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

Christmas Holiday, 2012 (Part Seven)

"I saw what I saw in 1981," Ottalie said, "And I couldn't live with it. It didn't matter how far I ran or how good I made my own life, it wasn't worth throwing away Charlus's son's. I knew what was coming and I knew I had a means to stop it. I had to try... and if I died trying, then so be it."

Alphard was spinning a wine glass in his fingers as he listened, watching the burgundy liquid swirl as the flute rotated. Dierks closed his eyes, fingers peaked against his mouth and over his nose, leaning forward on the table as he focused.

"So I went back. And when the scene repeated itself, I went back again... and again... and again... each time tightening the loop so that my return eclipsed my prior attempt." She spun her finger in a loose circle. "The problem is that meant I had to outrun myself as well as try to beat Riddle and Pettigrew to the house..."

"But Peter wasn't --"

"We didn't know at the time," Dierks interrupted me, "All the details that many now know about Pettigrew."

Ottalie raised an eyebrow but Dierks shook his head and motioned for her to continue.

It was clear I wasn't to share what I knew.

I wondered why.

Ottalie continued on, "Every time I lived the loop, it grew tighter... like a noose. Now, the only place I can be is here - in the time outside of time... and there's only a few precious seconds left that are untouched in the Halloween 1981 timeline."

"Which means," Alphard announced, "We are at a stop until we are positively certain we''ll make it or else everything we've given over the years was for nothing. We have one shot left at it - two at very most, but it would be narrow as hell to try it the second time. Possibly physically impossible."

"So what happened? On Halloween?" I asked. I knew, of course, that James and Lily died, and apparently, in some versions, so did Harry... but the details -- "Nobody really knows the details from what I've ever read. Nobody knows how Harry defeated Voldemort, how Harry lived through the attack... He was a baby and only remembers green light."

Ottalie's eyes darkened. "It was a massacre."

"Even we aren't sure how Harry did it or if it was even Harry who did do it," Dierks said. "It could have been the killing curse rebounding on itself as a side effect of the horcrux, or it might have been the shield Lily put up with her love. You're right to say that nobody knows."

"And us fiddling about there doesn't really help sort matters out any," input Alphard, who now drank the full goblet of wine in one go.

"What's a horcrux?" I asked.

Alphard chuckled mirthlessly into the goblet as he lowered it from his mouth.

"What?" I asked, not sure I understood what was funny about my question.

"You gotta read the books, Teddy."

I lay in bed later, after Dierks had spun the time turner to bring us back to the present. He showed me on the clock by my beside - not a minute had passed by while we were gone. All I could hear now in the dark was the absence of the ticking of all those clocks that had been in the house in the time between time, and the few clocks in the house seemed to be ticking incredibly loudly, all the way into the very core of my body, the vibrations of every tick and every tock shivered down my spine. Like I could feel time in a way I never had before.

Dobby sat purring on my pillow, curved like a halo around my head.

I rolled over and looked down at Dierks, who was asleep, the Mickey Mouse watch clutched in his fist.