Chapter Text
Rohan does not look the least bit surprised by my admission. “You are time sick Miss Tonks.”
“What do you know about time travel,” Tom cuts in.
Rohan takes a seat across from us. “It is what I studied. Vedic texts detail rituals where time is loose and malleable. Though the exact rituals have been lost to time,” he begins to detail, “I do think they were more intention based than our current system. While there is wandless and-,” the older wizard clears his throat. Honestly, he wasn’t much older than me. “it’s more similar to creature magic, like veela. You would not be the first witch I have treated who was time-sick.”
“Time sick?” Time magic was never something I’d learned much about. There had been one section on time runes during NEWTs but it was all theoretical. Industrial applications were time spells for a cat feeder, that would open to let food come out once a day and similar products. It was hardly going back in time and changing the course of history.
My grip tightens on Tom’s knee.
Did this mean I’d done it?
No You-Know-Who.
No war.
Tom would be alright.
It has all been worth it.
“There would always be a handful of cases back in Calcutta, wizards who had messed up asking for a witch’s hand, witches who wished they could have a do over in interviews. They change how things went and end up in the hospital.”
“A paradox,” Tom thinks aloud, “That’s what you’re referring to.”
“Yes.”
“What happens,” Tom interrogates Rohan, “is it lethal.”
“If the paradox is not closed it is.”
“What if I can’t change it back,” I utter, “what happens? I die?” I couldn’t change it back. In the grand scheme of things, knowing how many people would be saved, that my sister would be safe, that dad wouldn’t have to go into hiding, it would be worth it. Tom would get to live up to the promise of abilities, but more importantly, be happy. It would be okay. I was okay with that.
“No.” Tom tenses up. “You have to change it back. Lina.”
“But if I can’t-” I didn’t want to. Where I came from was utter shite.
“You have to.”
“Yes,” Rohan nods, “you would die. I doubt it would be hard. Just go back the day or so you changed,” the man shrugs.
It wasn’t a day.
I’d been changing years. The ripples in time grew the more certain I became that changing the past, creating a better future here and in my own time, was the right thing to do.
“And if I don’t want to?”
“Lina, you have to.” Tom’s jaw flexed as he gazed into my eyes.
I clutch my head in my hands, feeling my heartbeat accelerate. “I don’t even know-I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m not going to. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I don’t even know how I got here!” I squeeze my eyes shut. That had always been it. I wasn’t Dumbledore, some genius witch, I was just me. I couldn’t go home even if I wanted to. I didn’t choose this, it just happened.
The taste of metal filled my mouth and I was scared to check if it was blood.
“Might I suggest closing the loop,” Rohan offers before slipping into a melodic string of indian. To my ears hindi, tamil, bengali: it was all the same. I still remembered muggle tourists coming up to me, asking for directions in their mother tongue and I had been unable to help. It was a strange point of pride that they’d come up to me; and a stinging hurt that I hadn’t been any help.
Hamel answers.
They go back and forth in conversation before she slips away.
Closing the loop. What-how, I didn’t even know how I’d gotten here in the first place. I slump into Tom’s side, deciding that curling up here and eating croissants until I die was a good way to go. Better than anything in my own time which was chock full of death eaters. . .only it wasn’t now. . .was it? I glance up at Tom who’s watching Rohan.
Had my vision?
Was it even a vision, or simply the future as it was now in a world where Voldemort never existed. Where there was no Wizarding War, much less a second war.
I wanted to talk to Tom in private about it.
“My wife will bring you a tonic that will ease the side effects,” the wizard explains, “it is a temporary solution. You must close the loop by undoing your actions Miss Tonks or-”
Tom interrupts the man, “That is a nice talisman.”
“Ah,” Rohan glances down at his wrist. The talisman was in the form of a bracelet with blue enamel and pink gemstones. “Yes, back in Jeypore my family have been jewellers for many generations. But there are more pressing matters to discuss.”
Tom presses his mouth together, but lets the matter go entirely which almost certainly meant it was of such importance he didn’t want to risk drawing more attention to it.
“Even if I wanted to,” I tell Rohan, “I can’t do time magic. I-I don’t even know how I managed it the first time. Time turners only go backwards in time and other than that. . .” I needed something to send me back into the future, and what, make sure the me that had never heard of Voldemort was sent back? Write a letter that burned after reading?
My head still hurt and I could feel my stomach forming knots from the stress and anxiety.
“This is why toying with time is ill advised,” Rohan says solemnly.
“I wasn’t toying,” I reply defensively. I had never even snuck into the forbidden forest. “I don’t know how it happened, only that it did.”
