Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores

Hermione Granger discovered a charm in her fifth year while reading an ancient copy of Magic That Changes the Mind, searching for information on Cheering Charms for extra O.W.L. credit.

The spell is only mentioned in a footnote in the section on Memory Charms. The usual charms that wipe the mind of a certain event, or even the more complicated charms that replace true memories with false ones, only affect the person upon whom the spell is cast. This spell, colloquially known as the Ripple Memory Charm, can be made to affect any Muggle who may have known, met or seen the person upon whom the spell is cast. It is an immensely difficult spell, well above N.E.W.T. level, but when cast correctly, it can – in the minds of any Muggle who may have known the person, as well as to the person themself – turn a brunette to a blonde, or a wizard to a Muggle. It can change someone's character completely. It can wipe the memory of a person from the earth.

It is not a perfect memory charm, nevertheless. Some small trace of the original person will always remain, in half-memories or dreams.

Hermione files all of this information away in her brain. Just in case.

Your names are Wendell Henry Wilkins and Monica Louise Wilkins, neé Anderson. Your life ambition is to move to Australia. You have just bought a flat in New South Wales, at number twenty-three Cherry Avenue, Bronte. You will keep this house as an investment property, and the new tenants are moving in next Friday. You are leaving for Sydney tomorrow.

June 27th

Wendell is unpacking the third of the seven cardboard boxes that hold their books, and is placing the books one by one, alphabetically by author's name, in the new bookshelf in their new house in Sydney. Not that the house is new; it's a three-bedroom flat built in the 1920s, but it feels new to them, despite the pink-tiled en-suite bathroom (which is horrible in a 1950s way) and the avocado-green kitchen (which is horrible in a 1970s way), and the carpet, ingrained with cat hair, in the smallest bedroom (which they are going to use for a study as soon as they can clean the carpet properly).

"Darling, why did we wait so long to come to Australia?" he asks Monica, who is carrying the fourth box of books in.

She frowns, as if trying to remember something long ago and far away. "I suppose my mother was all that was really tying us to England," she says finally, arms still around the cardboard box. "We had to wait for her to die before we could go anywhere."

Wendell wonders whether he is offended by her frank and somewhat callous summary. Somehow, he isn't. He isn't sure why not.

Neither of you have siblings. You have no close friends. You have never had children – and you never wanted them.

September 19th

It's the kind of bright, sunny day that reminds Monica of an English summer at its best, but she can only catch a glimpse of it every now and then, through the frosted windows in the dental practice where she and Wendell now work. In the brief space she allocates for her lunch, though, as she sits outside in the sun and takes her straight, light brown hair out of its ponytail (and why does she always seem to imagine herself as having curly hair, she wonders), before she unwraps her sandwich, she becomes aware that she's forgotten something terribly, terribly important. Is it the sight of a child in the waiting room that reminds her, a girl with big dark eyes, reading a book that looks too heavy for a six-year-old to lift, let alone read (but the hair is wrong, something inside her says, blonde and straight, she feels like it should it be brown and so thick and curly it defies any attempt to brush it)? Was it perhaps the tanned young woman with prominent front teeth and her hair in a long plait (but blue eyes, when they should be brown)? Or maybe it was the two boys in the park opposite, one black haired and bespectacled and one red haired and freckled, pretending to wallop each other with sticks (but the dark one is tall and the redhead short, when it should it be the other way around)?

Whatever it is, she feels somehow lost and lonely and frightened inside, as thought she's mislaid something precious and rare, and she doesn't know what it is or how to get it back.

You are both dentists. Monica, you qualified in 1977; Wendell, you qualified in 1976. On your arrival in Sydney, you will both go to the closest dental practice to your home and apply for jobs there.

November 2nd

Verity Smith, the receptionist at the dental practice, is six months pregnant and already heartily sick of being so. "It's this backache that's the worst," she tells Monica as she prepares to turn off the computer for the night. "The baby likes to kick me in the back, too, and it is just a bloody nightmare."

Monica nods. "Yes, but the third trimester's worse. Your head gets so foggy, and you need to go to the loo all the time. Not to mention your feet swell up."

"Oh, so you have children, Monica?" Verity asks. Monica and Wendell never talk about their past. "How old are they?"

