This is technically a fanfiction of hpmor. If you haven't read that work, don't worry! You will not meet many of its characters here, you won't get spoiled for anything important, and everything you need to know can be summarized in a few sentences:
- Time-Turners can only be used up to six times a day, for an hour of time travel per use. This means that at most, a Time-Turner can be used six times in quick succession to travel six hours back. Regardless of the number of Time-Turners or individuals involved, it's impossible to form a chain of Time-Turning that transmits information more than six hours into the past.
- Time-Turners cause stable time loops, i.e. any attempts to change parts of the past that you already know using a Time-Turner will only cause it to turn out exactly as you remember it happening.
- Time-Turners and the shenanigans they cause are kept hidden from the public. To help cover up the various violations of causality Time-Turners cause, there's a magical ailment called "Spontaneous Duplication", which can be treated with so-called Spimster wickets (which look exactly like Time-Turners). Spontaneous Duplication is non-infectious, non-interesting and in fact not a big deal at all. It's also vanishingly rare—in fact, it's completely made up.
Las Vegas, Nevada. A sprawling, luminous city in the desert, kept fed and watered at astronomical expenses for no discernible reason at all — in short, the height of muggle folly. In that city, there was a hotel (not luxurious, but respectable), and in the hotel, there was a sparsely furnitured room large enough for three occupants, but booked by only one, under the name Cedric Diggory.
Cedric paced. He was nervous, true; most of all, he was impatient. The pressure was building, and the symptoms were getting worse. Slight headache, shaking limbs, a thin film of sweat on his skin. He ruffled his blond hair as he went through the plans again. He had six separate ones, one for each possibility, because even as the symptoms of Spontaneous Duplication built up to a crescendo, he couldn't know how bad it would be this time.
The moment came without warning. From one second to the next, the nearly-empty room was full of Cedrics standing in a loose circle. They turned outward, focusing on what they were seeing. Three heartbeats passed as each Cedric considered his own section of wall, window, a picture or potted plant.
Mental desynchronization. They were exact copies of each other, which made discussions a pain. Cedric had lost count of how often they had tried to start talking at the exact same moment, so they had devised this system. With all of them looking outward, they had different visual input for their mental processes, and within moments, they could be desynchronized.
Cedric turned around, knowing before he looked that the others had the same timing. Counting clockwise from north, he named them: he was Cedric-1, there was Cedric-2, 3, 4, all looking at him intently, 5, 6, waiting for him to talk, 7, 8 — darn.
"This has never happened before," he said. The literature on his condition had been sparse and confusing, but all sources were unanimous that seven copies should have been the limit.
"Do we wait it out?" Cedric-2 asked, speaking as the next-in-line. But all shook their heads simultaneously; they were of one mind.
"We proceed with the original plan," Cedric-1 said, voice certain. "There's no time to waste. With so many, we'll only have an hour each." The same question was going through all of their minds: with seven Cedrics, there would have been exactly one hour per individual, and that time could only be more if there were less of them, so what if there were more? They should have been safe—the time was always divided into full hours—but nothing was as it should have been right now.
"There are only seven roles. 8 needs to go with 5," Cedric-1 said.
"3," Cedric-8 corrected. "It's better suited. Trust me."
Cedric-1 furrowed his brows, and he wasn't the only one. He rarely contradicted himself, not when they were this close to being desynchronized. But then again, maybe Cedric-8 had thought exclusively about this in the last minute, knowing the decision would come up, and Cedric-1 didn't have time to re-iterate that process. He nodded.
"Go," he said, and they disapparated, one after the other blinking out of existence.
Cedric-1 stayed behind. The others had some leisure, as far as clothing went; their button-downs and jeans were easy to move in, and any visuals would be a matter of improvised charms. He, however, had to look genuine. Of course, he had practiced. One-and-a-half-minute later, he was in a tuxedo, and apparated away.
He appeared in an entrance hall, as was common among muggle hotels. Unlike the hotel Cedric-1 had just left, however, no expense had been spared here. There were massive crystal chandeliers, faux-antique statues, several fountains, and as a centerpiece, an absolutely massive flight of stairs with round-contoured steps which seemed to cascade from the second floor like a waterfall. To reinforce the effect, it was carpeted with shimmering blue velvet which contrasted against the gold tones of the floor and walls. The gaudy excess fit perfectly into what Cedric knew of Vegas.
What didn't fit were the people. Many, especially the twenty-somethings, had used the opportunity to dress up much as Cedric had. A number of misguided middle-aged tourists had tried to blend in among the muggles of Vegas, to horrendously incongruous effect. Finally, the vast majority took advantage of the venue's main selling point: in the Golden Pot, there were no muggles, and a wizard or witch might walk around in whatever they found most comfortable, which generally meant wide, flowing robes in dark colours. Strewn in among the visiting witches and wizards were waiters carrying canapés and complimentary refreshments, recognizable by the blue vests of their uniforms. All of them were human, but Cedric had no doubts that the food was the work of elves.
He finished his visual sweep of the room and smiled to himself. Far more than the robes and wands, one feature distinguished the Golden Pot: its entrance hall had no door.
Cedric made his way through the loose crowd, unfazed by fresh visitors appearing around him by apparation or portkey. He ignored the waiters as he climbed the stairs towards the true entrance. There was no time to lose.
The door was flanked by two pairs of muscle-bound suits wearing earpieces and dark sunglasses. Cedric wondered if the proprietor of the Golden Pot was aware that he had missed the "bouncer" aesthetic by a hair, landing straight in "secret service" territory. If it was meant to be intimidating, it was far less effective than the Thief's Downfall running through the open doorway. Cedric nodded to the guards and stepped through, feeling the not-quite-water run through him. It found no enchanted items to dissolve, no charms to wash away, and he was through.
In the long corridor beyond, he was greeted by a tall blue-haired woman in a dark blue suit, and was momentarily flummoxed. She didn't look human — not quite — but he had no idea what she was, and could only hope she couldn't read thoughts. Remembering his occlumency research, he started doing math in his head, but the woman merely smiled at him disarmingly.
"Please let me tell you about the rules of this establishment, sir. We pride ourselves on offering an authentic Vegas experience, which means magical means of cheating are strongly discouraged. You may keep your wand and are free to use it for your comfort, but be aware we have all the best spell-monitoring systems the world knows, and quite a few better ones. Furthermore, be aware that for reasons of security, we ask you to stay for no less than six hours at a time. I assure you you will not be bored. May I have your hand?"
Cedric extended his hand, keeping himself relaxed. There was no reason she should have reason to do anything to him—five to the fourth was 625, the square root of 17 was four point two, no, one, then a three—
"Thank you. You are now keyed into our system. Have a nice day in magical Vegas." She gave him a last professional smile, then turned away.
He shook his head, still somewhat dazed, and emerged from the dark corridor into light and noise. The main hall of the Golden Pot fit the Casino cliché to a tee: tables for roulette, craps, poker, blackjack and others, and walls lined with slot machines. Even at four pm, the place was alive and crowded, with what seemed like hundreds of customers engaged in every archetypal gamble one might think of. Of course, there were doors leading from the main halls, some grand, some small and hidden, to stage shows and cinemas, and any other vice that was legal, as well as quite a few novel magical variants. The Golden Pot was Magical Vegas, a monolith of commercial entertainment, and it offered everything there was to offer.
He shook his head clear and checked his timing charm. Six minutes thirty since desynchronization. In two minutes the other Cedrics would assume that he had gotten in and start their infiltrations. He had been quick, and necessarily so, for the Golden Pot's security was fiendishly complex. By some magic Cedric had found no details on, the Golden Pot's security tracked everyone who entered through the main entrance. Anyone who found another way in necessarily raised alarms, no matter where or how they entered, if they weren't registered. The system wasn't fooled by disguise charms, mental magic, not even polyjuice. That was Cedric's unique advantage: every one of him was him, and as far as he knew, not even the Golden Pot's security would know the difference.
