Consequences

Ginny slowly blinked her eyes. Bright sunlight was streaming in through the small windows in the temporary wooden wall of the infirmary. She looked to her right and saw Ron lying on the bed beside her, sound asleep. "Oh thank Merlin...it was just a dream."



"Yes," Luna murmured from a chair to Ginny\'s left. "Just a dream."



Ginny smiled tiredly at her friend. "Where\'s Draco?"



Luna blinked in surprise, then frowned slightly. "You\'re not still on that, are you? I wondered why you had so many wrackspurts around you..."



Ginny\'s heart sank. "He\'s still dead?" She groaned frustratedly.



"That\'s not something one tends to get over. Unless he had a horcrux like Voldemort," Luna murmured thoughtfully. "Do you think he did?" She asked curiously. "Harry always said he was evil."



"What? No!" Ginny exclaimed disgustedly. "Draco isn\'t evil!"



"I\'m sure he was just a big, blond, misunderstood teddy bear," Ron snorted from her right. She turned and found him sitting on the side of his bed, noticing for the first time that he was fully clothed and had been lying on top of the covers...not there as a patient after all.



"Why am I in the infirmary?" Ginny asked, mostly just to change the subject.



"Well, you passed out after babbling about a dead Death Eater being your boyfriend. We thought maybe we should have you checked out," Ron muttered sarcastically.



"You really don\'t remember saving them, do you?" Ginny whispered sadly. She\'d thought for sure Ron would remember, if no one else. But then, he hadn\'t been the one wearing the time turner while they\'d changed everything. It must\'ve made more of a difference than Kingsley had warned them about.



"Saving who?" Ron asked soberly.



"Harry? Hermione? Fred?" Ginny asked, realizing that talking about Draco wasn\'t helping them take her seriously.



"Gin, they\'re gone." Ron sighed exasperatedly. "You know that. You were at their funerals!"



Ginny bit her lip. "This isn\'t right! This isn\'t how it was supposed to go! We fixed it!" Suddenly a thought occurred to her. "Remus...I need to talk to Remus! He\'ll know what to do!"



Ron just stared at her, his eyes sad, and her heart sank.



"He\'s gone too? What the hell? We didn\'t even save him!" Ginny yelled.



Ron glanced nervously toward Madam Pomfrey\'s office. "Maybe you should calm down, Ginny. If you keep talking like this..."



"What? Are you gonna send me to St Mungo\'s?" Ginny asked scornfully. "I\'m not crazy, Ron! We saved them! The two of us, together! We saved them!"



"Ginny..." Luna interjected quietly.



"Shut up! I don\'t want to hear it! You weren\'t there!" Ginny yelled. "We saved them! We saved him, and I don\'t care what you think, I love him...and he loves me!"



"Malfoy?" Ron scoffed, not quite managing to suppress a roll of his eyes.



"Yes!" Ginny screamed, realizing she sounded quite hysterical at this point. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she didn\'t care.



"What\'s going on out here?" Madam Pomfrey\'s stern, familiar voice rang through the air.



"Nothing!" Ron answered too quickly, sounding ridiculously guilty. He hissed, "Shut up, Ginny!" under his breath as the healer approached.



Ignoring his warning, Ginny growled, "You shut up! You\'re lying. You have to remember. You were there!" She was openly weeping now.



"Miss Weasley, if you don\'t calm down, I\'ll be forced to restrain you..."



"Try it!" Ginny growled. "I\'d like to see you try."



"Gin..." Ron shook his head disapprovingly.



"Incarcerous!" Madam Pomfrey murmured. Thick ropes immediately sprang up, wrapping around Ginny and the bed, pinning her arms at her sides. "If she doesn\'t snap out of this soon, I\'ll be forced to contact St Mungo\'s," she grunted somewhat defensively to Ron.



"I\'m not crazy!" Ginny shrieked, struggling madly against the ropes. "We saved them! We did! Time is just all messed up now! Remus said so...he said the original timeline was trying to reestablish itself..." Ginny sobbed as it finally really struck her that Draco and the others might be gone for good. "Gods...no...we have to do something! We can\'t just let them die. I love him! I love him..." she moaned, breaking into hopeless sobs.



