“Yeah,” Ron said as he took in the circular entrance chamber, not spinning this time. “You still got those brains?”

“Classified,” Croaker responded, the old man turning away from Ron and crossing to one of the doors. “I called you here for very specific business. Your friend Potter should have come as well, but they said he was-”

“Overseas,” Ron finished. “Yeah, he’s tracking down ex-Death Eaters in Argentina. Whole bunch of them fled after Y- er, Voldemort died.”

“Better that than the alternative, my boy,” Croaker said, leading Ron into another room. It was large and rectangular, full of broken clockwork devices. In the center was a chair with what looked like broken hourglasses melted into it. Croaker continued past it towards a seemingly solid wall.

“Alternative?” Ron asked.

“Voldemort never dying at all,” Croaker said dramatically. He tapped his wand to the wall and muttered under his breath. “Our only strength is purity, and our only power is heritage. Our only weakness is dilution, and our only enemies are mudbloods.” The wall dissolved, revealing a doorway into an unlit chamber.

“What was that?” Ron asked.

“A passage from The Teachings of Lord Slytherin,” Croaker responded, leading Ron into the dark room. “Almost certainly apocryphal, written three hundred years after Slytherin’s death and bearing little resemblance to his distinctive literary voice. Still popular in fringe blood-purity circles for tying their beliefs to such an esteemed figure. The Death Eaters used quotes from it to identify themselves, and their agents in the Ministry built loads of hidden rooms keyed to reciting passages from it. It’s been five years since Shacklebolt took over and we just found this one yesterday. That’s why we called you in.”

The room, once illuminated, was a grim sight. In the center were two large glass pods, both with shattered holes in the front. Pooling underneath them was a puddle of an acrid-smelling blood-red potion. Tubes dangled within the pods, leaking out other potions in various colors. Against one wall was a low table on which many books had been stacked, alongside parchment bearing crude drawings of… those were people, right?

“What happened here?” Ron asked.

Croaker sighed. “When Thicknesse took over, Unspeakables stopped studying love, space, thought, death, or any of our other priorities. The new, mostly ex-Death Eater corps of Unspeakables worked at two things: rebuilding the time turners and creating homuncuposts.”

“Homuncu-whats?”

“Doppelgangers, clones, they have many names. Homuncuposts are grown from a target’s hair at an accelerated rate of two years for every one that passes normally. They resemble their donor in physical appearance, but are unable to feel empathy for anyone other than another homuncupost. They don’t use magic like we do, but they have power nevertheless. House-elf blood is a key component in that potion that’s spilled out.”

Ron took a step back.

“In this case,” Croaker continued, “Voldemort needed a propaganda win. He ordered the creation of Homuncuposts of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, so they could publicly surrender and endorse Thicknesse’s Ministry before submitting to the Dementor’s Kiss. Homuncuposts believe anything they’re told as they grow in their pods, so he had the Unspeakables teach them a nonsense version of history where Dumbledore was the real monster and Voldemort was right about everything.”

“I’m sorry,” Ron said, “you’re saying they made evil twins of Harry and Hermione? Why not me?”

“They thought you were home sick with spattergroit,” Croaker explained. “Don’t worry, you’re mentioned in here.” He picked up one of the books off the table. “Let’s see… ‘Dumbledore’s most loyal band of lackies are the Weasley family. These blood-traitors pretended to be your friends but were really dosing you with love potion and receiving regular payouts from Dumbledore. As greedy as they are stupid, the most despicable of the lot are Ronald and Ginevra Weasley.’”

“That’s mental!” Ron replied.

“Not the sanest bunch, Death Eaters,” Croaker responded.

“Okay,” Ron reasoned, “but why’d you call me here? These things are bloody weird, but how does it invoke the Aurors?”

“Ah,” Croaker said. “Well, as I said, we found this room yesterday. The homuncuposts were in their tanks, and looked to be about eleven. This is very obscure Dark Magic, so I, uh, may have thought they were actual children the Death Eaters had locked up and broke the pods open. They ran out immediately into the other room.”

He lead Ron out of the secret chamber and into the room full of clockwork. He showed Ron the chair in the center of the room. “This was the Thicknesse Unspeakables’ best attempt at remaking a time turner. It lacks all the protections of our old ones, and it’s one-way. You sit in this chair, input a place and time into the armrest here, see, and it sends you back in time.”

“And they ran right up to it?” Ron asked, somehow knowing what was coming.

“Yes, climbed into the seat and activated it.” He showed Ron the inscription on the armrest: King’s Cross Station, 09:30, 01-09-1991. “They’re somewhere in the past right now. Who knows what damage such crazed beings, with such fundamental misunderstandings of our reality, could do to the timeline?”

“That’s why you need an Auror,” Ron concluded.

“Indeed,” Croaker said gravely. “My boy, I do not ask this of you lightly. You’ll be stuck in the past for twelve years if you follow them, and while people don’t physically age while time-turning -your girlfriend isn’t three years older than she should be, is she?- it will still be a great commitment. Go into the past, find the Homuncuposts, and disable them.”

“Just ‘disable’?” Ron asked. “I shouldn’t kill them?”

“My boy, imagine you were born in a tube, your only companions another stunted newborn and teachers who stood at the edge of your vision, whispering unprovable but indisputable facts about a world you’d never seen into your ears. Do not hate these creatures, whatever they may do. Pity them,” Croaker instructed.

“I’m gonna need to talk to Hermione, and my folks, and probably send Harry an owl,” Ron said, “but then I’ll do it.”

The next day he returned to the Department of Mysteries, settled into the clockwork chair, and felt Croaker tap it with his wand. Then the world spun around him, and Ron knew he was going back to the past. Time to fix someone’s attempt to fix the mistakes.

-------------

Honestly a glorified prologue for a longer idea I had. Basically, versions of Harry and Hermione who believe the fanon version of reality do battle with the canonical world. It took a lot of effort to think of homuncuposts as a justification, but I’m pleased with this prologue.