Chapter Text
Prologue: In for a penny, in for a pound
Hermione Granger sneaked quietly through one of Hogwarts’ hallways, with her back against the polished stone wall and her wand lifted. Her hair was up in a dishevelled ponytail, and she was wearing a dirty and torn tunic. When she reached an imperceptible wall junction, she whispered the password.
"Christmas Pudding."
Immediately, from between the slabs of stone appeared a stone gargoyle that gave way to a spiral staircase. Hermione jumped nimbly to the first step and the axis of the stairs started moving, taking her to the Hogwarts’ Headmaster’s Office and shutting the stone wall on itself until there was no sign that could suggest there was a secret door there.
Hermione sat down on one of the steps and hugged her knees, resting her forehead on them. When the stairs finished the ascent, she would have stayed there forever if a pair of arms hadn’t brought her to her feet and held her against another body, visibly relieved to see her.
"Hermione! Thank God…"
The girl didn’t return the hug, at first. She pulled apart a little from the other person and looked into their eyes. Those eyes were looking at her interrogatively, but she didn’t want to answer the silent question they were asking. Those were some undoubtedly sad eyes, eyes that had seen many friends die, both in the first and second war. A pair of eyes tired of death and loneliness, but still capable to defiantly stare at any Death Eater.
"Have you found her?" Remus knew beforehand the answer Hermione was going to give him. The girl nodded her head and burst into tears, clinging to the werewolf with the desperation of those who no longer have anything to fight for.
A long time later, Hermione and Lupin rested lying on the carpet in the Headmaster’s Office, one of the few ones that hadn’t burned in the fire caused by the Death Eaters. Part of the school had been consumed by the fire, and others had gone down because of the explosions and spells during battle. But the office that had once belonged to Dumbledore remained there, untouched as if the late Headmaster’s soul watched over his belongings.
Both Aurors laid face up, very close, but not embracing. Lupin had his eyes closed, while Hermione stared unblinkingly at the ceiling as if reliving in her mind the scenes she had just seen.
"Don’t torture yourself more, Hermione… just leave it." begged Remus.
She moved on her side and rose slightly, resting on her elbow to look at him head-on. He stayed where he was, his eyes still closed.
"Tonks was the last one, Remus, only the two of us remain from all the Order’s members… we have to decide what we’re going to do." she told him, with a clear determination in her voice.
Lupin rose and mirrored her posture. The woman in front of him had little to do with the brilliant young lady he had taught in her Third Year; that was a child, still, with her front teeth bigger than normal and her impossible hair, rounded features and a child’s body. But the Hermione that was staring at him was 25, had perfect teeth and pronounced dark circles that framed a pair of brown eyes that exuded pain. She had seen Harry die two years ago, during the last battle against Voldemort. She had fought against him and screamed like a lioness when Bill and Ron held her by the arms and dragged her with them to the Portkey that took them back to Grimmauld Place, while Harry’s dead body laid at the feet of the Dark Lord. Hermione had never forgiven the Weasley brothers for not letting her die there, with him, throwing spells at Voldemort until an Avada Kedavra struck her in the heart. From then on, while those who resisted against the Death Eaters advance fell one after the other, Hermione’s eyes became colder and expressionless, more insensitive to pain.
She saw Ron, Neville and Luna fall all during the same ambush. Mrs Weasley had died at a surprise attack to the Burrow, defending Ginny and Fred, both recovering from the wounds caused by another attack, and who were killed after her. Mr Weasley had lasted almost until the end, but the last attack at Hogwarts had finished him and what was left of the teaching staff: Flitwick and McGonagall. Dumbledore had died long before Harry, and Hagrid, incapable of overcoming the pain of his absence, had practically committed suicide by throwing himself into a solitary attack.
"We have the temporary Time-Turner, Remus. Everything is lost. It’s now or never because, sooner or later, they’ll find us."
The werewolf sat down on the floor, his palms resting on his semi-flexed knees. He sighed deeply and prepared himself to try and convince Hermione to not do that.
A few years ago, a new model of Time-Turner had been created, and Hermione had been part of the team that had designed it. It was far more potent than the traditional one because it allowed going up to several years back and to the place one desired, and it spontaneously returned to the present. The magical energy it consumed was so big that you could only stay a very limited time in the past, for about an hour, before it automatically remitted the user to the day and time of the start point. Hermione had used it once, just once, to prove it. She had gone back to her childhood and seen herself playing at some park, with her mother, when she was six and didn’t know she was a witch yet. The emotional impact had been huge, and when she came back, she found herself in a bed at St Mungo’s. She had been unconscious for days.
Hermione’s plan was to go back to the past and prevent one of the events that might have precipitated the loss of the war, Harry’s death. But Lupin, who dragged with him a heavier load than hers, was panicked that changing the past could modify the future to the worst: as he said, jumping from the frying pan into the fire. The Death Eaters’ cruelty was limitless and, as Lupin said, preventing James and Lily’s death could, for example, set the hopes of the Wizarding World into Neville’s hands as the boy-who-lived and, despite the sincere affection the werewolf had felt towards the boy, he didn’t trust in his power as a wizard. Concentration camps, tortures… everything could change for the worst. But Hermione didn’t think that the reality was susceptible to worsen.
"Hermione… if you go back in time, Harry could die when he was one year old… Is that what you want?"
The witch shuddered. She kneeled next to her former teacher and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Remus… we’re going to die."
The werewolf stared at her, fixedly.
