Though spoken softly, the sound of her name was like a screwdriver being driven into her ear. She moaned accordingly.
“Lily Potter?”
A hand patted her gingerly on the shoulder. Lily felt like she had been dropped onto a merry-go-round.
She opened her eyes.
Standing over her, looking shabbier than ever (which always seemed to be the case, so either someone was wildly over exaggerating or he had in fact descended to the level of a tramp by the time Harry Potter first met him), was Remus Lupin.
“Are you all right?”
Obviously he had decided she was not. And he would not have been alone in making such a judgement. She was lying at an angle in the gutter outside the Hog’s Head Inn, filthy, dishevelled and probably concussed. The miracle was that she appeared to be vomit-free, as she had apparently projected every last drop onto Severus Snape earlier that evening. Remus made to help her up.
“Wait!” she rasped, suddenly clutching her chest. “It’s gone! My third breast is gone!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Gone. See?”
Lily thrust her bosom out towards Remus to make the point, and it was true that the lump normally created by the Time Turner was indeed absent.
Remus, who of course had no idea what she was talking about, tried to remain composed. In fact, he was so good at this that he decided to make a habit of it, and resolved only to lose his cool at moments of extreme tragedy, which would, apart from anything else, have a great dramatic effect.
“Come along, Lily, let’s get you home,” he said calmly, dragging her to her feet.
“NO!” Lily screamed with a sudden and uncharacteristic violence. “I can’t go back, not for months! Please, don’t make me go back!”
By this point she was clinging urgently to the front of his robes and shaking them, due to both the inability to stand and sheer desperation. Years later, when Remus found a mouse-haired metamorphmagus in a similar position, he was understandably quite unnerved and therefore failed to give a satisfactory response to her declaration of unconditional love.
“All right,” he said, slightly bewildered but nevertheless willing to help a damsel in distress. Had he not, after all, always had a soft spot for Lily? And besides, from the sound of it, she and James were having some kind of marital difficulties, which made him feel, if anything, rather hopeful. All in all, it was probably a combination of factors which led him not to immediately suspect her of being under some Death Eater’s Curse at the time.
Thus, with the hapless Lily clinging to his arm, Remus Disapparated into the night with a loud “CRACK”…and a loud groan from his somewhat delicate passenger.
The following morning, Lily had been alarmed to find she was sleeping in someone else’s bed, and had begun to fear for her virtue before she had realised that the bed’s normal occupant was in fact asleep on the sofa. A few hours later, and she had explained the whole thing to a bemused Remus while sipping a cup of coffee so strong it probably should have come with a health warning.
“…and now I’ve lost my Time Turner, so I’m stranded here for the next few months!” she finished, gesticulating wildly to illustrate the calamitous nature of the situation.
Remus looked thoughtful for a while, as he was wont to do, and one of the sleeves of his robes began to unravel spontaneously as part of a seemingly continual process which increased his shabbiness hour by hour.
“So Dumbledore doesn’t know you’re here?” he asked, just to clarify a plot point.
“No,” said Lily, a look of annoyance flitting across her face at Dumbledore’s name. “He won’t come up with the idea until months later. Nobody knows there’s a future me running around the place, and I have no idea who has stolen my Time Turner. It’s a bloody, bloody mess!”
She slammed the coffee cup down on the table, spilling it slightly and increasing its shabby look, thus creating less work for whatever it was which contributed to the general shabbiness of Remus’s life.
“Well you’re more than welcome to lie low here for as long as it takes,” he said in what he hoped was a casual tone.
Lily would have been lying if she had said she wasn’t sorely tempted. After a few years of living with James, she quite fancied a change. But then she thought of living a life in hiding, and she did not cherish the thought (though had she known that she would in fact return to a life of hiding, she probably would have stuck around). Remus correctly interpreted her silence and rueful look as a “no”.
“Or,” he continued, “we could try and get you a new Time Turner…”
Lily choked into what was left of her coffee. Her high, cold, derisive laughter was so loud that it is said Lord Voldemort himself caught strains of it upon the air, and liked it so much that he adopted it as his own.
However, Lily need not have laughed, for it was not a bad plan. In fact, it was utterly ludicrous, which meant that it would probably work. Remus proceeded to tell her of the Department of Mysteries and of the Time Turners allegedly concealed within. The following Saturday, according to Moody, the Department was having its Hundred Year Clean, which meant that for the first time in a century, cleaning staff would be allowed to enter the dusty, filth-strewn bowels of the Ministry of Magic and make it fit to work in, though of course their memories would be modified afterwards. This provided them with the ideal opportunity to enter, take what they needed, and get out.
“So that’s settled, then,” said Remus, once Lily had consented to the plan. “Next Saturday night, we're sending you back to the future!”
Unbeknown to either of them, a Muggle director named Robert Zemeckis was passing the window at the time and was hit with a sudden brainwave, resolving to catch the next plane home and begin writing his latest screenplay.
It was Saturday night. Lily and Remus were crouching in a corner under a borrowed invisibility cloak at the end of the corridor leading to the Department of Mysteries. It was deathly quiet, and the stench coming from under the great, black door was truly horrendous. Lily could see why its centennial cleaning was observed so religiously “ hang security, it was a veritable biohazard.
“Here come the cleaning staff,” whispered Remus, as a group of witches clad in aprons, headscarves and gas masks traipsed up the corridor, accompanied by a handful of bored-looking Aurors.
