ACT5CH24 - The Biscuit Paradox

The nursery had gone ominously quiet as the witches and wizards there processed Harry’s reply.

“....Say that again?” murmured Daphne.

“I said if he’s correct, then it might be possible to actually revert time back to 1981,” said Harry, his voice tight. “Maybe I can recreate the moment and see what transpired on that night.”

“That’s impossible,” said Amelia Bones. “Even the Time-turners cannot go back for more than twelve hours. The sheer temporal inertia alone….”

“He isn’t physically travelling back to the past, Minister.”

Surprising him again, Akingbade came to Harry’s rescue. “The idea is to see if he can recognize the values for, as you put it, temporal inertia, to determine the temporal position of an object.”

“And if you can see them, you can alter them,” offered Albus Dumbledore.

“I hardly think seeing something’s trajectory and peering through time are the same thing, Albus!” 

Harry barely suppressed a smile, not the least surprised at the Minister’s response. Amelia Bones was a realistic and practical person, one that always stayed grounded on logic and laws. Even when something that bordered on the unreal like the power of Death, she had used it as an anti-magic neutralizer and fought her way using it as a crutch without stopping to think of its potential applications.

In that respect, she was much like Hermione, except perhaps, her occasional uppitiness and refusal to believe that she was in the wrong. 

“Actually Amelia,” said Albus Dumbledore. “They aren’t exactly that different either.”

“Is it? One is kinematics, the other — divination.”

“Ah, but that’s where Harry’s magic shines, Amelia,” said Dumbledore, his blue eyes twinkling magnificently. “If I’ve understood this right, it may very well change the way we look at scrying and other divination-based magics.”

The Minister crossed her arms. “How?”

“Didn’t you think it was odd that a young man, even as prodigious as young Harry, was able to do something so impossible as enacting permanence on Ekrizdis’s suit?”

“He has the power of Death, and Death negates magic. I merely believed he enacted some sort of stasis charm and placed the entire thing within a layer of his Death energy, to protect it from any foreign magic.”

All four pairs of eyes gaped at her.

The Minister blinked.

“What? Wouldn’t that be a way for it to work?”

“I…. had forgotten that one of the vices of Hufflepuff was their everlasting belief in Occam’s Razor.” 

“If the buckled shoe fits….” the Minister drawled.

“It doesn’t,” grumbled Akingbade. “Honestly, I have spent every waking moment since the Summit, employing the best minds that we have to understand how Potter did it, and it’s only now that I have some idea of what he did.”

Then, he met Harry’s eyes in a frustrated gaze. “And given how you have no real clue about the true breadth of your power, it’s frankly, a miracle you ended up doing what you did.”

‘My finance’s the reason why the world’s even functional right now,” snapped Daphne. “I’m sure he has some clue what he’s capable of.”

“Nobody’s questioning that, lass!”

Harry stayed carefully silent during all of this. No one in the room knew exactly what he had done when he had concocted his insane idea of Permanence. To render something as ‘paused’ in every sense of the term would require far more than just a stasis charm and sticking death energy like glue around it, like the Minister claimed. 

One might as well stick owl feathers on one’s body and call themselves one.

“Um, Mr. Akingbade,” he asked slowly. “Exactly what do you think I can do?”

The man frowned.

“Consider one of those balls from earlier. At any time, it will carry a certain temporal value, weight,  nature, state — call it what you wish. It dictates the object’s physical manifestation in space-time. Now say, at Time A, its temporal value is X. So arithmantically, we get —” 

T(obj) = X + Δt

The formula etched itself in mid-air.

“Now say, ten minutes from now, its temporal value goes up by 10 units. I’m not sure if they represent entropy, causal iterations, experience, or simple time progression. The point is, there is a difference, and if Potter can see it, interact with it, and perhaps, alter it to say… erase, or negate the added value, then, we get —”

D ∘ T(obj) = X

“ —a Death-induced excision operator. In simple words, if he can cut out those 10 units, then —”

“He’d be able to reduce the object to its state at Time A,” finished Daphne, looking at the floating Arithmancy equations in front of her. 

“Theoretically, yes.”

