A/N: This story will follow the books until the final battle at Hogwarts, from there it becomes AU. This is my first shot at a Tomione fic, but I feel like there are not enough great ones out there, so here's my try at it. I'll be updating every week- 2 weeks. I've redone and resumed my Draco/Ginny fic called The Willing Slave so if you also enjoy a Dark Draco, take a look at it. I'll have a new chapter for it up in the next day or two. If you're a TWD fan, I also have an active Negan/OC fic. If you enjoyed this chapter, please review, follow, and favorite! When I know people are reading, I'm inspired and anxious to write more!
Her feet were pounding the ground so hard that only the adrenaline kept her knees from collapsing in pain. Her heart was hammering in her chest, blood rushing in her ears but she could still hear the leaves crunching and twigs snapping beneath the feet of her pursuers. Just keep going, don't stop, keep breathing! In, out, in, out. The dank musty smell of the forest invaded her nose. The leaves and twigs were crunching under her feet. It had rained the day before, everything was still damp and slippery. She grabbed at the low hanging branches to balance herself when she slipped. It was an advantage for her, she was so used to trekking through the forest in wet conditions that it didn't slower her down like it was doing to the men steadying falling further behind her.
Her chest was heaving, struggling to take in enough air to keep her body moving so hard and so fast. They were right behind her, she couldn't falter for even a second. She couldn't stop, this was the moment she'd been planning out for a year and she was nearly there. It was dark in the forest. It was always dark here. The trees were so tall, so thick, that real sunlight rarely reached the forest floor during the day. Only the smallest moonlight could illuminate her path even on a clear night. Tonight the moon was covered by heavy layer clouds, it was impossible to see anything without a torch or a lumos spell, both would make it even easier for her would be captors to find her. So she trusted her instincts and her magic, weaving between the dense trees. She didn't need to see to know where she was going, she pushed out with her magic, following the path is laid out for her. She could feel the sticky warm blood covering her hands. They were smacking against the trees, dodging, pushing off, and propelling herself forward. She'd been running for so long, she couldn't stop now.
Hermione Granger had been running and hiding for a year. Well, 354 days if you wanted to be exact. But she was now an expert on long distance sprinting to keep her ass alive. So many things had happened in the last year and it began 354 days ago when Harry Potter, the last hope and savior for magical and muggle world, had died. Harry Potter, her best friend, fell to the Elder wand in the hands of Lord Voldemort. The wand the vile man had taken from the grave of Albus Dumbledore.
Hermione could still remember it like it was yesterday. She would never let herself forget. It was her driving force now, the reason she kept going, the reason she could justify the unthinkable things she has done to get here. The flash of green light streaking across the darkness, Harry's body hitting the crimson coated ground, his beautiful green eyes staring at her wide open and lifeless, the trickle of blood that slowly trailed down his face. Her heart had stopped in that moment, she fell to her knees, the rainbow color flashes of curses, hexes, and charms flying all around her were unseen by her eyes. She heard nothing, felt nothing, and saw nothing but Harry. That was all she needed to remember to push through it all.
She was one of the few Order members to make it off of the Hogwarts battlefield alive and uncaptured. It had felt like she sat there, on her knees, staring at Harry's empty eyes for hours, but she knew it had only been seconds. The battle was over within minutes of Harry's fall. She'd watched all of the Weasley men fall, some before him and others after.
Bill took a severing charm to the neck. The pale green light nearly separated his head from his body. The last she saw of him, Fleur was standing over him, throwing spell after spell back at the Death Eater that had cast it.
Arthur didn't last long, he died long before Harry. She didn't see what happened to him. She found him in the middle of the battle field when she tripped over him, trying to get closer to Harry. Arthur would have been a target, Voldemort had wanted him dead for a long time. The damned Weasley hair made them all stand out in the crowded battle field.
Charlie had brought in reinforcements from all over Europe, leading the charge into battle. His brave effort had been in vain. His companions around him were cut down quickly. An explosive hex landed near his feet and there was nothing left of him to be found.
Percy had fought side by side with Fred. He was so valiant that day, something she'd never expected of him. He took an Avada Kedavra from Lucius Malfoy who was leading the group of Death Eaters charging against him. He died after Fred.
Fred and George, ever the jokesters were still laughing in the chaos of the battle. They separated before they were killed. Fred was crushed when a wall collapsed on top of him. George was hit with a slicing hex to his chest. It cut him from his hip bone to his chest. He bled out quickly. She was so glad the twins didn't witness each other's death. She took comfort in that.