That left about a hundred other, more conventional layers of security. He could only hope the other Cedrics found a way around those. Thankfully, he had seven spares. Any Cedric would, upon dying, disappear completely, instantly transferring their memories to all others. The only pitfall in the plan was if, when the hour was up, more than one Cedric was alive, all but one would disappear, and if the remaining one was in a tight spot... well, that was why every one of them carried no less than five different means of exit, so to speak.
In the meantime, there was only one thing Cedric-1 had to do: act in no way suspicious. That was why prim and proper Cedric Diggory, Hufflepuff among Hufflepuffs, went to the dealers' counter and turned twenty Galleons of his Triwizard winnings into chips with the full intent to lose all of them within the hour. He had barely made it to the roulette table before there was a burst of memories.
Standing in the circle of Cedrics, Cedric-7 was kind of miffed. It was one thing to be the highest-numbered Cedric, which meant getting the worst plan of the bunch; another, even, to be Cedric seven out of seven, a particularly bad stroke of luck. No, it was worse: there was a Cedric-8, a completely unforeseen, even impossible circumstance—and even that Cedric got a better plan than him, hell, he even got to choose.
It didn't matter. In no more than an hour, they would all be one Cedric again, with all of the memories at their perusal, and that Cedric would look back and laugh at the memory of being annoyed.
Cedric-7 apparated onto a flat concrete roof. Vegas was famous for areas like the Strip, where large, eye-catching architecture was the norm. Cedric-7 was far from those scenic buildings. He stood on a drab, squat warehouse. It featured no glass, no neon lights, not even windows. Still, Cedric had reason to believe that this was the true location of the Golden Pot.
Cedric-7 disillusioned himself. That charm was an incredibly useful one. Reasonably easy to learn, more powerful than most cheap invisibility cloaks, and best of all, its effect felt like cold fluid running all over your body. Sadly, the relief it brought from the sweltering Vegas afternoon sun was fleeting.
Once again, Cedric-7 was envious. Cedric-1 ought to have gotten into his tuxedo by now and was probably enjoying the Golden Pot's magical air conditioning; even the other Cedrics were preparing for their incursions in more hospitable places. To distract himself, Cedric got to work.
He got to his knees and started sounding out the roof. At a first glance, there was nothing magical about it—no illusions, no reinforced materials, not even signs of magical cleaning. Cedric probed deeper. Contrary to what one might think, a building that seemed devoid of spellwork necessitated being more careful than one bursting with obvious magic. For one, it proved that whoever had enchanted it was careful, and therefore probably clever. Even worse, however, there might be traps hidden within that roof, and the less magical noise the enchantments gave off, the more sensitive those traps' triggers could be. The tiniest probe could set things off.
All of this meant that there would be no shortcuts, but Cedric was accustomed to hard work. He probed deeper and deeper, never once deviating from Darenjevi's pattern. Fifteen inches inside the roof, the material still appeared to be rebared concrete, but he found the first thread of something else. Carefully, he pulled on it, bringing the spellwork ever higher, until the first glowing threads breached the concrete surface before him.
Now he had it, and the rest was Cursebreaking 101. He cast spells of identification, finding just about what he had expected: traps, materials strengthening, traps, spells of isolation and warding, traps, and a dimensional charm to make the building ever-so-slightly bigger on the inside. The warping was not quite enough to fit the Golden Pot's floorplan into the warehouse, but that wasn't too surprising; the room's within were probably strewn all over the city, with only their doors dimensionally linked. If one had the resources to do that, it saved quite a lot of work in soundproofing.
Cedric gently pulled the threads apart, making a hole in the web. Into that hole he projected his own extensions, forming a tube of glowing threads and runes which would allow him to enter through the roof. Now, the only thing in his way were twenty inches of concrete which wasn't even magically reinforced.
He checked the timing. Nine minutes forty since desynchronization, meaning he could have been in there almost a minute earlier if he had been quicker. No matter. The concrete broke under a single gesture of his wand, the blast making a foot-wide hole as Cedric stepped forward—
and stumbled, fell into the hole he had made as a mighty wind roared, the vacuum under the concrete asserting its power. His wandwork wasn't quick enough to save him as he fell, both legs going into the hole feet-first. Thankfully, the hole was narrow enough that he had an arm on either side keeping himself up there. The air was screaming through the gap between the concrete and his body, tearing at him, and it wasn't slowing down. He would have gladly let go to fall into the Golden Pot, but there was no certainty that under him was a normal room, or even anything at all.
Beneath his feet, he felt a surge of magic building. There was no time for thought, just the 0.1 seconds of brain-hand coordination as his wand rose in the gesture for an obscure heating charm, a stab that was quicker than most wand motions he knew. It didn't even yield enough heat to make a cup of tea, but if you localized it tightly enough, aimed it at the brain just right—
—it killed you just as dead as a killing curse.
"Sir, are you alright?" the croupier asked. He pushed the chips half an inch further, just enough to punctuate the question.
"Thank you. I was lost in thought." Cedric's smile was easy and honest as he took his winnings, but he could still feel the pain of death. It wasn't as sharp or searing as one might expect of a fried brain. Given that the brain contained nearly no pain-sensitive nerves, the only heat was felt on the scalp, where it was diffuse. The true pain had nothing to do with heat and everything with the resulting pressure, as the bubbling brain matter tried to escape and pressed the rest of the organ against the skull on all sides in a lethally intense migraine. It wasn't Cedric's favorite way to die, but it was certainly the quickest.
Without thinking, he placed another bet. (A galleon on red, not that he cared). It wasn't too surprising that Cedric-7 had failed; the warehouse had been a likely honeypot to catch the most primitive of intrusions. Still, it was a disappointment to learn as little as he had learned there.
His eyes swept the room. Now that the overwhelming initial impression had worn off, he found the gambling hall was fairly easy to surveil, no doubt by design. The tables in the rooms middle were low, the statues, plants and other decorations slender enough to look around. All the truly bulky elements, like the dealers' counter and the slot machines, were pushed against the wall. Almost any point of the floor allowed one to see everything... but there were even better vantage points. At the height of a second story, a balustrade wrapped around the entire hall. There were guests there, standing and talking with glasses in hand, but among them suits were dispersed, keeping eyes on the hall below. And there, among a cluster of them, stood the man himself, Vincent Avianci, the proprietor of the Golden Pot. By most estimates, he was the richest wizard alive, and his expensive-looking muggle suit was tailored to proclaim that fact. Only at a second glance was it obvious that the suit was enchanted, with subtle wave patterns moving over the dark fabric.
Avianci listened to one of the security guys talk, nodded, shook his head, and then waved him away. Cedric surmised that he had just gotten the news of the failed infiltration attempt, and had apparently not been perturbed. Good news, as it kept the window of opportunity open for the other Cedrics.
Cedric-1 took his winnings, bet another three galleons on red. If he had been gambling for fun, his luck would have been exhilarating, but as it stood, it didn't even serve to distract him from his worries. Something wasn't right about this. There had never been eight of him before; even the full seven were a rarity. From everything he had read, it was impossible. Then again, it was not as if the literature had been authoritative on anything.
Spontaneous Duplication was still something of a mystery to Cedric. He had contracted it in the final round of the Triwizard Tournament, as a side effect of a temporal trap in the hedge maze. His father had been beside himself, threatening to sue Hogwarts, but Cedric had talked him down. Historically, the Triwizard Tournament had claimed lives; Cedric had gotten off lightly in comparison. And Spontaneous Duplication wasn't that debilitating, in some ways, it could even be useful. At first, Cedric had debated whether he should even go to St. Mungo's, but the idea of undiagnosed side effects had scared him straight.
So he had gone there, to one of the most respected hospitals in the wizarding world, only to be greeted by perplexed looks and stumped healers. Finally, they had called in a specialist, a ministry Unspeakable who had given Cedric one stern look, then told him in no uncertain terms that he was not afflicted with anything, let alone Spontaneous Duplication, and that the ministry would under no circumstances issue a Spimster wicket to a hypochondriac. So Cedric, at his wits' end, had turned to the library, learning about all sorts of details, like the seven-person limit, the time limits which always summed up to full hours, and the fact that the disappearing Cedrics would transmit their memories to each other. That last point hadn't even been correct; the books had claimed the transfer of knowledge would affect only some Cedrics, not all of them. Additionally, the books hadn't quite told him that dying Cedrics would disappear without harm to whichever one survived. He had figured that one out for himself a month back, in the lair of the death-cultists of Azcuanta.
