A Curious Turn of Time

A Curious Turn of Time

Salazar Slytherin started at the heavy wood and iron door of his dungeon laboratory banging closed behind Godric and cursed, for once, their decision to close off the school to the relatively new-fangled technique, Apparition. Usually one for the old ways, brooms and Locomotor and the like, Salazar had to admit that Apparition was, at least, quieter. And that ridiculous popping sound would have made Godric look like a bit of a twit. Always an added bonus.

Why the fool protested against this research was quite beyond Salazar. He had gotten sick of Helga complaining about 'if things had been different' and Rowena muttering about 'if I'd had more time to look for that book'. But, of course, the second one mentioned the possibility of testing out actual time travel, Godric and his sense of righteousness protested. He began to pontificate, in his typical holier-than-thou way, about the inviolability of the golden thread that gives meaning to our lives.

Salazar snorted just thinking about hearing Godric say that. Their argument had only lasted ten minutes...a last ditch attempt by Godric to dissuade him from going ahead with this experiment as planned...but Godric had probably recited that phrase at least five times. For some reason, he hadn't been able to get it through to the dense, stubborn man that he, Salazar, was not about to sever, tangle, or otherwise damage that thread. Merely... tinker. Embroider. Knot, perhaps, if he was very unlucky.

After all, Salazar wasn't talking about senseless time-hopping, not knowing where you were going or how you were going to get back. The idea of controlling the travel was really more exciting than the idea of simply travelling. No, a reliable, logical method that gave you allotted, discrete little jumps: that was the key. That was interesting. He was fairly sure he could do it, too...

***

"Why do we have to do it here?" Hermione protested in annoyance as her arms began to ache from being stretched out to carry the manuscript, which of course he couldn't carry because he needed his wand...yes, the man so opposed to foolish wand-waving...to unward his private laboratory. So she had been carrying it all the way from the library down to the very root of the castle.

"Because I have more space than that poky little chamber you were keeping this in."

"There are classrooms closer to the library." And that don't belong to you.

"Oh, yes, a classroom where our main competitors for space will be crass, silly, hormonal teenagers," he muttered sarcastically.

"I thought you loved interrupting those crass, silly, hormonal teenagers."

"I would prefer to remain undistracted," he replied, not countering her accusation in the slightest.

Miserable bastard. He could almost hear her think it. As long as she did not say it, though, as long as she had more respect for him than for herself not to say it aloud... well, she would continue carrying the manuscript.

He was not by nature misogynistic. That had been the first question to spring to his mind last night, but he had quickly dismissed it. No, he did not imagine there was anything much that made women consent to subservience...Narcissa, Bella, Lily...before their men. It was not a function of being a woman. It seemed to him that it was an individual choice, for it was not true of all women...Minerva would make a classic example here...only of some. Why was an interesting question that he had not considered before last night. Well, had not considered any more than he had considered why Wormtail had so subjugated himself before Voldemort.

The possibility that it was love, love of the men...or perhaps merely the men themselves, somehow, in charge...that could be responsible for their choices... it struck him as uncanny and disquieting.

***

With his knife, Salazar pulled towards him a small line of the powdered stone and looked warily at it for a moment. It glinted a little in the dim, flickering light of the torches that were pinned along the walls, but he barely noticed what it looked like. All he could think of was that he didn't want to waste it...digging all three components, aquamarine, moss agate and labradorite, up from their mines and getting them all to him safely was an uncertain and lengthy process, and Godric would just gloat if he were to run out without achieving any success...and he certainly didn't want to over-do it and find himself stranded in some far-off time. Still, using not enough would also be a waste, as the powder would remain completely inert, but contaminated, within the receptacle. His expert eye judged that, for now, this was a conservative estimate.

He turned now to lift the rounded glass receptacle he had had blown expressly for this purpose. About four inches in diameter, the rounded globe had two cylindrical pipes that protruded like an axis from the globe's surface, one slightly wider than the other.