“I see.” The wizard didn’t believe me. I doubt he’d believe me if I told him I’d travelled decades, not a day.
I wasn’t going to explain further anyway if this was how he was going to be. Why should I explain when Rohan didn’t believe me. I’d figure something out. . .
Merlin’s beard who was I kidding.
I’d made no progress on getting back home and if I left. . .could I just timespell a letter to my future self? Live out my days in the 50s. . .so long as Tom and I left England there’d be no risk of interfering with myself.
Fuck, Dumbledore would know.
I should tell Professor Dumbledore.
Hamel comes back while I’m still trying to figure out my next move. She’s stunning. She looks like me. A large ring hangs from her nose, bell-like earrings in gold, and a small bottle she hands to her husband before taking a seat next to him.
“Merci,” Rohan tells her.
She answers in their language. Immigrants. Why come here? When France was in such trouble. Especially pregnant. I wanted to ask.
This could be my grandmother. I might never have another chance again.
“Take a teaspoon every day,” Rohan instructs, “Miss Tonks.”
Swallowing my questions, I answer. “I understand.”
My tongue felt heavy in my mouth. I wanted to know everything about them, I was scared to ask. Hamel’s child might be my mother, my father. Did my parents grow up in this village? Did that mean this place survived Grindelwald? Or were my parents refugees?
“I recommend taking it easy for a while longer.”
“Right.” I stand.
What if I was wrong?
What if Hamel had siblings?
Merlin.
I was overthinking. I should say something. That would be awkward and I was going to sound mad.
Tom leads me back to our room.
I sit down on one of the beds, looking at my feet. “I think we should figure out how to close the time loop,” I tell Tom in what I hope is a final tone. I wasn’t budging on this. I wasn’t undoing anything. “So I have to make sure to send future me, past me? Back to 1940. Right?” I glance over at Tom who’s carefully lining his shoes up next to each other.
“Lina.”
“Even if it takes the next forty years,” I say aloud, “all things considered, it wouldn’t be awful. Sure things are a little backwards, but giving everyone a brighter future, and I’d still get to have you around,” I ramble, “though I’m sure you’ll eventually want to move out and get married.” I chuckle awkwardly, trying to imagine that even as my stomach soured. The idea of not having Tom to myself wasn’t pleasant.
Sooner or later I would have to let go, just as Tonks had gone off and made a life for herself, Tom would too. Everyone did.
It was childish to think I’d always have my friends all to myself.
“Lina.”
“Not that I’d kick you out.” My hands were shaking.
Was I really dying?
“Lina,” Tom sits down next to me, letting out a breath. “I think those were your parents.”
I blink. “No.” That wasn’t possible. “I was born in either 77 or 78. Grandparents perhaps?”
Tom sets his hand against my back, “you are half veela Lina. Rohan studies time magic. He was lying about not knowing time travel spells. I read his thoughts. Professor Dumbledore is here. He knows the Mishra’s. Rohan has your talisman.”
“No,” I shake my head. “That’s. . .far fetched and entirely too complicated. Grandparents.”
“You’re not a quarter veela.”
“So my other parent was also half veela. I can do arithmetic.” I play with my talisman, wondering if I would collapse the universe if it touched Rohan’s past version.
“Occam’s razor,” he utters quietly.
I jolt away from him, annoyed, “are you hearing yourself? Isn’t the simplest explanation that my parents are from 1978. Or you know, had me then?” All this talk of time travel was messing with me.
He hums, “they could still be your parents. It’s not unheard of for wizards and witches to have children in their 60s and 70s.” We were longer lived than muggles.
I ball my hands into fists.
The thing was, Tom’s logic was sound.
It was Professor Dumbledore who had given me my wand and talisman. Was I, the unborn me, the reason Professor Dumbledore was in France?
Or was he simply visiting friends and then how did-
No.
My head hurt from trying to unravel the truth.
I should’ve just asked.
“If I’m right,” Tom points out, “then they can conjure another spell, or place the spell for the right time so that the loop can close.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, “can’t you just use your stupidly brilliant mind to figure out time magic?”
Tom snorts, “I’ll put that on my to do list.”
We sit together quietly after that. I was still unsure of so much. Instead of answers, I had more questions.
Why hadn’t I asked then and there?
Surely Hamel would recognize my wand given it’s veela hair core.
*
“I am glad to see you up and about,” Jeanne smiles. “I was worried.”
“All better,” I lie.
“Good.” Then inclines her head, “would you like to help make jam? both of you?”
I nod, volunteering us both.
