four turns later, it had been eight in the morning, and Eve had once again rushed down to breakfast.

"Ginny, whatever the Carrows say in class, do not talk back. I know it'll be tempting but . . . I mean, you know the horror stories. Just . . . don't do it. Promise me. "

Ginny had given her an odd look, but she'd reluctantly given Eve her word ("And, Eve, are you feeling alright?").

It had been all Eve could've done.

The morning had passed (again) in a blur of restless feet-tapping and stressful fidgeting on Eve's part, as her brain hadn't been able to do anything but dwell on whether her little breakfast warning had had any effect on the course of the day at all.

It had: Ginny had been detention-free (and very confused as to why Eve had kept pestering her during lunch on whether or not she'd received any detentions that day), and Eve had had a small win under her belt and a small spark of hope lit in her chest.

Her second time utilizing the Time-Turner during the first week of school had occurred in Slughorn's class of all places.

It was a relatively normal day so far—that was to say, the Carrows had handed out a minimal amount of detentions, and everyone was keeping to themselves.

Eve and Neville were in Potions with the Ravenclaws, learning about Armadillo Bile Mixture. Slughorn had a small flask of it, gleaming green in a way that was almost unnatural, sitting up on his desk, which he pointed to as he paraded around the classroom, chattering on and on about the potion's characteristics and properties.

"Now—ho! This little potion—oh, it looks small, but don't let that fool you! Highly dangerous, this one is—yes, highly dangerous. A very corrosive substance—it'll melt your skin off if it comes into contact with it! No, Ms Brown, don't look so worried! You won't be creating this potion today. Not to worry!"

Eve felt her eyelids slowly start to betray her, reality fading into oblivion as her body urged her to catch up on the sleep she'd sorely missed the past few days.

Then the unwelcome guest appeared.

"Sluggy!"

Eve's eyes snapped open, and she (like every other occupant in the classroom) whipped her head to the left, the voice she'd just heard familiar enough to raise goosebumps.

Amycus Carrow's robes billowed around from where he stood by the doorway, malicious leer present on his face and wand hanging loosely from his hand. He sauntered in, his eyes seeming to glow brighter with every step, as if he was enjoying the sudden silence and tension that his appearance had brought.

From where she sat, Eve felt like a statue; her limbs had suddenly ceased to function. She couldn't even lift her pinky if she tried. A quick glance around at her peers told her that they too were frozen to their seats, holding their breaths. It was like Amycus had walked in on a class of misbehaving children and had caught them with their hands in cookie jars—nobody was moving, all staring wide-eyed at the intruder. Next to Eve, Neville had paused his diligent note-taking on Armadillo Bile Mixture, his hand gripped tightly around his quill. There was a splatter of ink on the corner of his parchment.

Eve realized that even her breath was shallow, as if she'd unconsciously willed herself to breathe slowly in Amycus's presence. The revelation made her feel sick, and she tried to force herself to breathe normally.

"Sluggy, what's this you got on your desk?" Amycus didn't wait for an answer from Slughorn, who'd paused his walking and was sporting a very nervous expression on his face from where he stood by the side, and snatched up the Armadillo Bile Mixture. He examined it, his dissatisfaction obvious when he set the flask back down loudly. "Sluggy, what little potions have you got under your belt today? Any interesting ones? I've been pretty interested in potions myself, you see. So many different ones . . . so many different uses."

Slughorn had pressed his back against the wall, his mustache trembling. "I—ah, potions? Not—not very much in my inventory at the moment. It's only the fifth day of the school year, you see—been teaching more th-theoretical lessons so far. Haven't—haven't had time to brew anything interesting."

Amycus tilted his head, pasting on a mock frown and studying the professor. "Why, Sluggy, I'm disappointed. You and I are good friends, no? I thought I'd be able to turn to you for anything Potions-related. I just need a fun little potion for myself—you got anything you can give me?"

"Oh—I-I'm afraid not, Amycus. Nothing much here. Seventh year Potions consists mostly of theoretical, demonstrative l-learning, you see. Not many hands-on lessons." Slughorn twisted his hands together, looking anywhere but directly at the Carrow. "Today's Armadillo Bile Mixture lesson is just another one of these, ah, demonstrative l-lessons of the year. Not to say that demonstrative lessons aren't important, see—v-very valuable information!"

That was a lie—seventh year Potions consisted of more hands-on lessons than any other previous year. With N.E.W.T. exams for seventh-years to look forward to at the end of the year, it was only logical to fit as many practical lessons as possible into classes. Theoretical knowledge could be studied and crammed outside of class hours, but mixing ingredients and creating potions wasn't exactly something that could be practiced in the library.

Eve had a sneaking suspicion that Slughorn, like herself, knew exactly what Amycus wanted with a 'fun little potion.' He should be 'teaching' Defense Against the Dark Arts for first-years at this very moment. . . . Leaving in the middle of class to accost the Potions professor only meant that something must've happened for him to require a potion.

Eve wondered which poor first-year Amycus wanted to punish.

Meanwhile, there was a visible sort of frustration quickly accelerating across Amycus's face. A blood vessel was throbbing on his forehead, but he attempted what looked to be a smile. "Ah, really? I apologize for intruding on this very valuable lesson, then. I wouldn't want to . . . disrupt any longer."

He slowly turned on his feet, taking a sweeping look across the pupils of the classroom as he did so. Eve quickly diverted her eyes. Without another word, he made for the exit, his footsteps echoing in the otherwise silent classroom like the tickings of a bomb. All the students (and Slughorn) looked to be on the precipice of letting out collective sighs of relief.

Amycus paused at Slughorn's desk.

"Say, Sluggy, what exactly does this Armadillo Bile Mixture do?"

Slughorn's eyes expanded to the size of Galleons. Eve felt her heart constrict. No, no no no no.

"Sluggy, I asked you a question."

Slughorn was visibly sweating. Beads of perspiration gleamed on his shiny forehead as he glanced around the room in obvious panic. "It—nothing!"

"It does nothing?"

"N-nothing important! It does nothing important. Just a useless potion, really."

"Really."

"Y-yes."

Eve could see Amycus's eyes scanning Slughorn's panicked form, taking in his fidgeting and sweating. They paused on Slughorn's chalk-white face. "Well then, I'm in luck, aren't I? I just wanted a fun little potion, after all." He made to grab the flask.

"No!" Slughorn cried, taking a quick step forward just as Eve felt Neville rise halfway out of his seat. She placed a hand on his knee and forced him back into his seat, despite the vehement urge inside her to do the same and curse Amycus into oblivion. She gave her friend a side glance, a warning: don't make this worse.

Slughorn was now babbling to an irritated-looking Amycus, whose fingers were inches away from the Armadillo Bile Mixture. "Terrible side effects! It has terrible side effects! Better to just leave it! You—you never know what it'll do when you use it!"

"Ah, ah, ah." Amycus tilted his head casually before he smiled real wide, decaying teeth flashing in the dim classroom. The temperature in the classroom, already cold from being in the dungeons, seemed to drop ten degrees further. "I wouldn't possibly use it on people, would I?" With a mock sigh, he reached forward and curled his fingers around the flask of the Armadillo Bile Mixture. The unnaturally green color that the little potion had been emitting brightly dimmed, as if Amycus's hand was suffocating it. "Have a little more faith in me."

He strolled towards the exit casually, as if he was merely on a walk on the school grounds. Right at the door frame, he gave one last glance back into the classroom, his eyes raking over every single student. He raised the hand with the flask clasped tightly within it and gave a wave, as if daring anyone to stop him, before turning back around and disappearing through the door. His footsteps, audibly amplified by the smothering silence within the classroom, slowly faded away.

There was a moment of absolute stillness, with everyone unmoving and straining their ears to make sure Amycus was really gone.

Then, everything erupted at once.

"He can't do that! He can't just waltz in here and—"

"We've got to do something! He's gonna feed that to somebody—"

"A first-year is gonna end up ingesting it! We need to—"

"First the Cruciatus, now dangerous potions—"

"—corrosive!"

"—melt skin off!"