Salazar hesitated now and thought about Godric's warning once again in a slightly different light. This would, of course, be unpredictable. If it worked, it would be difficult for him to know immediately what time he had moved to. His aim was to move only a few hours. He had a firm hypothesis about the quantities required to move certain distances. A hypothesis that Godric had spent the past forty minutes or so poking holes in.

But what does Godric know? he huffed to himself. He lifted his knife to the wider pipe now, the little heap of powdered stone atop it, and he slowly inclined the blade just a fraction to ease every single speck into the glass sphere without any falling out the other side.

Once that was done, he laid the sphere down again. He lifted the shallow, earthenware dish that was beside it and breathed in the scent of the oil and herb mixture: crushed comfrey leaves immersed in pine oil. With a mutter of a spell, he lit a small, contained flame in a second earthenware dish and set an iron tripod above it. This would have to be done quickly. He needed to set the oil above the flame and quickly be prepared to capture the first wafts of the heated fumes by sucking them carefully into the receptacle, which he could then seal with small balls of clay to allow the powdered stone and air to bind.

Closing his eyes for a second, he envisaged all the movements necessary, all the careful adjustments, how he would tell through the cloudy gas that the receptacle was ready to seal. Then, moving swiftly and surely, he placed the oil above the flame and raised the sphere to his lips.

A few moments passed by, and he stared carefully at the oil's surface, waiting for that little shimmer that would tell him it was time. It was taking much longer than he had expected; the flame might not be hot enough. Still, he held the receptacle up for another moment, then another, with every shallow breath thinking that he would put it down soon, start over, but then worrying that he would just miss that moment.

Then, just as he was promising himself that the next moment he would lay the receptacle down, a slight waft, a mere shifting of the light told him that the oil was warming, and he breathed carefully, measuredly in through the thinner pipe, feeling a sudden sense of warmth creeping through the glass as the warm air was pulled inwards.

And then he almost choked.

Squeezing his watering eyes shut, he groped futilely for the clay balls for a moment before laying his hands on them. Still effectively blind, he fumbled and managed to plug...or at least he thought from the feel of things that he was managing it...both ends of the glass piping so that at least the experiment didn't have to be ruined. Fumbling, he almost dropped the sphere, but he managed to grip it tightly once again and set it down on the tabletop before pushing his hands against the table and rising to his feet.

He only now allowed himself to cough, trying to get the burning, tingling sensation from the back of his throat. Raising a hand to his watering eyes, he rubbed away the moisture and pinched the bridge of his nose, taking a moment to compose himself, swallowing to rid himself of the last of the sting, before he opened his eyes.

To find the tabletop bare. Immediately, shocked and infuriated, sure that he would find Godric behind him playing a trick, interfering where he wasn't wanted, Salazar spun around, snatching his wand from the table as he did so. Only it was not Godric behind him, but two strange and unfamiliar people, wands half-raised.

"How dare you?" he immediately exploded. "How dare you enter my lab without permission and then threaten me! If you're the new aides Helga's been speaking of, you should consider yourselves dismissed immediately."

The two people looked at him in alarm, the young woman with loose hair, which he was sure Helga would object to as thoroughly improper for the current company she was keeping, taking a small step back behind the dark-haired man.

"Well? What do you have to say for yourselves? Put down that wand immediately, man! Before I hex you into oblivion," he added with large, swirling gestures of his wand for emphasis. The people were clearly fools, but that was no excuse.

The man and woman exchanged looks, and contrary to Salazar's very explicit instructions, the man now waved his wand and muttered something completely unintelligible.

"Don't you dare cast spells on me, you impudent interloper!" Salazar raged, advancing towards the other man. The woman shrank back, but the man did nothing.

"I merely cast a charm to allow us to more readily understand each other," the dark man replied quite snootily to him. Some stranger, in his castle, being snooty to him. There had better be a good explanation for this!

"Well, it is hardly my fault if you only speak the vulgar languages," Salazar snapped back, drawing himself to his full height and letting his wand hand, his right, fall slightly. It did not behove a sophisticated wizard to keep his wand raised threateningly.

