It's Christmas Time Again: A Time-Traveling TMS Holiday Extravaganza

Christmas Holiday, 2012 (Part Six)

"I've lived and relived the worst night of my life about a hundred times if I've lived it once," Ottalie Potter's wild black hair framed her face as she stood up and assumed the position of the focal point of the room, taking it upon herself to not only tell the story but to apparently accompany the telling of it with a theatrical component.

And you wonder where I got my dramatics from? These are the people I've been hanging out with day in and day out.

"The first time, it was an accident. I'd never worked a time turner before and appaaaaaaarently they're very sensitive."

Dierks piped up, "They are."

"They can hear?" I whispered, eyeing the chain that stuck up over the collar of Dierks's shirt.

Alphard snorted and spit out whatever amber liquor he'd just poured himself from a decanter on the table.

"No, no - sensitive as in they need to be handled with care," Dierks said. "Like the physical touch."

Alphard started coughing and Dierks turned to look at him as Alphard knocked on his chest to stop the coughing attack, a wicked grin on his face.

Ottalie cleared her throat to regain her composure and her command on the room as Alphard continued to snort quietly into his palm, shaking his head and muttering, even as Dierks shushed him.

"What I saw that night - it was gruesome. It was awful, unfair, cruel, despicable. Even if it hadn't been obvious the man and baby I saw in that window belonged somehow to my family, I still would have felt driven to stop what I saw from happening."

"What was it?" I asked.

"My nephew being murdered - him and his entire family - by Tom Riddle."

"Harry's dad?"

"James," Ottalie said, nodding. "Him and his wife, Lily, and their son."

"Harry?" I breathed, and my chest tightened at the thought of a world without my godfather in it. "Harry wasn't murdered. Harry is The Boy Who Lived. His mum's love saved him."

"In your timeline, perhaps, but there were many others that he didn't live through, no more than his parents lived." Ottalie said quietly.

I felt sick. I thought the only thing potentially changed was that Harry's Dad might live through Halloween 1981, that his Mum would live, too, and they'd be there at his birthday parties. But there was a chance of losing Harry, too. And in a way, I'd already lost him in the past. Knowing chilled me.

"But without Harry --"

"Voldemort lives," Dierks supplied.

"He's gained control of the Ministry fully by 1984, and begins infiltrating the Ministere des Affaires Magiques de la France - resulting in a great war led against us by MACUSA," Alphard said, his French a lilting sound of perfection.

Ottalie said, "Every major Magical governing body chooses sides."

"Grindelwald escapes Numengard," Dierks added.

Alphard said, "Next thing you know, the world is on fire."

"All on account of Harry dying?"

Ottalie nodded.

"So... the loop?"

"I was in horror after seeing what I did, and when I turned time and got back to London, I was hysterical. There I was, utterly traumatized, and screaming and crying in the square, and making such a ruckus that some muggles called their policeymen. Next thing I know, the muggles are trying to take me into custody, they think I'm mad because I'm screaming of time turners and Tom Riddle, a meeting that happened three days before they knew nothing of, and a murder..."