Monica gets a strange, uncertain look on her face. "No, I haven't got any children."

"Oh – I'm sorry," says Verity, flustered. "Only you talked about being pregnant like you'd been there yourself, that's all." They were a mystery, Monica and Wendell Wilkins. They had turned up out of the blue back in June, holding their credentials and their references and asking if they needed some new dentists at the practice, by any chance.

"I-" says Monica, but stops. "I've never been pregnant," she says after a pause.

Verity drags herself up from her chair. "I'm really sorry if I've offended you," she says. Her mind drifts back to the oddities hovering about the Wilkins. When talking to their referees, all of their comments – while highly complimentary of the Wilkins' skills as dentists – seemed rather stilted, like they were reading straight from the page… and they all seemed somehow very vague as to what Doctor Wilkins and Doctor Wilkins were really like. And the ink on their medical certificates looked bright and new, despite the fact that they'd qualified a good two decades previously. But they were both very good dentists, it was true.

Monica shakes her head. "I'm not at all offended, please don't worry yourself. Not in your condition anyway, hm?"

Verity smiles and shrugs a little. "Shall I get the light?"

You both like reading Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens and Douglas Adams; you both dislike Tolstoy and Hemingway. Neither of you are interested in politics, but your views are generally centre-left.

December 25th

Christmas Day dawns hot and muggy, the sun shining desultorily through a thin haze of cloud that suggests a thunderstorm later. Monica sets the table as Wendell makes pancakes for breakfast, and the beef they plan to roast for their lunch is sitting in the fridge, although it's hardly the right food for the weather. Their upstairs neighbour Daisy Morris and her husband Albert have invited them over for Christmas dinner, which is kind of them, they suppose. Even after five months here, they haven't yet made many friends.

Wendell flicks through yesterday's newspaper as he waits for the pancakes to cook. Monica walks in and peers over his shoulder. "Oh, The Winter's Tale is on until the end of January," she says, looking at the reviews section. "Perhaps we should go. Haven't we only seen it once?"

"Yes," says Wendell. He doesn't remember when, though. Perhaps it had been while they were dating? No, no, there'd been someone else there. Who? He can't remember. Perhaps they had gone with the gang from university, but surely the rest of them wouldn't have been interested in Shakespeare. That was why they had first gotten together; both he and Monica liked Shakespeare. He notices that the pancakes are browning, flips them, and forgets what he had just been thinking about.

"Hermione," says Monica. "That's a nice name."

Wendell wonders why he feels like crying all of a sudden. "Yes. If we'd had a daughter, I should have liked to call her Hermione."

The heat in the upstairs flat is stifling, even though it is early evening and the promised storm is flashing lightning in the far distance. Daisy apologises. "We just haven't gotten around to putting air-con in yet. I mean, we moved in ten years ago now, but somehow it always gets forgotten about until December." She giggles, a high-pitched titter that sets Monica's teeth on edge. Somebody had told her once about someone with a giggle like that… hadn't they?

There are a handful of other guests. The Morrises are apparently always the Christmas dinner hosts for the people on Cherry Avenue who don't have large family get-togethers every year. Louise, the twenty-something living in the Victorian cottage opposite, brings a salad ("Still single! At her age!" mutters Daisy to Monica when they pass in the hall), Janet, the elderly widow from the apartment block a little way down the road, brings a trifle for dessert ("She's far too old to be living by herself. She should really be in a home, don't you think?" says Daisy as she checks the oven) and forty-ish Michael and thirty-ish Jack, from the townhouse three doors down, bring two bottles of white wine ("They're homosexuals, you know," hisses Daisy to Monica as she puts the wine in the fridge). There is cold ham and roast potatoes and Albert, who somehow always seems to fade into the background, is outside in the shared courtyard, cooking prawn skewers and lamb chops on a barbecue. It's a Christmas tradition in his family, he explains.

Monica and Wendell bring a Christmas pudding and brandy sauce. It might be too hot and stodgy for this warm night, but it's a tradition that they want to keep even here on the other side of the world. Daisy thanks them fulsomely and insincerely, and puts it on a high shelf in the kitchen. Monica wonders what she's saying about them to the other guests.