Tom uselessly bats away at a mosquito. He already had two bites on his left hand. He scratches his arm. The buggers liked him more than me.
There were obvious wizards with their pointy hats and cloaks shielding them from the worst of the summer sun, but also muggles with veela partners. Or maybe muggleborns in linen shirts. Even muggleborns like Tom dressed up in wizarding clothes during this period, while muggle fashion had bled into Hogwarts by the time I was a student. It was common to pair jeans and a cloak or rubber boots with a witch’s hat.
Unlike people in London, they weren’t gawking.
“Is everyone here controlling the thrall,” I ask Jeanne.
“No. Non. Mon dieu. That would be so tiring.” She waves at people. Since it was a small village, everyone knew everyone. I had hated that growing up.
I liked a middle ground.
“No,” the french veela explains, “it is just everyone here is close to, or family of veela. Growing up here they have a way. . .they are able to build a tolerance. Of course their lovers have the most but I think this is because we can be such jealous creatures do you not think,” she asks me, opening a door. “That does not mean they are entirely unaffected, but it avoids most problems.”
The smell of sugar and ripe peaches filled the air. I had made jam before with my mum. It had been great fun to livk the bowl clean with Tonks.
“I dunno,” I didn’t think myself a very jealous person.”
“Besides, even controlling it, people still sense you. We are magic creatures. It is impossible to hide our nature entirely.” The doorway was runed. No pesky flies or mosquitos would be getting inside. She makes room for us, “good now you might want to roll up your sleeves.”
And we get to work making jam.
**
“What do you think you’ll do,” Tom asks in the small hours of the morning.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“I could probably fogure something out in a year or two,” he admits, “I’ve never looked much into time magic.”
“Because you didn’t want me to leave,” I think of when I told him, what I know about Tom.
“Because I don’t want you to leave.”
I sigh.
You could come with me, I want to say. What better way to keep an eye on him, to have him near me. The idea of never seeing him again, awful. Besides, I had already changed the future once, what was one more time?
“We’ll figure it out.” I should talk to them, the Mishras.
Marcelina Mishra.
It didn’t sound good. Not like Marcelina Tonks.
I frown into the dark of the night.
*
I pace around the front door.
Just knock.
I inhale, counting to three, then finally, knock.
It’s Hamel and her large dark eyes that answers the door. “Bonjour Mademoiselle t-Onks,” she nods. “Vous voulez parler à mon mari?”
“I-,” I nod, barely grasping anything other than my name. “Actually,” I hold up my wand, offering it to her, “I’m here because of this.” I feel small. I feel like a child again.
I wish my parents were here like on some BBC program reuniting children with their biological parents. It’s never even been about my biological parents. I’ve only ever wanted to know more about my veela side which was unignorable. I was happy not knowing, had accepted the idea long ago.
Hamel tilts her head, reaching for the wand. Her eyes follow, as her fingers grip the thin magical stick.
It glows in recognition.
She looks at me again. “इसने काम किया.”
“I think you’re my-”
Rohan interrupts. His talisman glowed with use, the diamonds like fairy lights. “Hamel, kya aap isamen meree madad kar sakate hain?” He notices me, “Miss Tonks, back again?”
Hamel puts a hand on his arm, and says something.
I stand awkwardly while they go back and forth. They glance at me, then glance at each other, before going back to hushed whispers.
Hamel reaches for my hand and urges me inside. I let her.
“Uh,” I try, not knowing what to say. This would be easier if I could speak to both of them. My french was limited.
“Is this your wand Miss Tonks,” Rohan finally asks, voice flat.
I couldn’t read him.
“Yes.” My voice sounded tiny.
“I see.” He responds to Hamel who gestures at me, and then at her belly. Rohan throws his hands up in the air, utter a string of words that could have fit any English curses, then rubs his temples.
Hamel gestures at my face.
He shakes his head, then glances at me.
I shrug helplessly.
“When were you born?”
“Not sure exactly when to be honest but my parents adopted me in 1978. I don’t know anything. I just had this wand and then Professor Dumbledore gave me this,” I raise my hand, showing my talisman bracelet, “and then I somehow ended up in 1940.” Five years. It had already been five years since I’d found myself outside of Wool’s.
“May I see it,” Rohan asks.
I take off my bracelet, placing it in his outstretched palm.
“I do not sense any lingering time magic,” he notes, before casting a runic spell, “or see anything.”
“Maybe it wore off?”
Rohan shakes his head, “not in five years. Time spells take hundreds of years to wear off entirely. Are you sure it was a time spell? If-if it is true then your veela magic might have interfered with the spell you cast.”
