For the next week, Lizzie spent her time wandering Diagon Alley. People hadn’t really been able to recover yet from the disaster of the fallen Ministry, so few shops were open. There wasn’t much to look at besides ruins. Still, Lizzie walked and walked through the streets, not really seeing much. It was someplace familiar, and that was all Lizzie cared about.
She was only at her aunt and uncle’s house to sleep and eat. Even then, she spent a lot of time locked up in her room, taking meals there rather than facing the entire family at once. On top of that, the Edens had started taking on boarders, and Lizzie never knew when she’d meet someone she knew. Her room became her world, and no one intruded into it besides Mrs. Eden with supper or tea.
Half-way through June, however, she received an unexpected visit that changed everything.
Lizzie was returning from a shopping trip to the recently re-opened Quality Quidditch Supplies “ she had begun training again, and her start with the Irish National team was getting closer by the day. Aunt Carol was knitting in the front room and looked up as Lizzie Apparated into the entryway, laden with packages.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re here!” she said, standing up quickly, her knitting dropping to the floor. “I told him I wasn’t even sure you’d be back before supper, but he insisted that he’d wait.” Carol wrung her hands nervously.
“Who?” Lizzie hoped it wasn’t who she thought it might be. The boy in question had a habit of crawling back at exactly the wrong time, and she wasn’t in the mood to listen to his excuses yet again. “Not…”
Someone stepped from the kitchen, and Lizzie nearly dropped her shopping. It wasn’t who she’d imagined, not by a long shot. “What are you doing here?” she asked accusingly.
“Elizabeth!” Carol scolded, shocked.
“No, it’s quite all right,” Harry Potter replied, waving his hand.
Carol looked mortified at her niece’s response to their famous guest, and offered him some tea. He politely refused, turning back to Lizzie. “Miss Gray “” Potter paused. “Can I call you Lizzie?”
“No.”
Carol’s blush deepened. “I apologize, she’s been through a lot this past year and “”
“Would you give us some privacy, Mrs. Eden? I’d like to speak to Miss Gray alone.” Potter led Aunt Carol out of the room and closed the door behind her. Then he turned on Lizzie, no longer wearing a diplomatic and understanding expression. Instead, his eyes flashed with some urgent purpose. “Look, I know you have reason to hate me, but I have important information you need to know.”
“The Rebellion murdered my family, and you expect me to just sit here and listen to you? No!” Her pent-up frustration about so many things exploded in the form of contempt for Potter. “You may be the hero of the entire wizarding world, and I won’t lie “ I’m grateful you killed the Dark Lord “ but there’s no law keeping me here to listen to you.”
“I know all about your family, Lizzie,” Potter said, his hand on her arm. “I also know you stayed and fought on the side of the Rebellion at the Battle of Hogwarts last month.” His fingers tightened, and Lizzie itched to pull out her wand and hex him. His urgent tone stopped her, though. “Something doesn’t add up there, don’t you think?”
“What’s your point, Potter?”
He let go of her arm, and started pacing back and forth. “I got a message last night. Something warning me about a possible gathering of the escaped Death Eaters, a coup.”
Lizzie laughed. “First, there’s no way they’d be able to get enough support this soon after the fall of Voldemort. And second, I still don’t see how I fit into this.”
“Your part’s coming,” he replied, undaunted. “As for your first concern, this coup wouldn’t take place for another year at least, if not two.” Potter stopped pacing and faced Lizzie, serious. “This was no ordinary tip-off.”
Even though she desperately wanted to annoy him by not asking anything at all, her curiosity won out. “What kind of tip-off was it, then?”
He paused, considered her. “Do you know what a time-turner is?”
“Er…” He’d caught her off-guard again. “Yeah, they’re made by the Department of Mysteries, right?”
“And you know what they do?”
“A time-turner can transport a witch or wizard back in time, so they can re-watch parts of their own lives, the lives of other people, even be in what appears to be two places at once. Theoretically, you could change the past. Of course, that’s against the law, but it’s still possible even if it’s illegal and infinitely dangerous.”
