the_debt_of_time

especially with the promises he had made in the throes of passion to finish a few things
previously left unattended.
Mia took a nice, relaxing bath, and then wand-dried her hair—marvelling at the fact
that it was nearly the length of Pandora's—thrilled that somehow she had been able to
tame the frizz over the years. Securing the mane of honey-brown locks to the side with a
loose plait, she slipped into a pair of dark green hot pants and threw on Sirius's old
Quidditch jersey while she searched for something dressier in their shared closet.
Once she had found a slender, black dress and set it down on the bed, Mia reached
into her old Hogwarts trunk in search of the silhouette earrings that Sirius had given her
years ago for Christmas. It had been a long time since she had worn them, and she recalled
putting them away in a jewellery box before leaving Hogwarts.
Finding the small wooden box, despite the Notice-Me-Not Charm she had placed
on it, Mia waved her wand to remove the Locking Charm and opened it in search of her
earrings. What she found instead was the old Time-Turner. She pushed it aside casually,
wondering if she had placed the earrings beneath it.
As she moved the hourglass aside, she blinked at the sight of the sand.
Moving sand.
Mia did a double take as she lifted the Time-Turner out of the box by the long
golden chain it was secured to. That's not possible, she thought as she noticed that instead of
the blue grains of sand being frozen in place at the top of the hourglass, nearly all of the
sand was flowing freely at the bottom.
Pulling the object closer for inspection, Mia tipped it upside down only to see that
the blue sand remained unaffected by gravity. She observed closely, carefully, as she
watched one very tiny grain of sand fall through the centre of the hourglass.
"What's the rate?" she asked herself in a frantic whisper, rushing to the side of the
bed where Sirius kept an old pocket watch that her father had given him for his seventeenth
birthday. Clicking the watch open, she stared at the hourglass in her hand and timed the
sand.
"No," she said on a panicked breath minutes later. "On the minute. Why on the
minute?" She stood and paced around the room in a panic, Time-Turner clutched tightly
in hand. "Why did it start? When did it start? What's it counting down to? Fuck!"