"I\'m going to get her a calming draught," she heard Madam Pomfrey whisper loudly as Ron moved to embrace her.



"Thanks," Ron whispered, awkwardly rubbing Ginny\'s shoulder, his actions hindered slightly by the ropes around her.



Ginny tried in vain to move away from him, and felt her hand brush against something cold and metallic nestled among the blankets. It felt like a thin chain and her heart leapt. The time turner! She slowly gathered the chain in her fist and hid a sly smile when she felt the tiny hourglass pendant.



When Madam Pomfrey returned with a small vial, she meekly swallowed the lavender scented potion inside. "I\'m sorry. I didn\'t mean to yell. I\'m just so confused," she murmured, batting her eyelashes innocently.



"Well, maybe things will seem clearer if you get some rest..." Madam Pomfrey suggested gently.



Ginny let out an exaggerated yawn. "Yes, I\'m sure that would help..."



"Alright," Madam Pomfrey murmured. Turning to Ron and Luna, she said, "Why don\'t you two run along and get some lunch. I\'ll let you know if you\'re needed."



Ron looked like he might argue, but Luna pulled on his arm. "Come on, Ron. Let her get some sleep..."



Ron gazed intently at Ginny, and she let out another exaggerated yawn. "Alright," he agreed reluctantly. "We\'ll be back later." He kissed Ginny on the forehead then let Luna lead him out of the infirmary.



"Are you going to give me any more trouble?" Madam Pomfrey asked sternly after they were gone.



"No," Ginny shook her head vehemently.



"Alright..." the healer frowned thoughtfully then muttered, "Finite!" The ropes vanished and Ginny had to struggle to suppress a triumphant smirk. "Try to get some rest now. I\'ll check on you later..."



Ginny nodded and snuggled down under her covers. "Okay, Madam Pomfrey," she murmured sweetly, laughing on the inside.



Madam Pomfrey returned to her office, closing the door behind her, and Ginny leapt into action.



Climbing off the bed, she searched around for her wand and found it in the drawer of the nightstand beside her. First, she cast \'muffliato\' on Madam Pomfrey\'s office door. Then, she frowned down at her fuzzy blue pajamas and, concentrating intently, managed to transfigure them into black jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt. Her wool socks became thin, lumpy black ballet flats. They didn\'t look quite right...she could sort of see through them in places, but they\'d have to do.



Since Harry was gone, she didn\'t hold out much hope for his invisibility cloak being at Hogwarts, but when she muttered, "Accio invisibility cloak!" it flew into the room through the space underneath the doors a few seconds later.



Draping the cloak over herself, she placed the time turner\'s chain around her neck and twirled it until it wouldn\'t turn any more. When everything stopped spinning around her, the infirmary was dark. Even the light in Madam Pomfrey\'s office was unlit. Casting another \'muffliato\' on the door, she tried turning the time turner again. Nothing happened. Throwing it aside, she yelled \'accio other time turner!\' Sure enough, the time turner came flying to her from wherever it had been in this horrible timeline twelve hours before it found its way into her bed in the infirmary.



When she placed this one around her neck, Narcissa\'s face suddenly appeared in front of her, frantically shaking her head. This time, Ginny could almost hear the other woman\'s shouted, "No!"



Ignoring her, she turned the tiny hourglass twelve times, praying that Draco had been wrong back in May; that it was possible to go back further than twelve hours if she just used the time turner that actually belonged to the time she was currently in.



It worked. She narrowly avoided a collision with Madam Pomfrey when the now sunlit room stopped spinning. Jumping out of her path into the space between two beds, she waited for the healer to return to her office then pulled off the time turner and repeated the process of summoning the current timeline\'s turner. She got tired of adjusting the cloak each time and finally slung it over one shoulder, deciding that if she had any trouble with Pomfrey, she\'d just stun her. With any luck she\'d erase this timeline anyway.



"No! Stop!" Narcissa\'s faint voice gave her pause just before she went back another twelve hours. She caught a glimpse of the woman\'s pale face out of her peripheral vision as she turned the hourglass. She had a head and shoulders now, apparently.



"You need to stop this!" Narcissa\'s hovering head and torso met her when she arrived in the darkened room about 36 hours before she\'d originally left.