There is a vase on the sideboard with fresh lavender in it, and Monica wonders why the scent and sight of them makes her think of betrayal, of first love and heartbreak.

She isn't feeling at all festive.

The first raindrops splatter against the ground.

Monica, your father, Matthew Anderson, died of a heart attack when he was sixty-five and your mother, Millicent Anderson, died of breast cancer when she was seventy-eight. Wendell, your father, Henry Wilkins, died of lung cancer when he was seventy and your mother, Joan Wilkins, died of a stroke when she was seventy-two. Neither of you have any living relatives.

January 6th

Wendell is at the local General Practitioner's practice, flipping through an out-of-date Readers' Digest and worrying. It's what happened to his Nan, he knows, but not this early. Not this young. He's not even fifty yet.

"Mr Wilkins?" asks the receptionist, who is bespectacled and severe and makes him feel like he's back at school, waiting for the headmaster to see him for some real or imagined infraction, so he doesn't even protest that his title is, technically, 'doctor'. "Doctor Vickers will see you now."

Doctor Vickers is older than Wendell expected, with a brown wrinkled face like a cheerful walnut and a jar of jellybeans on his desk. Wendell almost comments on how a doctor shouldn't really be encouraging bad eating habits in children, but refrains.

"Well then, Doctor Wilkins, what seems to be the trouble?" asks Doctor Vickers, after a small amount of chit-chat.

Wendell shifts in his chair a little. "I think I'm losing my memory," he says.

"Hm," says Doctor Vickers. "How do you mean?"

"It's little things, mostly," Wendell says. "Not remembering where we went to dinner on our last night in England. Remembering going to a play, oh, almost twenty years ago it must have been, but not remembering all of the people I went with. That sort of thing. My grandmother had dementia, so I'm just a little… worried."

"Hm," says Doctor Vickers again. "Has this started recently, or has it been going on for a while now?"

Wendell shrugs. "Recently, I suppose. The last few months."

Doctor Vickers smiles, and the walnutty face shifts into new creases. "Coinciding, perhaps, with the beginning of the September heatwave?"

"Perhaps," says Wendell. "I don't really know. Yes, I think it started around then."

"Do you have any trouble remembering things that have happened recently? For example, can you tell me what you had for dinner on Christmas night?"

"Cold ham, roast potatoes, lamb chops, a couple of prawn skewers, some salad, a bit of trifle and a slice of Christmas pudding with brandy sauce. Oh, and a bread roll or two."

Doctor Vickers leans back in his chair. "Let me be frank. I honestly doubt that there is any problem, even with," he adds, "a family history of dementia. It's the heat, I think. I find that it affects people in funny ways, particularly when they're not used to it – as you almost certainly aren't, coming from England as you do. And really, forgetting who you went to see a play with twenty years ago is hardly a worrying loss of memory. As for the dinner in England, well, how long have you been out here now?"

"We came over in June."

"So it's been six months since that particular dinner! Why, most people can't remember what they ate last week." He chuckles a little. "Obviously, if you find your memory loss getting worse, or if there's any other medical problem you want to discuss, then you can always make another appointment. But as far as I can tell, you're in the pink of health. My advice is to keep out of the sun as much as you can, and invest in a decent air-conditioning system." He grins his walnutty grin again.

Wendell feels less comforted than he should.

You want to live in Australia because the climate is pleasant and because Wendell wants to learn to surf. You were frightened by the Brockdale bridge collapse and the West Country hurricane in '96, not to mention the murders, and want to live in a place that is safer and warmer than England.

March 22nd

It's late evening, and the Wilkins have the television on. They've become quite fond of Australian television in the past few months, although the almost-British enunciation of some of the news presenters can be disconcerting at times. They're becoming accustomed to the Australian way of speaking, can decipher the occasionally bizarre slang and can even distinguish the accent of a Sydney dweller from that of someone from Adelaide – sometimes. But there is nothing that makes them feel quite so homesick as the not-quite-right accent that some of the newsreaders have, which sounds like East Coast Australian with a dash of Received Pronunciation. It's wrong to their ears in a way that neither full Aussie nor proper RP would be.

"In breaking news, we go live to our England correspondent, where, in Brighton," says the newsreader, "two trains collided, leaving at least twenty dead and many more injured. Bob?"