“You don’t believe me,” I deflate. Somehow this was the worst possible scenario.
“It’s not that.” He sighs. “We have come here to ask Professor Dumbledore for-it is not safe for veela in India, or in Europe. America has their registration acts. . .we thought-”
Hamel wraps her arms around me. It was strange, her hugging me while pregnant with me.
“We came here to ask Professor Dumbledore for help, so that you may grow up safe. In England, and now you are here saying you grew up in the future.” Rohan runs his fingers over my talisman, his talisman. “Were you safe?”
I want to lie. Yes. Everything was fine.
It would be now.
“There was a war, and I tried to apparate to get away and ended up in 1940.”
“You changed what caused your war,” Rohan surmises.
“I did.”
“I cannot fault you for that. It is a noble thing to do.”
“I can place the spell that was originally here again,” he offers, “But I do not know how to send you back to your own time. So long as the version of you in this timestream comes back to 1940 and does what changed the timeline, it should be fine.”
“So I still need to get my hands on some time travel mechanism.” I sigh, having hoped they had the answers.
“Yes. What happens outside of that is fine. So long as you do not change time again, by say, assassinating Grindelwald.”
I shake my head, “I think I’m late for that and Tom would be better at that then me. I’m not that good at dueling.”
“The young man you are with.”
I nod.
Rohan nods, “it was a portkey spell triggered by distress.” He hands me back my talisman.
“I dunno that that would work now,” I bring up. If there was no war, then I’d need something else. I wouldn’t be fleeing Bill and Fleur’s wedding for my life. “But thank you for offering.”
“We will not see each other again,” Rohan clears his throat.
“After the war-”
“No.” He leaves no room for argument.
“Oh.”
Hamel hugs me tighter, before leaning back and pressing a kiss to my cheek.
I look at her, at the woman who gave birth to me and wish I could talk to her. I want-I want to tell her that my childhood was a dream, that I was fine, that I had no clue what I was doing most of the time but that I was fine. I’d been safe.
Instead I hug her one last time.
Wasn’t it true that no one ever really knew their parents?
I had spent the first seventeen years of my life with my mum and dad and still had no clue how mum had been raised in the same house as Bellatrix Lestrange.
“Thank you,” it was all I knew to say.
Rohan nods again, and I finally realize that he didn’t know what to say in this situation either. Maybe he felt that if he hugged me like Hamel, he wouldn’t be able to let me go.
It was a nice thought.
I grip my talisman against my chest.
*
We depart early in the morning.
Only Jeanne and Professor Dumbledore are awake.
“Are you heading back to England as well Professor,” Tom asks, alert even at a quarter til six.
“No Tom. I will not be returning to Hogwarts at the start of term. I am not sure when I will be back but I have further business to take care of in Europe.”
“Well, do take care Mr. Dumbledore,” I add. I couldn’t very well say Professor when I was supposed to have been homeschooled as far as he knew. Or had Rohan told him?
“Please, call me Albus Miss Chawla.”
“Albus.”
The trek is bearable when the sun is still rising. The heat of late July was awful even up in the mountains.
“Do you think you’ll ever want to come back,” Tom asks as we wait for the magical carriage.
“Maybe, though going somewhere like Egypt would be fun don’t you think Tom? You are graduating this year.”
He ducks his head. “I haven’t given traveling much thought. It’s expensive and with the war in Europe it isn't exactly advisable.”
I nudge his side, “right, because we aren’t in France right now.”
“Lina,” he rolls his eyes.
“We could sell everything and travel the world.” It sounded like something my sister would’ve done. But she also got herself a career and husband. So maybe not exactly. But it was in the spirit of my family.
“You’re not going to die.”
“You’re right. I’m not. But I still think seeing a ton of places would be cool before doing something awful and boring in the Ministry.” I could picture Tom sitting at a desk inside the Ministry.
“Do you want to talk about it,” he offers.
“Not really. It’s not like there’s any solutions there. And I know who my parents are. So this might be a curveball, but I dunno. I’m fine.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I am.” I nod. I was. “We could always break into the Ministry and steal a time turner.”
“I doubt it would be hard,” Tom agrees, “Most wizards can’t even cast a shield charm.”
“Don’t be mean.”
“It’s simply an observation.”
I think about how much junk the Ministry ordered from Fred and George all because not everyone could cast basic charms. “Someone needs to start failing more people at their OWLs if they can’t cast a shield charm.”
“I agree.”
“Oh Merlin. Next you’ll be running the Hogwarts Board of Governors.”
“I’d be good at it,” Tom says smugly.
He’s not wrong.