A/N - I don't own the characters or the Harry Potter Universe. I'm presenting a non-for-profit story of my own creation. Enjoy

TEN YEARS GONE

It was a rare day off from the spell research department for Hermione. After a light breakfast she sat back in her favorite chair and glanced around her small flat. Photographs and various knick knacks leading her memory back along the path that brought her to this point. A feeling of disappointment washed over her. She tried to shake it off. Her life was good; she learned new things daily; was able to apply herself and was appreciated for her abilities and efforts; her place was cosy and comfortable. But, she was alone. She denied being lonely. She has associates that can relate to her, that understand her. Well, about work anyway. She knows a lot of people. Nobody that she can confide in; nobody that she feels close to; nobody that really cares about her. Her eyes started to tear up; allergies, it must be. "Oh, how did I get here?"

Images flashed in her mind of her past. Working in her department; the last retched date she was on; the family reunion with her mom and various cousins ending quietly, consoling her mom as they missed her father. Her mind wondered further back. She saw images of Ron; in each one he had a different girl on his arm, a grin on his face and a vacant expression in his eyes. "Why didn't that work out for me?" She saw him with that same stupid grin as he stood there outside the tent; coming back from mommy's home cooking no doubt; after abandoning Harry and her on their hunt. She never really could forgive him for that; along with the other selfish, jealous and narrow-minded crap he pulled over the years. He wasn't a bad bloke, but the baggage he brought was just too heavy to carry after a while. When he asked her to be his girlfriend about a week after the memorial services for his brother, that's what she was thinking as she told him, 'No, I don't think that will work, but we can still be friends, right?' He quietly nodded and shuffled off to his quidditch practice. In her heart she knew that they would never be close again. Some guys just don't work that way. Ron was so different from Harry.

Harry, she had lunch with him two days after that. Before she could find the nerve to bring up Ron, Harry was telling her that he was leaving the auror training. He just didn't have the desire for it any more. He needed to get away from things get away from the attention and the stares; get away from the darker memories of lost friends and family. He decided he was going to travel a bit; he'd heard that lots of folks their age backpacked around the continent, and that sounded like a good remedy to him. 'What do you think?', he asked her. She told him that she thought it was a wonderful idea; that it was a great way to see some of the world and should be very relaxing. She offered to give him a list of sites that she has seen on a couple family vacations she had taken in her youth, and she suggested items to bring along. Seeing the image in her mind now, she noticed some of the spark go out of Harry's eyes as she did the conversation went along. Why was that? Had she missed something? Wait, no, was he hoping that . . . why didn't it even occur to her? She was so excited by the new opportunities being offered by the ministry, so glad she could avoid talking about Ron and excited for her dearest friend that he might find a measure of peace that she jumped right into her usual role of helping Harry. She didn't think that she had an alternative; that she could have joined him. "Oh, damn. I could have at least asked him if I could tag along. But, I guess I just couldn't see that a couple of months or years away would be a good thing; that the rest of the world wasn't going anywhere and research and studying would be here when I got back." "I could have been with Harry." Maybe she could have saved him, she'll never know. They didn't even know what caused the accident, but she did not that he was gone. A longing to see his face again came over her. Those allergies were acting up again as her eyes became watery and she had to find a tissue to wipe her face. "This woolgathering isn't helping anything." She called her mom to let her know that she was on her way for a visit.

The next day at work she was still somewhat pensive and wondering about the past. Since she didn't have a particular assignment currently her mind wondered to the that topic. So, she did was does best; she researched the topic and thought. Time-turners were used to go to the past; she and Harry saved Sirius doing so. Were other methods ever used? It would seem likely. If someone could enchant an object to do that, then there must have been a spell for it. After several hours of digging in the best library in Britain, in the Department of Mysteries, research division, she found the procedure for its creation. She also found why the spell was enchanted into a devise and why there was a fairly tight limit on the amount of time one could travel through. The spell was actually four spells which took over three hours to cast; with the last spell actually needing the caster to imbibe a fairly rare potion during the casting. Getting that right was not only difficult, but would exhaust you for several days; getting it wrong, well, she didn't like to think about it. Her curiosity for the need for such elaborate methods had her going over the arithmancy used to create those spells. The third spell empowered the element of time/distance which could be specified, three hours maximum. Something about the equation bothered her. Yes, it was the basic assumption that the time spent in the past needed to equal the time/distance traveled back. She could see why one couldn't go back twenty minutes and stay for two hours, but it was unclear why one couldn't go back five hours and stay for one hour. It seemed to have something to do with spatial relationships and somehow the fourth spell and that potion where defining factors.

