The Girl and Time

Sean didn't wake his still groggy roommate. He put on his clothes and headed towards the Common Room, where he first encountered a petite, silver-haired girl.

Stephanie is currently in fifth grade.

Unlike her usual aloof demeanor, she was wearing thick bear pajamas, and her long, bright silver hair, reaching her waist, was loosely tied into a ponytail.

However, it wasn't just a difference in appearance; her face also carried a fear and shock that didn't fit her usual cute image.

The feud between the two has now been resolved. Sean disliked Stephanie for approaching him with ulterior motives, and the gifts she gave him were actually used to monitor him, which made him very unhappy.

However, Stephanie was, after all, working for Grindelwald, and Sean was now practically Grindelwald's only direct student. Furthermore, with the major events that followed, Sean's initial dislike for Stephanie became insignificant.

Just treat them like ordinary classmates.

Sean waved casually as a greeting, then walked straight toward the corridor, intending to ask the professors about the situation.

Stephanie instinctively pursed her lips upon seeing Sean, but then she saw the boy who used to look down on her wave at her with a normal expression.

Was that a way of greeting himself?

She quickly turned her head to look around, making sure she was all alone.

He greeted me...

Beneath Stephanie's Gold-rimmed Glasses, her pale blue eyes appeared as black as a starry night.

She took off her glasses, and the struggle in her eyes gradually turned into determination.

On the other side, Sean was almost out of the Common Room when a voice interrupted his steps.

"Mr. Wallop, can I have a word with you?"

Sean turned around and saw Stephanie talking to him, but her usual aloof expression was gone.

Although there was still no change in her expression, her voice was still audible.

She felt a little awkward and a little scared.

Sean paused, then shrugged. "Sure, go ahead. But I'm in a hurry; I need to go see the professor."

Upon hearing his agreement, Stephanie clenched her hands tightly under her sleeves, her tone even carrying a hint of joy.

"Soon... and your questions should be answered..."

Stephanie answered, and then, as if worried that Sean might change his mind, she quickly walked over.

Her bright silver low ponytail swayed as she walked quickly to Sean and looked up at him.

He hasn't changed in height at all... That was the first thought that popped into Sean's mind.

When she first Hogwarts, Stephanie was slightly shorter Sean. Now, more than two years later, Stephanie is almost half a head shorter Sean.

He suspected that by the time he turned 18, Stephanie's head wouldn't even reach his chin.

However... Sean took a half step back.

There's no need to get so close just to say something.

Stephanie bit her lip slightly, but she walked past Sean to the largest stone wall in the Common Room.

That was the wall where the passageway was located. Apart from some potted plants and paintings, there was nothing else there. Sean felt more than once that it was bare.

Stephanie walked up to the stone wall, closed her eyes, and began pacing back and forth.

This action made Sean's eyes sharpen.

This is the action of entering the Room of Requirement, and this is not the corridor on the Seventh Floor...

Ravenclaw Common Room, the only stone wall began to move and arrange itself, and soon a wooden door appeared on the wall.

"It's you..." Sean narrowed his eyes.

Stephanie turned to look at him, then nodded slightly. "It's me. You should have gone to see Helena by now—"

As if worried about something, she added, "I didn't monitor you, but you know that someone got there before you. Only Helena knows this."

Sean wore a rather strange expression; he hadn't expected that the person who had entered the Ravenclaw Chamber before him was Stephanie.

And yesterday, Helena said something similar—"If I'm not mistaken, that person does want to do something for you."

What does Stephanie want to do for herself?

This left Sean somewhat puzzled.

There was no conflict of interest or deep-seated hatred between the two. It was simply that Sean didn't like people who approached him with ulterior motives from the start.

In fact, aside from helping Grindelwald monitor her, Stephanie didn't do anything to harm herself.

But why is she helping me, and how is she going to help me?

Strange girl...

Stephanie stood before the wooden door, her expression calm. "The other students will be coming out in a few minutes. There are some things we can't say here. Can we go inside and talk?"

