Auden took out the image of the map in his system and marked the recorded places where the time turners have been found.
He only found four in total within the map.
'All four of these locations are some of the most secure magical places in the world. But the fact that they are so few is really suspicious. If they are so few, they cannot account for the numerous time turners within the Ministry.
And if the time turners are few in number, the Ministry will not take the risk of sharing them so that a student can participate in all the classes at the same time. Even the politics of the purebloods would have stood in the way of Hermione getting a time turner. So that means that either the information he got from the public sources is wrong and they were found in various other places in large amounts, or maybe these places did have time turners in them and they were already secure compared to the other places they found time turners from, so it was safe to reveal it to the public.'
A lot of things were causing confusion in Auden's mind. With all the information he saved in the system, he found out that there were many explicit records about the usage of time turners.
One of the most absolute rules is that they cannot change the past. But the actions by Harry and Hermione have shown that the past can be changed as long as the people changing the past do not affect their own past selves' memories.
The original timeline Golden Trio had not seen the execution by the Ministry directly and had only heard the sound. So when Harry and Hermione saved Buckbeak, the executioner had chopped a pumpkin, creating the same sound. This, in a way, did not interfere with the timeline of the Golden Trio.
So the past can be changed as long as they do not interfere with the future or their own memories. This is one of the loopholes of changing the past.
'And more importantly, the prequel that must never be mentioned.'
Auden remembered through reels he had seen about a prequel that was supposed to be released but had a lot of problems because of how horribly it was written.
The story was going to be about the next generation of the Potterverse, which also included the daughter of Voldemort, who manipulates Harry's child to change time itself.
In that story, there was an existence of a time turner modified by Hermione, capable of bypassing the drawbacks and restrictions of the first time turner.
With it, the user can turn back time in any manner and change any sort of history he sees fit without any problems. And the user will be the only one who has knowledge about the changed timeline.
It was a highly overpowered object, but since it was a spinoff, Auden is not worried about it for now, but even then, there is a chance it might come true.
'For now, I need to send a letter to Amelia to get information about the time turners. The chances of her having access to those files are very high.'
After that, he went to bed to start the next day.
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The next day, Auden saw that the castle's overall atmosphere was not at all pleasant as he had imagined it to be.
Niklaus gave him a nod, but seemed to be too tired to even start a conversation right now.
The combined threat of the dementors and Sirius was eating up the happiness out of every student right now. It seems like when he was absent yesterday, someone spread out the rumour that the dementors attack those who are happier. So the students were trying their best to look not cheerful at all.
Even Malfoy was not mocking Harry for fainting during the train ride.
Overall, the mood was extremely down.
But during breakfast, Dumbledore gave assurance that Hogwarts students are completely safe from the Dementors as long as they stayed in the castle grounds. This actually managed to calm everyone down as the students slowly started to cheer up a bit.
Auden knew this was because there were no problems last year. Unlike the terror caused by the basilisk in the canon timeline, Lockhart only managed to capture one or two kids to make himself famous.
Dumbledore is still the undisputed strongest wizard in the whole world. So his guarantee was more than enough for a couple of students to feel that everything was alright.
Within half a day, the castle went back to how it was before.
Auden watched as the students went about their day without any sort of worries at all.
"I wouldn't deny that Dumbledore is exceptional. His abilities put him at the top of the wizarding world in the current era. Even if he was present in the ancient era, he would have been comparable to our younger selves," Salazar commented as he was hiding behind a wall near Auden.
"But I cannot also deny the fact that he was one of the reasons because of which the current wizarding world is not moving forward. The strongest wizard of the generation is supposed to guide the fate and direction of the wizarding world itself. But because Dumbledore never felt like interfering with the wizarding world, the entire wizarding community took it as an approval for continuing on their already existing path without any improvisation.
The way the students immediately changed their tune is an example. Instead of finding ways by which they can make themselves safe, one word from Dumbledore was more than enough for them to forget about their problems as if they had magically disappeared the moment he said so.
My boy, make sure the world in the future does not end up like this," Salazar warned with a slightly dissatisfied tone.
Auden looked around and could not deny that Salazar was right. This kind of mentality is what led to the denizens of the original timeline disregarding the warnings of Voldemort's return. They would rather enjoy the illusory peace rather than face the truth head-on.
A/N- Hope you like it.