In short, the illness was strange, and it had turned out to be more blessing than curse, saving his skin quite often during what an ex-classmate of his had called his "suicidal hero-complex trip around the world that Godric Gryffindor himself would have balked at".
On the second floor, Avianci was approached by another security guard. This one he didn't dismiss. For half a minute, he listened with growing concern, then barked a few words back, turned on his heel, and was gone.
Cedric-1 collected his winnings and decided he was bored with roulette. What had been twenty Galleons' worth of chips had grown to twenty-eight. He stood, thinking of quitting while he was ahead, when another set of memories hit him.
Cedric-3 thought that his job should have been the easiest one. A quiet, careful infiltration under three layers of camouflage charms, far from sight of any guards or other employees. The others had to make difficult decisions if danger reared its ugly head—he could just shoot himself at the first sign of anyone coming near and be done with it. But now there was an eighth Cedric, and for some unfathomable reason, the superfluous one had decided to come with him. He eyed the other one suspiciously, then decided to discard his suspicions. However extraneous the eighth Cedric was, he was a Cedric, and if they couldn't trust themselves, they would have been done for long ago.
"Ready, partner?" he asked.
"Like you wouldn't believe," the other answered, and they apparated.
They flickered into existence in an unassuming alley in downtown Vegas. The brick facades around them were smeared with half-hearted graffiti, as though even the city's vandals had no interest in this place. There was, in fact, nothing interesting here, just fire escapes, large garbage containers, and an alley cat which, heedless of the Cedrics' sudden arrival, continued to clean itself.
Cedric-3 cast a few diagnostics, only to confirm what he already knew. This was one of their hottest leads, a random alley in Vegas which was foul with magical fallout radiation. The remains of thousands of thoughtlessly cast spells ended up here, in a dozen giant garbage containers which none of the nearby residents ever threw anything into, yet were nonetheless regularly emptied. The trash itself was mundane enough; mostly food, paper napkins, broken glass, and other typical catering refuse. Yet there was magic all around it, the afterglow of charms to clean the napkins, heat or cool the food, cut a morsel in half to share it. This food bore the traces of wand-wielding gourmands, and there was only one place in Vegas it could come from, especially in those volumes.
Cedric-3 waved his wand about over the trash, searching for spatial distortions. He hoped Cedric-8 was doing the same. One disadvantage of stacking Disillusionment, Chameleon and Transparency charms was that it was impossible to keep an eye on your partner. Then he saw his wand pick up something invisible, dragging it until it resolved into shimmering ripples in the air.
"Got it," he whispered. The alley cat, spooked, ran away, and empty air answered.
"I see it," Cedric-8 whispered. "Use Mogul 3-7."
"Who do you take me for?" Cedric-3 said, smiling invisibly. He was going through the motions already. The distortion was well-masked, removing not only the thing itself, but also its immediate consequences from mundane view. The muggles would never see trash fall out of thin air, no matter how carefully they looked. Still, a few careful swishes of his wand unmasked it, and he gleaned not only the portal itself, but also the spatial coordinates of its other half, presumably in the Golden Pot.
Of course, they couldn't just jump through. Portals like this were strictly one-way, usually with some pretty tight spatial restrictions. Cedric-3 wouldn't trust this one to keep anything larger than a dinner plate intact. However, now that they knew precisely where the trash came from, they knew one place in the Golden Pot where spatial magic was not flat-out prevented. In other words, they knew somewhere they could apparate.
That made it trivial. First, however, a quick check of the camouflage, a thin personal shield around themselves, and a floating charm for good measure, as they had no idea where they would end up. The timing charm said nine minutes, and so, they took each other's hands and went—
—into the bottom of a garbage chute. They were glad for the Golden Pot's megalomaniac dimensions; even the garbage chutes were Vegas-sized, steel tubing with a cross-section of two square feet inside the walls.
Cedric-3 gripped Cedric-8's hand tighter, a wordless "You there?" They couldn't risk making sounds here.
Cedric-8 gave a short pulse back, then pushed upwards, a gesture that couldn't be misinterpreted.
Cedric-3 aimed his wand at himself, modifying the floating charm to levitate gently upwards. Like most wizards, he had never heard of Newton's Laws, and wouldn't have particularly cared about them.
The garbage chute was clearly part of a larger system. It forked into smaller branches, but the main one continued straight upward. Within a minute of slow ascent, they reached a service hatch. This was a critical junction; the bane of any invisible infiltrator had always been the humble closed door.
"Homenum Revelio," Cedric-3 whispered, then followed it up with a couple more spells to catch other possible observers. If they were close to the kitchens, they might have run into house elves instead (Cedric had never been quite comfortable with the idea of them, and intended to avoid them as completely as possible). Finally, having determined the air was clear, he pushed the door open and slipped through, still holding Cedric-8's hand.
Just in that moment, Cedric-7's memories hit. The pain of death faded quickly, but the memories left Cedric-3's pulse racing. By contrast, Cedric-8's pulse was slow and steady, his hand dry. How could he be that hardboiled? Cedric-3 shook the thought away and focused on the mission.
The empty corridor around them was painted in utilitarian white with a dark grey floor. They were in the service sections of the Golden Pot, far from luxurious excess. Slowly, they moved forward, checking around every corner. Except for a few livréed employees, nobody crossed their way. By the look of the large grey double-doors at either side of the corridor, they had chanced into a storage section of the Golden Pot, a place to which neither security nor guests often found their way. And those were the only ones they had to be wary of: the security guards were sure to be vigilant, but even some of the more eccentric guests might have the means to see through their camouflage. The ability to see through illusions was likely to be useful in a city of tricksters, after all.
Even more than concentrating on his camouflage, Cedric-3 focused on his awareness of the situation. An incorporeal tendril extended from the tip of his wand, providing him with a third, extensible eye and ear. In addition, he stopped often to sense the vibrations of the floor through the soles of his feet. At the slightest hint of steps, he held his breath and sought refuge against the wall. Cedric-8 was getting noticeably impatient with him.
The corridor ended at a door. Beyond, the color scheme changed to garish blue-and-gold, the floor was carpeted, and the right wall was adorned with abstract paintings, their geometrical subjects moving in ways that made Cedric-3 dizzy. The left side of this new corridor was even more breathtaking: it was glass from top to bottom, and beyond was the city of Vegas in the afternoon sun, as though the Golden Pot were hundreds of feet in the air. Cedric had never seen a view so majestic, so triumphant. It was Avianci's declaration of victory over the Muggle city: none of their buildings would ever stand as high as his. It was an illusion, of course, an application of clever remote-viewing magics, not even Avianci was megalomaniac enough to hoist an invisible palace in the air, but it was so easy to believe, so easy to share in this sense of superiority.
Cedric-3 was so taken that he didn't notice the security guards approaching. Two suits, both heads buzzed to the scalp, passed mere inches in front of him. His heart almost jumped out of his chest. If Cedric-8 hadn't pulled him away, Cedric-3 might have found himself an invisible obstacle. He held his breath, fought to get his hammering pulse under control, feeling as though the guards had to be able to hear him, but they continued onward, oblivious. In his hand was the wand, his exit ready.
Then one of two stopped, just meters away from the Cedrics, and said "Do you smell that?"
And Cedric-3, who had been on a hair trigger the entire time, became a victim of his own caution.
Probably a good thing. Better to exit too early then risk being discovered. True, they had set things up such that discovery would not risk the mission, ensuring the Cedrics could not be easily linked to each other. Still, who knew what might have gone wrong. The Cedrics were expendable, and the objective of their infiltration was to gather information. Even if none of them found anything, they could just try again.
However, experiencing two deaths within five minutes had left Cedric-1 frazzled. With his brain still full of inherited pain, he headed for the bar.
Bars, by themselves, weren't exactly a muggle idea. Every pub had them, which meant that they dated back to before time. As with many things, they hadn't been invented by a single person.
