As Melvin stepped away from the staff table, Hagrid—who'd been sprawled face-down—suddenly rolled over. He nearly toppled off his chair, then jerked upright again, sending Trelawney and Professor Sprout into shrieks. The Weasley twins burst out laughing.
From the looks of it, the Christmas feast was going to drag on for a while.
Dumbledore stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Severus, is there anything you'd like to tell me?"
"No," Snape replied, face as closed as ever.
From his tone and expression, whatever he was keeping secret wasn't up for discussion.
Melvin walked slowly out of the Great Hall. The laughter and chatter faded behind him; even the bright lights dimmed to just the flickering torches lining the corridors.
This had to be tied to time travel. This afternoon Snape had detained Harry and Ron, disguised himself as Harry, flown off on the broom… something had happened with Sirius Black. And now he refused to say a word—clearly things hadn't gone according to plan.
A few hours before dinner, there'd been a stretch when three Hermiones had existed at once. With her sharp mind, she'd definitely noticed something and gone investigating.
Melvin pulled out the Marauder's Map and unfolded it. Delicate ink lines spread from the center, sketching Hogwarts in perfect detail—down to the Black Lake, parts of the Forbidden Forest, greenhouses, Quidditch pitch, every floor of the castle.
He scanned it quickly and froze. The label "Hermione Granger" appeared in two places at once: one on the Astronomy Tower balcony, the other down in the passage under the Whomping Willow—alongside Harry, Ron, and a supposedly sick Professor Lupin.
But the dots were behaving strangely—flickering in and out at a slow, steady rhythm.
Normal dots either stayed still (like the headmaster and professors at the staff table) or moved continuously, leaving little footprints behind (like the twins chasing each other around the hall).
These four weren't doing either. The identical flicker rate meant they'd traveled together.
Something had gone wrong with their trip through time.
They weren't in the present anymore. Right now, some kind of temporal fog surrounded them—danger he couldn't quite name. They might not make it back.
The castle's moving staircases were quiet at night. Some portraits had already dozed off; soft snores echoed down the corridors. But Melvin felt wide awake—and oddly calm.
Snape had lived through whatever moment they were stuck in. For his own reasons he wasn't talking, but his demeanor suggested the crisis had been resolved.
All Melvin had to do was find the four time-travelers and bring them home. History would take care of itself.
He glanced at the Astronomy Tower dot on the map and hurried upstairs. On the way, he passed a landing with a wide portrait: the Fat Lady and her friend Violet, both enjoying their own little holiday party.
"Merry Christmas, lovely ladies."
The painted witches—in old-fashioned hoop skirts—looked startled at the greeting. They were about to scold the interruption, but seeing the handsome young professor, they giggled behind their hands.
"Oh, Merry Christmas, Professor Lewent."
"Sorry to crash your festivities. Quick question—did you see any Gryffindor students heading up to the Astronomy Tower this afternoon?"
"We certainly did!" Violet hid her whisky bottle behind her back and curtsied daintily. "The famous Harry Potter, top-of-the-class Miss Granger, that red-haired boy with all the freckles… oh, and the rather peaky-looking Defense Against the Dark Arts professor."
"Thank you very much."
Melvin left the tipsy portraits and climbed quickly to the top of the tower. Half the space was corridor; the rest opened onto a wide balcony with angled windows for watching sunrises and stars.
He pushed open an ancient wooden door and stepped onto the spot marked on the map.
The Astronomy Tower balcony wasn't lit like the Great Hall. Deep in the night, snow lay thick on the stone floor. The alchemical telescopes stood in neat rows. North wind howled across the open space, and the remains of a campfire smoldered black in the center.
A faint golden chain lay on the ground.
Nothing else. No one.
…
The light was dim, but not pitch-black.
The entire balcony was shrouded in thick white fog. You could just make out the glow of the dying fire on the stones; beyond that, everything was blinding white—no sense of direction, no way to tell if you were hundreds of feet up on a tower or standing beside the endless depths of the Black Lake. All sense of place had vanished.
Lupin—experienced with wilderness survival from his Defense post—planted his wand upright in the ground, trying to read direction and time from the shadow's angle.
After half a minute he looked up grimly. "Can't tell the time from the sun's position."
Cold sweat broke out down his back, soaking the thick sweater Mrs. Weasley had knitted him. Hermione's knuckles went white around the chain; her voice shook. "If we can't fix the time, we can't get back. We could be trapped here forever."
Pettigrew huddled nearby, trying to make himself small and unnoticed, waiting for them to find a way out before he made a break for it. He'd never used a Time-Turner and had no idea about the rules.
Think of the Time-Turner as a boat. For Hermione—the rightful owner—Pettigrew was part of history. Her timeline was stable, anchored. She could dock safely.
But for Pettigrew, the future he was trying to reach was uncertain. Every choice could spawn a new branch—no fixed anchor. He'd be swamped by the waves.
"Severus, let's scout outward," Lupin said quietly.
Snape shot Pettigrew a cold look but followed. The two stepped beyond the firelight, wands lit, trying to pierce the fog.
"Wait—we should all go together."
Sirius kicked Pettigrew a few times, took the rat's own wand, Petrified him, and shoved him down beside the fire. "We don't even know what this place is—or if it's still Hogwarts. Best we stick close so nobody gets lost in the mist."
