The Marauders Year Five Part 2 #Wattys2017

Artefacts

Artefacts

It was three days, two skipped lunches, one missed dinner, a party in the common room, and a midnight trip to the library beneath the invisibility cloak to get into the Restricted Section later, that Remus Lupin ran through the halls, trying to find James Potter. "HAVE YOU SEEN JAMES POTTER?" he gasped, grabbing Carly Shaw's arm.

"No?" she looked at Remus with disgust, tugging her arm away.

He raced away, trying to push out of his mind the look on her face, trying not to let the stupid people that occupied the castle bother him. He raced along, clutching a book, waving it about. "Seen James Potter?" he asked a group of Hufflepuffs, "Seen James Potter?" The Ravenclaws shook their heads. He was limping by the time he found Frank Longbottom, who said James had left the lunch table early to go down to the pitch to set up for Quidditch practice.

Remus stumbled down the path to the pitch, and burst through the door of the locker room, "JAMES, JAMES!! I RUDDY FOUND IT! I FOUND WHY THE TREES ARE IN THE COURTYARD EVEN THOUGH MARYROSE IS ---" he stopped mid-sentence as he tore around the corner of the locker room and found James and Maryrose - James's back pressed ot the wall, as Maryrose kissed his neck and chin along the line of his scruffy traces of facial hair, " --- here," Remus finished.

Maryrose's face as flushed bright red and her hair even turned red from the soft green it had been before, the colour just burning her all over. "Oh my stars," she whispered, covering her eyes, burying her face into James's shoulder.

James slid down the wall and away from her, "Excuse me." He turned to Remus.

Remus was red, "I - I can tell you later, I don't want to -- interrupt -- this --"

"No it's alright," James replied and he turned to Maryrose, "Hey, um, I gotta talk to Remus. Alright if I catch you up later?"

"Of course." Maryrose took her wand up from the benches where she and James had laid them and she waved to Remus, her hair slowly turning back to it's minty green shade, and rushed out the door.

Remus stared at James, "Well, you got over the shock of being with her right quick, didn't you?"

James flushed. "I mean she surprised me. It wasn't my idea. I'm actually glad you came along when you did, I was trying to find a way to stop it without hurting her feelings."

"Right." Remus said. Then he remembered how excited he was about what he'd found and he said, "JAMES! James! Blimey. Okay listen. We're alone now, yeah?"

"Yeah," James nodded.

"Alright. Look at this." Remus shoved the book into James's hand, letting it fall open to the page he'd been holding with his finger as he ran about searching for his mate. "LOOK AT THAT." He jabbed his finger at the page roughly, making the whole book bobble in James's grasp.

"The Problem with Time Travel," James read the title out loud. "The problem with time travel is the unpredictable nature of how even minor incidents affect other incidents of both inconsequential and important matters..."

"Fifth paragraph!" Remus instructed, too anxious to sit through James reading the entire article.

"Many travellers have reported seeing minor discrepancies with a revised timeline, where in there lies small clues or fragments from the previous timeline in the revised timeline, for instance one may bear a scar from an injury that no longer took place or find a photograph that was never taken. This is a phenomenon which is called Artifacting and is one of the dangers that time travellers have faced in the past, as they are driven mad by the artefacts that lead to things that never happened, which they wished had remained intact, such as a photograph of a child who was never born or the ring from a wedding never held. Many Time Travellers experience madness at the uncontrollable nature of such artefacts and the lack of understanding they receive from others in their new timeline. Nobody else recalls where these artefacts came from and, indeed, seem to believe that they have merely always existed for lack of better explanation. Typically the Traveller alone realizes the mysteriousness of their appearance. Artefacts are believed to be caused by especially important events having been undone - things that ought not to have been altered will leave these artefacts, like scars on the fabric of time. Famous artefacts are believed to include some of the great mysteries of the world, such as the heads of Easter Island and the Egyptian pyramids."