Still, this bar was distinctly muggle. Its polished countertop was sleek and modern, black and so shiny that Cedric-1 wasn't quite sure it had ever been wood. Behind that countertop stood a livréed barman, and though he was as much a wizard as every other servant of the Golden Pot, there was nothing wizardish about his attire or personal grooming. Behind the man was a backlighted glass shelf where bottles stood on display. There were a few wizard specialties among them, but for the most part, they were alien to Cedric.
"A water, please," he said.
The barman raised his eyebrows slightly, a gesture that was not so much understated as perfectly calculated in intensity.
"Yes, really," Cedric-1 insisted. "Do you want me to order a glass of milk instead?"
The bartender shrugged, smiled a disarming smile, and retrieved a glass from somewhere. In order, he added crushed ice, water from a crystal-cut bottle, even a slice of lemon, and gave it a slight stir. "Enjoy," he said.
Cedric slid over a chip by means of payment and a tip. Wherever he went, he ordered water first, and enjoyed the perplexed looks, rude remarks, and, in one remarkable case, the outright argument that had followed. Every time, he had gotten his water in the end. Never had he been presented with it like this.
He smiled as he sipped it. As if to spite his somewhat traditional father, he had always held the opinion that the muggles were more advanced in quite a few ways. Much of their sophistication degenerated into a pointless hunt for status, but if one wanted to cut loose and enjoy the finer points of life, it was always nice to see what nonmagical means could achieve.
His headache was clearing up, and it was time to start thinking again. Beside the obvious (he had already made a note to go look at that wall of windows as a paying customer), Cedric-1 saw multiple points of interest in how the situation had developed. Cedric-3 was dead, but Cedric-8 was still on the loose, and from what he had shown, he was quite composed, if somewhat lazy. That boy would go places, Cedric-1 thought with a certain indulgence, and it would be quite interesting to see where he ended up.
The more salient question had nothing to do with that particular infiltration attempt. Just before Cedric-3's memories had reached him, Cedric-1 had gotten to see Avianci lose his composure. Something was going on, something significant, and Avianci was less than pleased with it. Cedric-1 had an inkling that it meant the distraction he had planned was working.
He took another sip. The water was taking on a subtle citrus aroma, and Cedric-1 didn't think it had anything to do with the decorative lemon slice. On a hunch, he popped a piece of ice into his mouth and was pleased to find that some genius had decided to flavour the ice itself. Just as he was getting bored of the water itself, it became more interesting on its own. A wizard could have solved this problem with magic, but no wizard had even noticed the problem yet.
He was getting distracted. Avianci was, as well, but none of the Cedrics would be able to use that to their advantage, as he was the only one who knew. Pity.
Just as he raised the glass to his lips, there was another burst of memories.
Cedric-2 smiled to himself as he received his number. His task was essential. The bare-bones version of the plan required only three roles: the customer, a single infiltrator, and him, the man in charge of the diversion. Now, this job was the most dangerous for sure; even if everything went well, he was likely to die. Still, the time that lay before him was going to be exhilarating. Cedric Diggory didn't see himself as courageous. That would have been a Gryffindor trait, and Hufflepuffs were more humble, more realistic. Cedric was addicted to the rush of adrenaline charging into danger brought him. It had taken the Triwizard Tournament for him to realize that he could channel that addiction into more useful things than Quidditch.
Cedric-2 barely paid attention to the discussion revolving around the eighth Cedric. He was preoccupied with his battle preparation, going through the list of charms in his head. As the circle of Cedrics dissolved, he apparated outside the city, to an empty patch of desert, and started casting. By the time his various charms, abjurations, and enchantments were applied, ten minutes were already up, and Cedric-7 already dead. The tight timetable was a good thing, however, because most of those spells didn't last long, particularly not in conjunction.
He apparated to the nearest public Floo station in three quick hops. The attendant perked up. Cedric-2 was camouflaged in as many ways as possible, but charmed to the gills as he was, it would have been hard not to notice his presence. No matter; before the attendant had even properly entertained the notion of an invisible guest, Cedric-2 had grabbed the jar of powder, turned the fire green, and gone on his way.
He appeared in the employee break room's fireplace. Obtaining this address had been one of Cedric's greatest reconnaisance victories. Its mere existence was a rare concession in the Golden Pot's security system, and its address, while not top secret, was known only to employees.
Accordingly, there was little alarm among the seated security guards and livréed pages as the flames went green; when someone invisible kicked up sparks and trailed ash out of the fireplace, they perked up. Then a wave of magical alarms hit them as the security system cancelled some of Cedric-2's enchantments. His Lesser Invulnerability was stripped away, as was the Time-Stretching charm, and the Forget-Me-Now, but he was still invisible in three ways, had heightened his five senses and added three others. In addition, he had emerged with his wand in his hand, and the ever-important element of surprise was on his side.
Three guards were down before they could even react. All stunned, of course, if Cedric had his way, no one except Cedric Diggory would die today. The rumours of Avianci's misdeeds justified the use of force, but little justified killing.
Just as they began to break, Cedric was hit by Cedric-3's death, and the few moments of disorientation were enough for the guards to rally. They were well-trained: within moments, they had found a formation, raised shields, and, most importantly, gotten most of the non-combatant employees toward the door. They traded spells back and forth for a few seconds, them using wide area dispells in an attempt to make Cedric-2 visible, while he probed their shields with rains of projectiles. Before they managed to hit him, he found their shields' resonance points and took their formation apart. He was barely breaking a sweat, until one of them had an actually bright idea—and simply covered the entire room in conjured bright blue dust.
From there, the game was on. Cedric-2's invisibility spells didn't extend to the blue dust, and no matter how clean he kept himself, the dust his footsteps raised was enough to locate him. And whenever he thought he had gotten the upper hand on the blue deluge, the guards piled more on top. Their one advantage was that they had more bodies, each able to devote time to mundane details, while Cedric-2 cast three spells per second, attack, defend, relocate, again and again and again, and could barely keep up. Still, they were getting whittled down, dropping one after the other, and Cedric's stunners weren't easy to wake up from.
Then the door opened, both wings slamming open dramatically, and a dozen more guards stormed in, followed by Avianci himself. The guards were on the offensive, now, each trying to prove his worth, while Avianci stayed behind, holding his wand stiffly, but not doing much of anything. Cedric-2 was thankful for it. The man was rarely seen casting in public, and his capabilities were basically completely unknown.
He just had to handle the guards—admittedly twice as many as before, but they were getting reckless, and they still weren't hitting Cedric, not because he was the better wizard, but because he had far more real combat experience than them. It sounded strange, given that he was just eighteen, but in the last few months, he had gotten into and out of quite a few sticky situations.
Then, Avianci made his move. Golden chains shot towards Cedric's limbs, whirling up the blue dust. He flicked them away with a quick motion of his wand, but there were more, coming not in waves, but almost continuously, what had to be ten chains a second, until first Cedric's left foot was caught, and in quick succession his other limbs. Cedric had never heard of a spell like that, but with an effect that long and complex, it had to take at least five seconds to cast. That had to have been what Avianci was doing; holding his wand like that hadn't been a weird habit, but the wand motion for that spell.
"Very good, men," Avianci said. "Now give us some privacy."
The guards left, leaving behind a still-invisible Cedric held up in mid-air, and Avianci walking leisurely toward him.
"Quite the intrusion," Avianci said. "And quite the coincidence, perhaps, to have two intrusions in such quick succession. I don't think it's unreasonable of me to assume a connection."
Cedric-2 opened his mouth, but another golden chain moved to muffle him.
"Now I happened to notice that neither of you two intruders triggered the obvious alarms, which must have meant that you were properly keyed into the system. Usually impossible, except for a particularly obscure trick which has been tried before, leading to me establishing new countermeasures. I do wonder how you got around them."
Avianci looked at his wand with the studious disregard people usually reserved for their fingernails. "I won't waste time interrogating you. Two down, which means I still have up to five of you to deal with. At least I can make sure this one is the last one." He looked at the invisible Cedric, raising his wand. There were many spells capable of killing that were not branded as Unforgivable. Avianci used a simple Aguamenti, forced the water into Cedric-2's airways, and watched him drown.