"But we could watch those we love… loved, suffer more…"
She smiled sweetly at him.
"Then, you tell me what I should do. Let’s look for a moment in history we can change, a moment that isn’t so far back that things would change excessively. We have little time, a couple of hours until they find us, maybe. And when they do, they won’t keep us alive for long."
Remus rubbed his eyes. She was right, partly, because they really had little to lose. But… which moment should they choose? What could she do to prevent one of the events that could unleash defeat? She could meet with Harry before the final battle against Voldemort, but nothing would change by being able to talk to him because the last Horcrux was never found. Preventing the death of Ron, the Weasleys, Arthur, Dumbledore… he ran his fingers through his hair, still brown but growing more grey, and shared his doubts with her.
Hermione seemed pensive and frustrated because she too couldn’t think of a way to avoid any of those moments, before she raised her eyebrows, put a hand on her mouth and smiled.
"I got it…" she muttered.
Lupin looked doubtful.
"Listen, Remus, that’s it… we don’t lose anything… How it didn’t occur to me before?" she jumped up and began to walk feverishly through the room, showing signs of such enthusiasm that her partner thought that, after all, she hadn’t been able to avoid the madness. She seemed to be thinking rapidly, as if she was tying up all possible loose ends, and kneeled back next to Lupin, taking one of his hands in hers. She looked at him in the eye, with the feverish expression of an insane person.
"Remus, I’m going to go to Grimmauld Place to warn Sirius not to believe Kreacher. It’s simple: I just have to prevent him to go with you to the Ministry of Magic, make him stay hidden at the house until the Order comes to save us. Remus, it’s about preventing Sirius’ death…"
Crouching beside the chimney of Grimmauld Place, Hermione shrank back on herself to recover from the time travel. She was breathing hard, exhausted, and it took her a couple of minutes to return to the usual respiratory rate. She didn’t have time, she kept repeating herself, she didn’t have time to lose.
When she managed to get up, she noticed something pressing against her nape. Something blunt, hard and small: the tip of a wand.
"I don’t know who you are or how you managed to get here, but I would suggest turning around slowly and not doing anything foolish, or you will end up flying away to the opposite wall."
Hermione turned around, very slowly, and looked at the man she had in front of her, and who was looking at her with obvious distrust while pointing at her neck with the wand. Her heart skipped a beat: here he was again, alive, safe and well fed. She felt so overwhelmed by the memories that she couldn’t keep her eyes from flooding with tears.
"Sirius, I know you won’t believe this, but I come from the future to warn you of something. Please, before you do anything, listen to me."
Sirius pushed a strand of hair away from his face and got closer to her. His eyes almost popped out of their sockets.
"It can’t be…" he muttered "Hermione…?"
Sitting at the kitchen table, Sirius finished listening to Hermione’s entire story, which she synthesized admirably to tell him everything that was important in the shortest time possible. He didn’t have any reason not to believe her. She knew things that only the real Hermione would know, and besides that, it was her: it was her face, her eyes, her mouth… only ten years older. The story was credible, too; it was enough to look her in the eyes to understand the atrocities she had seen and the suffering she had endured.
"Don’t go, Sirius, don’t go to the Ministry today… Bellatrix’s going to kill you, and Harry will be devastated. Neither Remus nor I know how this could affect the future, but Harry doesn’t deserve to be left alone again."
He looked into her eyes, smiling slightly.
"So the old Moony is the only survivor, huh? Old flea-bitten wolf… And on top of that, him and Nymphadora… He should be ashamed, that cradle robber…"
Hermione couldn’t help but smile. She no longer remembered Sirius’ endearing humour, and listening to it again seemed like a dream. It hurt to give him the news.
"Tonks died, too, probably yesterday."
Sirius sighed. For some strange reason, it all seemed like overwhelming logic. Maybe it was because of that strange Hermione he had in front of him. Hermione had always impressed him a little, a girl so responsible and mature, who sometimes looked at him with a reproachful expression when he tried to trick Harry into doing something too risky. He told her, and she laughed out loud. It had been years since she laughed like that.
"I can’t believe the great Sirius Black is afraid of a fifteen-year-old school girl…" she teased him, wiping the tears out of her eyes.
"I’m not afraid at all." he pointed out, very dignified. "It’s just that as a teenager you looked like a small version of McGonagall…"
She thought that the situation seemed surreal: both of them there, drinking Butterbeer while, at some point in the future, their friends died one after the other. She felt so good there, talking with him, that she thought that in a few minutes she’d be going back to the future and everything could still be the same, and she could find herself in Dumbledore’s chambers, with Remus by her side, and Tonks’ cold body in the Great Hall, and she started to cry. Sirius understood perfectly well what she was feeling, and approached her, made her stand and hugged her warmly.
"Calm, Hermione, do not worry about anything." He whispered in her ear. "I don’t have any intention of letting Voldemort have grilled Sirius Black for dinner." He gently stroked her hair, strangely united to her by the painful past they shared. "When this is over, I’ll explain to Remus and Dumbledore what you’ve told me, and we’ll decide what we’re going to do with all this information."
She moved away a few inches and looked at him, smiling with relief. As she brought her lips to the ex-con’s cheek, her body started to vanish, until the body Sirius was hugging disappeared completely from the kitchen, leaving behind only the warmth of its presence.
Sirius picked up from the floor the red woollen tie that had held Hermione’s hair before the hug and smiled. He put it in his pocket because, in the end, no one ever knows how useful a hair tie that has come to us from the future can be.