PART 1: ACT 2

PART 1: ACT 2

Delphi walked through to the living room without invitation, glancing around at every corner. She carelessly tossed her denim jacket on the back of a threadbare sofa and began examining the spines of the myriad books that adorned floor to ceiling shelves along the wall, one hand tucked into the back pocket of her jeans as the other traced the warn leather covers. Severus watched her wearily from the doorway in silence.

"Cosy cottage you have here. A bit shabby though. It could do with a woman's touch." At this, she turned to face Severus, catching his eye and smirking as she moved her finger from the bookshelf and ran a delicate finger along her collarbone.

Severus remained unmoved at the apparent flirtation. "When are you from? And how, exactly, do you think I'll be able to help you?"

Delphi let her hand flop to her side with a dramatic sigh. "You might need to sit down for this."

After a few moments of hesitation, Severus crossed the lounge and sat in a high-backed leather chair in the corner, his eyes never leaving the young woman as she paced the room back and forth, preparing to speak.

"I'm from 2020, but that's not relevant. What IS relevant is why I need your help. And for you to understand this, I need to tell you how You-Know-Who managed to survive the Killing Curse back when Harry Potter was a baby."

"Go on," Severus said slowly, the memory of the attack as painful to him as if it had happened yesterday.

"He made Horcruxes. Ever heard of them?"

"An object in which a fragment of a person's soul is hidden for the purpose of attaining immortality," he answered coolly, as if straight out of a textbook. "It was rumoured that Herpo the Foul created one, but no-one had dared-"

"Exactly!" Delphi interrupted, putting both hands on the back of the sofa and leaning forwards for emphasis. "Herpo the Foul created ONE Horcrux. You-Know-Who created several. Six, he'd thought, but there were actually seven in total. Do you know how a Horcrux is made?"

At this point, Severus frowned, concern beginning to spread over his usually unreadable features. "No."

Delphi's head fell forwards and she breathed deeply in and out through her nose before continuing. "You'll need to brace yourself for this because it's not pleasant, but it's something you need to know. Horcruxes are made by committing murder. The act of committing murder is what splits the soul initially. So You-Know-Who killed seven people to create his Horcruxes, the evil bastard." She paused to let that sink in for a second. "Six of those murders he committed to deliberately make Horcruxes, but the seventh was accidental. He'd had no idea he'd made the seventh Horcrux when he performed that murder. THAT murder was the murder of Lily Potter, and the seventh Horcrux was Harry Potter."

Severus looked like he'd been punched in the gut. His beloved Lily, not only murdered by the Dark Lord but also now an instrument in the Dark Lord's immortality. Her only child, living with a piece of the Dark Lord inside them. He felt physically sick.

When he next spoke, his voice sounded hoarse under the weight of so much unspoken emotion. "Do you wish to destroy these Horcruxes?"

Delphi walked around the sofa shaking her head seriously, taking a seat on one of the arms.

"Oh no. I intend to do something much better than that. I'm going to stop him making the Horcruxes in the first place." She gave Severus a meaningful look.

"And how are you going to do that?"

"Easy. I'm going to go back in time and change the copy of the book that You-Know-Who used to create his Horcruxes. So he'll THINK he's created them, but he hasn't at all. And then we'll be able to kill him." She smiled as innocently as if she had just suggested going for ice cream.

Severus raised his eyebrows at both the audacity and simplicity of the plan. "I do not see how you need my assistance. You seem to have thought of everything."

Delphi gave another sigh. "Well, this is the thing. I need the right tool." Once again she plunged her hand inside her vest top and pulled out the thin chain with the Time-Turner on the end, watching the little hourglass glinting in the dim light. "This Time-Turner is like the most basic bitch of Time-Turners and I need something better. It's a long story, but the first one I got hold of was really unstable and only let me stay in the past for five minutes, which just wasn't long enough to do what I needed to do. So then I stole this one from the Department of Mysteries and it's far more stable but it won't let me travel any further back than thirty years and then only for an hour at a time. I need to go back even further and for longer, because You-Know-Who created his Horcruxes when he was a young man. "

Severus assessed the young woman in front of him, a growing respect of her plan and how far she had come to have gotten to this point.

"And how do I fit in to all this?"

She gazed at Severus and when she spoke next her tone was hushed and solemn. "I have it on good authority that your friend Lucius Malfoy is in possession of a Golden Time-Turner, specially made for him by one of his Unspeakable cronies. But THIS Time-Turner has none of the restrictions of the others; it can go back in time for up to a hundred years and for a limitless amount of time. My plan only works if I can use that Time-Turner. Malfoy Manor has more wards on it than Azkaban, so I need the assistance of someone who can come and go in Chez Malfoy without arousing suspicion and find the Time-Turner, namely you. Are you in?"

Severus thought back to the night of Lily's murder, of all the pain and anger that raged inside him to this day, and the desecration of her only living flesh by Dark Lord, and did not hesitate in giving his answer.

"Yes," he said firmly, and Delphi's dark eyes shone with triumph.