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"Excellent," smiled Quinn. The tough and first part of the problem was done. Now he only needed to get the straightforward part over with. "I have done some research with the Time-Turner, but you are the authority here; tell me, how should we do this?"
Hermione Granger was anything but uncertain. When she decided to do something, she went forward with composure, focus, and without second-guessing her decisions. Now that she had agreed to Quinn's demands, her previous hesitations were put aside.
She put her hand inside her shirt and pulled out a sparkling necklace that had an hourglass with blue sand.
"Oh, that is shiny," commented Quinn. Now that the difficult part was over, he was much relaxed, so carefree comments flowed out.
Ivy and Hermione looked up from the Time-Turner and saw that Quinn was closely observing the Time-Turner with a smile on his face.
"Time-Turners that are issued by the Ministry of Magic have an Hour-Reversal Charm placed onto them. They had a limit of traveling back a maximum of five hours, which is the determined safety limit to the person and the fabrics of time itself," explained Hermione before asking Quinn a question. "So, how long do you need to go in time, because if it is more than five hours, then we are already over before we start."
Quinn knew that because of his knowledge, and that was why he had hurried to call Hermione. If there wasn't a time limit, Quinn would have waited till he was fully recovered.
"I want to go a little under three hours back in time."
"I see, then it's fine. This Time-Turner turns back time in hours, meaning that we will go back three hours in time," nodded Hermione.
"Next, we need a place where we can't be seen. Somewhere we won't be disturbed. We need to find a place that has been empty for the last five hours," conveyed Hermione, another rule about Time-Turners. "Professor McGonagall has given me a key to one of the deserted and unused classrooms that I use when jumping back in time. "
Quinn pointed his hand towards the office as he said, "I knew that, so I have taken measures to ensure that we won't be disturbed in here. No one will be coming here today. I will lock the door, and just to be extra careful, we will start here." Quinn pointed at the workshop as he finished.
Ivy and Hermione looked at the workshop door and noticed that the door was different. Especially Ivy, who noticed that the new door looked much sturdier than before.
"Yes, the door is new. I had to make another one after our previous altercation. You won't be able to break it as easily as you did before," chuckled Quinn as he read their thoughts from their expressions.
The two girls twitched after hearing Quinn's remark. Hermione retrieved her eyes from the red door and nodded. "This will do. Now, before we go back, where are we going?"
"We will be going to the woods near the Hogsmeade station, near the lakeside. As I told you, my actions are going to be extremely isolated, and the location is the reason for that isolation."
"What are you going to do?"
Quinn shook his head and spoke, "I will tell you after we make the jump and reach the woods."
Ivy narrowed her eyes at Quinn's refusal to tell the details, but because Hermione didn't say anything, she kept quiet.
"... Well, let's get this over with," sighed Hermione, while guessing that asking Quinn again would be a waste of time and effort. The boy in front of her always had a shroud of mystery around him, and she didn't think that the shroud would come off today.
"Good, follow me so we can get started," said Quinn as he stood up from his barstool. He took out his fake wand and pointed it at the office door, melding the door and frame together.
The two Gryffindor girls stood up and followed after Quinn as he pushed open the red workshop door. Quinn closed the door after everyone was inside.
Last time, when Ivy was in the workshop, it was dark because she didn't know how to turn on the lights, but this time with Quinn with them, the workshop was brightly lit, and everything was clearly visible for them to see.
Hermione and Ivy watched with wide eyes, taking in the things that they could see. There was so much stuff in the room that the variety stunned Ivy and Hermione.
"Ms. Granger, let's get going. I would like to get started quickly, so we can get this over with quickly," spoke Quinn to the girls, who were occupied looking around.
"... Yes. Come closer to me," said Hermione as she pulled on the chain of the necklace with the Time-Turner. Then, the chain expanded. It actually kept on expanding until its length satisfied Hermione. "Get under the chain such that it is surrounding all three of us."
Ivy and Quinn walked closer and lifted the chains over their heads to walk inside the circle. The redhead girl and black-haired boy looked at each other with their vivid-green and stone-grey eyes as they stood in close proximity.
Quinn slightly smiled as he looked down towards the shorter girl while Ivy stared up with a stern, non-nonsense face.
"You look like Daphne, right now," commented Quinn suddenly and smiled when Ivy's face twitched. His objective had been fulfilled.
Hermione looked at the two and cleared her throat, and asked. "Are you sure? Three hours?"
"Yes, three hours will do. We'll be back here by the end of these three hours." He looked at Hermione and added, "We should hurry because three people just entered the office." Quinn pointed at the glass wall.
