Author's Note: This is thanks to all the writers who write good AU Harry Potter stories out there, because if I haven't been reading some of them, the inspiration wouldn't have burned so much. I had to write it all down before it drove me nuts and I couldn't even concentrate on the paper I actually have to write. I wrote this in a day. I edited it in another day. Any weirdness in style can probably be attributed to that. Many thanks to Seablue Eyes who gave me valuable insight as to whether the story was pressing all the right buttons or not, and for reminding me that I have the weird habit of not putting periods when a sentence ends with a quotation mark. Well. Everyone has weaknesses. Onwards!
Reviews are very much appreciated, as usual. Not to mention it might give me an idea if there are anything interesting I could use for the next installment. If any.
Disclaimer: If it were mine, the books will not go the way they did. I'm not getting anything from writing but the lulz.
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To Wrought A Hundred Change
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Prologue
"For wars will end, but as long as men's hearts stay the same, they will begin again."
'-
Present Day, London
The war had ended.
They were in the house of Lord-something-or-other, the party going in full swing. Hermione took a nice spot at the corner of the room where she could just lean on the wall and pretend to be drinking her champagne. The key word here is pretend. The accumulated echo of all yesterdays' headache was not completely gone from her head, and even if the noise wasn't as bad at the edges compared to the middle, they strummed her migraine with the dedication of a heavy metal guitarist. There were endless cheers and champagne and firewhisky, and this was the sixth party they attended this week. If she had to warn Harry or Ron or Neville to keep away from the alcohol one more time, she wasn't even going to use her wand to do it. She'd take this pretty little handbag Ginny had lulled her into buying, use it to whack their heads and knock them out.
There was a laughing Susan Bones near the table with the canapés, where she was paying court to the attention of at least three guys at once. Hermione had no envy for her at all. The first celebratory party thrown for them was great way to blow steam, to rejoice with friends. The second still had the novelty aspect going for it. By the third party Hermione belatedly remembered that she preferred reading in a library than to attend most social occasions. She had also only remembered again at the fourth party that she did not find three quarters of the joke told to her by all these people she didn't know but who kept trying to get close to her to even be remotely funny. She kept count because she was so very bored. She would rather have talked with Daphne Greengrass or even Draco Malfoy—which, considering the slight awkwardness that was still between them sometimes, that was quite telling. Pretending to be polite had gotten old really fast on the third bloke whose groin she'd had to introduce to her knee.
Just because the party wasn't fun anymore didn't mean she didn't have any entertainment though. Watching Luna confound one interviewer after another was worth the stomach pains laughing out loud cost her (there was a cut to her side that wasn't exactly healed). Seeing Neville stood with an easy confidence she couldn't imagine five years earlier made her smile in a different way. After her headache receded and there seem to be more people on the floor than standing, she couldn't help but think about the dirty floor and smashed bottles and stacked plates. She couldn't help but think of the people (or elves. Can't ever forget the house elves) who would have to clean the place after everyone else went away.
It was exactly like the Wizarding World, actually.
The Dark Lord is dead—but what now? Magical injustice and inequality won't fix themselves just because Voldemort is gone. The majority of the seats at the Wizengamot are hereditary, and a big chunk of that is held by the traditionalist and blood purists. If they have to work together again to change the system, she would take it without a second thought. Hermione Granger had never backed down from a good cause.
Hermione raised the champagne flute to the first house elf she saw, who gave a watery smile back even if he (or she) was confused. A toast to a kindred spirit.
Hermione might not always know what to do in a party, but she knew cleaning up and tidying up more than anyone.
'-
The war had ended three months ago.
Diagon Alley had started to return to its former crowd levels and if Harry wasn't so glad normalcy had come around, he might feel the buzz bordering on intrusive. It was lunchtime already, and Fortescue's had almost always been full at this time that people would have to book a seat beforehand—unless one happened to be Harry Potter or his friends. They knew the proprietor well enough to know the hard-headed old man wasn't going to rescind the offer just because they won't ever use it, so these days it was usually Harry or Hermione who took that offer up most of the time. Sometimes Hermione saw Daphne, Luna or maybe Neville when he's running to London. Anyone else was rarely around though.
The ones from the old crowd who worked in Diagon Alley and stayed around for a while was usually just Harry and Hermione. Ron had been in the Cannons for some time, Neville was taking his Mastery in Herbology and the others didn't seem to work anywhere around there. From afar, Harry could see the storm brewing across his friend's face, even if it lessened slightly as she ordered her ice cream. When she came to his table, her expression was as dark as before.
"Did you see what's on the Prophet this morning? They're not repealing the discriminatory laws against werewolves yet," she said as she sat down across him. "I can't believe the Wizengamot!"
"Good afternoon Unspeakable Hermione." Harry said from his ice cream, his best smile on his face. Her anger deflated a little and managed a smile at him. The old DA crowd had passed the trial period in their new jobs faster than most other people. Currently, it was obvious to anyone who went to Hogwarts with them that Hermione was still very proud of how she could put Unspeakable in front of her name.
"Good afternoon Auror Harry. How are things going?"
"The skirmishes are to be expected." He said with a wave of his hand. He didn't want to think about Voldemort's crumbling rearguard that was still around. He didn't want to muse too much about how the general security wasn't perfect yet, no matter what the Ministry would like to think. Maybe when he's back in his office, planning for the next move. "What do you actually work on?"
"Classified."
Hermione's grin told him that she had been waiting for ages for someone to ask her that just so she could gave her that one line. "Just kidding! I haven't worked on anything much yet, just resorting and reorganizing the old division projects. We have to make sure no one's doing the same thing that someone had done years ago, but the filing and database system sucks."
Harry rolled his eyes. "So your problem with the laws on werewolves is a hobby?"
Hermione had a deep, faraway look on her face, a clear sign she was considering a vexing problem. "I know it's not really my business, but nobody seemed to actually do anything about it yet. If we're not the ones to start something, could we expect other people to?"
Harry glanced at the article, just to refresh his memory.
