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Author's Chapter Notes:
Less than week after I joined MTT, I posted my first story, tomorrow to be exact but with the weight of tomorrow's event I decided to get Chapter 2 up tonight.

Thanks to all who have come along for this journey so far and the excitement you've shown for it. It's about to get a lot more complicated (and hopefully interesting too).

“What’s that you have there?”

Michael’s eyed danced from the aerosol spray that after three persistent pushes managed to sputter out a faint mist, to her opposite hand where a hint of tarnished gold peeked out from between her fingers.

---

While Jim had been gone, Pam kept up her part, carrying on about being behind on her work, and her desire to relive the day, all for the benefit of Dwight who to her delight, was still humming the Harry Potter movie theme.

When he returned, an hour and a half later, he proceeded immediately to her desk, not even stopping to hang up his coat, effusive in his excitement to unveil his find with her.

The ear-to-ear smile he had on his face said it all. He’d been successful in his quest and it would soon be time to put part two of their prank into play.

From out of his messenger bag, he retrieved the prize, cupping it like a baby bird and placing it gently into her hands.

As he hunched behind her and watched her eager fingers fumble to open the tiny box, Michael was making his way out again.

“How many times is this today?” Jim asked as she pulled the trinket from its encasement, nodding her head in glee as she did.

The beam in her emerald eyes vanished when she looked up to notice her boss, replaced by the exasperation that often was painted on her face when Michael was driving her crazy.

“Don’t ask. I lost track a long time ago. I think I used the whole can of air freshener and he’s still complaining.”

Offering Jim a duty calls glance, she dolefully got up as Michael got halfway out, paused, and summoned her with his finger.

“I need another spritz.”

With her free hand she grabbed the aerosol can that was perched on the upper portion of the desk and stepped around it to follow him back. However, with her annoyance at the interruption and her disappointment to have to part from Jim’s company, she hadn’t realized her other hand was still wrapped around the bauble when she followed Michael into his office for the umpteenth time that day.

---

“Oh this, it’s nothing.”

The key to a successful prank, she was well aware, was that Michael didn’t know anything about it. Between his inability to keep anything to himself and his blatant idiocy, she could not let him in on their plan or let him know the existence of the item she accidently took into the room with her.

She tried to conceal it in her small hand but the long chain proved too much to keep hidden and it spilled out from between her fingers. As she attempted to pull it back up, the whole contraption fell from her grasp and onto the floor.

They both bent down to pick it up, Michael close to sneering as his hand brushed the terrible carpet again, as if the minimal contact would leave him with severe and painful rug burns.  But even with his apprehension of touching the tainted ground, Michael’s reflexes were swifter, his hours of practicing sleight of hand magic tricks giving him the advantage and he beat her by milliseconds to where it had fallen.

His action seemed at first to be one of courtesy. His intention in grabbing the necklace end and flipping it gracefully back into his hands was to return it to her, but once in his grasp he deemed it warranted inspection first, especially after he noticed her urgency to retrieve it herself.

Eyeing it curiously as he brought it up to get a better look, his scowl slowly faded as happy realization washed over his face.

“Pam, is this what I think it is?”

She was caught. He knew what it was and that was not a good thing, not if they were going to have a chance to pull off the caper they had planned. After all the effort that went into setting it up what a huge let down it would be if they could no longer make it work. Oh, and how disappointed Jim would be. She hated to be one to mess it up.

Maybe, just this time, she could let Michael in on it. It was a risk, but she could kill two birds here, distract Michael from his carpet and save the prank at once.

“Um, ahh well yeah, but Michael it’s just a…”

Creased eyelids flickered at the corners as he studied it attentively, reading the inscription that was engraved on the rings.

“I mark the hours, every one,”

He turned the outer piece as he continued, “Nor have I yet outrun the Sun…it is, isn’t it?”

Pam looked back to her desk to see Jim had retreated to his own.  Facing away from her he could not see Michael had discovered the purchase that Dwight was meant to find.

“This is a Time Turner? You did it Pam. I knew I could count on you to fix my carpet problem. So, are you a witch or do you just know one?”

“Neither Michael, it’s just something Jim picked up.”

His eyes widened even more.

“Jim’s a wizard?”

Pam sighed. It was like talking to an eight-year-old, which seemed appropriate as it was the age these kinds of collectibles were made for.

“No Michael. It’s not real, he bought it at Barnes and Noble. It’s pretend.”

But Michael wasn’t listening. He was already far away in thought, most likely trying to work out an idea in his head. She could tell by the creases forming above his nose and the intensity that caused his eyes to cross in determined concentration.

It could have been him thinking back on all the years Jim had been working there, straining to remember times he might have done something mysterious or wizard-like. More likely he was playing the last Harry Potter movie over in his head to try to recall how the magic device he believed he was holding worked.

She determined it was the latter when his brow smoothed and he returned his focus to the item, questioning her as he turned it over in his hands.

“So, what do you do? You put the chain over your head and then twist the hourglass in the middle and you go back, right?”

Pam was tired. It was already after five. She wanted to catch Jim, who was likely getting ready to go again. The prank she knew would hold until Monday, but they would have to start from scratch setting it up. It was surely too late for it now but if she got away from Michael, she could at least work out some new details with him to put into effect first thing next week.

