Chapter Text
I. THE GARDEN
“... and to Miss Hermione Granger, I bequeath a time turner. Use it wisely”
Hermione straightens from her position on the couch, wedged between Ron’s lanky frame and Harry’s slouching figure. Her knees knock against theirs with the sudden movement, and they all stare at the Minister with no small amount of surprise.
“But Minister,” she begins slowly, “I thought they were all destroyed during the Ministry break-in. I – we were all there.” She gestures at the three of them, trying not to flush with guilt.
Rufus Scrimgeour gives them a resigned and acrimonious smile. “I’m only the executor of his will, my dear, I don’t confess to knowing any of Dumbledore’s secrets. I’ve tried, but to this day, he remains every bit the enigma to the Ministry.” He sighs. “Rest assured, this turner is fully his to give and I am legally obligated to surrender it to your possession no matter my reservations against the fact.”
Beside her, Harry bristles.
Scrimgeour releases another exhausted exhale. “It was one of the Ministry’s a few decades ago. The first batch of time turners, in fact. But it was taken out of circulation and the remaining inventory was permanently destroyed after the succeeding fiasco that ensued. And, of course, to prevent any from landing into the hands of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”
He shakes his head as if to clear away unpleasant memories.
“In all things, there must be a balance, and Time…” he drifts off at this, eyes glazing over as they wander over to the window, gazing at something only he can see. A few heartbeats later however, as if suddenly remembering where he was, his focus snaps back to the three objects of his visit. “Time,” he continues more firmly, clearing his throat, “is a dangerous, finicky thing. It is the most delicate spectrum of them all; even a single minute, a single element out of place, can disrupt the order of the world as we know it. Humans aren’t made to meddle with the infinite. ”
He stands up then, dusting invisible crumbs from his robes, and hands Hermione a silky black drawstring pouch.
She tugs hesitantly at its strings and upturns the contents onto her palm. With a dainty clink, a glimmering silver necklace slides out, along with a tiny slip of rolled-up parchment.
“Minister,” she calls out, looking up with a question already poised on her tongue.
Halfway through the door, Scrimgeour turns. “Yes, Miss Granger?”
“What was so special about that first batch of time turners? I was allowed access to one in third year you see, and –”
“What was dangerous about them, Miss Granger,” he interrupts, his tone curt, “was that they could bring any witch or wizard as far back or as far forward as over half a century.”
Hermione blinks in stunned silence.
Once the Minister leaves, she resumes her perusal of her newly-acquired time turner. It’s curiously different from the one she had been entrusted with back in third year, made of silver instead of gold, the pendant itself bigger and heavier. Upon closer inspection, she notices runes peppered all over the hourglass, etched upon its surface so thinly, as if by a needle. The sand is less desert or beach sand than it is pulverized moonstone, luminous in the midday sun.
She slips the time turner back into its pouch and unfurls the slip of parchment. There, in Dumbledore’s neat handwriting, lies the imperative:
Five and a half turns counterclockwise. Just in case.
Everything is going too fast and this was not supposed to happen, this was not supposed to happen; they were supposed to win; they did everything right —
But Draco was gone; Harry’s body had hit the ground, not stirring, and Ron had dashed forward, hand slipping from her hold. There was a triumphant roar and an electrifying green and it was all over, a chasm had opened up beneath her feet and had swallowed her whole; her throat was burning and her ears were ringing and Neville was shaking her shoulders, yelling at her to go, Hermione, go —
She bolts, stumbling over corpses and debris, vision obstructed with ash and tears. All around her, bodies were dropping like fleas, people she had known for years, people she had laughed with, and still she dared not stop, dared not think, dared not look.
She ducks behind a jagged shard of a wall blackened with soot, pulls out the silver chain concealed beneath her shirt, wills her hands to stop fucking shaking, and turns the hourglass counterclockwise to five and a half revolutions.
The world moves around her in dizzying, lightning-fast streaks of color and muted sound. It is nauseating, vastly different from her two hour jumps back and forth through time at thirteen.
She squeezes her eyes shut and lets herself sag to the ground, feeling her very cells vibrating, rearranging themselves in a futile effort to make sense of her body being hurtled through decade after decade.
Finally, just when she thought she was seconds away from being atomized, her body settles and her eyes fly open.
She gasps, wheezing, her bearings aflutter, senses assaulted by the violent clash of the birdsong and bright sunlight where she finds herself amidst, against the screams and smoky horizon from where she had just departed.
She was home.
She was home in a time when the people who had made it so were yet to be born.
She wrangles her memories into submission, storing them into tidy little boxes and filing them into the immaculate shelves of her mind as only a natural Occlumens can.
She goes to Dumbledore and surprisingly, the logistics of it all fall neatly into place. However, she knows he is different here; she has read his correspondences with Grindelwald and is privy to their intricately complicated dynamic. She errs on the side of caution and decides on a partial disclosure.
Warm food and fresh robes and a handful of memory charms later, she is reintroduced to Hogwarts.
In the illusory safety of Armando Dippet’s office, the Sorting Hat falls onto her head and calls out Slytherin.
The pang of loss and betrayal is resounding but she refuses to linger, grounds herself to the reality that she will, in fact, have to use every ounce of cunning in her body from this point onwards. After all, she had asked to be put in Slytherin and had requested Dippet to put her in Tom Riddle’s class.
(In the evenings she will let herself grieve, will permit herself to die alongside those whose fates she seeks to prevent. But in the mornings, she will think of the living. She will think of the futures she must protect and will continue to play the long, solitary game.)
The next day, Dippet and Slughorn introduce her to their famed Slytherin prefect.
Hermione feels sick.
Sixteen-year old Tom Riddle is tall, lithe, and disarmingly handsome. His face is a study in angles and bone structure; his hair, perfectly coiffed black waves.
Her stomach churns with a deep sense of wrongness. It shouldn’t be possible that all that blood should spill from this boy who looked like an avenging angel made bone and sinew. Harry has told her about young Riddle of course, but she still finds herself incredibly unnerved.
She decides that she much prefers the red eyes and the gaunt, bone-white face. Will have the portrait of evil as an enemy any day over this… teenaged Lucifer.
“Tom,” he introduces himself, holding his hand out and giving her a courteous smile.
She steels her spine, fights the bile rising in her throat, and takes his outstretched hand. “Hermione,” she returns.
It is September 1, 1942.
In 9 months, Myrtle Warren will become Lord Voldemort’s first victim, and the boy standing before her will tear off a portion of his soul and trap it within the confines of parchment and leather.
Hermione gives him a reciprocal smile, baring a flash of her teeth as their hands clasp.
He won’t know what hit him.