"—do something!"

"—the remedy, Professor!"

Slughorn, who'd been frozen helplessly for the past minute, was now frantically scrambling around the classroom, rummaging around the ingredient cabinet as he muttered to himself, "What do I do? What do I do?" He piled a bunch of ingredients and supplies onto his desk before turning to Parvati Patil, his brow shining. "Miss Patil, please go alert Professor McGonagall about what just happened."

Parvati ceased her urgent whispering with Lavender from where the two sat at the front of the classroom and nodded quickly, bolting out the door.

Eve heard Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas, her fellow Gryffindors, discussing plans to infiltrate Amycus's class.

"Let's go!"

"Seamus, don't be daft! We can't just barge into Carrow's classroom! He'll Avada us on the spot!"

Neville was engaged in an agitated conversation with Ravenclaw Terry Boot, the two of them wringing their hands as they conversed in hushed tones. A group of Ravenclaw girls was huddled in the corner of the room. Eve could make out tearful faces and sniffles, but only snippets of their dialogue could be overheard: "my brother" and "that class now" and "get hurt!"

Apparently, everybody had a clear understanding of what Amycus's intentions for the Armadillo Bile Mixture were.

"Professor, surely you have the remedy?" a Ravenclaw was desperately asking Slughorn, who had his head and hands buried in the ingredient cabinet as he furiously dug for whatever he was searching for. "You can give it to Madam Pomfrey when the unlucky first-year gets to the Hospital Wing, right?"

Slughorn pulled his head—which was now sweating profusely—out of the cabinet. In his hands, he was clutching a large matte jar, gray and dusty from age. There was a small label on the side: Bulbadox juice. The professor stared down at it, his lips pressed together worriedly. "I—no. No, I don't."

"Professor?" the Ravenclaw asked uncertainly.

"I don't have the remedy!" Slughorn cried, running back to his desk and setting the jar upon it. He wiped his hand across his forehead, looking genuinely distressed. "I—I didn't think we would need it! Today's lesson was supposed to be a demonstrative one—merely theoretical! All facts! No potion-making! That was planned for tomorrow! We wouldn't have been working with the potion directly, so I didn't think to brew the remedy!"

"Wha—surely you can brew it now, right?"

"I can start it now," said Slughorn, gesturing wildly towards the ingredients and supplies piled on his desk, "but the unicorn hair must be soaked in the Bulbadox juice for a minimum of two weeks! Oh, it's no use! What do I do?"

All across the classroom, students were either panic-talking or bombarding Slughorn with frantic questions. An overwrought buzz filled the air.

Nobody noticed Eve sneak out the door.

Everything past that felt like a blur. Eve ran, ran, and ran, thanking Merlin that the trolls didn't start hallway patrol until classes were over for the day. She shot past portraits of old wizards, of battling soldiers and stylish young witches. She dashed past at least a dozen suits of armor and through innumerable corridors. She didn't stop running until she reached the Fat Lady, where she was forced to wait an agonizing three seconds while the portrait nodded at the password ("Patefacio sursum!") and swung open. And then she ran again.

Through the Common Room, up the stairs, into her dormitory.

Eve slid across the floor as she fell to her knees in front of her trunk (ignoring the nasty rug burn that she knew she'd get later on), flipping the top open and sticking her hands inside, upending clothes all over the carpet. Her fingers made contact with cool metal, and she hurriedly yanked the Time-Turner out from under all her belongings, wasting no time as she looped it around her neck.

Just one turn was needed this time. Eve took a deep breath from where she knelt, sweaty and determined, then rotated the hourglass once. Immediately, there was a pulling sensation in her navel, and she felt the world blur around her as she was transported one hour into the past.

Slughorn had been quite confused when the Armadillo Bile Mixture on his desk had vanished into thin air in the middle of class. One second, the potion had been sitting there, content in all of its unnaturally-green glory as the professor discussed its ingredient makeup. Then, it had disappeared in the blink of an eye, causing Slughorn to pause his lecture and squint at his desk in befuddlement.

In the back of the classroom, Eve had inconspicuously slid her wand back up her sleeve, the result of her Evanesco satisfactory.

There had been no time for Slughorn to investigate the sudden disappearance of his precious potion, seeing as Amycus Carrow had intruded into his classroom five seconds later. The scene had played out just like before—Slughorn stuttering as he tried to fend off Amycus, the students frozen like statues, and Amycus growing more and more vexed—except, this time, his annoyance hadn't stopped, seeing as there hadn't been any actual potion for him to take. He'd left with bulging temple veins and clenched fists, dissatisfied and—most importantly—empty-handed.

From that moment on, Eve had her Time-Turner around her neck every second of every day, carefully tucked under her robes to avoid detection. It had come in handy countless times since then as students like Neville and Ginny became more and more outspoken against the Carrows and Snape's prospering reign, and, as a result, there were more detentions and Crucios Eve had to prevent.

She wasn't always successful. As with everything in life, failures occur sometimes. And Eve had a lot of failures on her track record.

Maybe it was the stubborn fourth-year who'd refused to listen to a random girl's warning to "keep your mouth shut in Carrow's class" and then was sent to St. Mungos for multiple bone fractures she'd sustained mysteriously. Maybe it was Neville, who would repeatedly brush off Eve's cautionary advice and then show up at lunch with multiple black eyes. Maybe it was a tiny first-year, chained to the dungeon walls, who Eve had tried to untie—that is, until she'd heard footsteps and had to dash into a nearby supply closet and rewind time over and over again as she was almost caught over and over again, until she was forced to realize that there were hopeless cases she just had to give up on, and this was one of them.

Eve didn't like to refer to them as failures. That felt like she was dehumanizing the people whose fates had been at the mercy of her hands. Like they were just tasks she could cross off her list with either a green checkmark or a large red X.

She just didn't call them anything. Occurrences, maybe. Happenings.

It could get very exhausting—not just the action, but the aftermath as well. She thought about the people she couldn't save and their situations often, and sometimes for unhealthy amounts of time. She'd lie in bed at night, wide-eyed and awake as she thought about all the alternate routes she could've taken and how those choices could've maybe brought better outcomes. Did I not try hard enough? Did I say something wrong to that girl yesterday? Should I have just untied that first-year despite the footsteps? No, you dimwit! If that had been one of the Carrows, you would've been caught as well and punished! Can't really turn back time when Alecto is in the middle of using the Cruciatus on you, can you? But . . . should I have tried?

It was mentally taxing. Extremely.

But Eve didn't think about quitting. About taking off the Time-Turner and burrowing it back beneath her clothes, thrusting it back into the darkest depths of her trunk. Not once.

Being in possession of a Time-Turner. . . . Not only had she been gifted an invaluable object, but an unignorable responsibility as well. It wasn't just about the material good, but about morals: Eve was the one with the Time-Turner resource, but if she didn't use it, and then the devastation happened . . . it happened because of her.

And that sounded dramatic, but it was the truth. Eve wasn't trying to make herself sound like some sort of conflicted hero. It was just that, to her, the Time-Turner was a double-edged sword—a blessing in disguise, unless thrown to the back of the room and neglected. It was a burdened present, bestowing upon Eve a duty—save people, or drain yourself trying.

So, she was stuck with it, which at first might sound besetting, but there were upsides (other than the obvious one of being given second chances to prevent certain events and perhaps change the fates of her classmates and friends for the better) to consider: on a more selfish scale, the Time-Turner made Eve feel useful. Like she was finally putting herself to good use, actually saving people and actually fighting against Hogwarts's corruptness. Like she finally had a purpose amidst all this harrowing turmoil.

In another world, Eve was on the run with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. In another world, she was hunting for Horcruxes with her best friends instead of staying cooped up inside the hell that Hogwarts had transformed into, halfheartedly attending classes and contributing to graffiti operations that never actually went anywhere. In another world, she was putting her knowledge and brains to use, bringing Voldemort down one step at a time and building a better future for ehrself.

Unfortunately, this wasn't another world—this was her life, and she wasn't experiencing any of that. She was by herself.