He must have been super-excited about this one that he’d even come back at all today. It was so close to quitting time when he returned from the call, anyone else would have just gone straight home to get a head start on the weekend.

She also knew Roy would be annoyed at waiting on her too long. At this point, he was probably sitting in his truck, stewing in the lot, his anger growing with each minute he had to wait.

“Michael, you know it’s not actually going to work, right. You’re not really going to go back in time, no matter how many times you spin it.”

She didn’t have time or the energy for Michael’s nonsense tonight. After all he annoyed her with today, she was anxious for the day to be over too. Following their romantic getaway, she had Roy in a place where he agreed to do a little wedding planning each night. The night before, however, he’d bailed on discussing anything to do with venues or menus as he had promised. With all the heavy lifting, he said he was too tired to do anything but have a beer and watch TV. She had to wonder what he did in the warehouse every day if having to lay carpet with Darryl yesterday was that much more strenuous than his regular job of hauling pallets and loading boxes.

He promised her time tonight; that they could go home before hitting Poor Richard’s, a stray from the usual Friday night routine. The plan was to have a quick dinner slash wedding planning session before he would head back out to the bar. He didn’t seem to be bothered that she was going to stay behind, but then again, she wasn’t either. If anything, she was happy to skip a Friday night at the local tavern, even if it was to catch up on the laundry from their trip and do some more wedding stuff on her own.

Every minute she was stuck with her boss cut into the time before she would lose Roy to the boys and brews, a window that was getting smaller by the second.  She knew arriving home late would slice her opportunity in half and she had wanted to discuss venue options tonight. That was looking less and less likely. In fact, the longer she had to stay and deal with Michael, the more likely they’d revert to the normal routine, dinner would be wings and beer and he’d bring up the idea again to hold the reception right there in the bar.

Pam stepped to the window to see if she could catch sight of Roy’s truck idling in front. There it was, right up by the main doors. The smoke billowing from the tailpipe seemed darker and more pronounced than usual as if it were the manifestation of his anger that she still hadn’t made it down at a quarter past five. From her angle she could just about make out the scowl on his face as he gripped the wheel.

“So Pam-trotter, you want to come with me? It will be fun.”

He walked over closer to Pam. With her focus on the parking lot, she didn’t notice as he slipped up behind her, feline-like in his quiet approach. It wasn’t until he fit the chain over the both of them, his breath hot on her neck he was so close, that she knew he was there. She whipped around when she felt it and found herself head-on with him, aghast at being mere inches from his face and as she tried to remove herself, her hair got tangled in the links and she was stuck, to him and the costume jewelry that hung around them both.

Michael didn’t seem to notice as he mumbled to himself.

“Let’s see, Packer must have slipped in Wednesday night. What do I do tell this thing how far back I need to go?”

Pam was more than irritated now. She wanted to go home and here she was playing games with Michael. However, she had so much experience with her man-child boss she knew it was better to go along, knowing he would not give up easily. Best to give him directions, let him try and when nothing happened, she could untangle herself and make her escape.

“No, Michael, as I remember you twist the hourglass in the center for as many minutes as you want to go back.”

Hours was what she meant, but in her frustration her words got confused. She realized her mistake as Michael began to spin the hourglass wildly, twisting it repeatedly, over and over again, until just like in the fantastical movie the piece in the middle seemed to start moving on its own as if on a motorized mechanism, rotating faster and faster while Michael kept flicking it more and more.

She wanted to yell at him to stop, it was going too fast, they would go back too far but she quickly realized her panic was unnecessary.

The fact was irrelevant because they did not live in the world that JK Rowling created and what he had in his hands was a toy.

As she looked down at the charm orbiting on its axis that spun in his hands, she started feeling dizzy. Looking up at Michael who remained stationary in place next to her helped to ground her for a moment, until she glanced past him at the blur of motion going on around them, what she imagined could have been people moving in triple time but she couldn’t quite tell since all the figures had a Gaussian distortion that made them seem more like wisps of colors and shapes than human beings. 

She felt as if she were airborne. Her feet seemed to lift from off the surface of the office floor. The solid ground of the carpet felt a million miles away from the soles of her kitten-heeled pumps.

She blinked rapidly in an attempt to clear the vertiginous sensation but it did little to improve her unsteadiness, perhaps even worsened it. The blurred view was still an explosion of images and memories that sped by in a blur of light, traveling past her now in supersonic speed, causing her mind to spin like a zoetrope’s center. She tried once more to turn her eyes towards Michael, wondering if he was experiencing the same sensation of zooming through time.

Unable to see anything but the whirring of lights, the streaks and ripples left in their wake near blinding in their intensity, she squeezed her eyes shut to stop the vertigo and keep herself upright. She kept them closed tight, waiting for the lightheadedness to pass and the motion to end, but vibrant hues still danced by behind her sealed eyelids.

After a minute more the circular motion slowed and the colors faded back to more muted tones. Tentatively she opened her eyes again to learn the room had stopped spinning and her feet were once again planted on the carpet.

What was that?