Molly fought so brilliantly. After Bellatrix Lestrange threw a killing curse at Ginny, one the young red head dodged just in time, Molly was blazing. She was firing off non-verbal spells so rapidly that Bellatrix couldn't block them all. The duel lasted less than a minute. Her final spells froze Bellatrix and shattered her into a thousand pieces. Her death was so… satisfying. Hermione only wished she could have killed the wicked bitch herself. Eventually Molly fell too, a Killing Curse hit her in the back, sent from a coward in a mask while she was shielding Ginny.
Ron was the last to go, standing side by side with Harry, loyal to the bitter end. He didn't even try to block the Diffindo that stuck him in the gut. He was frozen in time, just like she was, after they watched their best friend die. Then she watched the boy she loved follow him into death. When Ron's body hit the ground, it snapped her out of her trance and she took off into the forest.
Ginny was hauled away by Death Eaters as she clung to Harry's lifeless body. Lupin, Tonks, Snape, Brown, and there were so many others lost that day. But she couldn't think of them, it was too much if she did and she wasn't strong enough for that. So she didn't think of them anymore, only Harry. She was doing this for him, for her best friend, the 17 year old boy who so willingly gave his life for her.
Keeping pushing, keep going, almost there, focus! And so she thought of the things she'd done to get here. The wand in her hand was not her first wand, the underage magical trace on her beloved wand would lead the Death Eaters straight to her with a single spell. So she'd dropped it on the Hogwarts battlefield before she took off for the Forbidden Forest, the same forest she was racing through now. The 11" Blackthorn Dragon Heartstring wand had become her faithful servant, maybe more so than her first wand had been. She'd obtained it 3 days after the final battle, taken off of the corpse of a Death Eater who was searching the forest for surviving Order members. She's been sitting, her back leaning up against a tree, asleep when the crack of a twig jolted her awake. She slipped around the tree, held her breath, hidden until the masked wizard walked by and she'd stuck the sharpened stick she'd made straight into his throat. It was crude, messy, and a little barbaric but it had worked. The man died only a minute later, she'd ignored the gurgling and choking noises that had come from his convulsive body. And she'd gained a wand, a strong wand that she could use and that was all that had mattered. She didn't even lift the mask to see the man's face before she walked away, leaving his body to rot on the forested ground. A quick "Scourgify" was the first spell she'd cast with it, removing all traces of the dead man's blood from her cloths and skin. It cleaned up the dirt and other unknown blood sources that had caked onto her robes during the battle.
Hermione had stopped counting the number of lives she'd taken in order to get where she needed to be. She had been on 11 when the numbers started to blur together. They were all Death Eaters or Voldemort sympathizers or people too scared to stand up against the Dark Lord and his followers. She tried to avoid taking lives but sometimes, many times, it had been necessary. They were the necessary cost for the chance to put the world right. There was no cost too high for that. No cost too high, no cost too high. That had become her mantra.
When Harry Potter had died and Voldemort was free to reign over Wizarding England, the world was plunged into chaotic darkness. Voldemort was a madman with only a sliver of his dark soul left. His idea of order was full of torture, blood lust, and death for anyone who didn't obey him, for anyone that displeased him. The already decimated magical population continued to plummet under his complete rule. His forces has pushed their way into the European mainland, taking country after country until he had an empire. And he wasn't just taking the magical world, his war has spilled into the muggle world and he was laying waste to it too. Muggles were slaughtered or enslaved, their cities were leveled to leave no trace of their existence. He was truly a mad man who had to be stopped, no matter the cost. No cost too high.
So Hermione Granger made it her mission to stop him. The first few months she'd plotted and planned to kill the Dark Lord herself. She gained information any way she could, sometimes with drunk persuasion, sometimes with torture, and sometimes with Legilimency, all followed by a strong memory charm. Or death. When the horrible things she found inside someone's mind were too terrible to let them live, she ended them with an Avada Kedavra. At least it was a painless death, something many of Voldemort's followers didn't grant their own victims. She'd become an excellent Legilimens, an incredibly useful skill for a fugitive to have. She'd become good enough that she could even read some minds with non-verbal use of the spell.
It quickly became clear that she would never make it through Voldemort's defenses on her own and even if she could find some of them, there were not enough Order members left alive to raise a raiding party. And so her plans changed. The only way to stop Voldemort was before he regained power. So she read everything she could find on the dark wizard's history and she found the best place to stop him was before he created all of his Horcruxes. So September 1, 1944 was the day she chose. The day that Tom Riddle Jr began his final year at Hogwarts. He would have already created two of his Horcruxes, the diary and the ring, but Hermione would never pass for a 6th year student. Thanks to her use of her time turner in her third year, she was 19 years old now.