—

There was a distinctly loud slamming sound from below, and the first-years huddled together even tighter. Lavender Brown, one of the girls with whom Eve shared her dormitory, was sobbing hysterically into her robes.

"Settle down, everyone!" the redheaded Weasley prefect yelled, trying to calm the students—to no avail—from where he stood, guarding the entrance to the Gryffindor Common Room. "The professors have this under control!"

A distant roar echoed in the castle, and all the first-years (and many of the older students as well) shrieked again. Eve felt a small noise escape from her own lips.

She glanced around her at all the Gryffindor students who were crammed inside the common room. Despite the professors' instructions for everyone to return to their individual dormitories, most of the Gryffindor students chose to hover around in the common room instead. There were students perched on the velvet sofas by the fireplace, seated cross-legged on the oriental rug on the floor, pressed against the wall, leaned against the corners of the room, and even hidden behind stacks of books by the bookshelves. They all wore identical expressions of fear and trepidation, though a few looked slightly excited.

Eve squinted, going up on her tippy-toes as she scanned the crowd of Gryffindor first-years.

There was no sign of Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.

Eve signed inwardly, feeling her head start to throb. She'd seen the two boys, who were in her year and House, diverting away from the crowd of panicked students getting led back to Gryffindor Tower earlier. She'd been right behind them when they'd whispered to each other, looked around surreptitiously (or so they'd thought), and then camouflaged their escape (or so they'd thought) from the Gryffindor crowd by following another crowd of Hufflepuffs going in a different direction.

Eve hadn't really cared. It wasn't her business if the two boys wanted to stray off the safe path and bumble through a castle with a loose troll in it.

And so she'd quietly followed the horde of Gryffindor students back to the dormitories, placing Harry Potter and Ron Weasley at the back of her mind.

That was ten minutes ago, and they still hadn't come back. And now Eve was worried—not for the boys, no. She wasn't even friends with them.

It was the House points that were at stake.

She chewed at her lip, agitated. How many points from Gryffindor were the professors going to take once they caught Harry and Ron? Fifty? One hundred? One hundred each? In the chance that they did survive running around with a troll on the loose, they might as well be dead—the results of losing a large amount of points for Gryffindor weren't pretty. If the two boys lost as many points as Eve estimated they would, they'd have the entirety of Gryffindor House ignoring them for at least a full month.

That didn't matter. What did matter was Gryffindor's House point count, which was about to drop two hundred points lower. Eve grinded her teeth. That couldn't happen. She'd worked so hard to contribute! She'd answered questions she'd known the answers to in her classes. She'd offered to stay behind on a few occasions to help her professors clean up. She'd even kissed up to that poncey Weasley prefect and helped him with some duties, which had been the worst task of them all. It had earned her House points, though, so she'd suffered through it.

Now, two immature boys' impulsive antics were about to let her hard work all go to waste.

Eve stood up from where she'd been sitting on the ground, back pressed against the side of a sofa. She was short for even a first-year, and this feature now came to her advantage, allowing her to navigate relatively undetected through the throng of students. She emerged from the center crowd, sweating slightly, and, after a quick glance from left to right, hid herself by a corner of the room, where a horde of older students was present.

Eve dug around in her robe pocket, fishing out two Sickles triumphantly. She then looked up, locked her eyes onto her target, and squeezed herself into the new crowd.

"Hey!" She tugged at her target's robes, holding onto them a bit tighter than necessary when she found herself getting slightly jostled around by the people surrounding her.

George—or was this Fred?—Weasley stared down at her in surprise.

She held up her two Sickles. "If I pay you, can you set off a Dungbomb in the center of the room? Preferably as soon as possible?"

George or Fred blinked, then grinned widely. "Consider it done, little lady." He winked, plucking the coins from her outstretched hand (as she knew he would—the Weasley twins were infamous for their pranking tendencies, after all). "No questions asked. Give me thirty seconds tops."

He then said something to the friend he'd been conversing with before exiting the crowd, which was convenient for Eve—he was much taller and wider than she was, so she was able to easily walk behind him, utilizing the large gap that he left through the crowd to her advantage.

Once she escaped, she scurried off to the side again, positioning herself close to the exit of the Common Room, but far enough so as to avoid raising suspicion from the other Weasley, the one who was the prefect. She waited.

Thirty . . . twenty-nine . . . twenty-seven . . . twenty-six . . . twenty-five . . . twenty-four . . . twenty-three . . . twenty-two . . . twenty-one . . . twenty . . . nineteen . . . eighteen . . . seventeen . . . sixteen . . . fifteen . . . fourteen . . . thirteen . . . twelve . . . eleven . . . ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . seven . . . six . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . o—

BOOM!

"What was that?" the Weasley prefect demanded loudly from where he stood alert by the doorway, addressing no one in particular.

From the center of the Common Room, a hissing sound accompanied billowing smoke, which seemed to be pouring out from nowhere and spreading everywhere. Then—

"GAH! WHAT IS THAT SMELL?"

A horrible, putrid smell was permeating through the room at lightning speed. It smelled like somebody had dumped a bucket full of rotten eggs right into the center of the room and then farted on them. Eve heard the sounds of multiple people gagging from nearby.

Students were now running into each other, blinded by the smoke and tearing up at the smell, half-laughing and half-coughing. It was chaos incarnated.

Eve thought she heard a "Your welcome, little lady!" from the opposite side of the room, but maybe that was just the revolting smell messing with her head. She glanced at the entranceway—bingo. The Weasley prefect was nowhere in sight, presumably having dived into the center of the mayhem to try and sort it out.

Good luck with that, she thought wryly. The smoke and smell wouldn't dissipate for another fifteen minutes—twenty if she was lucky. Good 'ol Dungbombs.

With a brief look at her surroundings (all clear), Eve dashed forward, propelling herself towards the door. There was no time to lose; she slowly and carefully pried the door open with the pads of her fingers, making sure it wouldn't creak as it opened—though, honestly, with all the noise the Gryffindors were making at the moment, it probably wouldn't have mattered if it did creak. With the door cracked open slightly, she slipped through, landing softly on her feet. She then closed it behind her and looked up.

Perfect—the Fat Lady wasn't in her frame. She was most likely with some other portrait friend of hers, hiding from the troll. Maybe her friend Violet—Eve had heard that they were always getting drunk together.

She turned around. The corridor was a stark contrast from the energetic atmosphere she'd just left. It was dark and inky, save for a dim spot a bit further down the corridor. There was only silence; virtually no sound could be heard—

SMASH!

Eve jerked in surprise. Then she heard another loud roar, so thunderous that it could've only been uttered from the mouth of a troll.

It had clearly come from below her feet—definitely a lower level then. She wasted no time before racing along the corridor and following her instinct, which was telling her to follow the sounds. It just made sense—she was willing to bet that the noises would lead right to Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. She should've known they'd go off to try and fight the troll on their own.

Boys.

The natural behavior for trolls was to just lumber around and grunt—everybody knew that. However, for a troll to emit such loud and aggressive roars like ones Eve had just heard. . . . There was definitely an external source of agitation. Judging from the fact that such sounds had been going on for the last fifteen minutes, said source couldn't be the professors—it couldn't take that long for a trained and experienced team of professors to detain a single troll, no matter how big or powerful it was. This could only be the work of two eleven-year-old boys, and Eve had two very specific ones in mind.

So Eve ran, relying on her ears and the roars of the troll to take her to the two troublemakers who she was going to prevent from losing Gryffindor any House points. Even if that took partaking in a fight with a troll to achieve.

It didn't even take her five minutes. Seeing as everybody had been evacuated from the corridors of the castle following Professor Quirrel's troll proclamation, Eve was blessed with empty hallways to run through and a lack of people to avoid. Of course, there were the professors, but she had no idea where they were—she was just glad she didn't bump into any of them on her way.

The sounds were deafening at this point. She'd tracked them all the way to the third floor girl's bathroom, which she now stood in front of, suddenly hesitating. The troll's roars were coming from directly inside, loud enough to even reverberate off the walls next to her.

