Chapter Text
Six months later
"Okay but," Morag said, "with the Grandfather Paradox, you—"
"Jargon, Morag." Millicent snapped her fingers. "Define your terms."
"The Grandfather Paradox," Draco interrupted, grabbing the Stone of Sonorous out of Morag's hands, wanting to regain control of the conversation, "is a thought experiment. What happens if a person travels back in time, sees their grandfather, and kills them? Their grandfather obviously lived—because their grandchild exists. But their grandfather was just shot. So what happens? How does it happen? There's no right answer, because it's a paradox."
Terry raised his hand, and Draco passed the stone. "I think you'd simply find you couldn't kill him. Like, you'd go to cast AK and the wand would malfunction, or you'd try to cast a Cutting Curse and fail to hit any vital organs. Because it's not something that can succeed."
Harry hooked his foot behind Draco's ankle and leaned over to reclaim the stone. "That might be, yeah. But I think, the more I think about it…. I think it's the wrong question altogether. Because the fact that the man exists, and his grandchild exists, shows that this is a universe in which they both always existed. There was never a time when they didn't both exist. So the grandchild would never contemplate going back to kill their grandfather—it's just not something that would ever happen, by definition. It's a universe in which it doesn't happen."
Padma raised a hand, and Harry gave her the stone. "But isn't that really bothersome from the perspective of free will? It sounds like lip service to free will—like you're saying, 'You're doing what you want to do because it's what you always already chose'—but how is that a meaningful choice? If I heard, 'This is what you already did, so that's what you want,' I'd be tempted to do the opposite, just because someone told me I couldn't."
"That sounds like a 'you' problem, Pad," Lisa offered.
Padma laughed and passed the stone back to Draco.
"It's hard to explain," Draco said.
"You make it sound like you're speaking from personal experience, Draco!" Millicent jeered.
Draco and Harry shared a glance; Harry bit down on a grin. "Be that as it may, it's hard to explain. But it's almost as if a time traveller to the past could make decisions as they saw fit, without realising that the overall effect of all those decisions will produce the future exactly as it always was."
"This is all wank," Stewart said. "Because you're ignoring the existence of the multiverse. Of many-worlds theory."
Millicent snapped her fingers in his general direction. "Define. Your. Terms."
Stewart launched into a pedantic definition of multiverse metaphysics.
"No, man," Lynx said, shaking their head. "There are parallel universes, sure. If you need convincing about that, come talk to me about psilocybin. But uhh, anyway. That's not to say a person couldn't go back in time from their own timeline, their own universe, knowing when they leave that they'll make it back, that the universe they'd come from was a universe in which they'd gone back to their starting time. Time travel isn't necessarily multiverse travel, you know? Otherwise, no one could ever return from travelling in time. Which we know they do, man!"
Lou, sitting between Draco and Lynx, took the stone. "Yeah, mate, yeah. And like, I think we need to consider what time travel means in terms of bureaucracy."
Draco's lips curved up. "Bureaucracy? Maybe. Can you explain?"
"Like, you know that people only time travel if the government wants them to!" He leaned forward. "It's never like, some bloke wants to go back and meet his grandfather, or even some researcher wants to go back and interview Ulick Gamp. No, it's always like, 'We have a secret mission for you, for our purposes.'"
"That's a conspiracy theory," Terry Boot said, in a self-consciously rational tone of voice.
"No," Luna said, crossing her legs atop her perch, "that's a well-known fact. Have you not heard of the Unspeakeasies?"
Lou pointed an appreciative finger at Luna. Wasn't that bizarre. "Exactly. But what I was trying to say is—bureaucracy is temporally bound. If bureaucrats send someone through time, they necessarily lose control of their actors. Because once the actors are in another time, the bureaucrats are no longer there. So what I'm wondering is: is time-travel inherently anti-hierarchical? If we think of a time-traveller as a worker, think of the power it puts in the hands of the working class!"
No one in the group seemed to have anything to say to that. Perhaps too many of them had been forced into being revolutionaries as teenagers to be keen on uniting time travellers as workers of the world.