"Well, most of the annoying laws are gone, actually, these are only the last few ones, and they do make a good point. The Wizengamot states reasons of security to explain the restriction for werewolves' employment, and I could see their point if there's no guarantee the werewolves involved have secure containment area and procedure for when they change."
Hermione shook her head.
"There may be security reasons, but they're not final at all. The government could help the registered werewolves in creating change-rooms and making sure the existing ones are up to standard. They could also help with social workers checking around known werewolves' addresses around full moon to make sure they actually have someone to help them get into the change-rooms as well as having access to wolfsbane potion."
"Ah, but that's the task of the Department of Magical Creature Regulation and not the Wizengamot."
Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed.
"So we can't do anything about it?"
"We could try having lunch with the Minister about it." Harry said. "But then again, I'd rather I run away from him first before getting trapped into an impromptu press conference. It takes rather careful planning to be able to talk to him and not get dragged into politics in the process."
Hermione's ice cream arrived. The raspberry and snazzleberry swirls distracted her for a moment, but the tension poised at the corner of her lips were still there. Waiting. It was perpetually there and perhaps the lines re-etch themselves every time she read the newspaper. Her eyes, Harry thought, probably looked exactly like his right now. Old and jaded.
"What good are we as heroes if we can't make a difference?" she asked her bowl of ice cream.
This time, it was his turn to take a deep breath.
"I don't know, Hermione. I don't know."
'-
Hermione used a time-turner to attend Cambridge at the same time that she worked as an Unspeakable. Most of the few friends that knew about it thought she was nuts. Harry wasn't quite aware of what her major was. Once she started asking to meet him in obscure bookstores in muggle London with a picture of a snake over and speak certain phrases or sentences in Parseltongue, his curiosity was piqued.
"What's this for?" he asked, just after she pressed the stop recording button on her laptop. Her quill had finished writing down his words in written Parseltongue.
"I'm taking some linguistic classes as my minor. If Parseltongue is learnable, then breaking it down to find its grammar and actually teaching it to people would lessen the dark-wizard/witch stigma that seems to be attached to it."
"Is it really worth it?" Harry asked, curious at her dedication. "It would take up a lot of your time, you know."
She set her parchment aside and leaned back on her seat, her eyes flashing. If she had been in class, he half-expected her to push things away from her table.
"For goodness sake, Harry, we fought and won against Voldemort, and many wizards and witches still flinch if they happen to hear you speak just another sodding foreign language."
He smiled and said the only thing in his mind. "I've stopped caring about it a long time ago."
"But it still doesn't make what they do as right. I don't want to imagine that generations from us, some other poor kids with the unexpected talent are going to be shunned by their peers or supported into being another dark leader. Honestly, the superstition about it beggars belief. If I had my way, I would like Parseltongue to be an available elective in Hogwarts and I'd teach all the houses."
The colour was still high on her cheeks, and Harry knew Hermione was nowhere near half done yet. It feels... odd, in a good way, to have someone actually take offence about how he was treated. It felt like a family he never had, and that was true, in a way. His Hogwarts friends were his family. He grinned.
"If you do that, I don't mind being the co-teacher." Harry said. He snapped his fingers a moment later when he remembered something else. "Maybe you could ask Luna."
"Why Luna?"
"Oh, I don't know," he said, a picture of nonchalance. "Maybe because she studied extensively on advanced Ancient Runes under Herbert Bernstein. She would've gotten her Mastery in it soon enough if she wasn't as insistent on being the shadow editor to the Quibbler at the same time. Who did you think wrote all those rune puzzles in the magazine? She did that even when we were still in Hogwarts."
She blinked, processing it in her mind, and Harry silently counted to three. His expectations weren't wrong in the least.
"Harry, you're a genius! I'm not aware of all the variations in ancient rune, and there's a possibility that one of them had been developed by a parselmouth. If Luna knew many rune variations, then she could explore that possibility. We only have to find out if there are any that are close in form or structure to the written Parseltongue. If we could establish similarities, we could also start deciphering written Parseltongue..."
Harry let her words drift over and out as he leaned back and relax. No, he didn't really see the minute details as far as Hermione did, but it was always nice to be able to help, no matter how little.
'-
It was Fortescue's at lunch time again, sometime later after the winter had released its biting hold over the city. Another week or two, and it would be the six month mark to the end of the war.
Harry had just only gotten used to the regular schedule of his office again after being on the field for one dark artefact raid after another. Hermione was gripping the Daily Prophet in her hands until it creased—never a good sign. There were three of them there, with Luna being the third, and no matter that the place was called an ice cream parlour, they had ordered anything but ice cream. Harry was watching the way Hermione's jaw muscle clenched and waited for her outburst with a morbid fascination (he had rarely been required to actively talk to her at those times, usually she only needed to vent to a sympathetic listener).
"Did you know that merpeople are classified as beasts?" Hermione folded her crinkled newspaper and tossed it aside.
"It's not unexpected, considering that the centaurs won't even stay in the same category as 'humans'," Luna offered. "Maybe the merfolk might consider it an insult too. A variant of the word 'human' in Gobbledygook is certainly an insult when aimed at another goblin."
Harry laughed. Hermione's grudgingly allowed a smile to grow on her face. Considering that Fudge wasn't exactly a sterling example of humanity, Luna had a good point. Hermione expression told him that she was far from done, but her tone was calmer when she spoke up again.
"But I hardly think they would want to be in the same category as kneazles, crups and jarveys, especially if they'd be affected by the same blanket laws. Maybe we need a third category, the Magical People."
"If you ever manage to do that Hermione, I'd be the first person in line to ask to for a category change." Harry said. Hermione gave him a look while Luna was nodding away and saying that she wouldn't mind that so much either.
"I'm serious here, Harry..."
Harry gave her a grim smile as he turned the newspaper around and tapped his finger over an article. It said that the London society thinks the Boy-Who-Vanquished as being too unsocial, as he had yet to attend any parties or large gatherings within the last half a year. Another one was wondering loudly about his mental health, whether society could afford to let him run free. Again. Hermione's face went from pale to crimson in a heartbeat. He was sure her knuckles were white underneath the table as she held back her indignation.
"Why did you think I wasn't?" His voice was as neutral as a mask.