Her co-workers saw that familiar light in her eyes the next month and a half. The one she had when presented a particularly interesting and challenging puzzle. But, then it suddenly went out for two days. She found the answers she wanted; she knew the limitations; she had accessed the risks involved; she just didn't know what the effects would be. In third year when she used a time-turner she would jump back two or three hours, attend a class and after resuming her timeline would find herself suddenly flooded with the thoughts and memories of the extra time she had just lived through. None of the activities she engaged in would have made a great change in the timeline. The most significant change was saving Sirius, but if they had been delayed past the point of him being kissed by the dementor or Buckbeak being executed she was unsure what would have happened. Would it simply not work or if a change was made that was of great enough significance would an alternate timeline, or universe if those quantum physicists were right, come into being? Or, would the traveler suffer other consequences, like death or dropping out of existence? There seemed to be no way of knowing without experimentation and that was a rather risky proposition to only satisfy her curiosity.

Days later the thoughts of her past and her future would not leave her. She acknowledge to herself that work was not enough, that she needed her friends; she needed Harry. She returned to her research and reworked the problem. She came back to much the same conclusion. One could actually go back years in time as long as the time spent was proportionally shorter. Well, proportionally using her revised method. It could be done, but would the traveler come back to an unaltered timeline, because so much had changed that a new timeline was brought into creation or would she comeback to one with all the changes resulting from their impact on the past. She decided that she wanted to find out.

She now had to decide 'when' to go to; what action would create the best outcome and still leave the process with the best chance of success and least chance of utter failure. If she went back and never returned, for whatever reason, is that acceptable? Yes, if she could affect the changes she desired. If she went back and returned to this life with no changes taking place for 'her', but somehow an alternate Hermione and Harry could have a better life, is that acceptable? Yes, yes it was, knowing that somewhen he was happy and that she'd done her best was enough. If she went back and returned to a new reality with the alterations in place, well that might be wonderful. So, when to go to? Going back and asking Harry if she could come along on his trip was her first thought. It was discarded as being too little too late; he might honorably refuse for her own good or she could have simply misread his reaction that one time. No, she needed to go back further so better choices could be made and maybe the evil that was Voldemort could be ended sooner with fewer casualties and with less danger for Harry. The best way to achieve that, she thought, was to do as much as she could to prepare before hand.

After making the required lists of various turning points and important events in her past she decided to push the envelope and go back 12 years for approximately 20 seconds. She was confident that the spells and potion she had re-engineered would be reliable to that extent. 12 years could allow for a magnificent amount of positive change to take place for both her and society as a whole and she could foresee very few negative repercussions even after running through hundreds of different scenarios. The parchment store was beginning to be rather put out with her continuous orders; their suppliers were having a hard time keeping up. 20 seconds was obviously a limiting factor and any actions she took would need to be efficient and precise. The list of things that she felt confident changing were few. Sure she might be able to pop in and stun Bellatrix or Voldemort at just the right time. But there we no precise way to determine the exact time she would appear. Actions like those would have too great a chance of failure either in having the opportunity or in execution. Speaking to someone to relay information had some of the same issues. She figured that a note might be the best option.

Knowing that she could bring what she was wearing and carrying was useful. Limited to perhaps delivering one or two objects and her note she quickly decided on her approach. She scheduled two weeks off from work after gathering all the necessary items and after preparing the potion with utmost care. Two weeks should allow her enough time to recover should she find herself back in this time and alone. Next, go to Hogwarts, the site of the change she wished to make. Headmistress McGonagall had allowed her to use one of the old rooms in the dungeon for her 'research'. She doubted that Minerva would have agreed if she knew what she was going to do. Hermione chose a classroom she knew had not been used in her time there and as far as she knew since that time. She packed some provisions and medical supplies just in case and set to work.

The incantations went as expected. Taking the potion was always going to be the hard part and she know that going in. As usual it tasted awful, but the bigger challenge was the lightheadedness and the otherworldly feeling it gave her. It reminded her of the drug induced out of body experiences she had read about. Focusing on getting the last spell correctly cast was a challenge like she had never felt before. She uttered the last word and then she had a hard time keeping her feet as a myriad sensations seemed to flood her consciousness and then suddenly she was snapped back to clarity. It was like waking from a vivid dream to midday wakefulness in a second. Glancing around the room she know she had succeeded to at least some extent. The furniture was different and the room was dusty again.

Stepping out into the hallway she quickly went into the potions classroom. She deposited her note where she knew it would be found and quickly returned to her room with seconds to spare she left two items in a cupboard that had been there seeming since the founders. Blackness, blackness took her from that point on.