"I can assure you I didn't mean to hurt you. You know, no one can open a door to the Ravenclaw Common Room out of thin air except with access to the Room of Requirement," she added again, like a worried little girl.

Sean was silent for a moment, then finally nodded.

Stephanie turned her back to Sean and went inside first.

As Sean followed him inside, the wooden door gently sank back until it disappeared completely.

Room of Requirement, Sean found a simply decorated bedroom.

Everything in the room was small, even the bed. Sean estimated that he could only stretch his legs out just right when he lay down. The largest thing in the room was a soft cushion that one could sink into; to be precise, it was a beanbag chair.

Stephanie seemed much more relaxed after entering the room. She looked around and finally waved.

A velvet armchair, Sean's favorite, appeared in the bedroom, and Stephanie pulled over a beanbag chair and sank into it.

Sean walked to the chair and sat down. Then, Stephanie, who was slumped on the sofa opposite him, looked up at him with an inscrutable expression in her dark eyes.

After a moment of silence, the girl finally spoke, "You should have noticed that yesterday, Thursday, October 27th, there were only four hours."

Sure enough, time disappeared...

Sean nodded. "Then my watch isn't broken... How did you know?"

"The documents—I found Ravenclaw's Chamber of Secrets at the end of my second year. She left behind a lot of documents, including descriptions of this situation," Stephanie replied.

The end of second grade, which was before I even started school, pretty early...

Seeing that Sean didn't speak, Stephanie continued, "Someone has traveled an extremely long distance through time. That person may have gone back to the distant past, perhaps ten years, or even a hundred years. This will cause the current spacetime to become disordered."

Sean frowned slightly and asked, "As far as I know, the only thing that can currently travel through time is a Time-Turner, and Time-Turner should not be able to provide enough energy to go back to such a distant past."

Stephanie nodded. "Yes, a typical Time-Turner can only go back five hours. The Ministry of Magic has set restrictions on each time-twister to prevent accidents caused by exceeding five hours, and there are many limitations. I don't know who made this long-distance trip, otherwise this change wouldn't have happened."

She wrapped her arms around her knees on the beanbag chair, a look of reminiscence on her face.

"I once had access to the Time-Turner files of the Department of Mysteries of Ministry of Magic, which mentioned similar incidents."

"There was a wizard named Eloise Mintab, a Unspeakables of the Department of Mysteries, who once used Time-Turner to travel back in time during an experiment, but died because the time exceeded several hours."

"In the experiment to travel back in time, Eloise was trapped in 1402 for five days. When she finally returned to the present, her body was five centuries older and suffered irreparable damage, eventually dying at the St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Her journey altered the life trajectories of everyone she encountered in the past, with at least 25 descendants disappearing from the modern world, becoming 'never born.' In addition, there are some worrying signs that time in the past has also been disturbed: her Tuesday in the modern world lasted for two and a half days, while Thursday lasted only four hours."

Stephanie's words stirred up a storm in Sean's heart.

This is an extremely serious problem of spacetime paradox!

He asked in a deep voice, "Are you sure? This is different from the principle of the Time-Turner. A wizard who goes back to the past should live until the point in time when she uses the converter. Even if she really went back five hundred years, she wouldn't just travel there for five days before returning. She should live up to the present."

Stephanie shook her head. "I don't know about that. Theoretically speaking, what you said is correct, but the Wizarding World as a whole has very little research on time travel."

Sean fell into deep thought, his brows furrowing tightly.

This leads to a conclusion that contradicts one of his long-held views.

Sean wasn't without curiosity about the Time-Turner; he had studied it carefully and, considering the experiences of the trio in the original Timeline, the Time-Turner actually conformed to Novikov's principle of self-consistency.

In other words, there are no multiple Timeline, no parallel universes, and no Grandfather Paradox.

You can go back in time, but you can't change the course of history.

Our world is the final outcome that has already been altered.

Now, Stephanie's information directly overturns Sean's idea, and there is already evidence to prove it—approximately twenty hours have already disappeared into the annals of history on October 27th.

