History

"What year is it now, Minerva?"

Tom's smile was something like a threat, and it quickly scared off the two young wizards. He stood in the middle of the empty square, looking at the two huge posters hanging beneath the eaves of a distant high-rise.

In one enormous black-and-white photograph, a man leaning on a cane held a pipe between his teeth and glared at the camera. The latticed wooden backdrop behind him had split down the middle in a straight vertical seam, as if a door were opening. Directly beneath the photograph, a line of bold text proclaimed his identity and the subject of the poster:

<Winston Churchill Delivers Reelection Speech: The Reshaping of the Postwar Order and the Fall of the Century-Old Walls>

The photograph suddenly came to life. The great doors behind him, which had been about to swing open, seemed to have lost patience with the slow turning of their hinges and collapsed backward with a crash, revealing a street rapidly being rebuilt among the ruins—Oblique Alley. A wisp of blue smoke poured from his pipe and merged into the dark clouds dispersing overhead.

And in the other poster beside it, the young Minister of Magic had a bandage wrapped around his forehead. He was smiling, glancing sideways from time to time, as if he could see through the frame to the Muggle Prime Minister posing beside him. A group of Aurors wearing badges that resembled police insignia stood behind him with wands raised, and the light streaming from their wand tips formed a line of large words above his head.

Nobby Leach, Returned from the Storm!

"Oh." Tom quickly found the corresponding memory in his mind, nodded, and answered his own question. "Looks like I haven't come back too late."

"You..." McGonagall covered her mouth