The six of them raised their wands and moved into the fog beyond the fire's reach. The adults formed a protective circle around the kids, backs together. Snape's wand tip glowed with sharp, deadly light. Harry muttered Expelliarmus under his breath…
Nothing out there. Just colder fog—like a winter dawn in the Forbidden Forest, where steaming water would freeze mid-air.
Harry rubbed the goosebumps on his arms. The mist felt familiar—something nagging at the back of his mind. He'd felt this on the Hogwarts Express… on the Quidditch pitch in pouring rain…
Dementors?
Azkaban? Hogsmeade?
Questions piled up, fuzzy and half-formed.
Lupin and Snape scanned warily. It wasn't completely dark—just endless white. No edges, no telescopes, no snow, no signs of life. Only the stone floor beneath their feet.
Hermione flipped open the little hourglass again—more out of habit than hope. The fine sand still flowed, but dull now, no longer shining like gold.
"This might not be reality," she said slowly. "It could be… a gap. A rift between past and future."
"When Professor McGonagall gave me the Time-Turner, she told me about the witch Eloise Mintumble's disaster. I read more later. Eloise described bouncing back and forth between past and future. Her colleagues in the real world never recorded her arrival, so she never reached solid ground—she just wandered the rift."
Hermione fell quiet for a moment. "I don't know how long we'll be stuck. Minutes… or centuries. Like poor Eloise."
Harry asked suddenly, "Did McGonagall—or the records—say how Eloise finally got back to reality? Could we do the same thing?"
"I'm afraid not. In the story, Eloise kept trying to activate the Turners over and over, burning through her lifespan until she finally made it." Hermione's voice was soft. "We can't pay that price."
Sirius shivered, fists clenched, jaw tight.
He'd finally cleared his name, finally reunited with Harry. He wasn't going to grow old and die here. No way.
Then—a chilling, rasping inhale came from above the fog. Air sucked through narrow throats, vibrating into thin, wailing cries. Like a pack of starving beasts catching the scent of perfect prey.
Dementors.
Cold, suffocating mist flooded the space. Hundreds of tattered gray cloaks appeared—hundreds of bat-like shapes without the beat of wings. Only the wet rattle of breath through lipless mouths, withered hands reaching out like vengeful ghosts. The air grew too heavy to breathe.
They'd all faced Dementors before, but never this many, this close.
"Why… are there Dementors here?" Ron asked, voice shaking.
No one answered. The creatures drifted slowly closer. The fog grew colder, thicker. Breath came in white puffs; sweat-soaked clothes turned to ice against skin.
Their approach was maddeningly slow, but the dark magic in the mist seeped in—straight through the forehead, dizzying, sickening.
"Expecto Patronum!"
Sirius roared it low. Silver mist burst from his wand; a huge hound charged through the air, lighting up the fog.
Lupin followed instantly—a silver wolf slammed into the gray cloaks.
Like snow under fierce sun, the Dementors shrieked and fled. The silver beasts cleared a wide circle around the group.
But no one looked relieved. The oppressive weight didn't lift. Danger still closed in—closer now. Lupin and Sirius felt it instinctively, like animals sensing a storm.
As the Dementors retreated, the white fog thinned—but only for seconds. Then a new, grayish haze rolled in, thick with evil.
Vague shapes formed inside it, like a Pensieve starting up. But these shapes filled everyone with dread.
Tattered cloaks floated in mid-air. Withered white hands reached out. Thin mist drifted away—cold, dizzying magic.
"More Dementors?" Ron asked, confused.
Before anyone could reply, more shapes appeared.
A huge full moon leaped out of the gray, bathing everything in cold silver light. Beneath it stood a tall, stooped wizard—broad-shouldered but hunched forward, bones and muscles twisted like a beast ready to pounce.
"Remus… little Remus… do you like my gift?" the figure crooned.
A savage grin split the face—high cheekbones, too-long canines glinting outside the lips. Greasy, uneven hair hung like an animal's mane.
"No…" Lupin stared upward, face grim. "Boggarts. Dozens—hundreds of boggarts."
Boggarts took the shape of your deepest fear. Alone, one might become just the full moon. But with this many, the fear leaking into the air wasn't enough to go around—so Fenrir Greyback himself appeared.
Harry felt it: the boggart-Dementor staring straight at him, feeding on his fear.
He held his breath and swung his wand.
"Riddikulus!"
A sharp crack—like the whip-snap the spell should make. The gray-white mist rippled, but only like a pebble dropped in the Black Lake. The Dementor-boggart in the air didn't change at all.
Riddikulus wasn't working.
That realization hit like a Bludger to the chest. And there was no time to recover—more fears kept materializing from the gray.
Giant spiders, dozens of them, eight eyes gleaming. Scurrying rats with human faces, grinning and fawning.
Ron went sheet-white, swallowing hard, fighting not to be sick.
Sirius and Snape stared ahead, frozen. An old, cozy bedroom had appeared—two bodies on the floor. A red-haired witch lay with green eyes wide open in death, staring toward a blurry crib nearby.
Neither man could have said whose fear it was. Seeing it again, their eyes blazed with fury and pain.
Hermione searched frantically for her own fear—nothing clear took shape. Then she looked at the thickening gray mist and realized something.
Her face drained of color.
"Oh no…"