Just as Pandora predicted James followed her out of the Great Hall after lunch. He had wanted to talk to her during Breakfast, but Quidditch practice had run late.
“Pandora!”
The short blonde girl spun around, a smile on her pretty face.
“Fifty-two steps, just as I thought!” she said happily.
“Huh?” James said, stopping in front of her.
“I guessed it would take fifty-two steps before you called out to me,” she said, still carrying her wide smile.
“Er, is that another Divination thing?”
“No silly, I just wanted to try and guess.”
“Uhm, yeah, silly me. So, you were right. There is a favor I wanted to ask of you.”
Pandora spun again, this time moving her body until it was next to James, who got a face full of blonde hair. She took his arm and pointed forward.
“Lead on Potter. I am sure we are to be discussing this in private. A broom closet perhaps?”
The other students around them snickered or started talking to one another in hushed voices.
James sighed. Sirius was not going to let that one go once he heard about it. And he would hear about it. If there was one constant in the world, it was the Hogwarts Rumor Mill, thought the validity of said rumors were not constant.
“How about just one of the classrooms?”
“I guess… I wanted to check on the brooms though. I’m sure that they get lonely because everything is just cleaned with magic.”
“Oh I’m sure the brooms in the broom closets see plenty of faces,” James joked.
“That’s true…”” she trailed off with a thoughtful look on her face.
James led her to one of the abandoned classrooms, casting a few privacy wards once they were in.
“Was that Swahili?”
“Uh, yes,” James said after casting the obscure spell.
He was surprised she knew what Swahili was, he barely knew what it was.
“Awesome,” Pandora said cheerily, hopping onto a desk and kicking her legs back and forth. “Ive always wanted to visit Uagadou. Their most advanced students get to learn how to become Animagi.”
James shifted uncomfortably, and Pandora flashed him a smile.
“Oh I know about you three’s plan to become Animagi.”
“Us three…” James said, before cutting himself off.
“Yes three. Number four can’t due to obvious reasons.”
A numb feeling ran through James’s mind. She knew. How long had she known? Was it due to Divination? How many others knew? Pandora smiled wistfully.
“Lets not talk about that then. Your request?”
“You- you won’t tell anyone right?”
“I’ve had no plans to. I like Remus.”
James sighed with relief, but there was still a tight feeling in his chest. He thought back to Harry’s lessons about keeping secrets. He trusted James to know who he could trust with what, but had still taught him how to properly Obliviate someone. He was confident he could stun Pandora and wipe the knowledge from her mind.
“How long have you known?”
“Hmm, I learned in my fourth year. That was when I first really looked at him. The signs are obvious to those who know.”
So their second year…
“Okay…” James sighed again. “My request, our request is for you to tell us when there are thunderstorms for the next few months.”
Pandora opened up her book bag and took out a notebook. Without thought she ripped out a page and handed it to James.
“Here, now what do you really want to ask?” She said plainly.
James grimaced.
“The thing you said yesterday. You said prophecies are guaranteed, and that some other things are as well. Can you explain more?”
“Well once a prophecy has been spoken it will come to fruition. Some come to fruition because of the act of the prophecy being spoken, those are self-fulfilling prophecies. Others just say what will happen, but because of how Fate operates you will never get. “Zack will die on October second 1972.” Instead it will outline something in more vague terms. Like “The one who bears the end in the beginning will end himself.” Sometimes you will get things relating to specific times, but it's more common for births than deaths. Its actually easier to predict death without Fate intervening, because it has to do more with probability and circumstance.”
“But what if… what if someone, ah fuck it you already know more than you should and I don’t know how. What if someone went back in time to before a prophecy was told to change the future. Would that prophecy still be told, and therefore still come true?”
Pandora didn’t look at all surprised at James’s unsubtle revelation. How much did she know?