Hermione's eyes widened as she immediately understood what Quinn meant by his word. The three people that entered the office were the ones from the future.
She immediately turned the hourglass timepiece thrice, triggering the Time-Turner and slipping through the sands of times.
The bright workshop dissolved. Quinn had the sensation that he was flying very fast, backward. A blur of colors and shapes rushed past him; his ears were pounding; he kept calm and observed the phenomenon through all his senses.
And then he felt solid ground beneath his feet, and everything came into focus again. Quinn stood next to Hermione and Ivy inside the dark workshop. There was no light because there weren't any windows, and the rune lights were not turned on.
Quinn turned his neck slightly to adjust the chain of the hourglass-timepiece cutting into his neck.
"We've gone back in time," Hermione whispered, lifting the chain off and looking at Ivy and Quinn's figures appeared in the darkness. "We went three hours back..."
"Excellent. Let's get going. It will take longer than usual for us to get to the woods," said Quinn as he walked towards the workshop door.
"Huh, what do you -" Ivy asked what Quinn was talking about when she noticed a clearly visible limp in Quinn's stride that was previously missing. "Why are you limping?"
Quinn opened the workshop door and turned his face back to look at Ivy to state in a voice that made it seem that he was saying something obvious: "I am injured."
"The limp wasn't there before we jumped back in time," chimed Hermione as she looked at Quinn's feet.
"I was being careful, but now that we are here, I can tell you," said Quinn as he entered the office. The girls followed as his voice became faint. "I got injured, and we are going to make it so that I don't get injured further."
Ivy and Hermione looked at each other and followed, who kept walking with the limp in his step.
"You got injured in the woods?" questioned Ivy, trying to get information from Quinn.
"Kind of. Yeah, I got injured near the woods," said Quinn as the three exited the office and the door locked itself.
Ivy watched as Quinn looked around the corridor with an uncomfortable expression.
"What happened?"
Quinn briefly glanced at Ivy before going back to look at the corridor. "We have to make sure that we aren't seen. We aren't part of this time till the three hours pass: we don't belong to this time just yet. So, I would like to not be seen until the time after we return to the office after three hours."
To make sure that this entire operation remained isolated and contained as much as possible, Quinn wanted that three of them to not be seen.
Ivy and Hermione understood Quinn's point of view. Hermione looked at Ivy, who looked at her, and the two best friends talked with their eyes behind Quinn's back. After a few seconds, Ivy sighed and nodded.
"I have the Marauder's Map on me. We can use that," said Ivy looking at Quinn's back, who turned to face Ivy and locked eyes with her.
"Really? Finally, some luck. Then let's use the map. It will make our job much easier. I guess your tagging along is paying off."
The map alternated between the Potter siblings every day, and it turned out that today was Ivy's turn. She took out the map from her robes and activated the original inspiration for Recon with the secret phrase.
"I solemnly swear I am up to no good."
The ink appeared on the old parchment as Ivy unfolded the map and manually looked for their position.
'My Recon has a voice-activated, auto-locator,' thought Quinn proudly.
Ivy found their position, and as she did, Quinn noticed that the map only showed Hermione and Ivy; Quinn was missing from the map.
"It seems I'm still not traceable with the map," smiled Quinn as he looked at the map. "That makes me happy."
"... We tried to fix it, but it didn't work," spat Ivy as he lightly glared at Quinn.
"That makes me happier," laughed Quinn at her tone.
"Let's talk about this later," reminded Hermione, who was the only one experienced with time travel. She had gotten used to managing time, and her two companions were wasting precious time.
"Ah, yes, we should hurry. With my limp, it will take us longer to get there," nodded Quinn before motioning Ivy to step forward. "If you would be so kind as to lead the way, pathfinder."
Ivy ignored Quinn and stepped forward to lead the way, while keeping an eye on the map to see the people in their surroundings.
Quinn, who was following Ivy, sneakily and silently cast a group Disillusionment Charm that worked on Quinn's understanding of physical illusions and light manipulation to turn the trio invisible. It was high-quality magic, and it was much better than his previous work this year as an invisible vigilante.
The fact that he had been noticed prompted Quinn to figure out a better spell that wouldn't become vulnerable while moving. The general Disillusionment charms worked on light manipulation, so Quinn upped the quality of light manipulation and beyond by adding aspects of physical illusions to provide another layer of depth to the stealth.
The three eventually made their way towards the woods, taking the party around three-quarters of an hour to get to the point that Quinn wanted.