"I have to save him!" Ginny growled, yanking off the time turner and summoning the current version.



"You\'re going to destroy everything!" Narcissa exclaimed, making a motion that probably would have translated to a stomped foot...if she\'d had any feet to stomp.



"I\'ll take my chances!" Ginny muttered, giving the time turner a twirl.



This time, Narcissa was almost completely solid, lacking only her feet. "Do you know why you can see me more clearly the further back you go?"



"I don\'t know...because you\'re a ghost and I\'m getting closer to when you were alive?" Ginny guessed half heartedly.



"No," Narcissa shook her head frantically. "I created a paradox when I used the time turner to go back further within its own timeline to save Hermione. I\'ve been stuck in a sort of gap between the original timeline that I went back to fix and the new one I created by saving the Lupins and Hermione. I\'ve been trying to contact you ever since...I can\'t manipulate much from here, but I can touch and move the time turner...I hoped you\'d get the hint when I kept bringing it to you," she finished, frowning a bit reproachfully.



"That was you?!" Ginny gasped. "And you saved the Lupins?"



"I went back a little further than I meant to," Narcissa shrugged. "I had some time on my hands, and Nymphadora is my niece. I didn\'t get stuck here until I caught up to the point I had travelled back from. I\'ve been able to see all of you since you came back to the castle, but you couldn\'t see or hear me."



Ginny frowned slightly. "So...why can I see you now?"



"Every time you go back further, you create another copy of the time turner, enlarging the paradox. It\'s pulling you further into the gap!" Narcissa exclaimed urgently.



"So?" Ginny asked impatiently. "All I care about is saving Draco!"



"While I admire your persistence, at the rate you\'re going, you won\'t be able to save him. Even if you somehow get back to the day of the battle, there won\'t be anything left." Narcissa moved closer and reached for Ginny\'s hand, but her own hand passed right through it. "Stop this! You\'re going to destroy everything! Draco wouldn\'t want that."



Ginny frowned determinedly and turned the hourglass again.



During the next few stops, she blatantly ignored Narcissa when she appeared, simply removing the time turner from her neck and summoning the current one before going back another twelve hours. She\'d gone back about a week or so when something happened. When she carelessly tossed the \'old\' time turner aside after summoning the current one there was a loud cracking sound and a blinding flash of white light.



When her vision finally cleared, a sickly grayish yellow light cast strange shadows over the room. The walls of the infirmary had been blasted away. Dust and splinters of wood were hovering in midair around the outside wall. The wall between the main room of the infirmary and Madam Pomfrey\'s office was completely decimated. Ginny barely could see the healer through the floating bits of stone in the resulting gap. The older witch\'s face was covered in blood, and she was frozen halfway in the process of falling to the floor. Her eyes were wide and unfocused.



Ginny gasped and tried to rush to the older woman\'s side, but it felt like she was wading through maple syrup. As she struggled to reach the injured woman, she gradually became aware of a strange whooshing sound. It grew louder and louder until Ginny finally stopped trying to move and looked around for the source of the sound.



After several seconds the air directly in front of her seemed to shimmer slightly. The whooshing slowed, and out of nowhere, a strange wooden box appeared. It was painted a rich blue and had two small, six-paned windows along the top on each side, and the words \'Police Public Call Box\' in white above those. She heard a click and then a frumpy looking middle aged man wearing a white straw hat, tan trousers and a brown corduroy sportcoat over the ugliest sweater vest she\'d ever seen stepped out from around the far side of the box. For some reason, he was holding an umbrella with a red handle that matched the question marks all over his atrocious vest. "What a mess," he murmured, looking around and shaking his head.



"What is this, Professor?" A brunette girl about Ginny\'s age, dressed in black muggle trousers, a white shirt with thin, black, horizontal stripes and an oversized leather coat covered in pins and badges, stepped out from behind the older man, looking around with mixed curiosity and horror.



"Time has imploded on itself," the man replied casually, as if he was talking about the weather or the cost of tea in China. "A paradox caused it to turn in on itself until it collapsed. Easy enough to fix...the real concern is why it happened." At this, he turned his gaze on Ginny, a gentle but disturbingly knowing look in his eyes. "Why did you do it, luv? And how?"



