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Monday, 1st April, 2002On the short walk from the Ministry to the nearest Starbucks, (only, Merlin knows why, but Ron had turned into quite a Huge Fan of them in the last few years, caps and all), Hermione kept talking about this new thing they had her doing all the way down there — in the Department of Mysteries, which is where she worked. Both Harry and Ron had gone mad the first few months, calling her Unspeakable and whatnot, but right now it was just old news is old.“It’s quite a bit like Muggle’s programming,” she said.“Programm—?” Ron glanced at Harry, both eyebrows raised in his best what-did-she-just-say look. Harry himself had not much of a clue of what she’d been saying, so far into his own imaginary world he’d been, so he basically lifted both shoulders, shook his head, and ordered two Mochas and a Caramel Macchiato.“Ooh-kay.” Hermione said to Ron. “Say, you ever tried to solve Einstein’s riddle?”Fred rolled his eyes. “As if he’d even know who that is...” he said, and Harry had to shove back a snort as he moved forwards in the queue.Hermione, the poor lass, stayed behind him, still trying to explain to Ron whatever it was they had her doing these days was. “Some curses work a bit like a cycle,” she said, “like, think of time, for instance. Time is a cycle.”“Uh-huh?” Ron said.“Or... oh, I know! Stories. Yes,” she paused, nodding, “that’s it. Stories are sort of a cycle, too. See, to start one, you need to have a premise. All stories start with an exposition where you introduce your main character or characters, their setting, et cetera.”“Bit of a snob, ain’t she?” Fred said. Harry glared because, well, because she was one of his best friends and whatnot. Not that Fred wasn’t, but Hermione came first.“They call that the opening scene, you see. It’s the beginning of your tale, that then moves on to the...” Hermione’s hands were moving all over the place, and then something rather odd happened. Harry’s not quite sure what went wrong there. Perhaps he moved too fast, perhaps he moved too slow, but somehow when he tried to pick up his coffee, he ended up waving his arm in the air and going, “Ow!” because for some bizarre reason his Macchiato had spilled all over his hand and —“Bloody hell...”Merlin, it really was quite hot, wasn’t it? Like burning hot. He looked up. The waiter — hm, was he—no, he couldn’t be — looked down, said something that sounded quite a bit like ‘Salazar’ but it obviously couldn’t be. No, that was pretty much impossible since this was a Muggle establishment, so it might have been ‘soz’. Or ‘shite’. In all honesty, Harry quite preferred ‘soz’. It was much better than ‘shite’, he thought, because ‘shite’ might lead onto a fight, especially since it was his own hand that got burnt, but whatever. In any case, his waiter was gone now, and Merlin, his hand really did hurt quite a bit...Anyway, a couple of minutes later, a new waiter — a girl, this time — came back with his Macchiato and apologised profusely and that was that.“So that’s how it is in Muggle's programming. Basically, you spell something, anything, wrong,” Hermione was saying on the way back to the Ministry, “and the whole thing stops working until you find what you did wrong and where. It just loops over itself repeating the same mistake again and again until you fix it within the code. And that’s what happens here, too, only instead of spelling things wrong, you just need to mispronounce a single...”“Like a hole within a whole,” Fred said. This time though, Harry was too slow, and he only recalled not to snort after he snorted.“The ghost,” Hermione asked, “again?”Meanwhile, Ron stared at Hermione. “Wait...” He stared at Harry. “... what ghost?”