Cedric-1 stared at the glass of water, as if the melting ice harbored an answer to his troubles. Avianci was ruthless. A man capable of calm, efficient killing. It didn't matter to Cedric that the local laws allowed using lethal force against intruders; Avianci was a murderer. More importantly, Avianci was more powerful than expected. Cedric-2 had not even been able to put up a fight.
He took a sip, felt it wash down his despair. The plan did not depend on besting Avianci, but on finding the right information. And Cedric-2 had brought back quite the strange hints, mostly because Avianci hadn't been able to resist talking. He had said that something like Cedric's trick had been tried before, had talked of having "up to five left to deal with". It seemed obvious Avianci knew about Spontaneous Duplication, though quite a few other pieces didn't fit. What was the countermeasure Avianci had trusted in, and how had Cedric unwittingly circumvented it? What, exactly, had Avianci meant when he had talked about "making sure this one was the last one"?
That phrase in particular was heavy with meaning. If there were other Cedrics left, Cedric-2 couldn't be the last one... or at least, not from Avianci's perspective. Cedric-1 had a hunch, and it was particularly disquieting. It involved messing with time.
He shook his head. That way lay madness. Every building had its foundation; just so, every mind needed assumptions on which to rest. Cedric had taken some time to sort out his, back when he was in an ethically contemplative mood, and assuming an order to actions, a sense of cause and effect, was one of the more fundamental necessities of thinking, or at least, so he thought. He couldn't just discard it.
So he searched for other explanations. It was possible that Avianci was confused, even more likely that Avianci was intentionally confusing Cedric. It was generally suboptimal to talk at all before dealing with a captured enemy, and Avianci had been quite clever about it, staying intentionally vague. So maybe he had just thrown out concepts that would unnerve Cedric: a mysterious countermeasure, hints that he knew what was going on, when maybe he didn't, offhand remarks that could be interpreted as him having the ability to break fundamental laws of nature.
Cedric-1 shook his head again. That didn't explain how he knew there would be at most seven Cedrics Diggory.
"Look," the barman said. "If you're working through something difficult, water isn't going to do the trick."
Cedric-1 smiled despite everything. His smile had never failed him. "I'll defer to your expertise, then. No alcohol, however." I'm on the job, he didn't add.
The barman went through an elaborate routine Cedric-1 didn't even try to remember. At the end, a shimmering, multi-layered cocktail in shades of blue and gold stood before him.
"House specialty," the barman said.
Cedric-1 drank, and his mind went somewhere else entirely.
He was Cedric-4. The first three were in charge of the fundamental workings of the plan, a solid, but simple implementation; his role was risky, but rewarding. An infiltration not only in the physical, but also in the social sense. Thankfully, Cedric had always had an instinct of how to handle himself in social settings.
His part of the plan had the greatest emphasis on disguise. Cedric-4 took polyjuice, the hair for which he had taken from a carefully selected muggle. He was now more muscular, his hair cropped close to the scalp. Quite fitting, but it was clothes who made the man. Thankfully, the Golden Pot was deeply integrated into the local muggle service industry. In other words, there was a dry-cleaner's who regularly handled hundreds of nondescript black suits, all of which were embroidered invisibly with sophisticated identification runes.
Cedric-4 wondered whether Avianci had considered someone might steal his agents' laundry, and why he had gone through all that effort to add identification. Stealing from a muggle store was not unlike taking candy from a muggle baby, that is to say, quite easy thanks to the disproportional advantage of literal magic. He was in and out in less time than it took to put the suit on afterward. At plus five minutes, he was suited up, adding the finishing touches to his selection of charms. There were quite a lot of tricks a well-read wizard could pull off when it came to his appearance. Some were pure magic, such as the mild suggestion charm he had set up; others worked their magic on him to produce purely physical effects, like the gesture-mimicking charm. All of them were subtle enough that they were unlikely to be noticed even by trained guards. To them, Cedric-4 would be a barely-familiar colleague whose name was always on the tip of their tongue. When he flooed into the break room, mere minutes before Cedric-2 would wreak havoc, the other guards assumed he had been on an errand.
Finding a spot in their patrolling rotation went similarly smoothly. A mere nine minutes and thirty seconds after the split, Cedric-4 was on patrol, walking through the Golden Pot's corridors. White service corridors and decadence in blue and gold alternated. There were bright corridors and dark ones, wide and small ones, each created to reflect the sort of entertainment they led to. Into the various rooms, they didn't even look, and Cedric-4 began thinking about how to break off from his colleague and do some exploring on his own, when they entered a corridor with windows.
The view was too much, almost. A sprawling vista of Vegas behind a wall of glass from floor to ceiling, as if they could just step out into the skies. His colleague didn't even spare it a glance, desensitized to the luxury. Then the guard stopped. "Do you smell that?" And Cedric-4 could smell it; the faintest whiff of trash.
Everything happened too quickly after that. From one moment to the other, Cedric-4 had number 3's knowledge, as well as a brain that was half-convinced it had just died. The adrenaline rush shortcutted his frontal cortex; his guard colleague was stunned before he could fully raise his wand.
"Fuck," Cedric-4 said. "You still there, me?" A meaningless question. If 8 had dropped dead, all the Cedrics would have noticed.
But 8 didn't answer.
Cedric-4 thought fast. Within a blink of an eye, he was invisible himself, his body pressed against the corridor wall. Cedric-8 hadn't answered, even though he was there, deciding not to let Cedric-4 know where he was. He had been so different from 3 during their infiltration attempt, so unfazed by 2's death. Was it possible that they had an agent in their midst, and if so, what were his goals?
Cedric-4 grit his teeth. The mission as it stood might have been co-opted by someone. Unlikely that it was an agent of Avianci's; they would all have been dead by now. Still, the possible impostor calling himself Cedric-8 knew the detail of every plan. At the same time Cedric-4 had the other Cedrics' memories, and if Cedric-8 dealt with him, the others would know. If Cedric-8 was an impostor, he was not Cedric Diggory, which, in Cedric's experience, meant that any Cedric could take him. Also, he had a distinctive smell about him, and Cedric-4 knew how to magically enhance his olfactory sense.
Silently, carefully, he tracked his invisible adversary. There was no room for error; too far away, and he might lose him, too close, and he might run into him. 8 led him deeper into the Golden Pot. Through the corridor with the view, into an unused ballroom, from there onto a sequence of stairwells. There was no doubt that Cedric-8 knew exactly where he was going.
On top of the last flight of stairs was a half-floor, a dead end except for a well-hidden maintenance hatch. Cedric-4 stood, waiting for Cedric-8 to open it. Then he saw a piece of paper float up through the stairwell, tossed here and there as if by a playful breeze. Cedric-4 raised his wand to hold it still, not daring to touch it. The lettering was big enough that he could read it from a distance.
"Sorry," it read. "He expects to find seven."
Shit, Cedric-4 thought just before he was hit by a full body-bind. Paralyzed, he fell to the ground, unable to move as someone invisible removed his camouflage with perfect aim. His adversary knew precisely where Cedric-4 was.
"The suit's bugged, by the way," another note hovering in mid-air read. He recognized his own handwriting.
Then, he was alone.
Hoping to at least serve as a distraction, he waited, paralyzed, until he heard footsteps coming before he killed himself. It was a long enough wait that he experienced the death of Cedric-2. He expects to find seven, Cedric-4 thought, the remark suddenly making sense. How did Avianci know? How had Cedric-8 known what Avianci would only later come to assume? And where in these layers of deceit hat Cedric so completely lost control over the situation?
A mere half-an-hour ago, when he had been pacing in his hotel room, going through the plan in his head, Cedric-1 had thought this role would be the easiest. Get in, gamble and enjoy himself for six hours, walk out again. There were no infiltrations planned for him, no fights, no daring escapes. Cedric-1 was beginning to realize that might have been an oversight. He could have gone for a daring escape right now.
He put away the glass, thanked the barkeeper, and started walking around the Golden Pot, looking for spots to hide.
__5_
Cedric-5 looked into the bathroom mirror and took a deep breath. In this aspect of life, there was little difference between wizards and muggles. White tiles, white porcelain, a large mirror made of silver and glass. He washed his hands, splashed a little water into his face, dried himself off. That kind of ritual usually helped him feel prepared. As he got ready on the outside, he found resolve on the inside.