“This is all hypothetical,” said Minister Bones. “And I hardly think trying temporal reversion of all things on an existing paradoxical energy vortex like the one present in this very room is a good idea at all. Now I'm no expert in chrono-thermodynamics, but I know that even a time-turner can deal with only so much temporal inertia before it would evaporate, and the bloody things are made of pure orichalcum. Call me paranoid, but finding out an interesting but ultimately a relic of the past by risking everything and everyone here is a bad, bad idea. At least let’s have the Unspeakables analyze that and —”

“No bloody way!” Daphne began. “They have already caused too many problems as it is!”

“I do not believe I was asking, Miss Greengrass.”

“And I believe the Wizengamot doesn’t exist right now, and I’ve just newly gained the power of my Family craft.”

Both women held their ground, unwilling to cede even a single inch.

“Why don’t we put it to the test?” offered Albus Dumbledore, ever the peacekeeper. “Say, at a more preferable location, such as my house? It is well-fortified, and in the event of something going wrong, we can escape it. It will also keep any potential disasters at a minimum.”

Amelia Bones looked disgruntled. 

“What do you say, Harry?” asked Dumbledore.

Harry frowned. He was never truly comfortable with the idea of having others dissect his powers, but competent help, or rather any help, was hard to find. It was why he had accepted the offer from the Department of Mysteries, but after the recent events, it was incredibly hard to trust others with his own mysteries.

But, he knew that he couldn’t solve this by himself, and as much as he was uncertain, the people around him were helping him make things better. And while he had his suspicions about Akingbade’s character and motives earlier, the man had proven him wrong.

He was sharp, dangerous and stubborn. But he was also someone Harry could respect.

He glanced at the Headmaster.

“Let’s do it.”

Dumbledore’s house stood crooked beneath a mossy slate roof, a stone-and-ivy cottage just past the bend in the Hollow. The brick was pale and old, stained with rain and time. It felt like it had been part of the village before the concept of ownership even existed. No visible wards. But Harry felt them — braided deep into the air, old magic woven in looping scripts that were clearly constructed differently from the more formulaic Elder Futhark that modern wards employed. He had similar ward architecture at the Flamel mansion, likely from where Dumbledore had learnt it from, but the final results were starkly different.

The Flamel mansion wards reminded him of a warzone. And oddly, of a poisoned well.

The Dumbledore house felt like a memorial. Like a graveyard but without any of the negative connotations associated. A place for the weary to come and rest. A place where the soul could feel peace. A house that existed, not for its owner, but as a stand-in for all those that had departed and yet were firmly and fondly remembered by the owner. 

He could grow to love this place. 

“Do you live here, Professor?” asked Daphne.

“Not as much as I’d like, Miss Greengrass,” said the Headmaster, ushering them in. 

The entryway was tiny.The entryway was tiny. Two portraits — a man and a woman, likely his parents. Strangely, they were either Muggle or charmed to remain still. The main room was tall, a cathedral of bookcases, a lit fireplace, and old furniture. 

“We can try it here,” offered the Headmaster.

“Are you sure, professor?” asked Harry, looking around. “I don’t think this house would like it.”

“Nobody lives here, Harry.”

“Exactly.”

Everyone looked at Harry like he had grown a second head. 

“In either way, we won’t be attempting anything dangerous,” said Akingbade. “I’ll be making a ball bounce across this room, halting it at random positions, and you’ll use those eyes of yours to get every damned detail you can about them. Beyond their mass, momentum, charges, spatial directions… I want you to go into as much detail as you can.”

“And then you want me to compare them later and see if there’s a difference?”

“Yes.”

Harry frowned. He had never put his abilities to the test like this before.

“I suppose it can’t hurt to try.”

Akingbade nodded curtly and drew out a small tuning fork from his robes. Albus Dumbledore smiled when he saw it, and quickly began casting powerful privacy and containment wards around them, forming a magical dome with them encased inside. Then, he began crafting smaller domes around everyone else, including himself.

Except for Harry.

“I — something is wrong,” said Daphne, feeling uneasy. 