'-
"Could you teach me Occlumency, Harry?" Hermione asked him once. Her immediate superior had pointed out that she needed to master it before she was allowed to take on more secretive and sensitive artefacts and projects, and she chafed under the restriction.
"I think we've tried that and it didn't quite work... not that you can't do it or anything, mind you, but I think our approaches are very different. I like keeping defence walls, while your research habits make you feel more natural in sharing things than keeping them in."
Hermione glared at him and Harry backed away with a worried look. "I'm not saying you couldn't do it! Really, Luna doesn't even keep a wall and I know I wouldn't ever want to try to attack her mind. Her defence is of a wide open type too, I think you could learn better from her."
"She keeps no walls? But I read on Bartleby's Principles of Occlumency that your wall visualization must be of the most solid and impenetrable object you know, and—"
"Please, Hermione, I wouldn't know." Harry sat back and relaxed again. "I apprenticed directly under a friend of Moody's. I know how it feels, and how it worked in my case, but if you ask me the theory, it's just going to go straight out of my ear. Luna could do it. Trust me and go ask her. I asked her to let me attack once, just to see if I could do it, and I don't think I ever want to do it again. Ever."
"What do you see?"
He shuddered. "Abnormal geometry. There were rooms after rooms connected by a flower, a teapot or even a deranged house elf. There's no reason and only pure whim. The connections shift all the time too. Then, there are corridors out of time. Floors should definitely not be able to be tiled with heptagons, dammit."
'-
Harry had habitually left home before the crack of dawn. He had varied his schedule and route, just to reduce predictability, but always before the sun was up. His reaction made more sense that way to other people. He couldn't help scanning his surroundings every time he got out of the house and carefully eyeing every pedestrian within range, but no one would think twice about it if he did it in the dark.
This morning was no different.
At least he thought it would be until he heard the faintest rustle outside the fence. He blinked. His mind clicked and identified an ambush. Someone would be waiting for him to walk out. Harry charmed his footsteps into silence and ran to the other end of the front yard. He sent a jelly-legs curse, full body bind, as well as a healing spell he bastardized according to Lockhart's last application of it and removed the bones of the wizard's right hand. There wasn't the slightest pause from the moment he finished the last curse to the second he kicked the man away and held him down with one knee. Harry's movements had been automatic and precise, his mind cold calm and his hand steady. It was only when he had finished scouting the area for more ambushers, possibly unseen that Harry saw the prone and scared man on the ground and saw him for who he was—a reporter, not a Death Eater.
He sighed and helped the man up. He reckoned that he'd better floo St. Mungo right now and make sure the man received his dose of Skele-Gro.
"Is there any reason why you didn't notice why the DMLE decreed that my dwellings are off-limits? You could've been caught in the crossfire of someone looking for vengeance."
Harry did not mention how the personnel reports mentioned something about his hair-trigger combat reflexes he had yet to tune down. He had already done his best to make sure that report was always at the bottom of the pile in his current superior's desk. Considering how awfully hectic these days are, he wouldn't be surprised if his report hadn't seen the light of day since then.
It was just the way he liked it.
'-
"The mouse is tasssty."
"The mouse is the tassstiest meal I've tassted."
Hermione's focus had always been laser-guided when she was seriously studying something and she could block almost any distraction thrown her way. Luna's casual indifference to almost everything around her when she had her distraction was legendary even in the Ravenclaw towers. Therefore, it really shouldn't surprise Harry that both of them decided it was perfectly sensible to practice Parseltongue in broad daylight, on Saturday, in Fortescue's, but he stopped and stared anyway. Neither of them looked like they had noticed the way the tables and chairs around them were empty in a no-man's-land perimeter.
Harry tried to smile at the few worried people looking in his way, and decided to maybe drop the act altogether when it only made the other people to shrink away from him in fear. Oh, honestly... he rolled his eyes as he sat down on the table. Even with the empty space around him, he still felt claustrophobic. Well, he had idea what to do about that.
"Have you ever eaten sushi, Luna?"
Luna and Hermione looked up from their practice; Luna with her usual mild curiosity and Hermione with the annoyed look she always had when disturbed from her studies. Both of them smiled when they saw him and greeted him without delay.
"What's with your sudden interest in it?" Hermione asked.
"Just looking for a change of place. I feel like getting away from the wizarding world for a while." Harry didn't have to say anything more before both of his friends noticed the distance the people around them kept. It barely affected Luna, as usual, but the line of Hermione's shoulders turned tense.
It wasn't a surprise that everyone thought it was a good idea.
'-
When Hermione next asked Harry to borrow his invisibility cloak, he could guess that it would be for one of her rather mysterious researches. So he told her that he could only lend it to her on one working day because he needed it most of the time. He carried a lesser invisibility cloak or two he had found in the Potter family vault with him instead and a newly created Marauder's Map of the Ministry of Magic—he had asked Remus for his and Sirius' notes about how to make the map, no matter how incomplete. Hermione would have been proud if she knew the results of the NEWT-level charms notes that she lent him.
Harry had only made a show of going away to an unobtrusive nook. He used the invisibility cloaks over himself there and returned back to her office to painstakingly observe what she was doing.
A potion with a hazy smell bubbled in the air, and that had taken all morning until it was done. What he thought was a small glass table on the corner of the room turned out to be a mirror supported flat on its back. It was only noticeable once Hermione dragged it all the way to the centre of the room, next to the cauldron. There was an hourglass the size of a teacup on her table. She covered herself with the invisibility cloak and drank the potion (her floating hand was still visible). Next came she waved an extensive wandwork he had never seen before, and after that Hermione turned the hourglass on the table.
Then she disappeared. The arm that was previously hanging out of the invisibility cloak had stopped being there anymore, instead of gradually slipping into the cloak. Harry groaned, borrowed Hermione's time turner to make up for his lost time and went back to his office.
'-
"You both seemed to have gotten the hang of Parseltongue well," Harry said. The background noise of Diagon Alley faded away as he entered the silencing charm that both Hermione and Luna had always constructed around themselves lately.
Hermione nodded. "Pretty well, yes."