"Alright, we are here. We are going to make camp here and wait till the event starts," informed Quinn.
He took out his fake wand for show and transmuted the ground to rise up to form three plateaus before transforming them into stone.
Quinn plopped himself down on one of the flat stones and gestured to the girls to take their seats as well.
Ivy and Hermione looked to their surroundings and saw that they were barely inside the woods, which had the Great lake on one side and the Hogsmeade station on the other.
From the way Quinn was sitting, they could deduce that whatever was about to happen was going to happen at the Great Lake's side.
After the two finally sat down on the transfigured stones, Quinn spoke up, "We have time before I have to start working, so to pass the time, I would like to make some things clear."
Ivy and Hermione glanced at each other while thinking that Quinn was about to tell them what was about to happen, but what followed differed completely from what happened.
"First, Ms. Potter," addressed Quinn. He took a short pause before continuing. "You were at the wrong place at the wrong time. I was going through a bad time when you came across me. And well, you know what followed."
Ivy silently stared at Quinn with a totally expressionless face. It was clear she was using occlumency. She knew that Quinn was talking about the Polyjuice incident.
"If times had been better, even though I wouldn't have condoned your actions— I would've simply ignored you and moved along minding my own business. But the circumstances lead to what happened. And I truly and from the bottom of my heart am sorry that I threatened you and your family."
It was true; Quinn would have ignored Ivy in Daphne's form and would have walked away because of his then reluctance to get involved with the events. The sin curse had decreased those inhibitions, and he vaulted into the incident with a particular savageness.
Emotions could be peeked from behind Ivy's occlumency barrier as surprise appeared on her face. She wasn't expecting this from Quinn when he said that he wanted to pass the time.
"Next, I don't really mind you breaking into professor Snape's ingredient inventory to get the potion ingredients. To me, it just showed that you guys were resourceful. I probably would have just mail-ordered the ingredients, but I'm sure you didn't have that option."
Quinn knew he was saying that he didn't mind identity theft and breaking and entry. But the truth was that he truly didn't mind it.
Quinn was what you called a serial Legilimens, which meant that he regularly used Legilimency. Every mealtime while he was in the Great Hall, Quinn would use Legilimency to peek into the unsuspecting mind of numerous students. Tens of students had no idea that their minds were being read while they chatted and ate their meals.
In his second year, Quinn had drugged Ron Weasley to get information out of him, which was again a tremendous violation of privacy. His first meeting with Ginny Weasley had turned into a walk where he tried to go through the girl's recent life.
He had practically hacked into a computer system to get the private passwords of numerous accounts. Recon was just that as he even had the passwords to the professor's private quarters that were practically like their apartments.
So when Quinn said that he didn't mind the stuff that he had held against them, he was speaking the truth.
"... Nonetheless, I vehemently oppose you breaking into MY office. That wasn't cool at all. The reasoning that you girls based your opinion were —pardon my language— idiotic." Hermoine was about to speak, but Quinn stopped her and continued, "I know what I am saying is highly hypocritical, but the truth of the matter is that I am somewhat of a hypocrite."
Another example of Quinn's hypocrisy was his thoughts about the Lockhart incident. He felt that Lockhart got his punishment but didn't like the fact that it had come from himself: Quinn would have been fine if it came from anyone else than him. And that was classic hypocritical behavior.
When Quinn stopped and Hermione said what she was planning to say, "You know that what you said makes things worse."
"I know, but the thing is, what I said is the honest truth. The only reason I am telling you guys this is because, at that time, I was going through a tough time, and telling you guys just lets me get a load off my chest."
Hermione Granger and Ivy Potter stared at Quinn, who had an honest smile on his face. Both of them knew what Quinn said was in some ways a lot worse, but the tone and delivery of his words made them confused if they should take it positively or negatively.
"If you are sorry, then why did you call us to repay?" asked Ivy. She had dropped her occlumency.
"Hmm? I said that I didn't appreciate you breaking into my office. That thing is still pretty much entirely on the table. And while I never wanted to ask you guys to repay the debt, Ms. Granger's debt was my best option. If I had something that would help me resolve this on my own, then I wouldn't have given her a single second of thought."
Quinn shrugged and referenced. "I praised you guys for being resourceful because I like to think I am resourceful as well. This was just me being resourceful. So no hard feelings, alright."
Quinn was now done with what he wanted to tell them. He had said everything he wanted to say; he had apologized for threatening the Potter family, about staining James Potter's reputation, getting them expelled, among other things.