Harry glanced at her sharply, and to his senses, she suddenly felt less vibrant. As if the source of her power was….

Oh.

“Yes, you might feel that,” said Albus Dumbledore. “Those wards are the same as the magic-restraining shackles placed on Azkaban prisoners. So long as you— all of us, are within those circles, you won’t be able to generate magic.”

Akingbade then planted the tuning fork on the floor, and then stepped back into his circle.

The fork didn’t so much as flicker for a moment.

“That fork checks for any magical flux into the system,” said Akingbade. “I have already enchanted the ball to pause every time it jumps up for five seconds, so for the duration of this experiment, there will be absolutely no magical interference from anyone inside or outside. That’s what those wards are for. All the magic interacting in this place will be purely yours.”

Amelia Bones crossed her arms again. She didn’t look particularly pleased, but she said nothing.

“Don’t push too hard,” Daphne whispered.

Harry just focussed.

Akingbade pulled out a familiar red ball from his pocket, and hurled it outside his circle. It ball dropped, struck the wooden floor, bounced once, and —

Paused.

Harry squinted his eyes, and focussed, as the world went grayscale. He had come a long way from the point where he unknowingly shifted to grayscale vision and started losing control. Back then, shifting to this was a prime cause of concern, and an immediate red flag. Now, it was part of what he was.

As color evaporated from his vision, the world became sharper, like he was zooming through one of the telescopes up on the Astronomy tower of Hogwarts. Things were blurrier at the edges, but he could see things, smaller and smaller, layers upon layers, motion growing more rapid the closer he got.

He got a good look, and then the ball began moving.

And paused again after the next bounce. And then another. And another. Each of them adding superimpositions of themselves inside his mind, each of them almost the same as the previous one with the obvious differences in some attributes, while others remained constant.

Velocity changed, but that was expected. Harry ignored that one.

Mass was constant, shape was constant, but the way it hit the air currents was just a tad different every time around. Perhaps because the air wasn’t perfectly homogenous? 

He ignored that too.

A fourth image. Fifth. Sixth. They flickered across his mind like echoes in reverse, a ghost trail of all the positions it had occupied. Spatial locations would be different, it wouldn’t be in motion otherwise. Without a thought, Harry discarded that too.

Then he saw it. 

Something… behind the ball. A drag. A scar. A fold across the object’s reality, hiding in its shadow.

His breath caught. 

It pulsed, like a wave, having its own rhythm, yet somehow being perfectly in sync with the object. As if it were operating on a… different axis itself.

Harry stared at it, unblinking.

The original value, the incremental delta — associated with a particular bounce, shifted right after the next bounce. It was difficult to properly explain it, since it didn’t exactly move in arithmetic progression or anything Harry had ever worked with, except that there was a sense of repetition to it, a harmonic motion that perfectly went hand in hand with the equally timed bounces.

Harry located the precise difference in beat he was looking for and tapped into the pattern, waiting. For the next ten bounces, he tapped it out like a metronome, and by the time he reached for the eleventh, his hand darted forth.

There.

To his disbelief, everything went still.

The clock on the wall had stopped. Albus Dumbledore, Babajide Akingbade, Amelia Bones, Daphne Greengrass — everyone and everything in the warded roomspace had gone absolute still, like a giant immobulus in action. It was — how had Croaker described it?

Ah, yes. Standing between Tick and Tock.

Only….

He paused, and glanced at his hands. Why was he suddenly feeling like he was using magic, and taxing magic at that? The only time he had felt that recently had been in the Room of Requirement when he had used magic way beyond what his body could churn out. Of course, Summer’s entry into his life had curbstomped all such limitations, but now with Daphne at the reins, it was likely he would feel its absence — at least to a degree. 

He was still able to use Summer, just not as carelessly as before. And certainly not like the way he had fought against Ekrizdis. For better or worse, his days as a magical berserker were gone, replaced with cold efficiency and skill — something that his experiment was helping him inculcate.

But why was he feeling this drag? Especially all that he was doing was —

He glanced at his hand, then at what his fingers were currently holding.

Oh.

How long will you take to understand this, Potter? He chided himself. There is no free lunch.