She was already here anyway—it was now or never. Eve stepped forward, steeling herself, and placed her hand on the door handle.

Before she could turn it, however, the loudest sound she'd heard yet hit her, absolutely rattling her brain and almost shattering her eardrums. She cried out, wincing hard as she brought her hands to her ears. It sounded as though an entire cavern had collapsed onto itself from within the bathroom.

Then—

"Urgh—troll boogers."

Eve paused, frowning at the slightly muffled words that she swore she'd just heard from behind the bathroom door. She took her hands off her ears, drew her wand, took a deep breath, and pulled the door open, barging inside and pointing her wand out in front of her belligerently.

Harry Potter froze, looking up from where he stood in the center of the bathroom, currently in the middle of wiping some disgusting-looking gray slime off of his wand with his robes. Ron Weasley wasn't too far away, his wand raised above his head as he stared down, wide-eyed, at a lumpy green-gray mass in front of him. Behind the redhead, shrinked against the floor and trembling slightly—was that Hermione Granger?

The bathroom itself was blown to bits. Stalls were upended, toilets were in disarray, sinks were smashed, and mirrors were cracked. The floor around the lumpy green-gray mass in front of Ron Weasley—was that the troll?—had entirely caved in. Dust was flying everywhere.

Eve didn't know what to make of the scene in front of her. So, standing there with her wand pointed directly at her three classmates, she said quite simply, "You're all gonna be in so much trouble."

And indeed they'd been. Except Eve had been included in the mix, which she hadn't expected. McGonagall, who'd burst in only seconds after she had with very unfortunate timing, had been outright furious. She'd been about to dole out whatever punishment she had in mind for the four of them when, suddenly, Hermione had stepped forward and spun a lie so brilliantly crafted that the professor had bought it and then awarded five points each to Harry, Ron, and Eve (and took five from Hermione, but that was still ten points earned for Gryffindor in total).

"Please, Professor McGonagall—I'm at fault. I went looking for the troll because I—I thought I could deal with it on my own—you know, because I've read all about them. Harry and Ron were looking for me and helped me fight it off. If they hadn't found me, I'd be dead now. Harry stuck his wand up its nose, and Ron knocked it out with its own club. They didn't have time to come and fetch anyone. It was about to finish me off when they arrived. Then Eve showed up with her wand drawn, ready to save me as well. She'd noticed that we weren't in our dormitories and came to help, risking her own safety to do so."

And so Eve, who'd been worried about the jeopardization of Gryffindor's House points, had walked away from the situation with an excess of those and three best friends.

—

Years later, she'd explained her real intentions for barging into the bathroom that night to the other three, and they'd all shared a good laugh.

—

Six years of inseparable friendship, finally separated.

That is, Harry, Ron, and Hermione had split off on their own mission, leaving Eve behind.

In a sense, it felt almost like fate. Like Eve was destined to be the one left behind in the dust, to get swamped in all the suffering she could've been actively working against had she left with the trio.

She'd wanted to go with them, of course. One more person with knowledge about Voldemort's Horcruxes could only be an asset, not a liability. She knew everything about them (at least all that Harry had told her, Ron, and Hermione about them) and was ready to sacrifice everything to hunt them down. The opportunity to cut the root of the problem—to contribute to defeating Voldemort, who'd basically become a parasitic insect in their everyday lives for the past six years, once and for all. . . . It was almost like a schoolyard grudge. Like Eve finally had the golden chance to get Voldemort back for all the pain and suffering he'd caused in her life and to people close to her.

And she'd wanted to take that chance so bad.

But while Hermione had the courage to Obliviate her parents, and Ron had the bravery to leave his entire family behind, and Harry had the weight of the entire war on his shoulders from the very beginning, Eve didn't have the heart to abandon the one person waiting for her in a small cottage back in Tinworth.

It was just her and her mum back home.

On March 1st, 1982, two days before Eve's third birthday, Martin Laurence passed away, victim to a flyaway curse cast in the midst of a crowded Diagon Alley. The perpetrator was never found, their actions leaving behind a fatherless child and a heartbroken wife.

Eve's mum raised her alone—she was the one to wake Eve up every morning, to make her yogurt parfaits, to take her shopping for school supplies, to stand on the Hogwarts Express platform, teary-eyed, and wave her goodbye. Eve was the single most important person in Carol Laurence's life—she knew her mum's biggest fear was that something would happen to Eve like it had happened to Eve's dad, so as Eve grew older, she tried her best to generally opt out of trouble, keep up with all her responsibilities, and stayed away from any potentially-dangerous situations. Anything to keep her mum's worries at bay.

Well, she tried. It was pretty hard when one of your best friends was Harry Potter.

When Eve's mum had dashed into Eve's St. Mungo's room the day of the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, she'd taken one look at her daughter, dressed in day-old robes and confined to the bed in the center of the room, and had burst into tears in the middle of the doorway.

"Imagine how I felt when I got a Patronus from the Ministry of Magic, telling me that my only daughter was injured from a battle with Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries! Oh, Eve, I thought I'd lost you like I did your father!"

So, Eve had refused to go on the run (and with Undesirable No. 1, no less) to hunt Voldemort's Horcruxes, no matter how much her consciousness willed her to. She'd refused to put herself at risk of getting killed and subsequently abandoning her mum, leaving her behind to live in a world void of her husband and daughter.

So, she'd cast her personal feelings aside, bid Harry, Ron, and Hermione goodbye, and hugged them tightly. And that was that.

—

Eve wished she had Harry's Invisibility Cloak right now. Or maybe the Marauder's Map.

She tiptoed along the empty corridor, the sound of her footsteps light but seemingly amplified by the emptiness of the space. The portraits along the walls looked at her curiously as she snuck past, but none spoke to or questioned her. That's what she liked about the Hogwarts portraits—they tended to mind their own business (w, most of them—she hadn't forgotten Sir Cadogan, who used to make it a habit of his to question her on her intentions every time she exited the Gryffindor portrait hole in her third year).

At this very moment, the entire school—sans herself, of course—was seated in the Great Hall for the 1997 Hogwarts Halloween Feast. Had this been under normal circumstances, Eve would've been dejected to be missing the feast. But, alas, this was a special year, and she was more than happy to forego two hours of being stuck in the same room as Snape and the Carrows. She was willing to bet a Galleon that Amycus was scarfing down a whole pig leg at the moment.

She made it to the end of the hallway, pressing her back against the wall as she slowly peeked over the corner. All clear. She let out a small breath, continuing on her path.

Eve knew that the castle would be effectively empty, with the Halloween Feast occurring and all that, but that didn't stop her heart from beating all the same, or her sighs of relief every time she looked over a corner to see the wonderful sight of an empty corridor. It was better to be safe than sorry, anyways—god knows what she'd do if she got caught by a loose Patrol Troll.

Never had she been on such an overt and intense mission—one to steal the Sword of Gryffindor from the Headmaster's office, no less. It was frightening. It was mad! What in Merlin's name was she doing? Eve paused, reaching up to touch the small bulge in her robes where the Time-Turner hung from her neck. She immediately felt her anxious thoughts get slightly alleviated from the action—at least she had a backup plan on her. Get caught? Turn time. Snape comes back early, like he often does from meals? Turn time. She flexed her fingers, tightening them a bit more around her wand before continuing on her way.

She'd specifically and logically began her route to the Headmaster's office one hour into the feast—this way, she'd guaranteed herself a safe window of the minimum time her Time-Turner could rewind (one hour). If she did run into trouble along the way or in the office, she could turn the Time-Turner once and get transported back to an otherwise empty hallway.

She shuddered, thinking about what could happen had she not taken any precautions.

As soon as the feast begins, she starts sneaking her way down to the Headmaster's office. She makes it inside within fifteen minutes and is snooping around for the sword, when—oh no! There's the telling sound of billowing robes—for some reason, Snape is back! She dives behind some sort of cover, pulls out her trusty Time-Turner, rewinds an hour back, and breathes a sigh of relief as she feels the familiar pull in her navel. Saved!

