Chapter 485 A world that bears the consequences

The whole time Jon and Slughorn had been keeping a constant eye on that Time-turner in Slughorn's office at the Department of Mysteries.

From the beginning of the duel between Dumbledore and Voldemort, there had been constant sounds of great commotion coming from above them.

They were well aware of the intensity of the duel above them, and neither Jon nor Slughorn was actually quite able to sit still here, but Dumbledore's words were not lost on them, and they always kept their eyes on the time-turner, knowing that the commotion from the upper floors was fading away and that the time was gradually coming to eight o'clock in the evening.

At seven-fifty-eight, Jon was ready with the small handful of Floo powder.

It was obvious that once again the fireplace had been used to connect to the Floo network in Dumbledore's office, it was unlikely that Dumbledore himself would be able to receive it, and it was far more likely that he had left some extra arrangement behind so that Jon and the rest of them could obtain the information they needed to be aware of.

As the minute hand on the pocket watch finally pointed to 12 and the hour hand aligned with eight, Slughorn gave Jon a solemn nod.

Jon didn't linger as he sprinkled the tiny pinch of Floo powder into the fireplace, and soon a green flame flared up in it.

"Albus Dumbledore's office."

The flames in the fireplace began to jump after he named the location where the Floo network would eventually need to be connected, and it wasn't long before the flames formed into the ageing face that Jon knew all too well.

Dumbledore's face appeared in the fireplace, and he looked ahead, his voice still as gentle as ever.

"To be able to see this retaining shadow, then I guess I really have initiated the final plan, Jon."

Hearing him sound like that, Jon didn't know why, but his heart sank slightly as he felt that something wasn't quite right with Dumbledore's tone.

"As we first had a long talk in my office after Horace had left from the wagon, the truth is that Voldemort himself wasn't scary, what was really scary was that we never did figure out what exactly happened to him or what he discovered that ended up making such a huge change."

"At first I guessed that one of his divided souls that had been made into a Horcrux gained a more primary consciousness, which made it possible for 'it/him' to complete himself, absorbing all the remnants of his soul and separating himself from the main one. But apparently, every trace proves that this idea of mine was wrong, and the changes that occurred in Voldemort were clearly much more complex than that."

"It was also right after you brought back that diary from Azkaban that I got to thinking on a deeper level. I reviewed the entirety of Voldemort's initial appearance and fight with me, as well as his behaviour at the time and his bragging about this power he had gained, and it was easy to see that the source of this great power stemmed from the strength of his soul."

"According to what I thought before, the reason why his soul has been strengthened in such a way would be rightfully attributed to the reclaiming of the fragments in those Horcruxes, thus giving him such magical power. But again, after you brought the Slytherin portrait back from the North Pole, it was only from talking to him that I learnt that the magic to retrieve the remnants of the souls in the Horcruxes was given to Voldemort by him and that the magic itself didn't have the effect of empowering the soul, as it was originally something that was his."

"From that time I also understood that Voldemort's real purpose of retrieving those remnant souls was really just to find his emotions and sanity that he had once lost. And what really made him stronger was actually something else, but if things were really like that, there are two selves in Voldemort right now, the one that didn't regain his sanity is obviously the original him, and the scheming, cunning and treacherous one is obviously the one that managed to retrieve the Horcruxes, the one that came later. The reason they became so strong later on was purely because a new soul superimposed an old one to produce such an effect."

"This brings us to a more perplexing question; according to Slytherin, one can only retrieve their own soul. It is only possible to fuse back together a soul that has been split originally, again, only if it is one's own. And yet that newly emerged Voldemort can do the same, which means that the two Voldemort are exactly the same, yet not a split of an entity, but how in the world, can two people be exactly the same in every possible way?"

In the fireplace, Dumbledore's face paused as he uttered the question, the office was quiet as both Jon and Slughorn pondered the question, even Jon had always thought before that it was Voldemort's soul that had caused the problem, but in reality, the soul can represent an individual in and of itself.

Two identical souls represented the appearance of two identical individuals, and this world had seen the appearance of two identical Voldemort at the start, and it was only later on because one of them had fused with the split Horcruxes, and the other had not, that such a difference had been created between them.