Not this time. The expected surety stayed out of reach. Cedric-5 thought about Avianci, about Cedric-8, about the dozens of open questions, and found that he did not have the answers. He didn't know what the right choice was, or how to find it.
He smiled at the face in the mirror, and was relieved to see it smile back. It would be dangerous, but he was still himself, still the person he trusted to do the right thing when things got dangerous. Wand in hand, he left the bathroom, and retraced Cedric-4's steps.
This was his greatest advantage. Every Cedric sacrificed brought him knowledge; every Cedric died a little further in than the last. He knew where to go. Through corridors, unused rooms, onto a sequence of stairwells. On top of the stairs was a half-floor, where the ceiling dropped almost to the level of the steps, and instead of a true door, Cedric-5 saw merely a maintenance hatch. He was invisible, there was no one around, and the hatch was locked, but not in any way a strong Alohomora couldn't fix.
The door opened into nonphysical space. Cedric-5 could feel it on his skin, like static in the air, an artificiality to the very concept of position. It looked like just another employee corridor, marked off with a rope at chest height, on which hung a large red sign reading "authorized access only". Cedric knew not to trust the sight. Ordinary pocket dimensions were merely spaces twisted off from reality, and therefore just as suited to live in. If a space was truly artificially created, it wasn't possible to count on physics—worse, it wasn't possible to count on geometry. There might not be a corridor, or maybe there were multiple, all twisted around each other.
Cedric-5 moved further in, wand raised. The artificial space was terrifying, but also encouraging. After all, what more fitting lair could there have been for a man like Avianci? In here, he could bend every law to his whims. At the end of the corridor, there was an unassuming door. Cedric-5 reached out—
—and then there were chains. From the floor and the walls, from the ceilings, from that door itself, golden chains sprouted, shot out towards him in straight lines. But Cedric had seen this trick already, had thought about how to counter it since Cedric-2's defeat. He recited an incantation and whirled his wand around him in a perfect circle. A shimmering sphere was around him, a thin area of heat so intense that the chains passing though it melted, became red-hot fluid that Cedric-5 caught as an orb at the tip of his wand. The torrent of chains stopped. Cedric dismissed the sphere, and let the orb of molten gold drip to nothingness.
At the end of the corridor, Avianci stood, clapping slowly. "You've almost made it into my sanctum, invisible intruder."
"And now?" Cedric-5 said, his heart hammering.
In answer, Avianci twirled his wand, and a cloud of golden dust erupted from its tip, slowly moving towards Cedric. Cedric, in turn, ran towards the cloud, knowing that whatever it was, his best bet of winning was to go on the offensive. While running, he fired a wide spread of curses, watching them pierce through the cloud, not knowing if he hit Avianci behind it. Then, he readied a gust of wind to blow the dust away—
—only to trip and fall. Cedric looked at his feet, shocked to see that his right foot had been taken off at the ankle. Blood spurted, but there was no pain.
The chains were back, and Cedric frantically cast the sphere of heat again. This time, it didn't work. The chains bypassed it somehow, coming from a direction Cedric could not conceive of. He was bound, his wand taken, his spells dissolved. And through the cloud of golden dust strode Avianci, wand held loosely, closing Cedric's wounds with casual ease.
"I've been wondering," Avianci said, "how you escaped my chains. They suppress most forms of warping space, and the Golden Pot is heavily warded against time distortions. Not this space, however, and in this case, there's no reason to take risks. See you in five minutes."
He crouched down and tapped Cedric-5 lightly with his wand. Suddenly, he stood three steps away, arms crossed, and they were not alone anymore. The blue-haired woman was there, smiling at Cedric-5 from above.
"And so we meet again, boy."
"What are—" Cedric-5 was so surprised that he had not been silenced that he stumbled over his words. "What are you doing?" He was already using his darkest preparation, a charm that allowed him to disrupt his heartbeat at will.
"Identifying you," Avianci said.
The blue woman head her hand on his head, but it felt as if her fingers were inside his heart, ice-cold and ethereal. In a conversational tone, she said. "It seems you are indeed Cedric Diggory. It won't be hard to find the rest of you."
"What are you? Why are you working for him?"
"Please," the blue woman said. "I'm not working for him. This is a partnership. I supply my particular expertise, to this marvelous exercise in debauchery. In return, I collect a cut of all the wages of sin."
Cedric-5's heart was starting to give out. He couldn't make sense of her words. "A cut? This is about money?"
"He's buying time," Avianci said. "Is it possible that he can get away?"
"He may try," the woman in blue said. "I've never seen anything that could break both your chains and my magic. Only death can take him from my grasp."
Cedric-5 smiled weakly and died.
Darn it, Cedric-1 thought. He was in way over his head, and it was too late to start thinking about a way out. His current plan — hiding for the remaining five hours and leaving through the main entrance — was bound to fail with the woman in blue searching for him. He still didn't know what she was, but it was clear that she had some kind of unusual magical way of identifying him.
And there she was, entering the empty cinema at a brisk pace, looking straight at the corner where he crouched, invisible. "It's futile to hide," she said.
He dispelled his various invisibilities and stood straight. "Take me to your boss, then."
"How reasonable," she said. "I like all customers, you know," she continued. "Every last one of them. They put so much weight on morality, yet what they call good and the evil is forever at war within them. It's so strange to me, and it will always remain interesting. You stand out among them. So innocent in your transgressions."
"What are you? Some sort of demon?"
"Vile words from someone with so pure a soul." She chuckled. "I do so enjoy my little visits to your kind. However, you are wrong."
"I've never heard of anything like you. Somehow, I can't imagine I'd find you in a book."
"Ah, wizards. So keen on organising, sorting, classifying until the entire world is pressed between sheets of paper like so many dead flowers."
Cedric-1 was silent for a while, as they walked towards Avianci's sanctum. They were taking another path, now; apparently there were many doors to the sanctum throughout the Golden Pot.
Before the door behind which Avianci would be waiting, he stopped. "What do you do with whatever you take from here? Does it sustain you? Make you happy?"
The woman in blue smiled the serene smile of one who had seen everything. "It all becomes part of the hoard. Go now, Cedric. Meet your end."
Avianci stood at the end of the corridor. His wand was out, though he held it casually, not in a battle stance. "Are you going to attack me?"
Cedric-1 considered it. A fight between wizards was more like chess than a game of dice. It was not predetermined, not completely, but it was fundamentally a matter of skill, not chance. When a greater wizard and a lesser fought, the outcome was clear from the beginning. Cedric had fought Avianci as Cedric-2, and again as Cedric-5. He had gained a slight glimpse of the abyss that stretched between them. Wizards, as a rule, did not get less powerful with age, and Avianci easily had thirty years on Cedric.
He shook his head, saw Avianci relax, and charged. The deception didn't end up mattering; he only managed to ruin Avianci's jacket.
"I've had occasion to think about you," Avianci said. "To talk to you at length, even. And I believe I'm starting to understand you. Not as a person, mind you, I couldn't be less interested in you, but as an adversary. I hate that trick you're using. I tightened the wards against time magic, I even imposed that stupid six hour rule on all of my customers just to prevent anyone from trying this. There's no reason why it shouldn't work, but of course it didn't, because those damned things break the very concept of reason." He raised a hand which held a strange-looking trinket. It was a tiny hourglass enclosed by concentric circles of gold.
"A Spimster wicket?" Cedric blurted out.
Avianci scrutinized him, then smiled. "You don't know what this is, do you?"
At Cedric's "no", Avianci shook his head. "No, no, that won't do." He pulled a monocle from a pocket and set it to his eye. "Say it again. Do you know what this is?"
"It's a Spimster wicket," he said. "It's used for treating Spontaneous Duplication."
"That's a government cover-up," Avianci said. "One I approve of, given that it keeps the damned things out of people's hands. There are no Spimster wickets, only Time-Turners. Give it a spin, and it takes you back an hour. For an hour, two of you exist, one with all the memories of the other."
