Cut From the Sky

Chapter 23: Stakes

Caging him in with a screeching slam of the door, the Ministry elevator jerked rapidly backwards, then upwards. Harry kept his eyes firmly on the golden metal door, gripping onto the overhead handle. Even after an optimistic drying charm, his hair was slightly damp with the fishy water of the Strasbourg aquariums, and his socks were downright sodden. The floo he'd taken from Paris to London had coughed soot over the sleeves of his jacket and powder had caught in his throat, sparkly green and biting. Wizarding travel truly was a terrible joke.

The elevator spit him out on Level Nine. Hastily, Harry walked the length of a hallway, black and gleaming and entirely blank, then another, and another, before he felt tentaculous wards reaching for him, probing syrupy against his core.

Ushering him through, the wards left him in the Time Division, with dark walls that seemed to curve inwards under the weight of thousands of clocks. As Harry hurried through the corridor, he imagined, as he had so often, the walls finally caving and crumbling around him, burying him underneath the oppressive weight of time.

A billowing glittering wind, an ever dying hummingbird, a pause to catch his breath, to – unsuccessfully – attempt to calm his mind, and Harry stepped into Philomena's office.

"Harry Potter," Philomena greeted him, her voice perfectly devoid of inflection. "I almost thought you weren't coming."

"You've been expecting me?" Behind Harry, the door fell shut. All around, Time Turners twisted, spun, undulated in their sleep, and the beat of the clocks was unrelenting.

Philomena looked at him with cool, empty eyes. "Every time."

Already, Harry felt deeply unsettled. He glanced back towards the door, which blended so neatly with the walls it might as well have not been there, then stepped closer to the desk and invited himself to sit in the chair opposite hers. It was as black as the rest of the room, soft and cold, humming in time with the clocks. "I need to talk to you," he said, attempting to take control of the situation, at least for a little while.

"Talk then," Philomena instructed and waved a hand in a careless way that reminded Harry far too much of Draco. His heart fluttered madly. All around them, haunting blue light glinted off dark marble, draining Philomena's face entirely of colour, catching in the shadowy glitter painted to her eyelids and the weighty heart earrings pulling at her lobes.

"Do you know which day it is yet?"

Philomena cocked her head, her confounding hair curling into the facsimile of a question mark. "No," she offered, after a brief moment of consideration.

"Okay," said Harry, "Okay. Can you check?"

Philomena stayed silent. Gloomy candle light flickered over the depth of her eyes, veiling their true colour. She didn't blink.

"I need to know which day is the correct one. Which day I'll remember," Harry elaborated briskly, shaking his head minutely, as though he could rid his mind from the incessant ticking of the walls.

"I'm afraid that's not possible," Philomena replied evenly, "and which day you'll keep is not all that relevant besides."

Something ugly twisted in Harry's stomach. "It's relevant to me," he said, aiming and failing to keep his voice even as hers.

"Is that so?"

Harry sunk his teeth into his lip, focussing only on the sharp sting of pain for a moment before changing tack. "Alright," he said, "Let's – I have a Pensieve at home. Several, I think, somewhere. One of them is bound to be functional, I'd hope. I'll go home, deposit my memories in there, and all you'll have to do when we arrive in November 3rd is to tell me to watch them. Make sure I'll watch them." Harry knew it wouldn't work, of course he did, except that if there was even the faintest possibility of keeping his memories safe in a Pensieve, he didn't want to keep it unexplored. Different kinds of Pensieves existed, that much the strange apparatus behind Philomena attested to, and undoubtedly she knew more about their magic than him. Silver and edged in shadows, her Pensieve rested on a crowded shelf, lazily unspooling threads of nebulous purple fog into the room.