After figuring this out, Jon suddenly saw the time-turner that was continuously losing sand downwards, and a chilling thought suddenly rose in his heart!

"At first, I couldn't figure this out no matter how I thought about it, until after the end of the Triwizard Tournament, I learnt about the British Department of Mysteries, where all those time-turners suddenly and inexplicably lost their functions more than ten years ago, which made me come up with very bold speculation, and so to prove this idea I began to look for all sorts of evidence that could support it. This included determining when this time-turner completely lost its effect, finding out about a secret that once upon a time Voldemort stayed in the Department of Mysteries for a long period of time, as well as those golden sands brought to us by Severus later on, and now that strange time-turner you found in the secret room in the Time Room."

"Time, a thing that couldn't be more marvellous, and which could truly allow two identical exact replicas to exist in a world at the same time. There was even a time when the Ministry of Magic imposed extensive restrictions on the time-turners to prevent such a situation from occurring, as there has always been a rumour that has been widely circulated since the time-turners were first made, and that is that the person who goes back to the past mustn't meet up with their past selves or do anything to change the past, or else extremely horrific consequences will occur. "

"And are we, by any chance, suffering such consequences on behalf of Voldemort?"

Jon froze, and Slughorn's mouth dropped open!

Yes, there could only be one possibility for two completely identical people to exist in this world, he had reversed time, used a time-turner to send himself back to a past where he had already had a version of himself, and then altered that history so that the future version of himself wouldn't be in the same situation that he had been in when he had used the time-turner, and then two identical people came into existence in this world which could no longer be considered to be the same world as the original version!

This was even more of a shock to Jon because Jon knew exactly what the original version of this world would have been like!

Dumbledore would have never been defeated, Voldemort would never have been some great gentleman, and the string of stories that happened after that was created around a boy named Harry Potter.

And just as Jon was digesting this striking information, Dumbledore's voice continued.

"The thought of it terrified and excited me, terrified because time was being played around with in a way that had never been documented before, and excited because I finally might have figured out the real reason for the existence of two Voldemort living side by side. But then there was a nearly unsolvable dilemma before me, one that I have also talked to you about privately, Jon, if the Voldemort who came to this world by using a time-turner patched up his soul using the Horcruxes of the original Voldemort of this timeline, then, by what means he maintained his youth and immortality all this time?"

As the question came out of Dumbledore's mouth, Jon instantly felt like a bolt of lightning had exploded in his mind.

Having already guessed that this new Voldemort had appeared using a time-turner, the answer to that question couldn't have been any more easier to guess.

And so, Jon's murmur was almost right up alongside Dumbledore's voice.

"The Voldemort who used the time-turner, he's still using the Horcruxes to maintain his immortality, only that Horcruxes that maintains his immortality is in another world where he no longer exists!"

Slughorn pulled his hair together, his eyes widening like two eggs as he turned his head to look at Jon and then back to Dumbledore like he too had guessed the consequences if this was indeed how things were going to turn out.

Not to mention that the time-turner was broken, even if it was intact it couldn't possibly take someone to another parallel world where there was already a deviation point in time, and if the root cause of Voldemort's immortality now originated from the same world that he had once been in, then that would mean that they could never find those Horcruxes that belonged to him, and that would mean that they would never be able to kill him!

Chills ran through Jon's body, and he had already thought of this terrible consequence as well.

A Voldemort who had sanity and ambition, who was cunning and insidious, who was unprecedentedly powerful and could never be killed?

"That's almost a future we can't even think about or face."

There was disappointment and sadness in Dumbledore's calm voice.

"I don't want this speculation to be true, and neither do Gellert, or Slytherin, or Dilys, or any of them. But it's already here, and we can't be afraid to face it just because we don't want it to be true, so we need to prove first if this is just as true as I think it is."

"Thus, I began today's attempt. That time-turner you guys found is most likely the ticket that brought Voldemort who doesn't belong in this world here, and the link between him and the other world's Horcruxes is relying on it. As long as I can kill him once and verify that he can be resurrected and the source of that resurrection is from this time-turner or not, I will be able to prove all the things in the speculation."

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