Cedric-1 stared. The existence of a device like that should have been unbelievable, but it explained everything. Every unintuitive aspect of Spontaneous Duplication, every strange reaction he had gotten, finally made sense. The disease wasn't supposed to exist.
"I hate using them," Avianci said. "It's too great a risk; people tend to go mad in the loops. However, this time, I won't need to. You will."
"Excuse me?" Cedric-1 said, his tongue still loose from the potion.
"I've been racking my brain from the beginning, trying to figure out how you turned back time inside the Golden Pot, which should have been impossible. What you are instead going to do is use it in this corridor, go back one hour, and do whatever it is you need to. I already know what will happen: you'll make the full six copies, they'll infiltrate the Golden Pot, and I'll stop every last one of them." Avianci shook his head. "The only reason you ever managed to do this is because I explicitly allowed you to do so, if only to make it happen. How I hate this kind of shit. Oh, and you'll meet my past self. Tell him: '8dfhjgtew3'."
He tossed Cedric-1 the Time-Turner, and Cedric-1, barely believing his luck, spun it. He lost a fourth, more one-sided battle against the past Avianci, but once he had time to get a word in edgewise, the password got him past Avianci nice and easy.
Five minuts before the split, Cedric-1 was outside the Golden Pot again, wondering how, exactly, the mechanics of Time-Turners corresponded to those of Spontaneous Duplication. He thought of spinning it again, and felt his smile come back. Cedric would spin it again to appear in the middle of the split, which meant that the Time-Turner had charges left. Avianci, thinking that Cedric was fated to use all six activations of the Time-Turner, had given him far more time than necessary. He would use it to prepare himself for every eventuality.
One subjective hour later, Cedric was in his hotel room again. Standing precisely at the location he remembered, precisely one hour after the split, Cedric-1 closed his eyes, and turned the Time-Turner again.
He opened his eyes to a circle of Cedrics. They turned around, desynchronized; Cedric-1 began to speak. Cedric-1-who-had-become-Cedric-8 listened to what he had once said, and said his lines as he remembered them.
The infiltration was trivial. He knew his every step, and though he didn't remember them perfectly, he found he could not fail in retracing them. Cedric-3 and he went through the garbage chute, the service corridors, just about evaded Cedric-4 and his guard colleague. Then, Cedric-4 started following him, and Cedric-8 remembered the fear of that other version of himself. He didn't hesitate in taking out 4. It was fated, though he confessed he didn't quite understand how this precise shape of the loop had come to be.
There he stood, over the petrified body of himself, burning the notes he had written. This was the end of the road that had been laid out for him. But he was prepared now, far more prepared than the other Cedrics could have hoped for. This was his best chance to beat Avianci. Once Avianci was down, he could take a strand of hair, put it into the polyjuice he had prepared, and impersonate Avianci in his discussion with Cedric-1. It wouldn't be easy to mimic Avianci's spells, but with Cedric-8's preparations, it would be just about possible. It was certainly more difficult than Cedric-8 would have liked it to be, but Avianci had mentioned to Cedric-1 that he had taken care of all of them, and this was the only way to facilitate it.
He entered Avianci's sanctum. Through the corridor he walked, careful with his every step. He reached the door at the other end. The door was plain panneled wood, its doorknob plain brass. A quick check revealed that beneath that thin veneer was an inch of enchanted steel. That was Avianci's way: modern, sleek, effective. As it wasn't locked, Cedric-8 just pushed it open.
Within was a circular, domed room, easily two dozen steps in diameter and height. The walls were absolutely covered with cabinets, shelves and cupboards. As far as Cedric-8 could tell, each held uncounted magical artefacts, ancient grimoires and potions.
Avianci stood in the room's very center, holding a book open in one hand. In the other was his wand, and it was already aimed at Cedric-8.
"Welcome," he said.
The battle was quick.
Avianci idly twirled his wand in his hand, standing beside a bound Cedric-8. "That marks the fifth of you I have seen fall. Another is posing as a customer, though my associate is on her way to fetch him."
"There's... there's one of me you haven't heard of yet."
Avianci took out the monocle, had him say it again. "You're telling the truth. Why?"
"He died right beside me. I could feel his pulse fade."
Avianci sounded bored. "You're trying to trick me. Is he still dead?"
"You mean whether Cedric Diggory is dead? I'm before you in the flesh."
"Don't try to dissemble. That man you felt dying, was he reanimated? Is he among the living again?"
"Only in memory."
"Well then, Mr. Diggory. How does it feel to be a dead man walking? To know that before the clocks strike the next hour, you will irrevocably, finally, die?"
Cedric-8 shrugged. "I've gotten used to the feeling."
"You're impressively quick to adapt, then." He turned towards a dresser, reaching deep into its drawers, until he found what he was looking for. "It seems I will go to confront the final you now. Afterwards, we can figure out what will happen to you."
He tapped Cedric-8 with his wand, and the transition was instantaneous. Avianci's hair was ruffled, his suit jacket lost. "Killing you would break the loop, so attempting to kill you means I fail. I cannot control how I would fail, therefore attempting to kill one who is known to survive means tempting fate. However," Avianci said, taking a long pause. Cedric-8 bit his lip, tense with fear.
"I still don't understand by what magic you evade death," he continued. "But soon, it won't matter. And the situation is greatly simplified by your little trick. You are hard-to-kill in a particularly convenient way. And once you have disappeared... well, I need not know the long and winding path you take towards your death. It is sufficient to know that I will not see you again. Aguamenti."
Cedric-8 fought in his golden restraints as best he could. But his slow, painful death was unavoidable. The water was inside his lungs, no matter how much he coughed; his bronchial tubes, cut off from oxygen, burned and died. He weakened, his vision grew dark, and then there was nothing.
Cedric-6 disapparated from the circle of Cedrics only to come face to face with himself.
Cedric-6 whipped his wand out, but the other Cedric just stood there.
"Change of plans," the other said.
"Who are you?" Cedric-6 said, voice wavering.
"Today's code is 6924-3462-1046," the other Cedric said. "Does that suffice as proof?"
Cedric-6 nodded, not believing his eyes.
"Call me Cedric-9 if you want, though I believe the numbering scheme needs to be reconsidered. I need your help," he said, and pulled out a golden piece of jewelry on a chain: a tiny hourglass within concentric circles.
"A Spimster wicket!" Cedric-6 said.
"No, not really." His explanation took minutes, and Cedric-6's eyes grew wider and wider. Cedric-9 came to a close. "It's not a reconnaisance mission anymore. Avianci needs to be brought down, or we're done with."
"How?"
Cedric-9 handed him the Spimster wicket—the Time-Turner. "You'll think of something," he said. "Once you do, don't tell any of us more than they absolutely need to know."
"What are you going to do?"
"I'll get to the hotel room, turn back an hour, and become the one you know as Cedric-8. Of course, I'll have to find a Time-Turner first, but I believe that Cedric-8 has left his by the garbage containers."
"That—that's a screwy sort of logic."
Cedric-9 smiled wrily. "Better get used to it. Every one of of us depends on you."
There he was, standing at the hatch that led to Avianci's sanctum. Right beside himself, there he was, standing at the door of Avianci's sanctum. And right beside him—you get the point. Five Cedrics Diggory, six together with ten through thirteen, with Cedric-8's death fresh in their minds, as ready as a Cedric could be.
"Five minutes left," Cedric-6 said.
"Doesn't matter anymore," Cedric-10 answered. "As far as the illness is concerned, you're the final one. You're stable, and the rest of us are just who you will become. Of course, we need to get you back within the next fifteen minutes, so that you can become me. And don't forget that when the hour is up, we're vulnerable again. When it gets dangerous, time-turn back."
Cedric-13 smiled encouragingly, and they went into the corridor.
13 and 10 immediately knelt beside the entrance, pulling threads of light out of the thin air.
"They're contesting Avianci's control over this space," Cedric-12 said. "We'll go on the offensive, come on!"
They ran through the corridor, towards the door that led to Avianci's true sanctum. Cedric-6 attempted "Aloho-" but before he could finish, Cedric-11 had already blasted the door clean off its hinges. They barged in, setting the air alight with a flurry of spells. Some of them flew true, but Avianci shimmered and rippled where they hit, as if he had magical shields just above his skin.