Luna was shifting through her notes and adding her own annotations on them and Harry watched a line identical to what she was scribbling surfacing on the Gryffindor girl's parchment. The 'true copy' spell on both papers ensured that whatever Hermione wrote in hers would come up in Luna's and whatever Luna wrote would be visible in Hermione's.
The bushy-haired young woman had a proud smile on her face. "After this we can hold conversations. I think if we manage to teach you the grammar and some vocabulary, you would be able to consciously speak Parseltongue without having to face a snake first."
"So... what have you been working on in the office?" Harry asked, "Or is that classified?"
"You're an Auror; I think an answer without many details is acceptable. I'm making a mirror that can scry into the past." Hermione said, "It doesn't go too far, a year or two at most, and balancing the exact time frame is hard, but I'm sure it would be invaluable to see past events."
Luna's didn't even glance at Hermione when she explained this and continued to try to conjugate in Parseltongue.
'-
It was only on Harry's second attempt of sneaking at Hermione that he remembered the mirror in her office. This time, he didn't go back directly and peered into the mirror.
He was staring straight at the last battle with Voldemort.
Harry sighed and walked away. His curiosity was more than satisfied for now and he certainly did not need a reminder of how some of his more recent nightmares went.
'-
The next time Hermione borrowed his invisibility cloak again, he didn't even give her a time limit and just told her that she could return it to him when she was done.
"I'd rather have you come back in one piece than have the cloak back without you." he had honestly said. She was a bit embarrassed that he thought she'd be that careless, but Harry only said that he'd had enough of having his friends and acquaintances end up as dead people. The flatness of his tone and the deadweight in his gaze convinced her that he was serious, and he shook his head when she tried to say again that she'd be fine. He really didn't feel anything he could ever hear would amount to anything much if he would never saw Hermione again.
What he saw in the scrying mirror was his second year in Hogwarts. At this point, Harry had concluded that somehow, Hermione had managed to go beyond the time-frame limitation that she told him about earlier. As far as she seemed to be able to stay safe and out of trouble all this time, something was nagging him at the back of his head.
Why? Why was she doing this?
'-
"Did you know that orphaned muggleborn wizards are usually left to stay in their original orphanage in and out of Hogwarts? The wizarding world doesn't even have one single orphanage to their name" Hermione said on one of their mutual dinners together.
"Children from wizarding families are expected to be raised by relatives." Luna added.
"Yes, but it's not fair for the orphans that they couldn't practice magic at all during summer, while children from wizarding families can still do it once or twice as long as their guardians watch over them. Not to mention that the Ministry didn't seem to even personally check the conditions in each orphanage one by one." Hermione conveniently left out the fact that she had been rechecking Tom Riddle's background from the memory that Harry contributed to her pensieve. There was nothing right about Lord Voldemort's actions, but the wizarding world's system still left a lot to be desired too. She could understand some of his reasons, somehow.
"I've always used my wand all summer." Luna commented, to which Harry gave her a rather jealous look.
"Precisely! While Hermione and I couldn't do that."
"So, why isn't there at least one wizarding orphanage?" Hermione went back to her topic. There goes the tenacity she was always famous for when she had an objective to aim for. "I mean, it could also double as a safe place for children from muggle background to practice their magic outside their home."
"Because no one cared enough for the orphaned muggleborns?"
Luna's offhand remark earned long silent looks from both Harry and Hermione. She gestured with a fork on one hand; the prawn speared on its end wobbled a little as she made her point.
"Well, it is quite obvious, isn't it? The magical guardian for children of muggle backgrounds and orphans without known magical relatives defaults to either the headmaster of Hogwarts or a member of the Wizengamot. There is no mention of the child's preference."
"WHAT?"
Hermione looked quite livid, Luna was nodding along as she tried to remember other bits and pieces that might be interesting to talk about, while Harry wished that he could duck under the table should Hermione's temper finally blew.
'-
It was a little over a year after the end of the war.
"Harry?"
Harry pulled his attention away from the papers he had to file and saw Hermione entering his office with her Unspeakable cloak on her. "Yes?"
"Did you fight the Basilisk in the second year with another student?"
"What? No! I mean, it was just me."
She nodded, as if that was the answer she had been expecting all this time anyway. But if she knew it already, why ask? What had she seen?
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing." she said softly, almost soft enough to drop at the edge of his hearing.
"Hermione."
She sighed. "I've just found out that fine tuning the time aspect isn't the only thing I have to worry about when I make the potion. Now it turns out that there's another aspect whose inaccuracy could threaten the worth of my work; a certain locality related complication."
"Let me help you. I'm not that bad at potions." Harry said. He had walked away from his desk without even realizing it. "Besides, as long as we're still in the UK and around the right time, just apparating to the targeted location isn't too difficult, right?"
She shook her head, but didn't stop her lips from curling into a smile. "You have an outstanding in your potions' NEWTS, Harry, I think you've earned the right to call yourself more than 'not that bad' at potions."
He shrugged, not really seeing a problem about it.
"Still, you have your own work to do, and I have mine. I'd hate to impose too much on you. I think I'll check it again and see if I've managed to fix it this time."
Hermione had walked out of the room even before he could even say that there was no way she was imposing. Hermione Granger had always, always carried her weight in any academic partnership she was involved in. It was then that he noticed she hadn't answered or addressed his last question at all.
Besides, as long as we're still in the UK and around the right time, just apparating to the targeted location isn't too difficult, right?
Was it so hard to say 'yes' to that, or was the answer something she didn't want to tell him at all?
'-
"The motion to forward the bill to modify the law on magical guardianship didn't get to pass the Wizengamot." Hermione said with a groan. She carelessly bit another high-sodium-content French fry. She was definitely annoyed enough to not care about it at the moment.