He didn't mean any of those things, and those kinds of threats would only be true if they had done something that Quinn couldn't reverse or get out of easily. Because even though his grandfather and Lia would support him and he would inadvertently gain the support of the Dark Faction, the whole spiel would be a tremendous pain in the ass for Quinn.
The party of three sat in silence, with Quinn monitoring the lakeshore while Ivy and Hermione contemplated the words that Quinn had spoken to them.
After half an hour, Quinn suddenly stood up from his stone and garnered the attention of his companions.
"It is time," said Quinn as he stared at the lakeshore.
Quinn's abrupt stand surprised Ivy and Hermione, who were sitting silently for the past half hour. They followed his eyesight, and their eyes widened in shock when they saw a heavily injured Quinn West come out of the lake.
They were sitting at a distance, but even from there, both could clearly see the wounds on Quinn's body. The gashes on his body were deep and broad, and only their distance from the 'past' Quinn dissociated them from the gory scene.
"W-What happened to you?!" exclaimed Ivy as she removed her eyes from the 'past' Quinn to their companion, Quinn.
"... I got injured and am currently in the process of healing myself," replied Quinn, who had his eyes fixed on his 'past' self.
"Should we help you out? What should we do? You should've told us about this earlier!" rapid-fired Hermione as she frantically looked back and forth from both Quinns.
Quinn raised his arm to motion them to calm down. "You two don't have to do anything. Please remember that you are only here to keep an eye on me. You two simply need to stay put. I will take care of everything."
Hermione and Ivy had stood up from their seats and were now looking at the 'past' Quinn.
Both waited for Quinn to do something, but he just stood still and kept on staring at his past self.
"Why aren't you doing something?! You are going to die," exclaimed Ivy, anxiously looking at the injured 'past' Quinn. With every second that Quinn didn't respond, she grew more uneasy, and after some time, she couldn't hold it back anymore. "You are mad! I'm going to help him. He is going to die!" And stepped forward, fully intending to help the 'past' Quinn.
Quinn glanced at Ivy and sighed. With a slight twitch of his finger, a white dome force field appeared around Ivy, causing her to halt within the confines of the magic.
There was a sudden and sharp jump in tension between the group. Ivy threw a wary look at the dome around as she took out her wand. Hermione, who was still standing near her stone, also took out her wand in apprehension.
"Ms. Potter, nothing will happen to him. He will not die from his wounds. The fact that I am standing here is proof that he will come out of this alive," spoke Quinn, attempting to pacify Ivy as he threw a glance towards Hermione. "He is currently healing his wounds. I'm proficient in healing wounds. I'd like you to calm down. I assure you that he won't die."
Neither Ivy nor Hermione at this point knew how time worked, so it wasn't unusual that they would be stimulated by the sight of a badly cut-up person.
'People with lawful-good alignments can be a hassle sometimes,' thought Quinn. But he was a little surprised: even after what had happened between them, Ivy would readily try to save him...
The force field around Ivy disappeared, freeing her from the confines.
"And please try to remain quiet. I had to cast a silencing ward around us to stop the voice from reaching him. We need to complete this stealthily," instructed Quinn before going back to observing his past self.
Hermione gingerly walked to Ivy and stood by her friend. "Did you notice him casting a ward? Because I didn't."
Ivy shook her head in response, her eyes locked on Quinn, who didn't look worried at all. "Do you have any idea what is happening? Why isn't he doing anything? Didn't he say that he wanted to reduce his injuries? Why isn't he helping his past self?"
"I don't kno -" started Hermione, but her voice came to an abrupt stop.
Ivy watched as Hermione's face took an expression of horrified shock.
"... What?" spoke Ivy and turned towards where Hermione was looking and saw the thing that had Hermione stuck in frightening shock.
A flying tornado of dark cloaks descended from the dark evening sky. Hundreds of gliding wraiths gathered above the 'past' Quinn, circling in the sky as some of them silently flew down towards the injured boy.
The hundreds of creatures had a grim effect on the surroundings as Ivy and Hermione felt the temperature drop around them.
"It's time." They heard Quinn speak as he calmly looked at the hundreds of hooded-cloaks nearing his past self.
"The Dementors are here."
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Quinn West - MC - I am a hypocrite of a high-order.
Ivy Potter - Pathfinder - Lawful Good
Hermione Granger - Tensed - What is happening?!
FictionOnlyReader - Author - Alright, Dementors, 3..2..1. Go! Go! Go!
AlanL - Editor - This is getting interesting… (^_^)
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