"Vulgar?" the woman asked now, seeming more confident as she took a few steps around

"What is it that you two are speaking to me now? Your charm must be exceedingly good; your language sounds quite acceptable.

"Well, English. We're speaking English, of course," the woman replied. She was standing at the other man's left now, although the top of her head barely reached above the slant of his shoulder.

Salazar pondered this for a moment. They were obviously lying to him. He would have been able to understand English. What sort of game were they trying to play? Were they here simply to steal, or with some more sinister purpose towards him? Had Godric paid them to come and interrupt him and his work?

"You will tell me your names now, please," he commanded after a short pause. That would be a start toward acquiring all the rest of the information he wanted to know.

"I ought to ask you the same question," the other man replied warily. "And how did you come to be in my laboratory?"

"Your..." Salazar was just about to bellow when, quite unexpectedly, the woman leaned forward and impudently plucked his wand from his hand before scuttling back a few steps behind the man. "A Muggle thief, in Hogwarts?" Salazar exclaimed, looking at Hermione with horror evident on his face. So they had come to steal from him, perhaps also to harm him, then? He couldn't imagine Godric would be involved in that. Somehow, these strangers had penetrated their castle.

"Not at all," the man replied to him rather disdainfully. "A clever witch. Now, please, identify yourself before I am forced to call for someone."

"You speak as if it were your castle!" Salazar snapped back. Why should he identify himself first? Why should he identify himself at all to this intruder?

"More mine than yours. What is your name?" the dark man snapped now, clearly beginning to lose his temper. Well, Salazar would be more than a match for him if he did so!

Salazar glared at him for a long moment, eyes narrowed dangerously, and he contemplated performing a little instinctive magic to teach this new man a lesson, but then he thought better of it. Drawing himself to his full height, he instead said, in the coldest, most imperious tone he could muster, "I am Salazar Slytherin. Now, please show some civility and identify yourselves!"

The effect was palpable and very gratifying: the dark man immediately stiffened, his eyes narrowed, his hand gripping his wand more tightly; the woman immediately took a few startled steps back and almost tumbled to the floor when she put her hand on the tabletop only for the parchment beneath her palm to slip a little.

"I'm afraid I'll need to see something to prove that..." the man told him very stiffly.

"Prove it? You have yet to even provide me with names, but you expect me to prove who I am? Here. Listen, I'll show you who I am," Salazar began to rant. "Ssssshheessss!" he hissed suddenly.

The dark man merely raised his eyebrow and said, "Parseltongue, while rare, does not an identity prove."

"Severus!" the young woman behind him now snapped fearfully, and she was going to say more, Salazar could tell, but then her companion half-turned to her with a chilling glare, and she hushed.

"Sssseveruss," he half-hissed, half-muttered, giving the man a wily look now. "What a perfect name."

"Very well," Severus returned tightly, clearly disquieted by hearing his name in that half-Parseltongue slur. "Tell us, Salazar Slytherin, how you came to be here."

The man was still conducting himself with rigid authority, wary yet confident poise, and it infuriated Salazar. "That is not the question! The question is how did you come to be here?"

"We walked," the man retorted somewhat facetiously. "This is my private laboratory."

Salazar had to work to prevent his face from taking on an instinctive, bug-eyed look of shock at this grandiose declaration. "It most certainly is not! It is mine! Was it you who meddled with my experiment?" he demanded incautiously, his mind racing quickly through all the possible explanations for his current predicament, none of which included this being anything other than his private laboratory.

"What experiment?" the two before him questioned in unison, the girl's slightly nervous near-shriek in stark contrast to the cool, wily question from the man. Severus. A name Salazar quite deliberately made a mental note of now, in case he ever ran into this man again. He looked... devious. He looked very much like he was not a man to be played, conned, or otherwise wormed around. He was a man to engage head on. Head on in webs of deception, that was.

"Nothing," was Salazar's response after a pause, not giving in to the instinct to say it sharply and quickly, arousing suspicion.

"How... how are you here?" the woman stammered now, repeating that most annoying question.