Harry had helped her in trying to build an argument for it, and he didn't know why Ginny had only given him and Hermione a tired smile last Christmas at the Burrow. Ginny had steered clear of their conversation and Luna's occasional commentary. It's not as if the cause was as far out of most wizarding folk's comprehension as house elves, and there was a tiny bit of Harry that was disappointed about it too. Does it mean that not many would care the kind of home he went to in the summer if he hadn't been the Boy-Who-Lived? He wasn't even sure that he bought Dumbledore's blood ward argument completely—certainly not beyond fourth year and after Voldemort gained immunity to his blood. It had been a rather anticlimactic Christmas; Bill and Charlie had emergencies to tend to and had to leave soon and Harry followed not long after them, not caring that it was late already. Now, they were in an unremarkable 24-hour fast food place in muggle London.
Harry sighed. To tell the truth, he had half-expected it, unlike Hermione, but he didn't have the heart to say so earlier. Not when even Neville did his best to make sure the Longbottoms were behind them.
"It's an annoyance, but not completely out of the blue. It's not as if we've personally talked to each of the other members too."
"I'm sorry, guys." Neville added, before Harry and Hermione rushed in at almost the same time to tell him that he had helped them more than anyone else and he had nothing to apologize about. Out of all of them, he had the most pronounced tan from travelling to different places in search of rare plants.
"The project to make a third 'magical people' category hasn't gone far either." Luna said, eyeing her fish burger curiously. "Maybe we need to make a campaign for it, something like 'Harry Potter wants to be in a third category, support the magical people now!'"
"Maybe they don't want to change for, I don't know, until another hundred years has passed?" Harry couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice. He tried not to think too much about it and focus on the warmth of Luna's hand patting his arm. Hermione stilled in her chair. If his ears weren't half as good, he wouldn't have caught her words.
"Maybe we have to change the root of the matter, to go back farther."
When he returned his attention to Hermione, she had somehow drifted into a conversation with Luna on how wizarding Britain had moved too late during Grindelwald's rise, and paid a hefty price for it. Neville hadn't given any other comment while Luna was shaking her head at this point.
"Inertia and denial is a powerful force. I think some of the burden also falls on the leaders who didn't rouse everyone else in time. They have the power to see farther than what the common folks could see. Of course, we have the benefit of hindsight, so it's hard to determine if what they actually see back then is anywhere near to what we could see now."
'-
"My friend was having trouble in getting a recommendation just to be able to rent a place close to work." Hermione said on one of their random, but oddly regular meetings. "When I last told Daphne about it, she insisted that she was never even asked for one when she was getting her apartment, and it wasn't that far from where Melinda was trying to get hers."
A few months ago, Hermione would go on and on for at least a few minutes. Now, she just drops these uncomfortable truths bit by bit and watched as painful comprehension hit them with the patience of a trapper. Harry wasn't sure if this more patient, cagey Hermione was a good development or not—at least until he realized that he had been like that as well for some time now anyway. His friend simply had gone on a slower pace of change than he did.
"She's a muggleborn, isn't she?" Luna asked the rhetorical question out loud.
'-
Hermione was going through the past with her scrying mirror as another invisible shadow and watching her younger self solve the logic puzzle guarding the philosopher's stone with palpable excitement. Her potion made her partially wispy, incorporeal. With the invisibility cloak over her, her non-existence was complete. She was as silent as any ghost of Hogwarts.
Why, she mused, did the headmaster think that the school would be a better defence against Voldemort than the Flamels, a couple magic wielders that were over centuries old? If it was the Hogwarts wards that are powerful, why didn't he just invite the Flamels to stay over for a while?
If he was protecting the stone, his behaviour made no sense. If he was preparing a trap with appropriate bait, however...
A red hot flash of emotion surged through her even as her heart felt cold, colder than it had been. Her brain worked faster, her senses more acute.
Why did no one stop Albus Dumbledore from laying a trap for a suspected Dark Lord or his minion, inside a school and under such close range to many, many innocent children?
What if the Dark Lord had held some children hostage, and asked for them to be exchanged for the stone?
Why, a corner of her mind hissed, with a burning feeling Hermione never thought herself capable of, did no one stop Albus Dumbledore?
'-
"Hello Hermione," Luna gave her a friendly wave and a gentle smile, even if it was paired with the half-blank look she had most of the time. Hermione had figured that she worked somewhere in the Ministry as well, as there were a few times when they passed each other like this.
"Hello Luna."
"Have you been looking back too far again?"
Hermione paused mid-stride and turned around, brows furrowed. "Luna?"
"Just be careful not to sink into regrets too much, Hermione. The wrackspurts are going to eat your dreams if you do. You'd be a walking dead if it happens."
'-
The war had ended sixteen months ago.
"Are you sure you don't want to run as Minister of Magic, Harry?" Hermione asked, offhand. Everyone was too tired tonight, and no one volunteered their reasons to anyone else and everyone was fine with the companiable silence. Neville and Luna had turned to Hermione the moment she asked the question, definitely curious.
Harry picked his glass of drink and held it aloft, wordlessly asking Hermione to observe. She did. A few seconds later, the shakes were noticeable.
"The counsellor you recommended to me still didn't think I'm clear to go yet, for some reason." Harry said, in that dulcet, deceptively calm voice of his he usually used against reporters of Rita Skeeter's type. "Her PTSD diagnosis still stands, she said."
Hermione never brought the topic up again.
'-
"I really don't mind if you move in with me, Melinda. We could share a flat." Hermione insisted. The younger witch with honey-blond hair gave her a sad smile.
"I know you don't. You're one of the truest friends I've ever had, Hermione. I think you'd have made a great Hufflepuff." she said, her beautiful hazel eyes still managed to shine even when her mood was subdued. "But the more I think of it the more I realized it's not just about the flat I couldn't seem to get. It's also about Jerkin, about and his regular crass comments that no one ever seemed to care about before you came around. Before you managed to get him banished to some obscure corner of the bureaucracy. It's also about the news I hear on the rumour mill about the kind of career slowdown a muggleborn witch could expect. Especially when one doesn't have any significant connections and easy acceptance of certain questionable morals."
No, no, no... Hermione convinced herself that she was imagining things, and that her friend wasn't saying what she thought she was saying. Not when she'd finally managed to get Jerkin's superiors to notice what an annoying arse he'd been. Not when she thought things would be more normal and bearable for Melinda.
"I'm as muggleborn as they come and we could give them all a kick to their stiff backsides! You still have a lot of potential, Melinda."
