Fire And Ice - Yin and Yang (Harry Potter fanfiction)

The sick awaken

When Periwinkle awoke, her eyes found the white ceiling above her. It was a quite boring ceiling, actually. No patterns, no different shades of white- perhaps someone should hang a few paintings up there.

Would that even work? Hanging paintings on a ceiling?

There was the sound of a page being flipped.

Periwinkle's eyes flickered to the right and found a black-robed figure sitting in an armchair by her bed. She blinked dazedly.

"What year is it?" she croaked out. She put a hand to her aching throat and found a soft cloth covering it.

Snape's lips twisted into an annoyed grimace. He turned another page. "1993, Potter."

"Oh." Periwinkle's eyebrows furrowed. She lowered her hand. "Are you sure?"

"I was hoping you would remain unconscious for another hour," snapped Snape, still not bothering to look up. "So be quiet."

Periwinkle bit her lip. She swallowed. "I just thought, maybe I traveled back in time to the moment when I was in the hospital wing after Quirrell died. Because you were reading the same book then."

Snape lifted his eyes. Periwinkle couldn't tell what he was thinking. "Time travel is not possible, unless you have the right device, Potter," he said.

"Einstein said that if you go fast enough, then time slows down."

"That is not the same as time travel."

"What about doing the opposite? If I'd move really slowly- I mean really slowly- would time speed up?"

Why was she talking at all? Perhaps her brain was still fuzzy.

Snape shot her a condescending look. "No."

"But it's an interesting theory," Periwinkle mused, "Imagine you barely move a toe for two days and then suddenly, a whole year passed. So I guess that would be time travel, just- forward into the future."

"No one can travel into the future."

"Why not?"

"Because it does not exist yet."

"What if the future already exists, but we change it with our decisions in the present, so by the time we arrive in the future, everything's different than planned?" Periwinkle looked up at the ceiling. "I guess that means the closer prophecies are to the present, the more accurate they are."

Snape raised an eyebrow. That last sentence had actually been correct. Prophecies that predicted what was to come in a hundred years were so vague, it barely made any sense to listen to them at all.

"What happened to Lockhart's- remains?" asked Periwinkle and her voice suddenly sounded a little fearful.

"They were destroyed."

"And the others will get better?" Periwinkle pushed herself up until she was sitting and looked over to Azalea, whose bed was across from hers. Weirdly, Hermione and Ron were no where to be seen. Perhaps they'd been released already.

"Yes."

Snape's monosyllabic answer suggested that he was in a bad mood. Periwinkle wanted to ask why he was here in the first place, but she guessed that even Madam Pomfrey needed a break and perhaps Snape was the matron-substitute for now.