Neville gestured for the stone. "On the question of free will…. Obviously, time travel presents issues for the concept of free will. Or at least, like, unfettered free will. But what I'm wondering is: is that so different from other cases? Free will in regular situations, I mean, when there's no time travel. Like, remember when Morag told us about epigenetics? Even our genes affect our free will, you know? Like I can't do anything I want to for lots of reasons—my DNA, my magic, who my parents are, the family I'm born into. I think it's possible to think about time-travel as another case like this. Where, yeah, it constrains free will. But so does everything else, right?" He stopped for a moment, but no one rushed him. Everyone here knew that Neville sometimes needed a minute to collect his thoughts. "When I go visit my parents, I sometimes wonder if I'm like them, because of having inherited their genes and their magic. I don't think I can ever not be, right? But at the same time, like Morag told us, how those genes are expressed depends on the context of our lives. And we do have control over that, at least to some extent. I'm definitely not like, fated to be the exact person my parents were. You know?" He paused, passing the stone back and forth between his hands for a minute. "Can't time travel be like that?"
Between their chairs, Harry and Draco found each other's fingers and squeezed.
...
...
"Both your auras are looking so clear," Luna said, looking around their heads after the organised portion of the Circle had ended. "That must be a relief. They say blocked auras cause problems with ejaculation, you know. And also with mental maths."
Draco grimaced. "Yes, thank you, Luna."
"Do you think mental maths and ejaculation are connected, or that's just a, you know," Harry waved a hand around, "spurious relationship?"
"That's a fascinating question, Harry," Luna sang. "Millicent!" She touched Millicent's arm and guided her into the conversation. "Do you think ejaculation and mental maths are related?"
Millicent's face took a journey. She finally said, "Only insofar as I don't like to be in the vicinity of either whilst they're being… executed."
Draco put a hand to his mouth, but didn't succeed in stifling his laugh.
Luna patted Millicent's arm before being dragged away by Parvati to discuss her collection of ancient dildos.
"So you two are still together," Millicent observed, biting into a carrot stick. "I would've put money on you breaking up before now."
"Er," Harry said after a disbelieving laugh. "Yeah, we are. Thanks?"
"And you're not driving each other nuts?"
Draco slid an arm around Harry's waist. "You're asking the wrong question, Mil. Of course, we're driving each other nuts."
"Yeah," Harry said, turning to look at Draco and pressing a kiss to his cheek. "We like nuts."
"Aaaaand that's my cue to leave." Millicent was gone before they could respond.
Lynx walked in from the kitchen, carrying a stuffed mushroom. "Lou is talking to that pedantic Stewart bloke."
Draco craned his neck to see. "Oh Merlin. Should we save him?"
"I don't know," Lynx said, holding up a finger while they swallowed. "He seems to be into it, to be honest. If he doesn't have Stewart reading Kropotkin before the night is out, I'll quit smoking. Hey, Neville!"
Neville looked up and walked over. "Hey, Lynx. Good talk tonight, you two. Really interesting stuff. Makes you glad we wrecked all the Ministry's Time-Turners back in fifth year, right, Harry?"
"Oh yeah," Harry said. "Definitely glad the Ministry doesn't have those. Ow! Don't pinch me."
Neville frowned, and Lynx said, "Don't mind them. It's like their little traumatised child-warrior foreplay or something." Neville laughed.
"I wanted to ask you about the soil conditions," Lynx said. "This heat is too much! I know it's August, but it's England."
Neville let out a sigh. "Tell me about it, mate. I'm working double-time just to keep my plants from dehydrating."
It was weird. It still felt weird—Draco's friends mingling with Harry's; their two friend groups mixing and resettling in new configurations. Neville bonding with Draco's stoner friend over growing conditions.
After Harry and Draco had got back to 2004, they'd started inviting friends over. Before their time in 1980, they'd each gone to friends' places, but never really invited anyone to theirs. Afterwards, things were different—subtly, not drastically, but different. They'd plan a Star Trek night at Draco's and invite people from both of their friend groups (they'd told everyone they either needed to come topless or with shirt torn to expose collarbone and/or tits, in honour of Captain Kirk), or they'd clear all the furniture out of the room in Grimmauld Draco insisted on referring to as the "ballroom," hang a disco ball, and invite everyone over for a disco-themed party (no admittance if their outfits wouldn't impress Sirius Black).
They'd even found a way around the Unspeakables' prohibition on talking about their mission—or part of it, anyway. The only part that was important. They couldn't tell Neville about their mission—however, they could talk about the mission to each other. The same rules, it turned out, applied to sharing memories. So Draco and Harry each extracted their memories of Frank and Alice, giving them to each other, all the while trying to pretend that they were doing this for no reason whatsoever involving Neville Longbottom. They put all the memories on the table with a Pensieve and invited Neville over. It started with them struggling through a pantomime, instructing Neville to watch the memories without doing anything that would count as "giving" them to him. It ended with Neville and Harry hugging, in tears over seeing their mums pregnant, while Draco hovered around them, anxiously casting charms to monitor their levels of shock and administering small doses of Calming Draught.