Tuesday, 2nd April, 2002
Harry first noticed his clock was off during breakfast. He was conscientiously licking a tiny droplet of strawberry jam hanging on the edge of his thumb, when he somehow noticed, for some odd reason, that there was a one where there should be a two under the ‘day’ sticker. He had to admit that was a teeny, tiny ickle bit weird — especially on a magical clock — because it wasn’t just one hour or two, but a whole freaking day that was missing.It didn’t seem incredibly relevant at the time though, so he moved on. “Hi, Fred,” he said to the ghost that (everyone else said) wasn’t but was often there. Or had been for quite a while. “Have a good night?”“Wotcher, Harry,” Fred said. “Off to work?”Harry nodded. “Off to work indeed.”“I have to take Crookshanks to the vet this afternoon,” Hermione told him, later.Harry asked, “Again? I thought... didn’t you take him yesterday?”Hermione blinked. “Yesterday,” she said, extremely slowly, “was Sunday, Harry,” in a voice that kindly said Yesterday the vet wasn’t even open, you massive twat. Thursday Monday, 4th 1st April, 2002 Harry cast a Scourgify on his teeth. “Do you really think this is a good idea?” he heard Fred-the-ghost saying from the kitchen.“Why not?” said Fred, again. “Well, he might think he’s gone...”“... cuckoo? Off the loop...”“... silly, nuts, crazy?” Is he actually talking to himself? Harry’s mind pondered for a moment before deciding that was possibly beyond absurd, but still...“Yeah, maybe. Though we don’t really look...”He had to be, Harry thought. He really had to be.“... the same, do we? I mean, I, for starters, am missing and ear...”“... which I’m not. And in all truth I think I do look a bit younger than you do.”And he kept thinking that until he reached the kitchen and saw them.“Hm, perhaps.”Both.“Yes, I think so.”Fred and George. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be. Because if it was, well, if it was life didn’t look too great for Harry, did it? Or, for that matter, for anyone else. Monday, 8th 1st April, 2002Harry rang her bell a dozen times. “Open the bloody door!” he yelled, and then rang twice more before shoving his hands under his armpits. Merlin, it was freezing out there, he thought while bouncing on his feet. And anyway, what was up with her neighbour’s flowers? Seriously, those that didn’t look rotten were falling to bits. “Hermione! For fuck’s sake...”True to her word, Hermione did open the door. At least a tiny little bit. One sleepy eye blinked at him several times from behind the small chain attached to the door frame. “You,” she said. “Again. Jesus, Harry, it’s past midnight...”“I know!” Harry sulked. “They won’t let me sleep, okay? They just keep talking and talking and I tried to Silencio them but it didn’t work...”“The ghosts?” she asked, and at Harry’s nod she said, “Yes, all right,” followed by an extremely long sigh. She closed the door, and after that Harry heard some rambling inside, metal on metal and who knows what else. The door opened again, only this time it opened fully. “Sooo... um,” Hermione began, “would you like some...”“Yes, please. Thanks,” said Harry, quite busy rubbing his ribs through his duffle coat.“... tea?” she finished.They were both sipping their tea, quietly, when Hermione said, “I’m sure you remember that Fred Weasley died during the battle, back on 1998.”“Yes,” Harry snapped, “I remember. It’s not like I could forget, even if I tried to, thank you.”Hermione raised her eyebrows. “And that George Weasley killed himself two months ago.”“That’s the thing.” Harry pressed the mug into his shaking hands, letting out a shuddering exhale. “That’s what you say, but that,” he said, slowly, “that never happened.”“Harry, come on. You saw him. He was depressed, it’s only understandable that he—”“NO!” Harry shouted. “No, it’s not understandable, it’s not even... look, I saw him two days ago—yesterday, today—whatever. I went to his shop and he was there, and he talked to me. I can assure you he was completely and perfectly alive.” Harry lifted the drink to his lips. “And now he’s over there—” he pointed at them, though he was pretty sure Hermione saw nothing, or she saw him pointing towards the wall, or Merlin knows what, “—along with Fred. They’re discussing your poor taste in décor and the abundance of books stacked on piles around your floor, in case you’re even remotely interested. But you’re not, are you? Cause you can’t hear them. Because you can’t bloody see them. Because—ugh—” Harry clasped the sides of his head, sinking his fingers into his hair. He breathed in through his nose, a long deep breath. “Because no one can see them except me. Jesus.”Hermione swallowed. “Harry,” she began, “say, have you considered seeing a psychiatrist? They deal with, well, with this kind of... issues.”“That’s exactly what you said yesterday!” he shouted.Hermione blinked. “Harry... er. There was no yesterday. We didn’t meet yesterday.”“Yes, I know. Because yesterday was Sunday.” Gosh, seriously? How many more times was he going to have to put up with this?
