Time flew by almost unnoticed. Hermione's birthday arrived—or rather, both Hermiones' birthdays. Richard gave each of them an enchanted mobile phone similar to his own. Of course, these weren't products of the Grosvenor Workshop, but ordinary Nokias. The enchantments placed on them, however, allowed them to work without ever needing to be recharged and maintain a reliable signal anywhere in the world through micro-portals linked to a mobile phone mast in London.
The call charges were expensive, but not for Richard, since his company had signed a corporate contract covering a large number of numbers and managed to negotiate very substantial discounts with the mobile operator. The phones also had one undeniable advantage: they could be used to call any ordinary landline or mobile phone. And the durability enchantments were so good that the phones could withstand a hit from a heavy machine gun.
Richie gave his friend an additional present—a set of Portkeys to a hundred different locations across Britain. The set also came with an amulet bearing Muggle-Repelling Charms, which activated automatically upon transportation and remained in effect for one minute. This meant that up to five people could travel by Portkey without their arrival being noticed by any chance witnesses.
One of the destinations was the Grangers' house. Conveniently enough, the Portkeys could be controlled through the wrist-mounted AI.
Over the summer, Hermione would be able to travel safely around Britain with her parents or friends. She could, for example, spend the morning visiting Stonehenge, pop over to Edinburgh for lunch, and pass the evening admiring the Irish lakes...
Grosvenor had been worried that things wouldn't end with a single Hermione from a parallel universe. From the very first day after meeting Granger's double, he had been concerned that another copy of her might start appearing once or twice a week. Fortunately, nothing of the sort had happened.
Richard discussed the matter privately with the otherworldly Hermione during their birthday celebration, for which he had once again bought a mountain of cakes and fizzy drinks.
"Miss Granger, please try to remember everything you did with the Time-Turner on that ill-fated day."
The question caught the Hermione from another world off guard, but she answered nonetheless.
"First I went to Divination with the boys. Professor Trelawney was talking complete nonsense, frightening Harry with predictions of death and insisting that she'd seen the Grim in his cup. That was when I decided that Divination was a rather muddled subject, with nothing definite about it. It was all just fortune-telling. I thought that if Divination lessons were all about pretending you could see omens in tea leaves, I'd be better off not going to them at all."
"I can't agree with you there," Richard said, shaking his head. "Professor Trelawney predicted your appearance during our Divination lesson. But never mind that. Go on."
"Then I found a secluded corner and turned the Time-Turner twice. Each turn takes you one hour into the past. Everything went perfectly. I arrived about twenty-five minutes before the lesson began and went to Ancient Runes without any trouble. And then I... well..."
"Miss Granger, just say it plainly," Grosvenor said firmly. "I need every detail if I'm going to work out what happened."
"I needed the loo," Granger Number Two said, blushing. "And then I got hungry. Only an hour and a half had passed for everyone else, but for me it had been three and a half hours. Besides, I'd been so impatient that morning that I went down to breakfast very early, ate before everyone else, and then left the Great Hall."
"I see," Richard commented. "There's nothing embarrassing about bodily needs. Believe me, Miss Granger, it's difficult to surprise me with hunger or a trip to powder your nose. It would have been surprising if you hadn't experienced anything of the sort."
Now somewhat calmer, Hermione continued.
"So I thought, 'I've got a Time-Turner. Professor McGonagall said you can travel up to five hours back into the past. Surely nothing terrible will happen if I go back three hours and catch breakfast.'"
"And you went three hours into the past?"
"Yes," the otherworlder said with a nod.
"And when exactly did that happen?" Richard continued questioning her. "I'm interested in the sequence of events. At the moment you travelled back, had the other you already used the Time-Turner or not?"
Granger from the other world furrowed her brow.
"I don't think so," she replied. "Come to think of it, there was still some time left before my first use of the Time-Turner. Is that important?"
"Without a doubt."
Richard thoughtfully ran a hand over his chin. Suddenly, realisation struck him.
"Richard, have you worked something out?" Hermione Two asked hopefully, moving closer to the boy.
"I have a theory," he began. "Follow my reasoning."
Richard took out a notebook, tore out a sheet of paper, and folded it in half, leaving the fold curved rather than creased flat. He then pierced the sheet with his wand: through the upper half closer to the end, and through the lower half closer to the beginning.
"A temporal wormhole works something like this. The wand is the wormhole, and the sheet of paper is the arc of time. Once the allotted duration of the time jump has elapsed, the temporal arc straightens, and the time machine's operator is thrown back through the other end of the wormhole into their native universe."
Hermione blinked rapidly, trying to grasp the idea.
"Wait." She pointed at the upper part of the wand. "This is the entrance to the temporal vortex." Her finger moved to the tip of the wand at the very bottom. "And this is the exit into the past of a parallel universe. And once the Time-Turner's cycle was complete, I was supposed to return to my original point in time in my own world. Right?"
"Exactly."
"But then that means," the displaced Granger continued, "that the first time I travelled to another world, and then, instead of waiting to return to my own universe, I... used the Time-Turner while I was still in that other world, which is how I ended up in your universe?"
(End of Chapter)
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