There was no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. And if he extended the concept to other factors, for time as well.

Death might allow him to grasp the temporal differences, help him spot, study or even interact with the temporal drag, but it didn’t mean he could just halt time in its tracks.

Not without pouring an equal and opposite amount of energy in the process.

Guess Time wasn’t that different from the other forms of forces after all.

He could operate between Tick and Tock. He could perhaps utilize it to change his position, perhaps even alter the trajectories or spatial positions of objects within the bounded temporal domain he was operating in. But with every action, with every single breath he took, every single micro-second that he dragged this liminal period for — the temporal drag cost would grow and grow, and since he was the only object ‘active’, Time would drag the cost out of him, whether he liked it or not.

But still… he had to prove that he did it. Prove that something had changed when it shouldn’t have. 

Harry pushed his other hand forward, faltering as the feeling of an intense vertigo almost swallowed him. Clenching his teeth, he grabbed the still frozen ball, and placed it in Amelia’s direction —

“UGH!”

He nearly fell backwards as he let go of the temporal flow, the drag nearly forcing him off his feet, as the ball flew towards Amelia Bones who let out a surprised sound, and caught it with one hand  with surprising dexterity.

And every single person in the room went gawking at Amelia to gawking at Harry.

For Harry Potter had successfully stopped Time.

For a moment, no one spoke. Harry staggered, pressing a hand to his chest. His lungs were tight, like he'd just run a mile uphill with gravity doubled. A hot ache was pooling behind his eyes, and the tips of his fingers throbbed with residual static, as if he'd dipped them into a magical circuit mid-flow.

Daphne was at his side in an instant. “Harry—”

“I’m alright,” he said hoarsely. “Just… give me a second.”

He shook his trembling hand out. 

“What you are is a second away from keeling over,” Daphne snapped, holding him. Now out of her circle, she could feel her connection to Summer surge again. 

“Harry, my boy,” said Dumbledore. “What happened?”

“Drag,” said Harry, panting slightly. “Anticipating the temporal variable, grabbing it — that was the easy part. Holding on to it? Not so much.”

Akingbade gave him a curious look. “You dragged out the liminal moment, didn’t you? That is how you altered the ball’s trajectory. You were operating in a temporal trench.”

Harry wondered how a military commander in Uganda had time to gain a Mastery in chrono-thermodynamics and yet find time to act as the Opposition’s Voice, but clearly this wasn’t a good time for that curiosity.

“The more I dragged, the more I felt the drag. The inertia, if you will. It took my own energy from me. I — I think I’m now a few seconds older than what I am supposed to be.”

“Extending liminality through the expense of the individual time,” murmured Dumbledore. “That probably explains why you look that exhausted.”

“Yeah,” said Harry, colour now returning to his face as he felt Daphne’s power — Summer — mingle with his, and infuse him with strength. “I guess I could’ve done more, but I don’t have access to infinite power like before.”

“And why is that?” asked Akingbade, arching an eyebrow.

“Daphne’s the new Lady of Summer,” he said, as if that explained everything.

He could still utilize the Summer magic, but only as much as his body would allow him to channel naturally. To use an analogy, he had been connected to an infinite-sized battery all this while, and now, that battery had found a new partner. 

On the other hand, he held the Jaguar’s allegiance — for some definitions of it anyway — and could use it to cast very intricate magics — magics that he needed to study at depth at first. Death was available as it always was, and with the Elder Wand, his spells would receive a larger boost to them than they normally were.

Great! It didn’t seem he was giving up the bloody thing anytime soon.

“Why on Earth would you think that was a good idea?” asked Amelia Bones. “With everything going on, you’re going to need all the power you can get. No offence, Miss Greengrass.”

“None taken,” Daphne said crisply.

“Wow,” Harry drawled. “First you all accuse me of hoarding power like I’m preparing to become some God Emperor of Doom or something, and now you criticize me for letting Daphne what’s rightfully hers? Make up your mind, why don’t you?”

Amelia looked suitably chastised.

“Admirable sentiments,” said Akingbade coolly. “But if we are to continue conducting the experiments, power will be required.”