So Hermione began to study, to read, to research. After 3 months of non-stop work, she'd created a time turner. A true time turner that could take her back to any time she wanted, not the cheapened version she'd had in her third year that limited you only safely turning back 5 hours of time. Once that was done, she'd found a suitable cover. She would become Callidora Selwyn, one of the last remaining pureblood Selwyn's, one of the sacred 28 that Voldemort coveted so much. Callidora was a 17 year old girl who had been privately tutored by her parents, Reginald and Gabriella, until their home was destroyed by a muggle bomb during the muggle war on August 29th, 1944. Her body was never found. The entire family kept to themselves, especially after Callidora had been born on May 23, 1927. It didn't take Hermione long to have the paperwork drawn up. Though they were fake, they were created by an Imperiused Ministry official and would even fool a goblin. The same official fetched the Selwyn family vault key that had been stored at the Ministry since the family's demise. Since Callidora's body had never been found, she couldn't be declared dead for 100 years so until that time, all family assets had been frozen by the Ministry. The key now rested in the inside left pocket of her plain black robes along with appropriately wrinkled and dirtied identification papers. The kind someone would have dug out of the rubble of their ruined home.
Once that was done, Hermione only had one task left. She knew from her third year use of a time turner that you couldn't go back in time to change it. When you go back in time, it's because you've always done so and any actions you take, you took because you were always going to. It was a damned time paradox that Hermione had to break if she was going to change to future. It took 7 solid months of research and testing before she thought she had the ritual. She really had no way of testing the completed formula. This was a one-time, all or nothing shot. But she had it right, she had to. Her wand was in her right hand, and she fingered the small glass vile that was tucked safely in her outer left hand pocket. The potion she had spent 4 months developing was swirling inside.
The ritual was dark, creating that potion left a mark on her soul, but really, what was one more mark? She was doing the right thing, someone had to set things right and Hermione Granger would sacrifice her own soul if it meant saving the lives of her friends, of her family, and of all of the others who took a stand against the Dark Lord and fell at the hands of his forces. So she created the potion, even when she realized an ingredient, the most important ingredient, was a soul. A human soul. It took three, since the first two attempts burned up before she could bottle them. They were all Death Eaters. No innocent souls, if any still existed under the rule of Lord Voldemort, were harmed.
She was almost there, just another minute and she'd be at the edge of the forest, still deep enough to remain hidden but close enough to the Hogwarts grounds that nothing unsavory would be lurking around. It wouldn't do to go to all of the trouble she had, perfectly execute her plan, and then be killed by an angry Centaur or Werewolf when she arrived. So she kept running. She'd planned to leave the following day, but the inconvenient timing of a Death Eater search party had pushed her plan ahead of schedule by a day. It didn't matter, she was ready now. She'd purposely picked plain robes, a plain white blouse, and a below the knee length skirt that would blend into 1944 Wizarding England and changed only an hour before the search party discovered her camp sight. She'd cast disillusionment charms and a repealing charm but one of the Death Eater's wasn't a complete idiot, he'd sensed the charms and came charging in, breaking her spells and sending her on the run. She always slept with her wand and beaded bag in hand. She was always ready.
She was beginning to recognize the forest now. She'd been in the edges of the forest enough times as a child to remember it. She was close enough now, so she listened. Two pursuers were close enough that she'd have to dispatch them, one to her right and one to her left. The others she couldn't hear anymore, they had fallen too far behind. She didn't have time for a battle, for curses that could be blocked. So she dodged behind a tree and let out two successive, carefully aimed Avada Kedavras. She was already pulling the glass vial from her pocket as the green lights from her wand streaked across the forest and found their marks.
"Tempus est ad fletere!" Hermione cried as she smashed the vial to the ground. Black smoke consumed her, swirling so fast it nearly knocked her off balance. It was pulled at her, tearing her robes, ripping her hair, suffocating her. Faces were flashing by in the smoky whirlwind. It only took her a minute to recognize the faces of people she'd killed. Her heart clenched, it was even harder to breathe now. Her eyes were burning and her chest was on fire, but she didn't need to see for her final task. She'd practiced over and over again until she had each step so engrained in her memory that she could do them not matter what was thrown her way. She'd prepared for time to fight back and it was. But it wasn't going to win. She reached under her robes and grasped the time turner. The date was already set to September 1st. All she needed was one turn for each year she needed to go back, 55 in total. And so she began to count down
55. The black smoke tornado around her was so loud it felt like her head was going to burst. Just keep turning, keep counting.
40. There were screams, just barely audible over the howling wind.
30. The screaming grew louder. It was a single voice now, she recognized it. The Death Eater she'd killed and captured his soul successfully into the potion. She didn't know his name because it didn't matter, but his scream was echoing so loudly through her mind that she thought she might lose it if it didn't stop soon.
20. Curses were being fired, but none could breech through to heavy darkness of the smoke. Nothing could stop her except herself now. The thick black swirl was pushing down her throat, choking her. She couldn't breathe, her lungs were on fire and her chest was heaving, trying desperately to take in oxygen that wasn't there.