The blurring stops, and she jumps out from whatever hiding spot she'd thrown herself into, now an hour in the past, and—WHAT IN THE—! IT'S SNAPE IN HIS GREASY UNDERPANTS, CHANGING FOR THE FEAST! OH NO! BECAUSE SHE HADN'T GIVEN HERSELF ADEQUATE TIME IN THE CASE THAT SHE NEEDED TO REWIND TIME BACK (AND SHE HAD) AND HAD IMMEDIATELY JUMPED INTO THE PLAN, SHE'D REWINDED TO BEFORE THE FEAST, WHEN SNAPE WAS STILL IN HIS OFFICE!

Thank god for preplanning.

She was in the West Tower now, racing along the second-floor corridor, which she knew led to the Gargoyle Corridor around its corner. Sure enough, when she'd caught her breath and peeked past the wall, she spied said corridor, dim and long and ominous, which was quite fitting for the Halloween theme.

She was so close to Snape's office. As she crept down the Gargoyle Corridor, she couldn't help but stare at the Hogwarts grounds through the tall, looming windows to her right. At least—she tried to. It was raining; bullets of precipitation pelted against the glass relentlessly, efficiently masking Eve's footsteps but obscuring her from getting a clear view of the outside.

Curiosity and longing got the better of Eve, and she looked around, making sure that she was alone in the hallway, before stepping slowly out from the shadows and pressing her face against one of the windows, trying to catch a glimpse of the grounds. She hadn't stepped a foot outside of the castle since the beginning of the school year, and she missed the Black Lake and the Quidditch field and the Forbidden Forest and Hagrid's hut and the pumpkin patch tremendously. Just one look wouldn't hurt.

There was an opening—the raindrops parted a bit, creating a space through the window just large enough for Eve to peek one eye through. She shuffled over eagerly, going up on the tips of her feet as she strained her neck, peeping through the gap.

A dementor stared back at her.

Eve fell back, clapping her hands over her mouth in terror as a small scream escaped from between her lips. Luckily, the rain was beating against the windows loudly enough to cover the sound, but—

A dementor!

She scrambled back up, hands shaking—her wand had fallen out of her grip and clattered onto the floor. She picked it up quickly, breathing hard, and looked up again.

It was gone, now—the rain was once more bombarding the glass, covering it all with water. The gap in the precipitation had disappeared.

Eve stood there, panting quickly, the adrenaline rush from the incident having yet to deplete. She closed her eyes—she could still see it. The decayed cloak, the gnarly fingers, the pitch-black hood. The shroud of despair that had suddenly seemed to encompass Eve, suffocating her. A fleeting vision now, but nevertheless still tangible, separated from her by only stone walls.

Give it up for Hogwarts, she thought bitterly, shivering and drawing her robe around herself tightly. She'd never seen a dementor so up close and personal until then. She shook her head and blinked hard, willing the apparition of the dementor from behind her eyelids to disappear. She was on a mission. She couldn't fail.

And so Eve blended back into the shadows, focusing on the sounds of her breaths as she resumed her discreet trek towards the end of the Gargoyle Corridor.

Upon reaching her destination, she stepped out from the side. She craned her neck upwards and couldn't help but marvel at the sight. In front of her, gleaming magnificently from a light source above—and the only part of the corridor to be illuminated—was a gigantic bronze gargoyle.

Its body glinted, each feather pronounced and gleaming, having obviously been carved with extra precision. Its two wings curved inwards, as if hugging an invisible column or pillar. It stood in a sort of hollowed out, circular room, the stone wall leading up so high that Eve couldn't even see the top. The archway leading inside was flanked by two tall fire pits, the flames sentient and glowing brightly in the dimness of the corridor.

And just beyond was the Headmaster's office.

Eve looked around, a bit unsure, trying to locate some sort of button or switch that would animate the gargoyle and get it to reveal the office. She poked one of its carved feathers.

"Password?"

Oh no.

Eve froze, her heartbeat speeding up. Password? That hadn't been a part of her calculations. That wasn't a part of the plan. The office wasn't supposed to have a password.

She wanted to facepalm herself. Or jump out the window, preferably into the arms of a dementor.

How didn't I think about this? Of course the bloody Headmaster's office would have bloody security measures!

Out of Neville, Ginny, Luna, and Eve, only Ginny had actually been inside the Headmaster's office. However, it had been on the night of her dad's attack at the Ministry in fifth year, and thus Ginny had had no advice to give Eve regarding anything.

"I'm really sorry Eve. I don't remember anything at all. That night was all a blur—between getting woken up so early and then finding out that my dad was attacked by You-Know-Who's snake, I wasn't really paying attention to my surroundings."

For the other three, there hadn't ever been any instance in which it had been necessary for any of them to meet Dumbledore alone. They only knew of the route to the office, which students often passed on their way to class, not the procedure that it came along with. And so they'd just assumed—foolishly—that the biggest challenge for Eve would be to find the sword from inside the office.

Well, that wouldn't be a problem, considering the fact that she couldn't even enter the office in the first place.

"Alohomora," Eve whispered frantically, pointing her wand at the gargoyle and receiving no result. She swore it gave her an unimpressed look.

"Ummm—gargoyle! Feathers! Shiny! Bronze! Bricks! Circular! Headmaster! Office!"

The gargoyle remained unmoving.

Eve racked her brain, chewing on her lip anxiously. What kind of password would Snape have set for his personal office?

"Death Eater! Skull! Bat! He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named! You-Know-Who! Murder? Greasy? Potions? Bezoar?"

Still nothing.

Eve, now half-frustrated and half-panicked by the unresponsive gargoyle, began to pace around in front of the gargoyle, continuously glancing over her shoulder as she belted out every single word that came to mind. "Snape! Severus! Severus Snape! Unlock! Open! Lemon Drop!" She buried her hands in her hair at the gargoyle's lack of response, feeling her panic levels nearing maximum. "Merlin, I wish Dumbledore was still here!"

Creeeeaaaak. Then a rumbling sound, like shifting stones.

Eve spun around in surprise.

The gargoyle was rotating, the stone wall behind it turning along as it slowly moved away to reveal a circular stone staircase in a dimly lit, hollowed stairwell.

Eve's jaw dropped open.

What happened? Did I say the password? She stood still for a moment, confusion and relief overlapping as she tried to process what just happened. I said, 'Merlin, I wish Dumbledore was still here.' . . . Had it been 'Merlin?' 'Wish?' Had it been . . . no.

Eve clutched her wand tightly, suddenly feeling disturbed. Surely Snape didn't set his password to the name of the dead Headmaster he himself had murdered?

She felt a slight shiver spread down her arms, but she shook her head and pushed the thought away, ducking under one of gargoyle's wings instead. It didn't matter anyway—all that mattered was that she was now in.

Once on the other side, she straightened up and adjusted her robes, taking a deep breath. Placing a hand onto the rail of the staircase, she took a few tentative steps onto it before speeding up her pace.

It wasn't that long of a journey—only a few spirals later, she found herself abruptly face-to-face with a giant mahogany door, complete with a golden handle—the door to the Headmaster's office. It looked very ominous and forbidding, and Eve couldn't help but gulp, feeling her palms start to sweat suddenly.

Well, too late. There was another rumbling sound from below her: the gargoyle was returning to its original position. She peeked over the railing of the spiral staircase and saw that the small doorway from which she'd entered was getting smaller and smaller, until it disappeared entirely.

Eve was now stuck in the hollowed stairwell, which was devoid of any light.

She stared up at the door, hesitating. Can't turn back now. She placed her hand on the golden handle, turned it downwards, and pushed the door open.

Immediately—dark.

That was what the office was. Very dark.

Two identical round tables by the entrance were the first objects in Eve's line of vision. They were large, taking up a good chunk of ground space. She peered over at them curiously—they both had domed glass covers, which protected the contraptions inside. They looked to be Astronomy models, with little planets connected by circular golden wires, but they were currently immobile.

Behind them, right next to the door, were wide glass cabinets. Eve could make out various items and treasures behind the glass, no doubt trinkets accumulated throughout the years by the office's various predecessors. She eyed her reflection in the glass—it was hard to see in the dimly-lit room, but she could make out the general outline of herself.