As they reached the door, Lily and Remus fell into step behind the cleaners, taking care not to bump into the Aurors. One of the latter began to speak.
“Right…” he cleared his throat. “You are not to touch anything. You are not to write anything down about what you see. You are not allowed to read anything. You are not allowed to look at anything. You are not allowed to listen to anything. You are not allowed to breathe in excessively. You are not allowed to talk to each other. Do not make eye contact. Do not smile at one another. Do not linger once the mess has been cleared. No food and drink to be consumed in the Department of Mysteries. And remember this is to be kept a Non-Smoking Area at all times. Do I make myself clear?”
The terrified witches made muffled squeaks of assent.
“Oh, and if you see an archway on a raised stone dais, don’t walk through it, and for heaven’s sake don’t try and clean the curtain,” he added, absent-mindedly. The cleaning staff nodded.
“All right then,” said the Auror, getting out his wand. “You have one hour. Anyone not back inside the hour…”
He let his sentence hang ominously, though in truth he probably didn’t know how to finish it. He raised his wand. Making a strange, squiggly motion with it, he pointed it at the door, which creaked slowly open. Lily and Remus followed the witches through the door and into the Department of Mysteries as the door slammed behind them.
Unfortunately, as they could not be seen, the door shut rather too quickly, and the invisibility cloak got caught, so that no sooner were they inside than the cloak had slid off them both and they were in full view of the cleaning staff.
All hell broke loose.
The cleaning ladies let out blood-curdling screams of panic and began running around wildly, knocking things over and attempting to bang on the door to be let out. However, as the doors were soundproof, the Aurors outside were oblivious to the commotion within, and so the hysterical witches began firing curses willy-nilly, so that Lily and Remus had to make a dash for it, sprinting through the nearest door and banging it shut.
“Colloportus!” gasped Remus, and the door sealed itself mercifully behind them.
“Now what?” Lily demanded, unimpressed, catching her breath.
“Well,” said Remus, “if you’d care to look around you, it would seem that by a curious stroke of luck, we have come to the right room.”
And he was right. They were in a dusty, grimy, particularly smelly room with a bird-dropping-splattered hourglass in the centre, within which the offending bird performed its life cycle over and over again. Along one wall was a cabinet full of dull, chunky Time Turners, each one encrusted with muck, and it was towards this cabinet that Lily and Remus made their way.
“Well,” said Remus, “go on then.”
“I’m not touching that, it’s filthy,” protested Lily.
“So clean it.”
“You clean it.”
“Fine,” said Remus in exasperated tones, flicking his wand in the direction of the cabinet, which gleamed suddenly. Lily tried not to be impressed “ James would have flatly refused to do anything he considered to be a woman’s work.
Finally, Lily had a grubby Time Turner badly concealed beneath her robes. Moving over to the door, she listened intently. The sounds of screaming had not abated. There was only one thing for it.
“On the count of three?” asked Remus, apparently coming to the same conclusion. Lily nodded.
“All right. One…two…THREE!”
The door flew magically open, and Lily and Remus fled through it, flinging hexes left, right and centre until they came to the invisibility cloak and yanked it out from the door, which, by a remarkable coincidence, triggered the unlocking mechanism. Throwing on the cloak, they ran through the open door, past the dazed Aurors, with a dozen gas-masked, wand-wielding cleaners hot on their heels.
Remus jabbed the lift button frantically as Lily duelled with one particularly hefty-looking witch with “Mum” tattooed on her arm. As the lift doors pinged open, Lily dashed after Remus, the tattooed cleaner in hot pursuit, and shoved the doors shut. There was a ripping noise as the lift began to climb upwards, and Lily realised with a twinge of revulsion that, for some strange reason, the cleaner’s bloomers were trapped in the lift. It seemed to be a recurring motif.
Once in the entrance hall, they ran for the exit, finally emerging from the telephone box and Disapparating, the strange and warlike cries of the cleaning staff still ringing in their ears.
“So…” ventured Remus awkwardly. One of the patches on his robes fell off in an uncomfortable sort of way.
“So…” agreed Lily. She was holding the newly-polished Time Turner in her hands, ready for the off. She did so hate goodbyes.
“I’ll see you soon, then. I think.”
“Thanks for you help,” said Lily lamely.
Sexual tension, she thought. It complicates everything!
There was really nothing more for them to say to one another without things getting really uncomfortable, so Lily gestured towards the Time Turner. Remus nodded, and they began to make those odd, penguin-like movements one makes when attempting to initiate a hug, flapping their arms slightly until they reached a height suitable for wrapping round each other. Remus tried not to wince as the hand holding the Time Turner hit him in the back and temporarily winded him.
Then, with a smile, Lily twizzled the Time Turner and was gone, spiralling forwards until she landed with unnecessary force on her own bedroom floor. And suddenly found herself being bound with snakelike chords by none other than…herself? She looked up from the floor indignantly.
“Haven’t you gone yet?” she demanded.
“What?” the Other Lily demanded back.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Lily. “Look, I can’t be bothered to explain, but take this Time Turner, go back a few months and talk to Remus Lupin, he’ll fill you in. Our future is at stake, now go!”
To Lily’s immense surprise, The Other Lily, who was feeling incredibly reckless after having been in hiding for so long, took the Time Turner without a word and vanished.
Well, who could blame her? Though, upon reflection, thought Lily, as she struggled fruitlessly against her bonds on the floor, James started enquiring loudly about his dinner from the other end of the house and Harry began to screech loudly from his cot, it was still good to be back.
The End.