She shook her head. "I didn't even manage to be an Unspeakable like you, only the Department of Magical Transportation. Besides, you're not as muggleborn as they come, Hermione. You're one of the more legendary witches in the last war. You're a trusted friend of Harry Potter! I'm just...average compared to you. I can't do what you can do, and I certainly can't get away with the things you can."
Melinda Larkin pulled her handbag up her arm and fiddled with her bracelet as she kept her eyes on her shoes. Her voice was quivering, the last sound of a forlorn harp plucked of all it strings.
"You can shake the system, Hermione, but I can't. You've got a good idea, taking a muggle college degree like that. It's not too late for me to build a life on the other side. I'm... I'm sorry, Hermione, I can't do this anymore. You could, though, I'm sure you could."
"You don't need to apologize for anything." Hermione choked out.
The Gryffindor witch held her friend for one last hug, one that was as comforting as it was painful. Melinda was looking at Hermione with a certain guilt, as if it was her own fault that she couldn't stand working in the Ministry. Hermione wanted to assure her friend of the opposite, but she didn't know if Melinda would let herself listen to it at all. She was beginning to figure out how it felt being as famous as Harry Potter.
Victory tastes like ashes when you're alone.
'-
Hermione passed Draco in the corridors not long after that, and she saw something she thought she'd never see in his eyes. Grudging acceptance. Sympathy.
"She's right you know." Draco had muttered.
"Who's right?"
"Your stunning Hufflepuff friend with full lips and killer legs that had just handed her resignation in? Larkin?" Hermione gave him a look for the comment, but he merely shrugged, a wordless expression of 'you know what I'm saying is true' on his face. The second thing that she noticed was how Draco Malfoy was unexpectedly well-connected in the gossip department, and she had the absurd image of seeing him socialize in the powder rooms. She smirked while Draco continued.
"She's one of the most beautiful people around—barring Veela heritage—and she's a muggleborn. Many a right bastards are going to make her career difficult just so she'd feel cornered enough at one point to ever look at any one of them as saviours."
"And you're one of them?"
Draco snorted. "Do I look like I'm that stupid and desperate? Of course not. I'm just saying that there's a lot of stupid and desperate people out there."
At the last two words, he didn't actually point towards the door that lead out of the Ministry—he was pointing inwards. Towards what she liked to think as the internal bureaucratic jungle. Homo homini lupus and all that.
"And you think the Ministry can't be changed." Hermione didn't pose that as a question—asking something that obvious was just begging for any self-respecting Slytherin to snark on you. Besides, she didn't have to. She saw the jaded look in his grey eyes, the exasperation held back from appearing on his pale face and she said her next thought out loud too.
"You don't think we can ever remove the people like that from their offices either."
He scoffed.
"Merlin, Granger, I'd love to boot a lot of people in here. But are you that desperate to make the Ministry understaffed? I'd like to see you try running that idea past the Minister."
'-
Hermione wrote one line in her diary.
Revamp the Ministry of Magic.
Then, she threw it across the room in frustration. It went with a less-than-satisfying 'shlep' against the wall. It was Saturday night and Hermione begged to be excused from meeting Harry and Luna. She knew they'd understand.
Hermione couldn't take it anymore, all these people she had been passing in the street, going on with their lives as if nothing was wrong with their world, the wizarding world. She wondered how many muggleborn witches and wizards never actually stayed in the wizarding world completely. Hermione was determined to go to Hogwarts the first thing in the morning and get the graduation records and student backgrounds. She could send owls to all of them, start a Hogwarts alumni survey. Maybe she could ask John, a business school guy from marketing, to help with the wording. McGonagall certainly wouldn't mind if Hermione put her idea forth. It would be a good thing for the school too to keep tabs on their graduates.
She tried not to think about what she might uncover.
'-
Hermione had finally finished tallying up her results and she checked her laptop (in the most securely magic-dampened room in her apartment). There was an unsettling nervousness in her stomach even before she'd started. A premonition she couldn't rationalize no matter how much she thought divination was tosh.
Of all the replies Hermione received from the muggleborn alumni, only a quarter of them had occupations outside the wizarding world.
Of all the muggleborn alumni Hermione sent her surveys to, a third didn't reply at all.
She couldn't stop thinking about it.
'-
It was more than one and a half years after the war ended.
It's not that she was unsatisfied with her work right now—she's happy, really. It's intellectually challenging, she had access to many artefacts the average wizard didn't even know could exist and she was paid to tinker with them and find out how they work. Really, there was rarely any other job out there that would be as mentally satisfying to Hermione Granger.
But university head-hunters had told her that it's always a good idea to update your CV once every six months, and it's good precautionary measure to check what kind of job offers you've been receiving and what other options are out there for you. So she decided that she'd do exactly that.
There were modelling offers from Witch Weekly, a request for an interview with the Prophet, and a letter from a publisher telling her the kind of sums they were prepared to pay if she would publish an autobiography with them with subtle requests of love gossips concerning her friends. There was a rejection for a diplomatic post she had even forgotten she had applied to some months ago. Another offer from Playwizard, with double and triple payment for her if she could coax one or two of her friend to accept the appointment with her as well. Hermione had to look away and count to sixty before her magic burst out on its own and burned her whole 'non-business and non-personal letters' inbox.
She resumed her task. There was a letter from the Minister of Magic. It was an apology of sorts; he said that he felt bad because he couldn't accept her as one of his advisors, no matter how gifted she was, because she had not yet worked in the Ministry for long enough (well, perhaps not exactly in those words).
Hermione was calm until she reached the part that he expected her to become a Ministry employee for at least fifteen years before she could even be considered for the post. The man wasn't even talking about work experience, only working-in-the-ministry experience. At this point there were only around three other letters there. She knew, really, that wizards and witches lived a lot longer than non-magical people, and will definitely have longer careers. Still... She gritted her teeth and tried to hold it in—
—and failed. The 'non-business and non-personal letters' inbox went out in a retina-blazing mini explosion complete with a mushroom cloud.
'-
"Wait up, Granger... Hermione."