Monica pales. Wendell grabs her hand and clutches it like it's his only link to safety.

"Thank you, Sam," says Bob, who looks vaguely familiar from previous breaking-news-in-England stories. He is standing in front of the wreckage of what could possibly once have been two trains. "It's been reported that the two trains somehow managed to get onto the same track, despite the fact that they were headed in opposite directions. It is certain that a minimum of three dozen people are dead, and at least five people are still trapped in the wreckage." Bob blinks. His eyes seem curiously blank, and Wendell catches a glimpse of a woman wearing an odd hat, standing off to one side and mouthing something.

He thinks nothing of it. Accident scenes always attract weirdos, he supposes.

"Is it known why the trains were on the same track?" asks Sam.

Bob shakes his head. "I'm afraid that is not known at this stage, though I understand that the head of the British Railway system is conducting a press interview in less than an hour. I'll keep you informed as I receive updates on the situation. Back to you, Sam."

Sam starts talking about the upcoming Commonwealth Games, but neither Monica nor Wendell is listening.

Wendell is shaking. "Oh God," he says, "oh God, oh God, oh God. What if someone we knew was on one of those trains? One of our old friends?"

Monica is white. "She said this would happen," she whispered, words tumbling out too fast for her to stop the flow. "She said there'd be more disasters this year than last year and last year than the year before, more deaths, more murders, one bloody thing after the other, and after that bridge collapsed I thought how can it possibly get worse? But it did, and it has, and oh, all those people…"

Wendell looks at her, and half notices that his hand is still holding hers so tightly that it hurts. "Who are you talking about, love?"

"I don't know," whispers Monica. "I don't know."

Wendell, your hobbies are cooking and collecting interesting stamps. Monica, your hobbies are gardening and knitting. You both enjoy watching films starring Humphrey Bogart.

April 16th

Michaela Adams, sitting on a stool and filing her nails behind the counter of the local newsagent, is having a slow day. Leah is off "sick" again, but it wouldn't matter if she weren't. Nothing has happened all day. Nothing is happening. Nothing will-

And then what sounds like a gunshot goes off in the alley at the side of the building, and Michaela leaps to her feet and races outside, flipping the grammatically-incorrect "Back In Five Minute's" sign on the door as she runs, yelling to the couple browsing the shelves that she's going to go see what's going on, please don't leave without paying for that Better Homes and Gardens magazine.

There is only one person in the alley, standing next to the rubbish bins: a man with a stick in his hand and an unpleasant tattoo on his arm, one of a skull with a snake coming out of its mouth.

Michaela, in a detached way, notices that he is wearing a polo shirt over a tutu and a pair of hiking boots.

"Are you okay?" she asks him.

He sniffs. "Muggle, are ya?" He has a strong Cockney accent, she notices in that same detached way.

She backs away a little at the word 'muggle'. She doesn't know what it means, but it doesn't sound like a good thing to be, not from the tone of his voice.

He sighs and puts the stick in his pocket. "Look, girl, I ain't got nothing against you, not so long as you stay here in the backside of the world. My, uh, boss don't like your kind, but he ain't here, is he? Just tell me, d'you know a couple of people, both Brits, called the Grangers? Only I got a tip that they was perhaps in Sydney. They might be housing dangerous criminals, y'see."

"N-no, I don't know any Grangers," she stammers. She would get angry at the insult to Australia, if she didn't get the feeling that this man was a very, very dangerous person to annoy.

"Well, they might be under an assumed name. That's what I was told. I've got a photo of 'em if you wants to have a look-see."

She takes the photo. Her fingers are trembling as she looks at it, and the photo shakes.

The photo is a close-up shot of a man and a woman standing with their arms around each other, in front of what looks like Stonehenge. The people in it look a tiny bit like that couple inside the newsagency, but not quite. Where the man in the photo has thick brown hair and wide brown eyes, the man inside has thinning blonde hair and smallish blue eyes. Where the woman in the photo has a tip-tilted nose and wild curls, the woman inside has a straight nose and straighter hair. But most of the bone structure is the same, the woman's high cheekbones and the man's sharp jawline, the woman's wide grin and the man's shy smile. Still, Michaela hands the photo back to the man and says firmly, "I've never seen these people in my life."

