Due to the intensive course load, Oleandra's second week as a sixth-year student seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye. She now understood why the sixth- and seventh-year prefects liked to push their nighttime patrol duties onto the fifth-year prefects— they wouldn't have got a wink of sleep otherwise, as each waking second was spent studying!
To make matters worse, Oleandra's timetable wasn't exactly light by any means. Most students were already swamped with work with five or less subjects, but Oleandra had seven: Potioneering, Transfiguration, Herbology, Charms, Care of Magical Creatures, Study of Ancient Runes and Alchemy. She couldn't imagine how busy she would have been with eight, like Daphne…
Luckily for Oleandra, Professor Hagrid still hadn't heard back from the Ministry, and without hybridization permits, he was unable to start teaching Life-Weaving Alchemy. As such, he was forced to do the Wizard equivalent of making the class watch recorded episodes of the BBC's Planet Earth narrated by Sir David Attenborough: awkwardly reading straight from the course book, giving Oleandra a much-needed excuse to rest her eyes in the middle of the day.
However, things weren't so easy in her other classes.
Potioneering, Herbology and Study of Ancient Runes didn't require much spellcasting, but the subjects' teachers liked to assign mountains of homework. Professor Slughorn made his students write essays on the principles of potion ingredient interactions, Professor Sprout made them draw complex diagrams of magical plant half-sections, and Professor Babbling made them translate at least three feet's length of parchment of Old English as homework for the next class.
Still, this was nothing compared to the worst offenders: the spellcasting classes, Transfiguration and Charms, both of which required students to master complex wandwork, and as of last Monday, nonverbal spells. According to Tracey, Professor Snape also required his Defence Against the Dark Arts students to master the omission of incantations, but luckily for Oleandra, this was something she didn't need to suffer through.
At any rate, nonverbal casting was difficult, but not as difficult as wandless casting. For a Wizard or Witch, speaking was a way of imposing their personal reality onto the world, but in truth, spellcasting was all about willpower. After all, the air surrounding a wizard couldn't understand Latin any more than a deaf pig could, so speaking out loud was unnecessary.
Still, to speak was to organise one's thoughts, and in turn, focus one's willpower. To omit part of the spellcasting process naturally meant weakening a spell's potency and increasing its difficulty, but in a world dominated by Muggles, secrecy was one of Wizardkind's greatest advantages, so it was still important to learn.
…
"Let's make this quick, okay?" said Oleandra, stifling a yawn. "My little sister has her Quidditch tryouts right after breakfast, and I'd like to cheer her on."
"I'm sure it'll work this time," said Theo, filled with determination. "It has to."
By Saturday, Oleandra had already gone through multiple iterations of the Alchemical Circle that was supposed to convert regular beach sand into Sands of Time— the substance enclosed within the hourglass at the core of the Ministry's Time-Turners— without much success.
Instead of paying attention in her Study of Ancient Runes class, Oleandra had spent most of her time designing Alchemical Circles, based on the several criteria Theo had presented her and the pre-existing templates he had given her.
Unfortunately, Theo lacked a lot of the information Oleandra required to do the work that he had asked of her— even though he had managed to nick a Time-Turner before the others got destroyed, he hadn't managed to find much else of use in the Time Room.
Indeed, both the Alchemical Circle used to transmute the special sand and the Hour-Reversal Charm used to enchant the finished apparatus were some of the Department of Mysteries' most closely guarded secrets— meaning that Oleandra needed to reverse-engineer the correct Alchemical Circle for Theo's purposes.
"Why do you want these sands so badly, anyway?" asked Oleandra, as she began engraving the newest version of her Alchemical Circle onto the floor of an abandoned dungeon classroom. "You already have a Time-Turner, so what more could you want?"
"Regular Time-Turners can only be safely wound back five times, which means that their effective range is five hours," responded Theo. "I aim to go further back than that— and yes," he added, as Oleandra was opening her mouth to tell him how stupid that was, "I am aware of Time's laws. I'm only going back to observe, not to change anything."
The past could not be changed, because it had already happened. To sail back up the River of Time and attempt to change the past would result in catastrophic consequences for everyone involved.
Put simply, when viewed from within the timestream, time is a straight line, but when viewed from outside of the timestream, time is like a branching tree— and since that is the case, it is impossible for one to leave the branch they are on and hop to the next by changing the past.
Parallel realities, the branches on the tree, are born from an infinite number of decisions made at every given moment, but they are parallel for a reason. Parallel Realities all overlap each other yet never touch— for changing the past would mean collapsing at least two realities by making them the same.
As time and space are inextricably linked, two objects cannot possibly occupy the same space at the same time, and to force them to do so would cause irreparable damage to the world. The fabric of space-time is flexible, but there is a limit to abusing the miracles of the vertical and horizontal space-time axis.
At any rate, it is much easier for a healthy world to delete the source of the problem than it is to repair wormholes and tears in reality, so most of the time, that is what happens… and the culprits and everyone involved end up un-born.
"Observe what?" asked Oleandra as she planted her dagger into the ground, carving an intricate rune into a flagstone. "Dagaz… There, that's one rune down."
"I intend to travel back just under six hundred years to witness Nicolas Flamel's recreation of the Philosopher's Stone," Theo said, mixing a viscous white liquid into a bowl of sand. "I daresay it'd be safer than going back thousands of years to Ancient Egypt."
A thought suddenly occurred to Oleandra. When Daphne and Hermione had obtained their Time-Turner three years ago, it had come with a certain warning…
"Since you're messing around with time," said Oleandra, "I assume you're aware of a certain Eloise Mintumble?"
"An Unspeakable of the Department of Mysteries from the 19th century," answered Theo. "She went back five centuries into the past, and as a result of being trapped five days in the past, she aged five centuries upon her return. She died shortly afterwards from old age, in 1899. I don't intend on repeating her mistakes— I'll observe Flamel in secret. And once I've refined the Stone, ageing six hundred years in an instant during the trip back won't be a problem, since I'll be immortal."
Oleandra raised her eyebrows, but Theo still didn't seem to get it.
"Simple subtraction," said Oleandra patiently. "What's 1900 minus 500, Theo?"
"1400," answered Theo. "But what's that got to do with… oh."
It was currently the year 1996. Traveling about six hundred years into the past would place Theo at the tail end of the 14th century—around the same time Eloise Mintumble had briefly visited. It was highly likely that the Unspeakables of the Department of Mysteries had once tried to cheat time to spy on Nicolas Flamel, in an attempt to uncover the secret of immortality—and failed spectacularly!
"Well," said Theo, chewing his bottom lip, "that is slightly concerning."