Monday, 1st April, 2002
I’m sane, Harry thought when Ron joined the bunch of ghosts. “What, you forgot?” Hermione said. “Jesus, Harry, what is wrong with you?” Three tissues and an incommensurate number of tears later, she finally told him: “Ron died two years ago, one of his new inventions blasted and took him with it.”Days got shorter. He literally couldn’t remember that last time he slept and, apparently, the amount of ghosts in his house just kept growing and growing.“I’m so sane,” Harry told the mirror, because somehow Ginny had now become a ghost too. Apparently. At least according to Hermione, she’d fallen off her broom during a Quidditch match.“Pansy,” Hermione said, “Ginny’s girlfriend, died in her sleep, without pain,” while “Lavender and Dean died in a car crash last Friday,” and “McGonagall mistakenly cursed herself, apparently she mistook her image to be that of an intruder. Such a shame, isn’t it?”“I’m so flipping sane,” Harry told his mirror self. “There’s not even the slightest bit of wrong in what I’m seeing.” And then came Percy, Seamus, Zabini, Neville...What on Earth was going on?
Monday, 1st April, 2002
Harry stared at his clock, basically convinced that he was living someday in whatever the month, in some bollocked year he didn’t even know when, over and over. While people died. And showed up on his living room. And the bananas in his fruit platter were somehow putrid bits of decomposed rubbish-like detritus that should have been in the wastebasket since at least three weeks ago.
Monday, 1st April, 2002
On the short walk from the Ministry to the nearest Starbucks, Hermione kept talking about this new thing they had her doing all the way down there, in the Department of Mysteries.“It’s quite a bit like Muggle’s programming,” she said.It’s quite a bit like Muggle’s programming. Quite a bit like Muggle’s programming.Muggle’s. Programming.Merlin.
Monday, 1st April, 2002
On the short walk from the Ministry to the nearest Starbucks, Hermione kept talking about this new thing they had her doing all the way down there, in the Department of Mysteries.“It’s quite a bit like Muggle’s programming,” she said.Harry yawned. He pretty much knew the whole thing by heart now, mainly because he’d been living this day forever and, with Ron gone, there was no one else she could talk to, was there? So he yawned and nodded and ordered, “Two, sorry, one Mocha and a Caramel Macchiato.”“I feel like the other one would have been for me,” Ron, the ghost, said, and Harry answered, “Indeed. And pay attention to whatever she’s saying because that’s also meant for you.”“The ghosts?” asked Hermione, who was now quite used to Harry talking to himself in the middle of nowhere.“Ooh-kay...” Hermione said, as if everything was just fine and peachy and dandy.“They call that the opening scene, you see, it’s the beginning of your tale, that then moves on to the...” Hermione’s hands were moving all over the place, and Harry took a step back, because, honestly, he was so done with the Macchiato falling all over his hand.“Malfoy?” he said. His waiter stood still, then looked up, tense around the edges. “Potter.”“How come you ended up here—I mean...”“In a Muggle place?” Malfoy asked, tersely. “They’re much nicer than you lot.”“Hm.”“I can’t believe you’re talking to him,” Ron said.Harry snorted. “Well, why not? At least he’s alive, unlike you.”
Monday, 1st April, 2002
“Cheers, Malfoy,” he said. His waiter stood still, then looked up, tense around the edges. “I see you’re still alive.”“I... what?”“Never mind. Listen, you won’t remember but we talked yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that...”“Are you—” said Malfoy, and then, lowering his voice til it was barely above a whisper, “—on something?”“You leave at six.”“I... well, yes.”“Let’s meet up then, huh?” It was kind of hilarious how Malfoy’s mouth got stuck between a ‘What’ and a ‘Huh’. “Don’t worry,” Harry said, “you’ll get it later, likely when I come pick you up,” and winked at him on the way out.My, my. Malfoy did get quite red on the face.“So that’s how it is in Muggle's programming,” Hermione was saying on the way back to the Ministry. “Basically, you spell something, anything, wrong, and the whole thing stops working until you find what you did wrong and where. It just loops over itself repeating the same mistake again and again until you fix it within the code.”“Oh, I know,” Harry said. “Trust me, I’ve heard this whole convo so many times.”“You...” Hermione blinked. “What?”“Yep.”“How?”“There’s a bug in your code, Hermione. You haven’t noticed it yet, but you will.” And she would, because at least now she knew. “Well, chop chop. Don’t just stay here, go on and fix it!” And as she turned and ran, Harry yelled, “And make it fast! I have a date this afternoon!”