4 Turns | Dramione

01 | four turns

0 1

f o u r t u r n s
Jul 22 1999

↻

Tick tock.

The busy, hustling ticking loaded the chamber like thousands of minuscule, marching footsteps. Every kind of clocks—large and small, grandfather and carriage—was hung in spaces between the bookcases or standing on desks ranging the length of the room. Clocks could be found on every surface. At the far end of the room, a huge crystal bell jar erected on a table, darting beautiful, dancing, diamond-sparkling light all over the place.

Inside the jar which appeared to be full of billowing, glittering wind, a tiny object rose and fell on the current, moving through an endless loop. The object was a small hummingbird. At the bottom of its circuit, the bird was within its egg. As it rose, it hatched and grew into a mature bird by the time it reached the apex of its cycle. On the way back down, it became a fledgling bird then re-entered its egg, which reformed around it, before everything repeated all over again.

The bell jar never failed to mesmerize her. Hermione could stare at the life cycle of the bird all day. Her chocolate eyes reluctantly shifted from the jar and landed on the large glass-fronted case standing against a wall. Hourglasses of various sizes and colours dived from the shelves before they soared back to where they'd been in mere seconds ago, replaying the movement. The magical devices were trapped in an infinite loop of falling over, un-falling, and then re-falling, in an endless cycle. The turbulent Time-Turners were what she came here for.

Since the defeat of Voldemort, Hermione had worked for the Ministry at the Department of Mysteries. Told by its name, it comprised loads of mysteries. Employees of the department were forbidden from discussing or disclosing any information about their duties. Little was known about their workplace, and even less was known about their jobs, the name "Unspeakables" was granted to the workers at the incomprehensible division.

As an Unspeakable, Hermione couldn't divulge any detail of her jobs to anyone, even her best friends. Ron, being the gossipy man, always tried to trick Hermione into spilling confidential information, however with her mouth professionally zipped up, she never granted him any detail. Violating the personnel regulations of her job was the last thing Hermione would do.

The plummeting tiny machines derived every ounce of attention from Hermione. Time-Turners were rare in the Wizarding World and they couldn't be easily replaced. During the Battle of the Department of Mysteries in 1996, the full stock of Time-Turners in the Ministry had been rendered useless—not destroyed—just unusable. It'd all happened due to the way one of them had fallen at the moment their counter had been knocked over, they're trapped in an endless loop for all eternity. They no longer had any functioning Time-Turners after the battle. As of now, it's Hermione's job to fix them.

To make the devices usable again, freeing them from the repetitive pattern seemed to be the only way. Yet, it's easier said than done. It'd been months since Hermione and her co-workers began to work on the project, but not a solution had been come up with. Frustrated by the snail-paced progress they'd made, many of her colleagues had become frustrated while some had even given up already. Still, being the brightest witch of her age, Hermione was positive about the challenge and confident in overcoming the difficulties ahead.

The hour-arm of a clock pointed at 7, suggested that Hermione had worked overtime again and she's the only person left in the department. Inspired by the Muggle physics book she'd just finished, she decided to come back to the Time Room to give her hypothesis a try before she called it a day.

Pointing her vine wood wand at the drifting pile of Time-Turners, she uttered an incantation, "Immobulus."

Nothing happened as she'd expected—the Freezing Charm had no effect on them. She'd known this a long time ago. She just needed to make sure.