3… 2… 1… And suddenly it was quiet. The smoke, the wind, the screams, they were all gone. She took a gasp of air, delivering previous oxygen into her lungs. She was so dizzy she fell, catching herself on her hands and knees as she retched up bile from her otherwise empty stomach. At first Hermione heard nothing, maybe the howling smoke had deafened her. Then she heard it. The chirp of a cricket, the croak of a toad, the rustling of the wind through the trees. The pale moonlight just broke through the trees. Was it the early morning or late night of September 1st? She hadn't even caught her breath, but she had to move, time was of the essence now. She was on her feet, flying through the forest towards the castle. She counted in her head. It took 2 minutes and 47 seconds to reach the closed gates of Hogwarts. She was breathless as she banged on the gates. 38 long seconds later, a puzzled young man in Slytherin robes appeared.
"Who are you?" his voice was calm, smooth as silk.
"What… day is… it?" Hermione gasped between heavy breaths.
"September 1st," he replied, his dark brow furrowed in perplexity.
"Year?"
"What?"
"What year is it?!" she yelled.
"1944. What is wrong with you?"
She didn't answer. No time. She ripped the time turner from around her neck and threw it to the ground. She crushed it under her boot before she circled her wand and cried, "Uanescere!" and it disintegrated into dust, chain and all. Hermione grasped the wrought iron bars of the gate as her legs began to shake and she collapsed to the ground. She was here. She made it. It was done. The problem with a real time turner was that it only allowed you to return to the past for 5 minutes. Exactly 5 minutes after it transports you back in time, it returns you to the point you left. It would take Hermione much longer than 5 minutes to change the future. She couldn't have the time tuner bring her back so soon, so it wouldn't be taking her back at all. Just as she'd planned, as soon as she knew she was in the right time, she destroyed it before it could take her back. She could never return to her own time, but that was a small prices to pay to set the world right. She'd accepted her fate when she'd realized it was the only way. Not cost too high.
Now the adrenaline was wearing off and the exhaustion was catching up to her. She closed her eyes for a moment before she looked down at herself. Her robes were torn and dirty, her blouse now dipped a bit lower on her chest than would be considering appropriate for 1944, but her bra was still covered. Her skirt had several large tears but still covered her intimate areas. Her long honey brown curls were a wild mess, it would take a few rounds of spells to untangle it all.
"What was that? You're trespassing on Hogwarts grounds and I demand you answer me!"
Hermione looked up at the boy who was towering over her from behind the gate. He was tall, around 5'11, his dark brown hair was slightly curly and well groomed, his piercing green eyes reminded her of Harry, and his robes were perfectly pressed. He was quite handsome, not something she generally noticed or cared about anymore, but it wasn't something you could ignore in him. His presences was striking, commanding. He had a confidence and power about him that wasn't often found in a student. His wand was in his hand, though it wasn't pointed at her yet.
"It was a necklace my father used to track me," the lie rolled elegantly off of her tongue. Lies came so quickly and naturally to her now. If you made something out be less than trivial, then people paid it no notice. "There's no need for it anymore. I need to see Professor Dumbledore."
"Who are you?" he demanded. His brow was still furrowed, though he accepted her first answer.
"My name is Callidora Selwyn. My father told me to come to Hogwarts and speak to Professor Dumbledore if something happened. Please, I need his help." Hermione watched as her new last name registered, a glint of curiosity sparked in his eye.
"Give me your wand, then I can open the gates and take you to the Professor." Hermione hesitated, her wand had not left her possession since she'd take it. It was in her hand or up her sleeve at all times. It had bonded so strongly with her, it hurt to think about separating from it. She stretched her arm up and through the gate, handing her most trusted weapon to the stranger. He snatched it from her open hand and pocketed it before he waved his own wand and the gates opened. He stepped forward and offered her his free hand to help her to her feet. His hand was warm, soft, inviting, and something sent a spark straight down her spine. His eyes snapped down to hers, almost like he'd felt it too. He pulled her to her feet and released her hand as quickly as he could.
"Follow me," he said and started towards the castle. Hermione stepped up walk side by side with him. "Professor Dumbledore is still in his office. You're lucky you showed up when you did. I'm doing final rounds at the gate this evening and I was about to head back to the castle. You could have been stuck out here all night. I'm the Head Boy here at Hogwarts, Tom Riddle."
Hermione smiled at him as she glanced over the Head Boy badge sewn on to his robes. She'd missed that in her fatigued state. Yes, luck was on the side of Hermione Granger today. No, not Hermione Granger. That was a name she'd never hear again. She was Callidora Selwyn now. Now until the day she died, whenever that would be. Only time will tell.