It wasn't a voice that she heard often, and just by that it was enough to make her stop and wait for the wizard to catch up. She was mildly surprised when it turned out to be one Draco Malfoy in a smart black robe. He definitely looked determined to be part of the movers and shakers.
"I didn't think I've seen you anywhere near my wing often enough, Draco."
"I had business to conclude in the area." he said nonchalantly, "And I thought I'd drop you a message while at it and kill two birds with one stone. Did you know that the Ministry has yet to legally undo Umbridge's educational decrees? No one's paying attention to it right now, of course, but it's still there. Anyone in power could still place Hogwarts under their mercy as long as they get to half of the Hogwart's Board of Governors first."
She held back a low frustrated growl. Why hadn't anyone thought to deactivate it once the toady woman was out of office? Oh yeah, there's that one little thing called the war going on. Dumbledore probably managed to override it with some emergency condition provisions, though she wondered why no one seems to be thinking much after the war was over. Hermione took a deep breath.
"Why are you telling me this? I mean, thanks all the same for bringing it to my attention, but you could try to get it repealed as well."
"Everyone worth their salt knows of your crusade against the system, Hermione," he was smirking at her, but it was not as annoyingly smug as she remembered it. "I thought I'd pass the information along and place it on your plate too. I've got less foolhardy guts than you Gryffindors, after all."
"Your children could still suffer the after effects." she pointed out.
"Well, that'd be enough excuse to send their schooling to Europe if I ever have any." Draco said again. Her eyebrows almost shot up to her hairline.
"Your solution to the problem is running away?"
His first reflex seemed at the beginning to just affirm it right away, but something made the blond Slytherin hold himself back and just ran a hand through his fine hair. She saw his carefully cultivated air of carelessness fall down a little, piece by piece. "Most of the other purebloods are even worse wimps. I don't know if I could consolidate a strong enough voting bloc in the Wizengamot. Maybe not for at least another twenty years or so."
"You could at least try." It was rather hard not to raise her voice at all, but she was quite proud that she had succeeded.
"I don't have a problem, Granger, but that's because my family is still at the higher end of the scale. The purebloods of limited means couldn't be anywhere else—"
"Most muggleborns don't have that kind of funds to throw around either—"
"But they could still go back!" Draco hadn't raised his tone, but there was a surprising intensity in it. There was despair in his eyes. "They have another world they're familiar with to fall back to. They have a second option open for them. Most of us purebloods have known nothing but the wizarding world. If the wizarding world is tearing itself to pieces, a good number of us would go down with the ship because they can't swim."
She was still as annoyed, as angry as before, but she could no longer ignore the echo of pain that she felt. Her voice was softer when she next spoke and more subdued. It didn't have the sarcastic edge she was planning to give.
"Then it's as good time as any to learn how to swim, isn't it?"
He laughed, not that there was anything funny. His voice was tinged with the brightest trace of hysteria. "Not everyone is as talented as you are, Hermione—or have you forgotten how Wizards had dubbed you 'the brightest witch of the war generation?' Not everyone will be able to swim in time. Some, whatever they do, would just end up sinking."
'-
Hermione changed the potion components of her project, trying to reengineer the potion from scratch again. She decided not to settle with being a mere mental presence at all. In the process, she also copied her research notes with the same 'true copy' spell on both her own and Luna's parseltongue notes, then she set up a contract with the goblins of Gringotts to keep one of them with instructions of who to give it to in case of magical accident.
She had just about enough of this mess.
'-
The war had ended almost two years ago.
Unspeakable Granger moved with a keen sense of purpose in her office-cum-lab. It was one small step for Hermione Granger and one large step for wizardkind. At least that was what she thought after she had just finished bottling her particular travelling potion. Harry had barged in right after she finished bottling her potion, a smug smirk on his face when he saw that he caught up with her just in time, a subtly familiar parchment in hand.
"You don't have to go, Harry." Hermione hissed, trying not to call the attention of other Unspeakables to her office. There was a newly-finished, modified time hourglass the size of a large cat on her table.
Harry grinned at her. It was one she hadn't seen for some time, one that reminded her of Padfoot than anyone else. "Friends don't let friends go on suicidal adventures alone. So, where are you going?"
"There is an observation I want to make about a certain crossroad of history." Hermione said quickly with a straight face. Harry rolled his eyes.
"I didn't ask what you're doing. Maybe I should ask you to when you're going, Hermione?"
She sighed and didn't meet his eyes. "It's... it's not important—"
"Now that is an outright lie." Harry muttered. "You've never worked on anything that you don't think to be important. Come on, two heads are better than one."
Realizing that his heroic impulse wasn't going to let this one lie, she stared him down. "I might not be back after some time Harry, or even if we were back immediately at the same moment here, there's a chance we're not going back immediately, that it would be years on the observation location—"
"Hermione—"
"—we don't know how time would have passed on this side. It could be month or years, our friends' life would have gone on; heck, Ginny might even have gone on—"
"Hermione" Harry raised a hand to stop her rambling. "Just...to when are you going?"
Hermione wrung her hands. "The 1940s."
Anyone else might be tempted to say something about how she was definitely kidding, but Hermione didn't show him her research notes for nothing. He might not understand the technicalities as they weren't his specialty, but the conceptual framework wasn't lost to him. If anyone could do it, it would be Hermione. Harry stared at her for a moment before nodding very slowly.
"Why?"
A beat. "To see the wizarding world then. To make notes, observations. To observe either Grindelwald's height of power and downfall, or Tom Marvolo Riddle."
"For observation, eh?"
She didn't say anything, didn't even as much as blink when she stared him, but her steady, straight back told him that she was actively using occlumency right now—heck, he had already started to pick up her external thoughts. Harry also knew that she wouldn't have broadcasted them so strongly if she wasn't actively running the confounding mazes of her mind's defence. His first clues had been when she stopped renewing her paper, magazine and journal subscriptions. There was something Hermione wasn't telling him, but years of keeping secrets had made him patient. She would tell him when she was ready, and he trusted her to inform him upfront of anything that's actually critical.
He nodded again. "I'm going with you then."
"Didn't you hear anything I just said?" Hermione's voice went up by half an octave.