“I can do it,” said Daphne, then faltered and looked at Harry in slight apprehension. “I mean, if you want me to?”

“It would help,” said Harry slowly, looking at Dumbledore. “What do you have in mind?”

The Headmaster caressed his beard thoughtfully. “Ideally, it should be an experiment that not just allows you to identify an object’s temporal state, but also perform a specific incision, rendering it to a different state that all of us would know to have existed at one point, but couldn’t, not without adding extra elements into the control system. That way we would all know that you were able to perform temporal incision with everything else around us staying intact.”

Harry blinked. “And… how do you propose we do that?”

“Have a biscuit, Harry.”

“....”

Dumbledore actually summoned a plate of biscuits out of nowhere, and held it out at him.

“Have a biscuit.”

Somehow, despite everything else that had happened recently, this felt more surreal. Blankly, he grabbed one of the biscuits and bit into it. 

“Good?”

“Mmm, yes. It’s—”

“Do not tell me what it tasted like,” said the eccentric professor. Then, even more surprisingly, he snatched the half-eaten biscuit out of Harry’s hand, and put it on a conjured table, vanishing the plate of biscuits away.

“Ah,” said Akingbade, smiling. “This should be interesting.”

Albus gave him an eye smile. “Now, I want you to repeat the same exercise with the ball earlier. Grasp the biscuit’s current temporal state, and revert it back to…shall we say, before you ate half of it.”

Harry blinked, before it hit him. Reverting the biscuit would be impossible, because he had already bitten, chewed and swallowed half of it. Currently, it was on its way to be digested. No amount of Reparo would work on this, and any transfiguration would only add a magical addition to the existing biscuit, thus, failing the purpose of the experiment. For all intents and purposes, this was a permanent change, and the only way to revert it would be to ensure it to the state where the action never happened.

Temporal regression.

“Okay, I guess we could give it a try,” he said slowly.

“Not without me, you aren’t,” said Daphne, and grabbed his left arm and pulled it against her bosom. 

“.....”

“What?” she defended. “I’m not casting a spell, am I? Just serving as a battery, and the more surface area I have in common, the easier it is for me to ensure the transfer.”

“...Right. Increased contact areas would reduce the pressure of the energy flux,” added Minister Bones quickly, eyeing Daphne who blushed. 

Harry didn’t know if the Minister was speaking the truth or merely helping Daphne save face, but he wasn’t going to question her on it.

He wasn’t that stupid.

Still, he felt the familiar surge of power rush through his left hand, and his eyes shifted to the familiar ‘Death-vision’. Instantly, the world was rendered void of its colour, and at the same time, became clearer and sharper than ever. He gazed at the biscuit, as knowledge of its attributes rushed into his head. Mass didn’t matter, velocity didn’t matter, space didn’t matter, shape didn’t matter — one by one every single physical attribute was cast away like onion peels, leaving the inner scaffold bare, and in that he could spot it again.

The temporal nature. The value. Maybe arithmancers would be able to define it in their mathematical terms, but as far as he was concerned, the only way to define it was as ‘itself’.  It could be more, and less, but the ‘more’ or ‘less’ state was just as stable as it was right now. Almost as if ‘stability’ as a concept didn’t even exist as far as this variable was concerned. 

Or perhaps, it didn’t exist in this limited arrangement.

His hand went forth like a claw, and Harry grasped its temporal state. 

The power of Death flooded into him, as runic circles of gray formed around his wrist. 

Harry twisted it anti-clockwise.

With a shimmer like a ripple reversing across water, the half-eaten biscuit began reforming. Crumbs began to fill in out of nowhere, like motes of golden dust slowly adding to its length. Bite marks smoothed over. The texture of the shortbread reversed its fracture, compressing back into uniformity.

And then it was complete. Just as new.

Daphne sucked her breath.

“That’s… wonderful,” said Akingbade. He looked like a man that wanted to say something but was overwhelmed with more questions that he wanted to test first. The Mamba commander walked up, and bit into the biscuit this time, ensuring that he took at least half of it, and then left the half-bitten piece on the table yet again.

Chewing and swallowing the bit in his mouth, he turned to Harry.

