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She'd done this before. Why couldn't she do it again?

This spell was less complicated than the one Star Swirl the Bearded had left unfinished, for Twilight Sparkle to fix it. The spell she was rewriting now was not a task from Princess Celestia. She had made the decision on her own. She was only trying to fix the spell sending a pony back in time, to make it last longer. It could prove useful in some kind of emergency. Twilight, as a princess, now had easy access to the documents of the Canterlot Archives, including the secure Star Swirl the Bearded wing, and it was no trouble retrieving the instructions for this time traveling spell. But it was way more complicated than she expected, and even after a week she'd only had half of it figured out.

But Twilight was getting somewhere. If her calculations were correct, she was now able to stay in the past for at least three minutes longer than the original spell had allowed. She worried that extending the time length too much would endanger whoever was performing the spell somehow. She knew better than anypony else that magic worked in strange ways. She could end up stuck in some alternate dimension, or stay in the past for much longer than she intended. She could somehow add to the spell so somepony would be able to travel back to the present if they needed to, but she would have to extend the time limit for that to actually have a real point. She'd come up with that idea not long after she returned to Golden Oaks Library late that night with the document, but in the past week she'd been focused on extending the time limit.

She felt somewhat guilty for it. Every day Twilight's friends would check in on her. Twilight had taken a few breaks to spend some time with them, since it would feel wrong if she chose the spell over her friends, but when at home, if not eating or sleeping she was always working on the spell. She'd told her friends what she was doing, of course--they could've easily found out within a week anyway--and a few of them were worried about it.

"A spell like that could easily go wrong if tampered with," Rarity had pointed out.

"I'm not tampering with it," Twilight had argued. "I'm revising it. Extending the time limit in the spell will be useful in certain cases."

"Are you really sure you wanna mess with time?" Applejack asked.

"Yeah, what if you end up rising the dead or something?" Rainbow Dash added.

Twilight sighed. "I'm dedicating all of my time away from you guys to perfecting it so it can't go wrong. I'll test it. Several times."

"We just don't want you to get hurt." Fluttershy had had a firmer voice than usual. It was odd; Twilight knew Fluttershy had concern for her friends' safety, but she'd never stricken her as the overprotective type.

"You were a teensy bit singed when you did the spell last time," Pinkie Pie had reasoned, as if she knew what Twilight was wondering. "We all know that. I mean, what would it do if you changed it?"

After a bit more arguing, Twilight had realized that it was getting late and she had to get back to the library.

In the present, Twilight then realized that she could probably test the spell and be able to stay in the past for about three minutes, before returning against her will. Just then, Spike entered the library. He was holding a book, which was good news; Twilight had sent him to fetch an overdue book from Sweetie Belle.

"Hi, Spike," she greeted him, looking up from the parchment. "Did she say why she hadn't returned it?"

Spike shook his head. "I didn't ask." As he walked over to the appropriate shelf, he asked, "How's the spell going?"

"I was just about to test it," Twilight replied.

"Right now? Are you sure?" Although Spike had been much more enthusiastic about Twilight's project than her other friends, he did not completely lack concern for her safety.

Twilight nodded. "If my calculations are correct, I should be back in the present in about three minutes."

Spike backed up against the wall and nodded in response, probably trying to stay at a safe distance. Twilight glanced at the spell, memorizing it again before closing her eyes and focusing her magical energy.

She had to know when and where, and put all of her focus onto that. Or at least, that's how the spell was supposed to work. She felt the wind around her and sensed the blinding white glow. She began to feel a bit lighter in weight before she she felt all of her senses become null, for a short period of time. She felt the ground again pretty soon. It felt as if she was lying on solid rubble.

But that couldn't be right. Twilight had traveled one week in the past, at midnight, on her balcony. She should be feeling a wooden floor.

Unless the spell went wrong.