He nods, as if this is the answer he's been expecting. "Sorry about all this, girl, but you know I have to do it. You won't remember a thing." He raises the stick again. "Obliviate!"

There is another gunshot noise as Michaela walks back into the shop, but she doesn't notice.

"What was that?" asks the man, looking pale and shocked. The woman is equally pale and shocked, and her hand is clenched around the same Better Homes and Gardens that she was holding two minutes ago.

There had been a noise, Michaela remembers. She had gone outside to see what it was. There had been nothing there. What a boring day this is turning out to be, she thinks.

"Oh," says Michaela, "probably a car backfiring or something, I didn't see anything out there. No big deal. Are you going to buy that?"

You do not believe that magic exists. Magic is a thing in children's tales and nothing more than that.

May 2nd

It's been a pleasant day, despite a strange feeling of anticipation. The sun had shone bright over Sydney all day, and Monica and Wendell had gone for a walk in the park, hand in hand like teenagers. Now, though, it is dark, and Monica still can't shake the feeling that something crucial is happening – is about to happen, has just happened – and that her life is about to be shaken off its axis. She lies awake worrying, although it is late and she is tired, and it is only when she is sick of trying and failing to fall asleep that she gets up and wraps her dressing gown around herself.

She knows her way around the house in the dark now; she no longer gets confused when feeling for stairs that are not there or doors that are in the wrong place, and she tiptoes to the living room and turns on the television, hoping that a bit of mind-numbing distraction will bring sleep. When she flicks through the channels, hoping for a mediocre sitcom or sci-fi with bad special effects, she comes across a news program instead. It is showing some place in Scotland, a wild-looking part where she has never been, but it must have been described to her, because she remembers it somehow. But now there are flashing lights above the landscape, like a fireworks display, and at first Monica thinks that is what they are. But then she realises that they are silent, and the wrong shape for fireworks, and something about them both terrifies and grips her.

"This video was taken at approximately one a.m., Greenwich Mean Time, and it is still unknown what this light display was. It has been suggested by top UFO researchers that this is the site of an alien landing," says the female newsreader as the scene cuts back to the studio. This is one of the channels that she and Wendell never watch, Monica realises, as the show cuts to some bearded conspiracy theorist talking about light patterns. It cuts back a minute later, though, and the male newsreader says, "Onto the weather now, and it looks like more clear skies are on the way for Sydney…"

Monica turns off the television, slips down from her chair and tiptoes back to bed.

In the morning, no news reports mention strange lights in Scotland.

All anybody knows about you is that you are just two fairly boring English dentists with no children and a stamp collection. There is no such person as Hermione Jean Granger, and there never was. And you love each other. You love each other so much – and I love you too, even though you don't know it now. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I only hope I've done the right thing.

May 10th

The end comes suddenly for Monica Louise and Wendell Henry Wilkins.

Early in the morning on the tenth of May, the doorbell rings. Wendell wanders to the front door in the dawn light, yawning behind his hand. Monica follows close behind him. When they open the door, there is a young woman standing there, curly brown hair bound back into a tight plait. She is thin, rather than slender, and her eyes are shadowed. There is a thin scar on her neck that looks recent, and a graze on her cheek that looks even more so.

"Are you the Wilkins?" she asks, and her voice is more tired than her face. When Wendell nods, the girl smiles a little. "May I come in, please?" She has an English accent, the Wilkins notice.

Monica stands aside to let her in, and Wendell whispers in her ear. "What are you doing, love? Why are you letting her in?" Without even noticing, he's stepped aside too.

Monica whispers back. "She looks sick. We ought to call a doctor for the poor thing. Least we can do is let a fellow Englishwoman in out of the cold."

The young woman steps through the door, and shuts it behind her. "My name's Hermione. Hermione Jean Granger. You don't remember me, do you, Monica and Wendell?"

Monica shakes her head. She doesn't know this Hermione, and she doesn't know why she's let her into the house, but there is something, some tiny sense of recognition, and it's itching at the back of her mind.

Wendell backs away slightly. "Who are you? How do you know who we are?"

"I'm so sorry," says the girl, "so very sorry. You know I didn't really have a choice, don't you?" She takes a polished stick out of her small, beaded bag, and raises it. She smiles at them, shyly. "Finite Incantatem."