Her rational mind grasped for an explanation for the bizarre sensation she just went through. Logic told her she’d fainted or had a seizure brought on from the chemical fumes of Michael’s new flooring. Maybe he had been right to complain all day. But she was standing upright, she hadn’t fallen and Michael was also vertical right next to her, and still way too close, with his eyes squeezed shut.

She turned to look out the window. The truck was gone. Had he left without her?

No, he wouldn’t do that. Or would he? She wouldn’t put it past him to take off and leave her to find her own way home. Still, he’d never done that before, left her stranded, no matter how late she was. Well, not since their first date at the hockey game, but that was a mistake and ages ago…

And he did leave her at the last Dundies, but that was because she refused to go with him…

… and the night she stayed behind for the table read and fireworks show, but that was at her insistence it was a work thing keeping her, even though she was sure he didn’t believe a word of it.

As she mulled over whether he had done it again, she realized it was no longer dark outside. In fact, the sun was bright in the sky and the parking lot was filled with the cars of her co-workers.

What the hell was going on?

She looked around the sunlit office and then down to her legs where streaks of daylight flooding through the blinds painted lines across the shins of her tights, giving her limbs a striped pattern that reminded her of the Wizard of Oz and the costume worn by the deceased witch Dorothy landed on.

“Michael. Open your eyes.”

Pam spoke calmly but decisively despite her own disorientation. Confusion still had a hold on her mind but since she was not yet ready to believe anything but a common-sense rationalization, she wanted Michael to weigh in with his observations. There had to be some reasonable cause for the change in the sky or the fact that her watch hands had shifted so drastically, the smaller no longer hovering between the four and five but firmly set on the eleven.

“Is it over? That was awful. I thought I was going to vomit.”

So, he had the sensation too. That ruled out some anything medical on her part. Maybe this was hallucinogenic, the fumes causing them to trip out.

“Me too. So you got dizzy also?”

Dizzy was an understatement but she wanted to play down what just happened to keep Michael from going into complete panic. However, for Michael, he seemed rather composed in the aftermath of whatever it was they both experienced.

Now that her stomach had settled and her balance returned, she felt sound enough again to take a step back from him before remembering that her hair was twisted up in the necklace that was wrapped around them both. Turning her attention to what was keeping her connected to her boss, she untangled the strands of hair, leaving a few of them behind in the chain and lifted the Time Turner from around their necks.

Free now to move away from him she took a step backward and then towards the chairs by the door, eager to sit down. But she stopped before she got there to look down at her wrist again.

“Tell me Michael, what does your watch say?”

He looked down at the timepiece and blinked a few times before he answered.

“Eleven. Damn it. We didn’t go back far enough. I swore I’d spun that hourglass enough.”

From the confused look in his eyes, she could tell he was trying to calculate how many spins would have been required to get them back far enough. It was as if he believed the item she just removed from around their necks contained actual magic.

“You don’t really believe we time travelled?”

Before he could answer she noticed the carpet below her feet. Apparently, just at the same instant he did.

“Of course, I do,” he said as his eyes lit up in joyful exuberance. “Guess I turned it enough after all. Look my old carpet is back.”

He took a deep breath in.

“Ahhh, pizza and popcorn. Wow, I’m starving. Time traveling really makes you hungry.”

Lightheaded once again after seeing the old flooring, she rushed to the chairs to sit down. She lowered herself to the seat and peeked out the blinds to the bullpen, half expecting to see Jim snickering. She was unsure how he managed this prank and a little surprised that she was the victim instead of Dwight, but was ready to congratulate him on his best one yet and was eager to ask how he pulled it off.

But Jim wasn’t at his desk. No one was. Only a few minutes had passed since she’d come in to the office. On Fridays the bullpen cleared out fast, but that fast and all at once? She turned back to Michael who was still inhaling with gusto, waving the scent up into his nostrils with an absolute goofy grin on his face.

“Michael, time travel isn’t possible. Something else is happening here. We must be dreaming.”

But she was beginning to see there was little other explanation. The impossibility of it was becoming debatable with all the tangible evidence in front of her.

She stepped hard onto her foot with the heel of her other in a last attempt to wake herself up if she was in fact dreaming, but all it got her was a hole in her tights and a searing pain she instantly regretted causing.

She had no other rationalization now. What seemed like science fiction was the only thing that made sense. Had she been told she would one day have to accept something Dwight insisted was possible, despite its being as preposterous as he often could be, she’d have scoffed and protested that there was no chance of it ever.

However, just as she thought she’d could ever feel compassion for him, but then worried about him when he drove into a pole and wound up concussed, she was finding herself once again reversing her stance when it came to him.

Knowing him as well as she did, in normal times was exasperating but here could prove helpful as she tried to remember all the things he’d said about the rules when altering the time continuum. However, it was her knowledge from Harry Potter and Hermione she would most need to rely on now because it looked like she would finally have to accept it.

She and Michael had traveled back in time.

Chapter End Notes:

It's been a great year for me here at MTT - thanks again to my fans and friends.

Sidenote:

Another thing happened around the time I first posted - a little warrior was born - Happy Birthday Warrior Junior. 


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