For a fragment of a second, there was silence. Avianci, blindsided, stood where a dead Cedric-8 would have been, his mouth ever so slightly open. His tiny pause saved the Cedrics' lives. Avianci reached into a hidden pocket, no doubt attempting to turn back time, but Cedric-11, remembering that exact motion, had already readied a spell and cut straight through the fabric. Avianci pulled back bleeding fingers holding a mess of bent gold, glass shards, and sand.
He regained his composure quickly. A motion of his wand raised shields; another sent a deep ripple through the sanctum.
"How extraordinary," he hissed through clenched teeth as the Cedrics' spells impacted his shield, failing to break through. "But that's quite enough of you."
"He's cut it loose," Cedric-10 yelled from the entrance hatch. "The sanctum isn't tethered to the Golden Pot anymore!"
"No more reinforcements from you," Avianci said from behind a blinding cloud of golden dust. "I see you're disrupting my control over this space itself. You've studied this situation in depth, of course."
A golden beam would have hit Cedric-6 in the back of his head, but Cedric-12 had cast a shield already.
The dust settled, and Avianci was nowhere to be seen. "Homenum Revellio," Cedric-6 cast, uncovering nothing. But in the same moment, Cedric-11 had already blasted apart one of the cabinets lining the wall, and Avianci flickered back into existence, immediately flinging bolts of golden light at them.
"You cheat," Avianci shouted over the din of their renewed battle. "Yet you cannot know every last one of my tricks." Without so much as a motion from Avianci, gravity was inverted, leaving the Cedrics falling towards the ceiling. "You cannot know all of them," Avianci continued, "because your time is limited, and my pockets are far, far deeper than you could imagine."
The battle was perfect chaos. Avianci was as paranoid as he was ruthless. His sanctum was littered with traps and hidden weapons; consisted of traps and hidden weapons, almost. Every cabinet and every cupboard held a dozen nasty surprises. The floor was ice one moment, water the next; the ceiling threw itself at them; tools came to life and attacked them. Throughout it all, Avianci cast from his seemingly infinite repertoire of spells. Soon, the gold and water Cedric-6 was accustomed to were joined by fire, poisonous gases, beams of black rotting death, cutting edges of air. The Cedrics responded in kind. As if in perfect choreography, 11 and 12 knew Avianci's every move and every countermove, no matter how obscure. They knew the weaker points in Avianci's defenses, but his defenses were deeply layered, and nothing they tried truly hurt him. With pandemonium around him, Cedric-6 stumbled through, barely surviving with the other Cedrics' help.
Avianci noticed. It was the glaring weakness in their plan: only two of the three Cedrics fighting knew enough to stay ahead, yet the third was the most vulnerable, the one that absolutely needed to stay unharmed. Fifteen minutes, Cedric-10 had said, and fifteen minutes were over quickly. Cedric-6 fought his way towards the corridor, knowing that he needed to escape spatially as well as temporally, but before he could reach the hatch, fire sprung up all around him. With the circle of flame tightening around him, Cedric-6 turned back time.
Cedric-10 saw number six disappear, and the flames died down.
"Well done," Avianci said. "He must have been quick to get out after this, as did all of you. After all, I cannot remember meeting you." Standing at the center of his sanctum, he looked at the four Cedrics cramped into the corridor, and smiled. With callous disregard for the turmoil of attack spells 11 and 12 conjured around him, he pointed his wand at Cedric-10. "You're next," he said.
Cedric-10 pulled his wand out of the glowing fibers which defined the artificial space and stood straight. Cedric-12 took over for him. There was no need to communicate; nonetheless, he addressed Cedric-11 directly. "Shield me," he said as he walked towards Avianci. He kept a measured pace, firing spell after spell which Avianci brushed aside. And all of Avianci's attempts at a counteroffensive were for naught. Wizardkind knew many shield spells, some so small and fast that they were unusable in regular combat, but Cedric-11 knew the angle of every attack intimately, and every one of Avianci's spells ricocheted off, most being reflected towards him.
Avianci grew visibly more frustrated. Moments ago, it had been enough to take advantage of Cedric-6's missteps; now, every critical action was being handled by Cedrics with foreknowledge, and step by step, Cedric-10 progressed. The shields were impenetrable.
"Well then," Avianci said. "Avada Kedavra!"
In the last possible second, Cedric-11 pulled Cedric-10 away, and the latter stumbled. Avianci showered them with offensive spells, but among his tidal waves and golden chains, green bolts were mixed in, requiring a complex combination of shields and dodges. Cedric-10 stumbled again, fell, and, seeing that Cedric-11 had his hands full, turned back time.
"Two to keep this space under control. Only one left to fight me." Avianci smiled. "This is the end for you."
The barrage resumed, and Cedric-11, not even seeing enough of an opening to get Cedric-12 to help him, gave in immediately.
As Cedric-12 pulled his wand out of the tangle of runes, he finally realized what Cedric-13 had been trying to achieve from the beginning. He reached for his Time-Turner and was gone.
"You're working hard, but I can already feel my control over the space returning." Avianci walked leisurely toward Cedric-13, who still knelt by the entrance. "But I'm not going to take any chances."
Cedric-13 opened the hatch, and light shone through from behind. The artificial space was reconnected.
"Avada—"
"I yield!" screamed Cedric-13, dropping his wand.
"—Kedavra!" shouted Avianci, and a green bolt flew at Cedric-13, who, crouching halfway through the hatch, should not have been able to dodge—
—but was yanked through by an exterior force, the curse passing harmlessly where he had just been.
And from outside the hatch came a stern authoritarian voice with an American accent. "Mr. Avianci, you're under arrest for use of an unforgivable curse, as well as for excessive use of force against a home invader who has yielded. Come with us, please."
"Can't say I'm buying what you're selling, son." The American auror leaned back in his chair, his massive blond brows scrunched.
"It's simple. I'm saying if you investigate Avianci, you're going to find a grave consumer rights violation."
"It's the specifics I'm getting caught on. You're postulating a magical entity that's best described as a demon, and you say that Avianci's in cahoots with it. See, I get a number of cranks in my office each month, all related to gambling, and all I can tell those fine folks is that in this jurisdiction, it's legal."
"You just need to investigate him, and you'll find that he's been backdooring customers into an unwitting pact with an entity siphoning off their metaphysical gambling losses to who-knows-where."
"Look, son, even if I might like to see the man gone, without a warrant, my hands are tied. And whatever you may say about Avianci's ethics, the man pays his taxes, and he pays them well. No way I'll get a warrant without probable cause."
Cedric-9 smiled. "That I can help with. In—" he checked his timing charm "—a bit more than sixteen minutes, Avianci will arrive straight at your doorstep, and if luck's on our side, he'll be breaking some laws as he does so."
"That's a mighty precise hunch you have there."
"Let's say that I've found a note which purports to be from my future self. I'm not asking for much," Cedric said, hands pleading. "Just try to be ready at that door in a quarter of an hour, best with some backup. And there might be a young man who bears a striking resemblance to me there. If he's in danger, I'd be much obliged if you could save him."
The auror looked at Cedric levelly. "I can do that. I'll have you stay here for the meantime."
Cedric smiled brightly. "I'm afraid that's not going to be possible. I have somewhere to be, or rather, somewhen." With those words, he made off, leaving behind a very concerned, but slightly amused auror.
"You're aware that there are laws against vigilantism here." The auror's voice was stern, but there was a smile on his gruff face.
Cedric-13—now, once again, just Cedric—grinned sheepishly. "I was hoping you might overlook some of them in exchange for me appearing in court as an anonymous witness."
"We'll come to accommodations, I'd say. Especially given that you managed not to seriously hurt anyone during your escapades." The auror shook his head, as if he was still in disbelief. "Tell me you're not going to get into trouble like this again, though."
Cedric reached a hand into his pocket, where a small golden piece of jewelery hung on a chain. As his fingers traced its concentric circles, he pondered how marvelous that little device was, and what opportunities it could afford him.
"Never get into trouble again?" He shook his head, laughing. "I can't promise that."