Stone flooring—the same material as the wall behind the gargoyle—led to an elevated center floor, accessible by a few shallow steps. Thick, sturdy stone columns sprouted from the steps, reaching high and arching inwards towards each other just before they hit the tall ceiling. Bookshelves lined the walls; the shelves didn't stop until the barrier of the ceiling forced them to. They were all filled to the brim with giant tomes, products of years and years of literary collection by the previous Headmasters and Headmistresses of Hogwarts. A wooden ladder, tall enough to reach the highest shelf, was propped against the corner of the room, and a large, brick-set fireplace—currently flameless—was off to its side.

The very center of the center floor housed a grand mahogany desk, grandiose and imposing despite the looming shadows cast upon it by the stone columns nearby. Atop it lay a slender lamp, currently off, and a large, fluffy quill. A chandelier, adorned with what looked to be little bulbs, hung above the desk, whose matching wooden chair looked more like a throne than anything else.

The background of the desk was the most impressive part of the room, past all the trinkets and books and stone. Behind it all, flanked by the aforementioned bookshelves, two stairways, each on one opposite side of the room, rose high, curving inwards to each meet an architectural column. The two columns converged into a royal archway, acting as pillars to the archway's spectacularly-looking platform. A gigantic globe-like ball sat in its very center, overlooking the Hogwarts grounds through high, carved windows. Moonlight streamed through the glass, hitting the globe and illuminating the tall ceiling above it.

It was all so magnificent, but . . . lifeless.

"Lumos," Eve whispered from where she stood by the entrance, raising her wand in front of her as she shut the door and took a few light steps forward.

"Hey! I'm trying to sleep!"

Eve jumped, eyes wide as she pivoted to the side from where the voice had come. The light from her wand illuminated a large portrait by the door, which housed a wrinkled old woman wearing a bonnet. The woman winced and shielded her eyes when Eve's wand pointed directly at her face.

"Oh! Sorry!" Eve quickly lowered her wand.

She observed the walls: the woman's portrait wasn't the only portrait inside the office. In fact, its walls were littered with dozens of them, all of various shapes and sizes and inhabitants. Some were empty; most of them had occupants, however—a bespectacled old man in a frame the next wall over was asleep, his snores causing his mustache to bristle every few seconds. A few portraits past him was another old man—this one was asleep as well, a large glob of drool hanging precariously from his lips. The woman in the portrait below him, clad in plum-colored robes, was eyeing him with distaste.

Eve crept past, trying her best to avoid eye contact with any of them. At least they weren't questioning her on why she, a lone student, was poking around in the empty Headmaster's office by herself when she should be at the Halloween feast with the rest of her classmates, although she did notice a few portraits eyeing her curiously from the corner of her eye.

Now was when the real hunt began. Eve swiveled her head left and right as she went, looking at the walls, at the cabinets, at the stone pillars. There was no sign of the sword, but she'd expected that.

Like Snape would have it on full display in here, she thought to herself.

She spent a few minutes combing through the place quietly, occasionally pausing to glance around the office and ponder in her head where the artifact could be. As she neared the central Headmaster's desk, she considered rifling through its drawers, but she quickly rejected that idea—who knew what the portraits on the wall considered as 'going too far.' Eve didn't know if any of them were very loyal to Snape, but she didn't want to find out: she settled on just observing the desk's exterior. The drawers were probably too small to fit a sword anyways.

She shuffled past the desk, hands empty and feet a bit more hurried. She had no idea how long she'd been in the room, but every second that passed in the Great Hall downstairs was another lost for her. Forget the Time-Turner—there'd be no time to take it out and give it a spin if Snape walked in on her. He'd probably summon it from her within a second, and then she'd be in trouble with the Ministry as well.

Instead, Eve looked up at the wall behind the desk, right below the globe platform. There was a set of shelves built into the wall. Propped up on one of the shelves was an empty glass case, and next to it a very familiar patched rag of fabric.

She stepped closer, eyes widening when she realized that she was indeed staring at the Sorting Hat.

Eve observed the Hat. At this moment, it was inanimate—there were no eye folds in the fabric, no mouth crease from which songs sprang. She hadn't seen it so up close since her own Sorting six years prior. As she gazed at it, feeling nostalgic and letting herself get momentarily lost in old memories, she unconsciously angled her body slightly to the right.

Immediately, she felt a bit of light shining onto her face, nearly blinding her. Squinting slightly at the sudden disruption, she tilted her head upwards, her attention caught back onto the tall, empty glass case next to the Sorting Hat. There was a patch of silvery light dancing and shimmering on the case that had rebounded off its glass and onto her face at the angle she stood at.

Eve frowned, looking around behind her. This wasn't natural light—the windows on the platform above didn't extend that far. The moonlight from outside couldn't hit this alcove of a wall.

A black cabinet off by the side of the room drew her awareness. It hadn't been properly closed; a sliver of silver-white light—the same light that had illuminated her face—peeked through the small opening, shining brightly into the air in a linear path. Its door was tilted to the right, directly facing her at that moment, which explained why it hadn't come to her notice before now.

Eve hesitated, clutching her wand tightly. "Nox," she murmured quietly. The brightness from within the cabinet was visible enough for her to extinguish her wand light. Keeping her wand still raised in front of her, she cautiously made her way across the office and to the cabinet. She pulled the door open slowly—and gasped.

It was the Pensieve.

Within the span of two seconds, Eve recalled every single detail that Harry had ever uttered about the Pensieve in the Headmaster's office. As she glanced down at the shallow stone basin, luminescent with silvery light, she remembered his words:

"It's like this great old basin, made of stone and kinda ancient-looking because it has these odd carvings all over it. Runes, or something. Looks really shallow if you stare at it from the side. It glows this silvery-white color—a bit shimmery—when there's a memory in it, sorta like a Patronus. Except it's not really swirling light like a Patronus—it's more smoke, like gas, but it also looks liquidy. I dunno, it's hard to explain, but anyways you'll never guess what Dumbledore showed me about Voldemort today—"

Every single word of Harry's retellings of his appointments with Dumbledore from sixth year seemed to flow right back into Eve's brain. While the Pensieve hadn't been of too much importance in the grand scheme of things at the time, it had nevertheless been an object of interest to her.

To relive your memories. . . . Eve used to wonder how that felt. Would she be overly critical of her past self? Would she feel weirded out to come face-to-face with herself? Would she just spend the entire time picking out everything that went wrong and the alternate paths her past self could've taken for a better outcome in whatever the situation she was observing? Would she experience the world's worst case of déjà vu?

She stared down at the swirling silver, entranced. She'd completely forgotten about its existence, too preoccupied with her Sword of Gryffindor hunt. Now, with this magical item in front of her, she was faced with the inexplicable urge to examine it a bit more. After all, it wasn't everyday that she got to explore the Headmaster's office and be in close proximity to a Pensieve.

It was alright. Eve toyed with the chain around her neck. She had time. She was hidden behind the black cabinet door, anyways—even if Snape decided to suddenly come back early, he wouldn't be able to see her right away, and she'd be able to whisk herself back in time with nothing to worry about.

She bent forward towards the basin, her fingertips brushing lightly against the symbols carved into its sides.

Harry was right, she thought, finally understanding what her friend had meant by his words. I can't tell if this is liquid or gas.

The substance within the basin looked like light-made liquid, like somebody was hiding inside the basin's center and flashing a source of light up into normal smoke. It was moving ceaselessly, its surface rippling and swirling in all different directions. It was like a tiny, ambiguous ocean, its waves churning; the surface of it would flow smoothly, before suddenly intensifying and taking on the resemblance of a furious sea with its fierce whirling and vehement surging.

Now that she was right in front of the Pensieve, Eve could see that her own body was bathed with a silvery-white luminance. She looked at her arms, which were slightly sparkling. Her skin looked like it had been washed with diamond water, like she'd grinded diamonds into small bits of sand-like material, sprinkled them into the silver liquid, and then sprayed herself with it.