"I'm... well, me and Ginny thought we'd just live our own lives for now. I could ask the same thing of you, Herm. What about Ron?"
She didn't feel like elaborating it much. She didn't want to think about the last argument they had. She had accused him of not caring about the world at all beyond his own interest, and he pointed out that she had favoured her causes more than him. It really wasn't his fault or hers that they were too different, that the war left a different imprint for each of them… but sometimes she still wished they could have ended it in a more peaceful way. She cleared her throat and banished her memories.
"Same here."
Harry smiled. It felt stronger than most of his smiles that she had seen since he'd become an Auror and she couldn't help smiling back.
"So, I'm just speaking theoretically here. If you think we'd be there for some time, for observations, don't you think we need to pack a bit more than what you seem to have right now?" Harry asked as casually as possible, complete with a leaning-against-the-wall and hands-in-trouser-pockets pose. "We could empty our Gringotts account and carry a charmed-weightless, mokeskin bag, you know. You've said it before, there's no such thing as too much preparation, after all."
Hermione rubbed her temples with a resigned sigh and nodded. Her friend only gave an assuring smile in sympathy. Harry was sure she had been too busy making sure that the potion and spell would cause no harm that it hadn't occurred that her gamble may have stranded them in the long-term somewhere. Well, she always kept her grab purse on her person, but it was certain that she hadn't put an all-terrain tent in it, nor enough potion ingredients to last a year. He knew she would certainly care enough about that.
'-
They ended up taking a whole day to take everything they wanted to take. Hermione almost couldn't hold back from putting everything in her apartment in her 100-galleon, super capacity, mokeskin bag. Everything from her potions lab was stoppered and bottled and inside it. All of the contents of her bookshelves were inside it. There were rolls and rolls of parchment and quick-quote quills as well as normal ones in it too, as well as a dozen biros and some notepads. She didn't put everything in, of course. She still left the kitchen set where it was.
Considering that Harry didn't complain about the length of time she was taking to prepare, she was certain his bag was no less full. He did buy the same bag after all. They met again in her office at the exact same time as yesterday.
"Good. So… ready to go on another adventure now?"
Hermione handed him a bottle of the potion she had brewed. The door to her office opened once more and both of them could only stare as Luna walked in casually with a bag slung over her shoulder and dressed as if she was preparing for a safari in the Russian steppes, fur hat included.
"Just in time." she said breezily. "I was sure I won't be late. Can I have one too? Thank you."
She had taken the bottle from Hermione's outstretched hand while the two earlier arrivals stood stock-still, staring at her in disbelief.
"Right." Luna said. "Now, I think there's something like an incantation and wand movement for this. Could you show us, Hermione?"
"Err, Luna..." Harry started.
Luna shook her head with the same eerie calm she always had. "We have half an hour most to prepare. After that, some people might be looking for you Hermione. In case we leave for too long, I've prepared a timed letter to request a holiday for the three of us because the search for the Crumple-Horned Snorkack waits for no man."
Harry and Hermione exchanged perplexed glances before they turned to Luna again.
"Do you even know what we'd be doing?" Hermione asked.
"I have a vague picture in my pensieve about it." she said, tapping her head while she did so. "Strange dreams and all that. Besides, your magical material request was one of the most interesting documents I've seen to go through the inter-office chutes. Not that anyone would have an idea about it if they don't already know what you're working on. I think your cover research about the scrying pensieve is very good. I've read your report last month."
Luna was waiting for them in the most placid showing of excitement that Harry had ever seen. He could sense the slight tingle in the air around her, though. Her magic was actively leaking out in a buzz of anticipation that sent his skin tingling.
"What... How..."
"I'm also Unspeakable." Luna tapped her chin with her wand, "I have a friend in procurement."
Harry groaned. "If I had known that I could've just asked you when Hermione's not being forthcoming instead of sneaking around trying to sneak around for clues."
"You could still ask me now." Luna volunteered.
"Hey, I resent that! It's only proper if you ask me about my own research." Hermione groused.
"By the way we only have around twenty five minutes left before at least three people will walk in here, so are you sure you don't want to get moving now?" Luna said again.
Hermione instructed everyone on the wandwork, and all three of them walked under the invisibility cloak. Right before Hermione turned the large hourglass on the table, Luna's voice posed a few innocent questions could be heard in the apparently empty room.
"Have you actually tried transporting more than one person at a time, Hermione? And what did you use for that larger hourglass? It looks different than the smaller one you've been using before, and I daresay of a different make and material. Not to mention that tonight's All Hallows—"
There was something that sounded like a bitten-off curse, a muffled 'pop', and all was silent again. One Auror and Two Unspeakables had just disappeared from the face of the earth.
'-
'-
(Updated) Author's Note: As it is, the prologue could stand alone as a one-piece. It turned out that the muses would not leave me alone, so I ended up continuing the story. I have no idea where it goes and what the ending's like, though, so it would be an adventure for both of us.
Particular Inspirations:
They're fun stories in their own right, so read ahead if you're interested. That said, I don't claim 100% originality in my fanfiction, just around 70%-ish with stddev of around 30%. Ha. Hey, it's called fanfiction for a reason. We can go higher because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Here goes:
Altered Destinies by DobbyElfLord is the fanfiction that gave me idea that maybe the wizarding world doesn't have any orphanages at all. Oh, it also started my interest in the '40s, for that matter.
Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality by LessWrong introduced me to the fun to be had from taking the plot of the HP books apart and shoot at the weak points. Luna's heptagons can be considered a tribute.
Some of the best of Harry's AU stories like Trust is a Relative Thing by Silverfawkes as well as Harry's AU time-rewind/time-travelling stories like His Own Man by Crunchysunrises and What is Right by Emma Lipardi made me love the alternate-world-interpretation of the wizarding world as a dystopia instead of the canon utopia. There really is much fun to be had in dystopias.
(To any of the above writers, if I hadn't left a review yet at one or more of stories, that's because I'm bowled over and is speechless right after I finished reading. I will review some time though. Not reviewing a great story that you've actually enjoyed at least once is like incurring a life debt).