“I don’t know. The reason the only legal means of time travel is a Time Turner is because the Time Turner is a reliable way for Closed Loop Time Travel. As in regardless of what you do when you go back, the you that used the Time Turner will still end up using the Time Turner again. Anything more than a day should damage Time in very visible ways. Like skipping days or time moving at a faster rate for a week. At least that’s what the Department of Mysteries and other similar organizations across the globe have decided on.”
Harry had gone back in time more than two hundred years, either the effects of that had not yet come to or whatever he had done had mitigated those damages. While some of the “damages” Harry had done was to give James information. The Wolfsbane Potion alone would change a lot in the world.
“So, is the changes someone made by traveling further back in time something that damages Time, or is it just the act of moving through time that damages it?”
Pandora shrugged.
“Can’t say for sure. I assume the act of moving through time damages the flow of time, and the things someone does affects the present, in whatever the term “Present” is.”
James frowned.
“Then what is it that you said would make us upset yesterday?”
Pandora smiled sadly.
“Remus Lupin. His name has two connections to wolves. I believe his fathers name is Lyall, which also means wolf. Tempting fate like that is never a smart thing. Sirius Black. Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. Which could mean the beacon to a better life that others need to follow. That could mean his friends, it could mean your old son. It could even mean his family, him being the one to lead them to a new age of prosperity. But it also means because he shines the brightest that it is hard to see the light in others. Darkness, Black, will always surround him. That could stand for his family’s ideologies, his own madness, his insecurities. Peter Pettigrew. Stone and small man. He feels exactly that. Like a small stone on the side of the road, unnoticed and unneeded. But he can learn that even the largest person can trip on the smallest stone. Names have powerful meaning in one's life James Fleamont Potter.”
James gulped, her words hit too close to home. Remus’s family had always joked about their naming tradition, then Remus had gotten bitten, and everyone on his fathers side outside of his dad had distanced themselves.
Peter’s was as he had thought, but the final sentence scared James. Reminding him that Peter had been responsible for James’s death.
Sirius’s was a wagon load of things he needed to digest and think on.
“I see. Thank you… Now, about… my son. How do you know?”
Pandora’s face scrunched up into one of concentration.
“I… felt him, I guess. I have studied deep into Divination and Spellcrafting. I am sure a lot of Seer’s and Spellcrafters felt his arrival, because they are much more attuned to the magic around them. But I felt a connection to the disturbance, it took me a while, but I was able to deduce it by divining more about myself and that of my family.”
“Do you think others have? Felt that connection I mean,” James said worried.
“Its likely, the Department of Mysteries may have your kidnapping as one of many possibilities, but I know that they are more focused on You-Know-Who, and he is likely their primary suspect. Anybody that was significantly close to your son in his life, and who is powerful, a Seer, or a Spellcrafter, may have an idea of who he was or will be.”
That was not good.
James’s first thought was Dumbledore, Harry’s warnings and explanation of the Headmaster made James reluctant to just spill all the beans. And for Spellcrafters, there was Snape, did he have a close enough connection? Closer than the mother of Harry’s wife that Harry never met? It was definitely possible. They knew each other for more than a decade before Snape killed himself, and Snape was also Lily’s best friend. James didn’t think Snape currently had the power, skill or knowledge to deduce any of that though.
But then a chill ran down James’s spine as he realized another person. Voldemort. Voldemort had a piece of his soul inside Harry’s head for sixteen years. Most of Harry’s young life revolved around Voldemort, and they had shared memories, experiences, thoughts. Voldemort was definitely powerful, and a skilled Spellcrafter.
Voldemort also had a spy in the Department of Mysteries in the form of Augustus Rookwood. If Voldemort decided that whatever connection he felt was important enough to look into it may put a target on James and the rest of the Potters.
Did Harry know about that? Hermione had been the one to do most of the work for the Ritual that sent him back in time, Harry having to complete the last bits because of Hermione’s death. James felt it was something that he definitely would have told James.
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Pa tr eon Link in Bio for 10 Advance Chapters
Pa tr eon . c om / BronzeTurtle