With a sudden start, Eve whipped her head back to the basin, staring at its silvery contents with a dawning thought as she revisited Harry's words again.

"It glows this silvery-white color—a bit shimmery—when there's a memory it, sorta like a Patronus."

Somebody's memory was in there right now. One of Snape's memories was in there right now.

Eve stared at the Pensieve with a renewed sense of burning curiosity. What memory does Snape possess that's important enough for him to use here?

Slowly and carefully, she bent her knees, placing her hands on either side of the basin for support as she peered into its silvery swirls. Maybe she could catch a small glimpse of what was happening in the memory inside if she looked close enough—it wouldn't hurt to try. She tilted her head as closely as she could to the contents' surface without actually coming into contact with them and getting sucked into the memory itself.

There was nothing at first, and then—oh! She could make out a murky shape, a bit darkened—was that a rectangle? There was a fuzzy outline of something, and it was all really hazy, so she inched her face just a bit closer—

"What are you doing, young lady?"

The voice came from right above Eve's head, and it was so unexpected that Eve gave a gasp of fright, immediately exerting pressure onto her hands as she scrambled to right herself, and, in the process of doing so, she felt her fingers lose their purchases on the sides of the basin, and she tripped, the basin's contents enveloping her face, and then she was tumbling downwards into silvery nothingness.

It felt like somebody had dunked her body into a tub of ice and held it there. Eve plunged—headfirst—through what felt like a chilled whirlpool, her limbs flailing wildly. It was the most abnormal feeling ever, like she was falling through an endless vacuum. She couldn't see anything anymore, either—no silver, no nothing. It was like the person who'd dunked her into the ice bath had also tied a handkerchief over her eyes.

And then, Eve blinked one of the many blinks she'd blinked in the last minute, still thrashing her arms and legs around in the dark, and right before her eyes—

"Professor?"

Albus Dumbledore was sitting in front of her, quill in hand as he contently read over a wrinkled piece of parchment.

Eve, who'd somehow landed onto some kind of stone floor in a sprawled position, stared up at her former Headmaster with a mixture of amazement and astonishment.

Was this a figment of her imagination? This was Snape's memory in the Pensieve—Dumbledore when he was alive? And an auburn Dumbledore, no less—this Dumbledore was a redhead! Her eyes roved over reddish-brown hair and a reddish-brown beard, and she didn't bother to get up from the ground as she drank in the man in front of her, whom she hadn't seen alive and moving in months.

The auburn Dumbledore, in turn, continued whatever work he was doing, stuck in a past memory and oblivious to the accidental intruder observing him.

Eve got up from the floor shakily, unable to tear her eyes off her former Headmaster. She was finally able to fully examine the scene that had materialized before her eyes and replaced the pitch-black darkness she'd been falling through only seconds earlier. It had been a strange feeling, having been falling headfirst towards unknown ground and then—without feeling any physical impact—suddenly sitting still on the floor.

They were in an office space, one unfamiliar to Eve. It was a great deal smaller than the Headmaster's office she had just come from, and much less clustered. Actually, it was a very simple-looking room—there was a desk in the center, one of the only aspects of the layout that was reminiscent of the Headmaster's office; a red rug covering the floor; two tall, latticed windows on the wall, displaying a beautiful view of the grounds below; a small clock perched on the left windowsill; a fireplace, currently not in use; and two bookshelves, bursting with tomes, flanking the fireplace on either side.

Eve stepped towards Dumbledore cautiously, eying him up and down. He was wearing midnight blue robes which—as cliché as it was—were embroidered with tiny little silver stars, each one blinking in turn whenever the fabric shifted with movement. His trademark half-moon spectacles were perched upon his long, crooked nose, and his auburn beard was tied loosely near his chin with a thin red ribbon.

He was seated at the central desk. There were two stacks of parchment in front of him—it looked like he was working through the pile on the left and stacking them onto the pile to the right. Every once in a while, he'd pick up his quill, dip it into the inkwell sitting on his desk, and mark something onto the parchment he was reading.

Eve eyed the man closely, stare lingering on his auburn beard and hair, then on his face, which was less saggy and wrinkled than she remembered.

So this was a young Dumbledore, and he was a redhead. How bizarre!

Eve frowned, looking around. Was this not Snape's memory then? She turned back to Dumbledore, observing his features and thinking hard. Clearly not. The Dumbledore in this memory was obviously young, no older than seventy (which, in wizarding terms, was practically adolescence). No matter how old and greasy Snape looked, Eve knew he wasn't that old. At the time of this particular memory, he probably hadn't even been born yet. Which meant that Snape hadn't even utilized the Pensieve.

This memory had been left from when Dumbledore had been alive and Headmaster.

Eve leaned in closer, waving one hand back and forth in front of Dumbledore's face. He didn't even blink, only continuing to read over the piece of parchment in his hand. Eve looked down at it and read the neat handwriting:

The Five Principal Exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration and How They Limit Conjuration

By Logan Jean

Eve raised her eyebrows. Gamp's Law was a subject covered in the seventh year N.E.W.T. Transfiguration course. Had Dumbledore been the Transfiguration professor before becoming Headmaster? She glanced at the two messy piles of parchment on the desk, both comprised of essays bearing Transfiguration-related titles.

That made sense. Eve didn't possess much knowledge about Dumbledore—she'd only known him as the wise former Headmaster with the long beard and an affinity for weird words—but, somehow, she could see him in her mind, standing at the front of a classroom, eyes twinkling as he lectured on about Human Transfiguration and Animagi and how to transfigure a teapot into a tortoise.

She watched younger-Dumbledore dip his quill in the inkwell and mark a large O onto the corner of the essay he held before placing it on top of the rightmost stack with the others. He then leaned back, opening one of his desk drawers and reaching inside to take out a small tin can. Upon his opening of it, Eve could make out a small population of yellow candies inside—sherbet lemons, she recognized. Dumbledore picked one out from the crowd and popped it into his mouth.

Eve was watching memory-Dumbledore eat a sherbet lemon. This really was her peak in life.

She blinked, burying her hands into her hair as she felt her heartbeat begin to climb faster and faster. The emotions she'd managed to keep at bay had finally overcome their barrier, overtaking her in an instant as the events of the past five minutes finally hit. The initial shock of her situation was wearing off to be replaced with full-blown panic.

She was in a bloody memory of Dumbledore! She hadn't meant to fall into the Pensieve at all, but that voice had caught her by surprise and she'd slipped right in—oh god, that voice!

'What are you doing, young lady?'

She'd been caught! Who had that been? It hadn't been Snape's voice, that was for sure—it had been too high and had had too much of a haughty quality to be his. But, whoever it had been . . . the rational part of Eve was confused as to why they hadn't pulled her out of the memory yet.

Was this her punishment—to stay, waiting, in a memory of a dead man? A cruel joke?

She abandoned Dumbledore's side, rushing towards the door frantically. How does one escape a memory except wait it out? Eve had no idea. She ran around the office, peeking into the fireplace and glancing out the windows, no clear objective in mind but hoping she could find something to use to her advantage.

There was nothing in the memory that could be of great usefulness, and nobody was pulling her out. It looked like there was no choice for Eve but to wait for the memory to end, which didn't seem like it would happen anytime soon—Dumbledore hadn't done anything of relative excitement yet. In fact, he'd yet to move from his chair, still sorting through the parchment on his desk. The leftmost pile was now only the height of a small hippogriff.

Eve exhaled through her nose, limbs restless but heart realizing that there wasn't much she could do. She dragged her feet back to Dumbledore's desk, perching on its corner and slumping her shoulders, her mind swirling with thoughts as she pushed her panic to the side as best as she could.

At least she could read the essays he was grading to pass time.

—

Eve was about an hour in, and she was bored out of her mind.

In fact, she was too bored to even be stressed anymore. There were only so many Transfiguration essays one could read before their brain exploded.