Potter smiled. “Exactly.”
Lizzie was sitting now, and Potter sat in the chair opposite her. “I still don’t understand what this has to do with me.”
He turned and pulled out his wand, muttering Muffliato at the door. Then he dove in, speaking quickly, eyes on hers. “Try to keep up, because even I’m not sure I understand it all. Now, last night I walked into my home at Grimmauld Place and found myself waiting for me. At first I was shocked, thought it was Dark Magic, but my future self showed me the time-turner around my neck and answered any questions I asked, the answers to which only I could know. I didn’t tell me much, and it was a huge risk to tell me what I did. Suffice it to say that certain events this year at Hogwarts will affect whether or not the Death Eaters will take over once more, whether this regime will last. You are a key part of these events, I said, and it was vital that I make sure you come back to Hogwarts to finish your last year as a student, that your presence there could make all the difference in the world.”
Lizzie couldn’t speak. Either Potter had gone mad, or he had some secret agenda. “I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t blame you. Just come back to Hogwarts. I’m only asking for one year.” His voice was desperate, something she’d never heard before. Lizzie had seen him nervous during the Tri-wizard Tournament in their fourth year, defeated when Dumbledore was killed at the end of their sixth, even commanding and confident as he battled Lord Voldemort only weeks ago. But Harry Potter, actually desperate for someone else’s help? This was a side she’d never seen.
Well what if she did go back to Hogwarts? Now he had her thinking about it, and the feeling of home she’d been missing returned with the ache of longing. Whatever she told herself, Hogwarts was home. Sure, she’d miss out on the opportunity to start with the Irish. But she was confident she could work her way up in no time, even if they had an established Chaser to take the spot. If she got her N.E.W.T.s, her career wouldn’t have to end at age thirty when she could no longer keep up with the younger players. What if she was injured? It would provide a foundation, something to fall back on. Really, her excuses “ that she didn’t belong at Hogwarts anymore, that she’d miss her chance of a lifetime, that school didn’t matter so much “ they fell away when she considered them seriously. Besides, if Potter was actually telling the truth…
Lizzie looked into Potter’s eyes and opened her mouth to acquiesce “ but the green of his eyes reminded her of something, what was it?
She saw a flash of green light. A scream rang in her head “ her own scream, a memory. Thomas’s dead body on the ground in front of her, limp, still warm, unmoving. His own brown eyes staring into space, unseeing.
“No.”
Potter’s face fell. “Please.”
Lizzie shook her head. “I won’t go back. You’ll have to figure this out yourself, if what you told me is even true. I can’t go back to Hogwarts, and you can’t make me.”
His eyebrows furrowed. “You said ‘can’t’ the second time.”
Lizzie’s own expression was unreadable. “Can’t. Won’t. Doesn’t matter which one. I’m not coming back to Hogwarts, and that’s my final decision.”
Potter stood so he looked down at her, taking on a commanding air. Pompous, self-righteous boy, you don’t know anything, do you? Lizzie thought angrily. “You could be dooming the entire wizarding world to a fate as bad as the one it just escaped, you know that, don’t you?” he said.
“GET OUT!” Lizzie yelled, standing herself and drawing her wand. “NOW!”
Potter backed away, never taking his eyes off her. As he reached the front door he pulled out his own wand, but didn’t aim it at Lizzie. “We’ve all been hurt, Lizzie, all had experiences that made us feel angry, victimized. It’s what we choose to do with those experiences that defines our character. Just remember that.”
Lizzie raised her wand. “OUT!”
Potter Disapparated before her jinx hit the wall, rebounding harmlessly back to the floor.
Lizzie didn’t wait for Aunt Carol to run in, worried and upset. She just ran up the stairs and into her room, slamming the door behind her. As she leaned against the door, breath heavy, pulse racing, she couldn’t shake the image of Thomas’s dead eyes looking back at her.
I just can’t go back. Not to that.
Tick-Tock by Britta Berkley
Chapter Endnotes: Please please review! Thanks a million!