Ginny felt all of the fight melt out of her. This man didn\'t feel like a wizard, though he was dressed like many older wizards did when trying unsuccessfully to fit in with Muggles; but despite the fact that she could sense no magic coming from the stranger, she was somehow completely confident that he could fix everything. "Who are you?" She asked somewhat dazedly.



"You didn\'t answer my questions," the man replied, smiling amusedly.



The other girl rolled her eyes and stepped forward, holding out her hand. "He\'s the Doctor, and I\'m Ace. We\'re time travelers. He\'s a Time Lord, actually. I just take care of him. And you are?"



"G-Ginny," she mumbled, shaking the strange girl\'s hand. "A-are you a Muggle?" She asked confusedly.



Ace looked over her shoulder at her companion, whose face suddenly lit with understanding. "Oh! Are you a witch? That would explain a lot. Been messing with time spells, have you?"



"Time turner," Ginny answered meekly. It wasn\'t magic, exactly, but some sort of power was rolling off this man in waves. It was intimidating, though he didn\'t seem threatening. She\'d never experienced anything like it. "You know about us, then?"



"Oh, yes. I even met Merlin once, in another lifetime." The man...the Doctor...nodded, smiling cheerfully. "I warned him that it wasn\'t a good idea to mess with time. Only Time Lords are capable of manipulating time without mucking everything up."



Ginny decided it was probably best not to admit that Merlin had listened to him and she was most likely breaking a dozen laws with her actions. "I understand, but there was a war, and people were killed that shouldn\'t have been. A hero, who saved us all from a very evil man, and his girlfriend, my best friend, who helped defeat him. And..." she choked back a sob before continuing. "My brother, and a professor here who was a spy and a boy...everyone thought he was evil, but he was just forced to do horrible things to keep his mum safe. He tried to help our side in the end."



"When did they die? What dates, exactly?" The Doctor asked solemnly.



"May 2nd, 1998," Ginny answered quietly. "All of them. There was a big battle that ended the war, but some of them were murdered afterwards."



"Well, that\'s convenient. And who was this war against?" He asked.



"V-Voldemort. Er, his real name was Tom Riddle," Ginny replied, wrinkling her nose disgustedly.



"And what did you do? That was months ago. Why were you trying to go back now? Magic can only take you back a few hours. Why didn\'t you do something back then?" The Doctor asked reproachfully.



"I did!" Ginny exclaimed defensively. "My brother and I went back right away to try to stop Dolohov, the man who killed Harry, Hermione and Draco. We saved Harry and Draco, and we managed to save our brother Fred and Professor Snape, too. But I guess somehow in the process Draco\'s mum, Narcissa, ended up going back with the same time turner to save Hermione and the Lupins..." She realized on some level that she was babbling and they had no clue who she was talking about, but rushed onward, trying to get everything out before she broke down. "Narcissa was here a minute ago...before all this happened," she gestured at the frozen chaos around them. "She said she got caught in some sort of gap between timelines...a paradox. She went missing back then, but we thought she just ran off with Snape. Everything else seemed normal except Ron and I had really bad headaches and the people we saved had nightmares about dying. But then a few days ago it all started to fall apart. The headaches got a lot worse, and we started seeing Narcissa everywhere, and then Ron ended up in a coma and I got a really nasty headache and when I woke up they were all dead again. Ron didn\'t even remember saving them."



"Your brains couldn\'t handle having two sets of memories for the same period of time, even though it was only for a few hours. And if this Narcissa woman was trapped within the paradox, time must have tried to reset itself in order to free her," The Doctor explained, thoughtfully rubbing his chin. "It should have worked. It must not have completely reset or you wouldn\'t remember either."



"But I do remember! We saved them, and Draco and I fell in love. But now Draco\'s dead! He can\'t be dead! I can\'t live without him!" She shouted angrily, then burst into tears.



Ace rushed forward and wrapped her arm around Ginny, murmuring comfortingly and stroking her hair while she sobbed. "There, there, it\'ll be alright. The Doctor will fix it. Won\'t you, Professor?"



"Give me a moment," The Doctor muttered after gazing thoughtfully at Ginny for a long time. "I need to think about this. I vaguely remember hearing about this Voldemort person once. Bad seed, that one. Let me look into the best way to handle this. What were the names of the people you tried to save?"



"Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, Narcissa Malfoy, Fred Weasley and Severus Snape. And I guess Narcissa saved Remus and Nymphadora Lupin when she tried to go back," Ginny supplied obediently.



The Doctor nodded distractedly and disappeared back around the corner of the box without a word.



"He\'s just looking at the records in the TARDIS to see what happened," Ace explained softly. "He\'ll figure out the best way to save your friends without destroying the world in the process." She grinned a bit teasingly and Ginny found herself smiling slightly despite her tears.



"Do you really think he can?" She asked hopefully.



"He\'s the Doctor. I know he can." Ace grinned. Her utter faith in her companion was obvious and Ginny once again felt herself relaxing slightly.



"How long will it take, do you think?" She asked curiously after it seemed like several minutes had passed.



"Well, like I said, he\'ll be looking for records of what happened, trying to figure out when and how to help. He might have to go back through several years of information. Then we\'ll have to go back and actually put his plan in motion. Once we do, none of this will ever have happened. You won\'t remember any of it."



Ginny frowned worriedly. "But saving Draco is how I got to know him. He might end up in prison if I never realize that he\'s not really an evil git. My brother and I spoke up for him after we found out his father made him do things for Voldemort during the war by threatening his mother. We didn\'t know he was trying to help our side in the end until we went back and saved him. We only saved him because his mum helped Harry before he defeated Voldemort."



"Hmmm...I\'ll make sure the Doctor knows all of that. Maybe he can figure out how to keep him out of prison," Ace shrugged uncertainly. "At least he won\'t be dead. And even if he does go to prison, you won\'t remember being with him, so you won\'t miss him."



"He doesn\'t deserve to go to prison!" Ginny protested. "Even if I don\'t remember and don\'t miss him...he doesn\'t deserve that!"



"Calm down," The Doctor interjected gently, coming back around his box. "I assume you\'re talking about your Mister Malfoy?" he asked, tilting his head slightly. At Ginny\'s answering nod, he smiled mischievously. "Don\'t worry, my dear. I think I know how to best help him. I\'m going to have to make a few stops to tie up all of the loose ends, but it\'s easily fixed. For a Time Lord, anyway. You wizards need to learn not to meddle in time..." he clicked his tongue disapprovingly, shaking his head slightly. "I\'ll be taking care of that time turner, too, believe me. Come along Ace...we have a bit of work to do." He beckoned cheerfully and the brunette obediently scrambled to his side.



"It was nicely meeting you, Ginny," she murmured politely before ducking around the other side of the box.



"What are you going to do?" Ginny asked the Doctor anxiously.



He smiled reassuringly. "I\'m just going to visit a few people. Give a bit of helpful advice. If everyone does what I say, things will work out fine."



"Can\'t you just go back and kill Voldemort as a baby or something?" Ginny asked impatiently.



"Oh, I wish it were that easy, but some things are fixed points in time...so important that I cannot interfere. Unfortunately, Voldemort is one of those points. The wizarding world had a very important lesson to learn from this war. But your friends deaths...your brother\'s, and Severus Snape...those are just minor details, in the big picture, and I agree that they all deserve better than what happened to them."



"What\'s going to happen to me? Am I stuck here like Narcissa?" Ginny asked nervously.



"When I go back and change things, this timeline will never have happened. It\'ll just cease to exist, so neither of you will have ever gotten stuck in the first place. Your lives will just carry on as if all of the things you went back to change had never happened. Because they won\'t happen. I promise, Ginny," he bowed slightly. "You will see me one more time, but you won\'t remember this." He winked mischievously. "I really should get on with it. Good-bye, Miss Weasley. See you soon." With that, he turned abruptly and walked back around the box.



Ginny watched, wide eyed, as the box began to make its strange wheezing and whooshing noises and slowly faded out of sight. Once it was gone, she looked around expectantly, waiting for time to unfreeze or something. "When is he going to-"



*****



AN - I have to admit my muse has completely abandoned me on this one. I just want to finish it, so here goes. There will be an epilogue to reveal what happened instead of Dolohov\'s murder spree...if I can figure that out without my muse. If not, just assume they all live happily ever after. ;-)