Beyond all the panic and 'oh my god, what do I do?'s, it had been interesting at first—the aspects of being inside a memory, that is, not the essays (though she'd read a very fascinating one that discussed why—despite their possibility and legality—conjured items never lasted in respect to Gamp's Law). Even though Harry had described the feeling of being inside a memory to her before, it was still surprising to have everything feel so . . . physical. Eve hadn't expected for the ground to feel so solid, for the wood underneath her fingertips to feel so cool—she hadn't even expected to be able to touch and feel anything. She'd always assumed that everything inside a memory would feel sort of misty and translucent—almost ghost-like.

Then, the boredom had kicked in. After watching Dumbledore grade what had to have been his millionth essay and staring at the pile of ungraded ones that somehow had grown even higher, Eve had simply slid off the desk and ambled back to the spot on the floor where she'd first appeared, dropping onto it like a sack of potatoes.

That was where she sat now, cross-legged, head propped up on both hands as her elbows rested on her knees, wondering where her plan had all gone to shite.

At the Pensieve, obviously. No—the Sorting Hat. Actually, the Headmaster's office as a whole. Why did I agree to do this? I should've never agreed to do this.

And there were so many unanswered questions: Who had that voice belonged to? Why haven't they pulled her out of the memory yet? Was this some sort of intended punishment? And why had this specific memory been inside the Pensieve? Eve had trouble coming up with reasons as to why her former Headmaster had left a memory of his younger self grading Transfiguration essays for an hour inside the Pensieve for viewing.

She patted her robes for what felt like the hundredth time in the past hour, sighing in relief when she felt two distinct bulges in the fabric anyways—she still had her wand and Time-Turner on her, thank god. It wasn't like either item was of much use in her current predicament, but both just gave her an inexplicable feeling of safeness regardless.

Eve unclasped the chain around her neck and slipped the Time-Turner out from beneath her robes, holding it up to eye level and staring at its golden hourglass.

She'd debated on using it and just rewinding back to before she'd made the mistake of investigating the Pensieve and gotten herself into this entire mess. It seemed to be the easy and obvious solution—just turn it, and she'd be back in the empty castle corridors, where she could then sneak back into the Headmaster's office and actually find the Sword of Gryffindor instead of getting sidetracked by stupid silvery light.

But no—it was too risky. Eve had no idea how time passed in Pensieves, and she wasn't about to use her Time-Turner whilst stuck in a memory inside of one. As far as she knew, that was an unattempted feat, and just about anything could happen if she tried. Time magic was dangerous magic—it bordered on uncharted territory. There was a reason as to why the Ministry had a whole section in the Department of Mysteries dedicated solely to the study of time.

Using a Time-Turner from inside a memory—no. Who knows what could happen? Eve refused to follow through with such an impulsive urge, no matter how bored or apathetic she felt. It didn't matter if her current situation was seriously testing her patience and sanity. It didn't matter if the past hour had been the most mundane sixty minutes of her entire life.

If her estimated timing was accurate (or close to being so), and assuming that time passed in a Pensieve the same way it did in the real world, then the Halloween feast would be ending in around twenty minutes.

And that meant her time could very well be up.

After all, the twenty minutes didn't matter, seeing as Snape could choose to return to his office any second now. It was a very real possibility. In fact, it was even more likely than him returning right on time—after all, he often did leave early at meals, gliding off to coop himself up inside his bat lair and do Merlin-knows-what. Who said the Halloween feast would be an exception?

Eve wiped a few beads of sweat off of her forehead with the back of her left hand, her right one still clutching the Time-Turner tightly. Oh god, it was too late now. She hadn't expected to spend this long on this mission in the first place at all. One way or another, assuming the person who'd startled her with their voice doesn't pull her out first, she was going to get caught by Snape—and in either situation, she was getting in trouble. She'd already accepted that fact and her fate. It was her fault, anyways—she'd gotten distracted during her mission, and she was going to have to face the consequences of her own blundering actions.

It was just a matter of waiting now.

Acceptance didn't make it any easier, though. Minutes felt like hours as Eve sat there uncertainly, her whole entire body tense and expectant as she waited to feel that inevitable harsh grip on the back of her robes, pulling her upwards and out of the Pensieve to face an enraged Snape. There was nothing else she could do.

Any moment now.

From where he was still sitting at his desk, Dumbledore picked up his next essay serenely.

Any moment.

The ticking from the clock set atop the windowsill was incessant.

It's only seconds away.

Dumbledore marked something on the essay.

Any second now.

He placed the essay onto the leftmost pile.

Eve groaned, willing her head to stay quiet. She was just psyching herself out. Maybe Snape really wasn't going to leave the feast early, and she still had twenty more minutes of freedom. She was a Gryffindor, for god's sake! It wouldn't do her any good to just sit around and—

THUMP THUMP THUMP

What happened next, only milliseconds after the loud rapping from the opposite side of the office door in Dumbledore's memory, was entirely to blame on Eve's own mind. The stress of waiting for Snape's eventual discovery of her inside his office and Pensieve, coupled with the fact that she'd driven herself to the very edge with such a worry, had stretched her so taut that it only felt natural for the unexpected knocking sound to trigger her entire body into surprised, panicked movement.

And that was exactly what happened—Eve jolted so hard that she felt her bones rattle inside her body. She flinched so intensely that her hair momentarily levitated. She started so violently that her grip on the Time-Turner loosened slightly, a small movement that was just enough for it to slip through the crevice between her index and middle fingers, fall through the air, and make contact with the stone floor, shattering in an explosion of a million tiny pieces of glass and golden sand like a nightmare come to life.

"No!" Eve cried, immediately dropping to her knees and wrenching her wand out of her robes. "Reparo! Reparo!"

The broken Time-Turner stayed shattered, and Eve jerkily stowed her wand back into her robes, bending forward as she desperately tried to scoop the small sand granules—which had spilled in all directions across the floor—into her palms. Her pinky grazed against the uneven edge of a glass shard, and she felt the skin there pull open, but she didn't care—her Time-Turner, the only thing she depended on, the key to less bloodshed and suffering, her lifeline—it was gone, shattered against the floor, and she reached once more for the golden sand, and she saw the blood—saw the bead drip from the cut on her finger—it fell towards the ground—collided with a sand granule, the two uniting in an almighty connection—there was a blinding flash—like what one would see behind their eyelids if they closed them and tilted their face directly towards the sun—and the world exploded.

—

"A girl disappeared."

Severus Snape paused from where he had been hooking his robe onto a small peg on the wall by the entrance of the Headmaster's office. "I beg your pardon?"

"I said, a girl disappeared. Just two minutes ago. Right from inside this office."

Severus narrowed his eyes, striding across the room swiftly and approaching the portrait that had spoken. "Explain."

The portrait of Phineas Nigellus Black sniffed, staring down at him haughtily. "Some girl wearing Gryffindor robes came poking around inside here during the feast. Small and skinny. Dirty blonde. She was obviously looking for something. Was rifling through the room like a Niffler. It looked like the Pensieve caught her attention, though." He gestured downwards at the black cabinet right below his frame, its door cracked halfway open to emit the sliver of a silvery-white light. "She crept inside to do Merlin-knows-what. Naturally, I asked her, "What are you doing, young lady?" as anyone would have done, and she jumped, and her face fell straight into the basin. The lack of decorum, honestly." He cleared his throat, then continued: "She stayed like that for over an hour, face bent into the Pensieve, unmoving. It looked quite unsettling. Then, just now, two minutes before you came back, she simply disappeared. No flashing light, no sound effect. She just vanished into thin air."

"It's true!" The portrait of a middle-aged, innocent-looking witch that hung a few frames down gave an eager nod. "I saw it!"

Her neighbor, an old, bald wizard, made a loud tsking sound, glaring at Severus (which was the normal treatment he received from the portraits of the old Headmasters and Headmistresses in the office). The witch who had spoken quickly glanced away, looking abashed as she slinked back to the corner of her frame.

Severus, meanwhile, had glided over the black cabinet, pulling the door open and stepping forward. The shimmering silver inside the basin of the Pensieve gleamed brightly, washing his face with its glow.

Without another word, he bent his face into the light, and he fell into nothingness.