"I repeat, young girl, that it is you who are here." Salazar gave her a disdainful look. She seemed to be one of those stuttering ninny types, who although possessed of magical ability, were never capable of doing anything much with it because they were always seeking the approval and permission of the men about them. He wondered, now, what the relation between these two was and whether he could somehow use their relationship, whatever it was, to his advantage in what was rapidly becoming a stalemate.

At that moment, as both Severus and his young lady seemed about to protest, there came a knock at the door, startling them all.

"Come in," he and Severus both called in unison before glaring at the other.

At that moment, to Salazar's horror, an older woman with a few curls evident beneath the white fabric covering her head, functional but undistinguished robes swaying just a little around her ankles, entered the room.

"Severus, Hermione, Minerva said...oh, I'm sorry. You have a guest!" The woman flushed upon making eye contact with Salazar, who was looking at her in total horror. Who was this woman? He had never met this woman before. How were there suddenly so many unidentified people in the castle? How had they all gotten in? Were they playing an awful trick on him? Perhaps Godric had planned this to try and teach him a lesson about his experiments? Or perhaps...and suddenly he felt foolish for not having thought of this first, although there had been no real reason for him to expect other people in the past or future to be using this room at the precise moment he arrived...he had actually succeeded. Was this another time? When? What was Hogwarts now? Still a school? What?

The woman took a step towards him now while looking chastisingly at Severus.

Awkwardly, almost begrudgingly, Severus said, "Poppy Pomfrey, this is my... cousin..." He turned to Salazar suddenly with a warning, fierce look. "This is Poppy Pomfrey. The school's Healer."

Salazar nodded once, then a second time, slowly, and turned to face the older woman, who was looking at him kindly, although she was still a little pink.

"Well, very nice to meet you, Mr... Snape, is it?" she said hesitatingly.

"Sal," Severus interjected tersely before Salazar could respond. "Just call him Sal," he added with a malicious twist of his lips at Salazar.

Feeling thoroughly wrong-footed, but sure that he would get some sort of revenge against this man later, once he had gotten to grips with where he was, Salazar smiled gently at the older woman, Poppy, he had said, and replied, "Enchanted," taking her hand and lifting it to his lips and enjoying the second flush of colour that suffused her cheeks.

AN:

So, I wanted to think here about the invention of magic. We see all the time in fanfic that Hermione or Severus have invented something new and groundbreaking, curing lycanthropy, etc., but what of the magic they all now take for granted? In writing Salazar's invention of the Time-Turner (at least in a primitive form), I used the following information about gemstones, herbs, etc.:

Aquamarine: Used in deep meditations, aquamarine is associated with unfinished business, order, and with foresight. It is also a powerful stone to meditate upon, bringing peace and serenity. Some more advanced meditators use aquamarine to receive the wisdom to see truth. It was a well-used stone in Roman times, and so would probably have been just within Salazar's reach.

Moss agate: Moss agate is simply agate that takes on various hues of green, particularly darker pine and emerald shades. Moss agate is said to be the most powerful agate, and it is used to help balance emotions because it enhances concentration and persistence. This sort of stone would come from the rocks around a volcano, and there are plenty of these in Europe to choose from.

Labradorite: Labradorite allows the meditator to see through illusions and see the true form of their dreams, so it is excellent for strengthening intuition and developing new ideas. It can help you 'think outside the box', so to speak! This stone would probably, at least for Salazar, be the most difficult to get hold of and would come from Norway. As it's a less common stone, there's a picture here to help you imagine it: http://www.geocities.jp/senribb/jewels/Labradorite.jpg

Comfrey leaves: this herb is a protective one, particularly effective against negativity while travelling and for protection in the astral realm.

Pine oil: this oil would have been easily accessible to Salazar Slytherin in Scotland, and would be useful for binding, particularly in a protection spell.

And all those who are a little older and remember chemistry class: pipetting by mouth, the dangers! Or, as my co-author suggested, Salazar puffing on his crack pipe. It's supposed to be a little silly.