And they are themselves again, and the past eleven months are a blur and a muddle, a confusion of memories, and the Wilkins are gone. The Grangers sob and embrace their daughter Hermione, in the hallway of a flat in Sydney, in the early morning light.

Author's Notes:

The title of this piece comes from The Winter's Tale, Act 4, Scene 4. Although I think that the full quote is about not heading to "unpathed waters" (it's the tiniest bit obscure because my copy of the Collected Works of Shakespeare got something spilled on it at some point in its long and useful history and the words on that page – only that page! – are a little blurry and hard to read), I felt like Shakespeare here sort of encapsulated the way the Wilkins/Grangers must have felt in my story, where their entire history before June 1997 was changed. They were given, in the space of a few minutes, new personalities, new destinies, new lives, just to protect them from a war that they would have had very little hope of surviving otherwise. Other titles I considered were "We knew not/The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dreamed/That any did", as well as "It is a heretic that makes the fire/Not she who burns in it" (I feel that while it was a very drastic move of Hermione's to change the memories of the Grangers, whether it was with their consent or not, the whole thing is much more Voldemort's fault for targeting Muggles and Muggle-borns in the first place) but they both felt a bit unwieldy.

I based the Wilkins' flat on my grandmother's old place in Sydney, although the Morrises are, thankfully, completely my own invention. I did consider setting the story in Adelaide, where I live, but then I remembered that almost nobody goes to Adelaide and made it Sydney instead, since that would probably be the city that Hermione would think of first when imagining Australia. There isn't, as far as I know, a Cherry Avenue in Bronte, although Bronte is a real Sydney suburb.

As for the Ripple Memory Spell, which is my own invention, I can't believe that Hermione Granger used a simple "Obliviate", which can be broken, as we see in the case of Bertha Jorkins, or even the complicated spell that inserts a false memory into your mind. There is, in both of these spells, always the possibility of their next-door-neighbour from 1985 or something meeting them in the street and going, "Oh, how's Hermione?" "Who?" "Your daughter?" – cue the Wilkins getting totally confused. Not to mention getting job references ("The Wilkins? Who are they?"), passports, Social Services… We haven't, to my knowledge, been given any indication that magic can't work like that, so I just made it that it could. Of course, then I changed their appearance as well (Tonks implied that this was possible to do with spells in OotP) so some of this wouldn't be a problem, but I liked the idea of the spell so it stayed.

Finally (or almost finally), the Death Eater in Sydney on April 16th. I think this is probably the least realistic part in the story, but I made it like that for a reason. I've decided that this OC Death Eater is totally disillusioned with the whole thing. He joined during the First Wizarding War and was quite happily bigoted and generally unpleasant for the inter-war period and for most of the Second Wizarding War, but by the time he gets to Bronte in 1998 (and he's been bouncing around Sydney for a few days at this point, it's not that small a city), he's decided that he actually doesn't care if the Grangers are there or not. He already knows that Harry Potter is in England, as is Hermione Granger, since they've already been captured (and lost) by the Snatchers at that point, so the Grangers aren't hiding them. They also probably don't have any decent information for the Dark Lord. And if they really are in Australia… well, it's Australia, after all. What harm can they do on the other side of the world? Not to mention, killing an innocent bystander is just a little bit unpalatable, even if she is a Muggle. So he wipes Michaela's memory, double-checks the Muggle phone book for Grangers with the right name and occupation, Apparates to where he's left his broom, flies home (it's a bad idea to try and Apparate across continents, after all) and tells ol' Voldie that obviously their information was wrong, there's no dentist Grangers with the right names to be Hermione Granger's parents living in Sydney. Sorry, boss.

I hope you enjoyed this story. If you did, I would love it if you'd let me know, although I am rather terrible about remembering to respond to reviews. If you hated it – well, if you've some actual constructive criticism for me, I'd like to hear it. If you just hated it because, I don't know, you think that Monica Wilkins' middle name should be Jane instead of Louise, or you hate things written in present tense, or you don't like the fact that I included non-canon characters, there's really no need to tell me that sort of thing. And just so you know, I've cross-posted this to AO3, so if you see it there, that's why. Thanks for reading, and for getting to the end of this horribly long A/N!