Across from her, Stephanie looked at Sean, who was frowning in thought. She tilted her head without saying anything, but a relaxed expression appeared on her face.

Although she was silent, she didn't feel suffocated; she liked that feeling.

After a long silence, Sean finally looked up. "Any more news?"

"He believes me!" Stephanie lowered her head, trying to hide the excitement in her eyes, and said softly.

"There are two pieces of news. First, the Ministry of Magic does not have Time-Turner."

"That's all?" Sean asked, puzzled.

"Yes, that's why I was able to get information about the time travel accident files. I don't know the exact time, but all the Time-Turner in the Ministry of Magic were destroyed, so the Department of Mysteries isn't as concerned about preserving these originally top-secret files as it used to be," Stephanie said.

Sean then recalled his earlier conversation with Percy, Percy hadn't used the Time-Turner at the time.

"Not a single one left?"

"At least the Ministry of Magic doesn't have any left. As far as I know, every Time-Turner is registered with the Ministry of Magic, whether it's borrowed, worn out, or so on; it all needs to be recorded in the files."

Sean immediately thought of the person who traveled through long distances of time; perhaps it was related to that person...

Stephanie continued with the second piece of news, "I suspect this might be related to Professor Dumbledore..."

"Professor Dumbledore? Why do you say that?"

A struggle flickered in Stephanie's eyes; her relaxed expression vanished, and she now pursed her lips.

Hmm? A look of confusion appeared in Sean's eyes.

The girl's expression is strange...

The bedroom fell silent again, but this time the atmosphere was much heavier.

Finally, Stephanie took a deep breath, as if she had made a momentous decision.

Instead of mentioning Dumbledore, she brought up the 'betrayal' that the two had always kept hidden from each other.

"I...I've always wanted to apologize for what happened before, but I didn't know how to say it, and...and..." Stephanie gritted her teeth and said loudly, "I knew that day, when you went into the Ravenclaw's Chamber of Secrets, I was there..."

As she spoke, she even struggled to stand up from the beanbag chair, her voice filled with panic and urgency.

"I didn't mean to follow you! I was just curious who went into Ravenclaw's Chamber of Secrets and then I saw you... I... I didn't know how to show myself and tell you this, so I've been hiding in the Room of Requirement ..."

Her voice trailed off, and she didn't even dare to look up at Sean.

Someone with access to the Room of Requirement can indeed know if someone has entered the Chamber of Secrets...

Wait a minute... Sean's eyes narrowed slightly.

In his first year, he went out at night looking for the Room of Requirement. He hid in the Vanishing Cabinet after hearing footsteps outside, which is how he met Grindelwald. (See Chapter 25)

Meanwhile, Filch was also with Mrs. Norris, searching for the guy who was out wandering around at night...

Normally, if someone is inside, the Room of Requirement won't open the door to a second guest unless their needs are exactly the same. Those with the necessary permissions can come and go freely—does that mean my first encounter with Grindelwald might not have been an accident, but rather inevitable...?

Sean looked up at Stephanie.

Stephanie clutched the hem of her pajamas, the little bear pattern on it crumpled up.

He did indeed think of that time... A sigh escaped the girl's lips.

Stephanie's hands trembled slightly. Finally, she grabbed the hem of her pajamas, took a deep breath, and shouted loudly.

"I know you'll think of what happened in first year, and I know I have no credibility with you! The Monocle was indeed used to monitor you! I was indeed Mr. Grindelwald's... spy at Hogwarts! But apart from that Monocle, I didn't do anything else; what happened in first year was just an accident! And, and..."

I won't go into detail about time travel, as it doesn't contribute to the plot. Those interested can look up Novikov self-consistency principle; the third-year storyline in the original work does indeed adhere to this principle. The Time Incident involving Heloise Mintab, which contradicts this principle, was also written by Rowling herself.

Therefore, I still wrote it according to the original setting, and the truth of the story will slowly begin to be revealed.