“Again.”

The biscuit still sat there, half-eaten, once again, only by a different person. Like the original version where it had been Harry himself that had bitten it. And then there was the original version he had rendered it to — unbitten, untouched — shimmering in his mind, nestled like a ghost within the current object. He reached for that echo again, felt its time signature snap into his grasp.

Another anti-clockwise twist of his wrist.

The biscuit reformed instantly. 

“My turn,” said Amelia Bones. She grabbed the biscuit, and this time, ate almost the entire biscuit, leaving behind some crumbs. She wiped her mouth with surprising formality, and placed the crumbs down on the table.

Harry reversed it.

Again — whole.

Anti-clockwise twist. Just a degree more than before, but the results were the same.

Reverted.

She gave a breathless laugh. “That should not be possible.”

Dumbledore took his share this time.

Twist.

Reverted.

“Umm, just as sweet as it should,” he said.

“Sickeningly sweet,” said Akingbade.

“My turn,” said Daphne, taking a large bite. “Yes. Too sweet.”

Twist.

Reverted.

“Hah!” laughed Akingbade.

“Did we just….” began Daphne.

“Eat the same biscuit?” asked Amelia Bones. “I can barely believe what happened myself.”

All five of them had eaten the same biscuit in turn, and each of them had eaten at least half of it.

All five of them remembered the taste.

All five of them had chewed it.

All five of them had the same biscuit chewed and lying as cud somewhere in their food pipe.

And yet, the whole biscuit now sat on the table. Utterly inconspicuous by how ordinary it appeared.

“By Merlin’s beard, how is this even possible?” asked Amelia Bones.

“Every time one of us bit the biscuit,” said Dumbledore, eyes twinkling, “Harry reverted the leftover piece into its temporal ancestor — unbitten, whole.”

“That would be like erasing the timeline—” Amelia began.

“For the biscuit, yes.”

“But we remember it,” said Daphne. “If the timeline was reverted then —”

“Ah, but that’s the beauty, Miss Greengrass,” said Dumbledore, still smiling. “Reality is subjective, not objective. One man’s reality is another illusion. What Harry did was erase the biscuit’s reality where he ate it, and reverted to the past, allowing for… shall we say, a different timeline to transpire where Babajide ate the biscuit, and then reverted again, successively through each of us.”

“But we all remember it!” Daphne argued.

“Because it isn’t your reality that’s changed, it’s the biscuit’s.”

“Let me get this right,” said Amelia. “You’re telling me that we just created five different branches in time that are somehow part of this time, only affecting this bloody biscuit and nothing else?”

“Parallel timeline-traveller biscuit,” murmured Daphne.

“Actually, there were six different branches,” said Akingbade. “The sixth one is the one sitting in front of you. The other five branches were pruned the moment Harry performed his temporal incision.”

“I ate a biscuit from a parallel timeline, that was eaten in five different parallel timelines before that,” murmured Daphne, still in her daze.

“Granted,” said Akingbade. “It is a very limited control set up. Barely any magical involvement. Involving an object with barely any worthwhile history to have any temporal inertia. But when you deal with a real-world setup, involving things as large as complex as thoughts, life, rituals and of course, death… things can get interesting.”

“What are you proposing, Babajide?” asked Albus.

“Let us put Potter’s Genesis test on hold,” said the Ugandan. “The Minister already said she had the rest of the crowd in her pockets, didn’t she? I’ll let the two of you ....”

Daphne cleared her throat.

“...Three of you discuss with Potter about how to go forward with what Albus and the Minister proposed earlier.” 

“Wait, what proposal?” asked Harry.

“Something we’ll discuss at length, Harry,” said Albus, turning to Akingbade. “Think you can make the Council cooperate?”

“With what we’ve just discovered? Easily. I believe if everyone is in agreement, we can bring the latest experts in the field, take proper precautions before we unearth the mystery of what happened in 1981. That said….” he hesitated. “Flamel might not agree. He has had plans centered around the Peverell Vessel for far too long.”

Dumbledore smiled. “I guess Nicholas will have to learn that a plan is just a list of things that don’t happen.”