It was all surprising, and jovial, and the new friendships and Harry and Draco's post-time-travel mindsets made Luna's Circles more comfortable than ever.
Lynx asked Neville for some pointers on how to set a time-delayed Irrigation Charm, and Neville led him into Luna's garden.
Draco leaned against Harry as they watched the bustle and laughter of the nerdiest of their friends. "Do you have to prep your first week's lessons this weekend?"
"No," Harry said, "I'm all done. Got it done when you were on night shift the other day."
"You know, you could relax while I'm at work," Draco said, grinning.
"Well yeah, I could, but it's the perfect motivation—if I get it done while you're working, I can spend time with you when you're off. My brain likes it. Otherwise, we procrastinate."
"'We'?" Draco asked, laughing. "Who, you and your brain?"
"Yeah." Harry nudged him with his shoulder.
"That explains a lot."
Their jobs were no different, not really. Draco was still one of the best (the best, Harry would insist, telling him not to sell himself short) in his cohort of Healer Trainees, though now he spoke up more and took more ownership over his patient care plans and research agenda. Harry was still a loving, encouraging primary school teacher, though he didn't find himself drained so quickly these days and in his spare time (of which he had more over the summer holiday), he was researching historical figures in magical queer history with an eye towards putting together a book manuscript about their culture's lost elders, in Dorcas's memory. Harry kept saying that Draco and Hermione would have to help him finish it, and they kept saying sure, but neither Draco nor Hermione had thus far offered a second of labour, and Harry kept plugging away with no help at all.
Last week, Harry and Draco had finally gathered the courage to look up Frankie. They'd been too afraid to look—too afraid to find her, like Dorcas and Marlene and Mary and Sirius and Remus and Frank and Alice and James and Lily, long dead. When they'd finally Googled, though, they discovered Frankie was alive, back in the U.S., working as a high-level official in MACUSA. When they contacted her, she invited them to come visit her in New York City in October, for the annual Lower East Side Magicians' Fair. She told them she'd wondered intermittently over the past twenty-four years whether they'd look her up someday—and that she was thrilled they had.
There were so many things to choose from. There was so much to look forward to. Life was vibrant, and they were—maybe for the first time—living it on their own terms.
"Oh! Draco!" Luna shouted from across the room. "I forgot! I got you something on my zoological trip to the States!"
"You didn't need to get me something," Draco insisted, even though he loved gifts.
"It quite literally called out to me in the shop and told me it was destined to be yours," she said, grinning incandescently. "I just have to run and get it." She disappeared up a spiral staircase.
"What do you think it is?" Harry whispered, eyes glittering.
"It has to be an antique dildo," Draco whispered back.
"I was thinking it was a vintage Kate Bush cassette."
"Oh, I'd die for that," Draco said, closing his eyes for a moment in the ecstasy of imagining it. "To complete my collection. The CDs just aren't the same. The KaZaa is definitely not the same."
"Maybe it's like, a Muggle stethoscope," Harry guessed.
"Maybe it's a brand-new product that removes ugly dark-magic residue from bodies," Draco said, holding up his left arm.
"Hey," Harry said, frowning, pushing the arm down. "Be nice to Draco. I love him."
Draco laughed and knocked their shoulders together. "I'm just joking." He pulled his wand and cast a nonverbal Legilimens. I love you, too, you sap.
You afraid someone will hear? Harry thought, amused.
No, Draco returned. I just like annoying you in private.
There was a crash, and Luna came jogging down the spiral staircase, holding something behind her back. Her enormous eyes twinkled with anticipation. "Are you ready?"
"Ready as I'll ever be," Draco said.
From behind her back, she pulled a cowboy hat. A big old cattleman hat with braiding around the rim.
Draco leaned forward to allow Luna to place it on his head.
Harry cackled, thinking of Sirius, thinking of everything happening all at once, and by now they'd drawn the attention of everyone in the room. The sight of Draco in the hat drew laughter and cheers. Millicent wolf-whistled.
Draco tipped forward, dramatically doffing the hat. "Thank you, Miss Luna." His 'Texan' accent sounded like an Etonian gangster.
Harry was still cackling.