Hermione Granger and The Kiss of Time

by Lousy Poet Automaton

AN:

This is my lone disclaimer for the start of the story. I don't own Harry Potter or any associated characters, settings, ideas, etc.

I'm still collecting rejection letters for my original stuff. The good news is I am approaching the 1,000,000 word hump that's supposed to indicate I've put in enough work to reach 'publishable' quality.

This is yet another random experiment. All my serious writing effort is going into the stuff that might someday actually get paid for, so I no longer put much work into editing or researching for fanfics. This is purely stress relief, so my apologies in advance for typos I don't catch, and various canon details I'm sure I will miss. Consider continuity and canon errors to be AU changes, if you like.

xxx Prologue: The Forgotten Lady

She woke and examined her surroundings. They never changed, of course. In the first century of her imprisonment, she had tried to make things more comfortable - conjuring furniture and clothes when they crumbled and broke, etching runes into them to make them last.

But, oh! The ages passed so slowly.

Though the Elixir staved off death and the decline of her mind and body, it did nothing for her soul, which ebbed and cooled. Only the slightest, smoldering heat remained at the core of her heart.

After the second century, she stopped caring about appearances. Alone in her tomb, did it really matter if the clothes crumbled right off of her skin? Though she did still bother to wash herself with the water from the well, to keep herself and the crumbling stone walls clean.

After the third century, she shattered all the mirrors and vanished the fragments. Her appearance never changed anyway. Outwardly, she was a woman with ageless features and a lean figure that could have passed for twenty or forty.

Some years, she thought she had gone mad. But the Elixir's effects always brought her out. Perhaps there would have been less pain if she stayed mad, and stopped taking it, just waiting for death. But sooner or later, even during the occasional year of madness, she would dream of him, and then she would remember what it was she still lived for.

All that mattered were her dreams, and the steady tick of the dials of the clock on the vault door. In her dreams, she was never alone. She had her family. She had her love. They kept her alive, they kept her imbibing a drop of the Elixir each day, the only nourishment for her lean, pale body.

During the long, painful hours of wakefulness, there was little for her to do but practice. She practiced magic. She trained her body. In preparation for the day that seemed farther and farther away in her thoughts.

But this day, she realized, was different. She staggered closer to the clock. The arms on the dials were approaching the places she had marked so very long ago, where she'd scratched in a date, a time, a hope that kept her going.

"So close," she whispered, then flinched. Her own voice seemed startling again. She could not have that.

She gestured at the cracked bowl set into the floor. Time turned back for a moment, enchantments were restored. And her Pensieve functioned again. Another sweep of her hand and row after row of phials rebuilt themselves against the far wall, and the ghosts of her memories re-condensed into the enchanted glassware.

She had better immerse herself in those old memories. Even with Occlumency and the Elixir, the passage of these endless years meant that, surely, she had forgotten most everything.

One more spell, she cast. Her form shimmered, folded in on itself. Became smaller. Became younger.

Each day now, her heart beat faster.