Summary: Harbinger (n): One that pioneers in or initiates a major change, a precursors; one that presages or foreshadows what is to come.
Hermione finds herself on the wrong end of a curse in the Department of Mysteries that sets the stage for events 17 years in the past. Loyalties shift, friendships are questions, and the players learn to look beyond the surface of things. Because, after all, this is war. Nothing is ever as it seems. First fic.
Spoilers: The entire series. AU from the battle in the Department of Mysteries on. See note at the end of this chapter for more details.
Rating: T for now, may change later.
Anti-Legal Action Charm: I do not own anything from the Harry Potter books, movies, or any other related products/services. I am merely borrowing the characters for recreational purposes and will return to J.K. Rowling as soon as possible. The only character that is mine through the duration of this story is Kalare who is a cameo for my friend and tormenter K (Kidding, K. Just kidding.) There may be more if I need filler characters (which I probably will).
The chapter titles will (mostly) be borrowed from Beatles' song titles. If they're not, I'll make a note of it.
Reviews are welcomed,flames are not; constructive criticism only please.
Chapter 1: Golden Slumbers
"Enervate!" Hermione felt her chest tighten and surge upward, some unseen power forcing the air out of her lungs to a point where she couldn't draw a decent breath. The pressure in her chest vanished as soon as it had started and she struggled to get into an upright position. A hand curled itself around her arm and helped her. "You alright?" A feminine voice asked.
"Peachy," Hermione deadpanned, her voice hoarse and grating to her own ears. She sounded like the old woman in the corner house in her parents' neighborhood, the one who had smoked for her entire life and didn't plan on stopping anytime soon.
"I'm old and dying anyway," she always said. "Don't see why I should give up the only enjoyment I have just to prolong my life another few months." Mrs. Kennsey, Hermione remembered. That's what her name was. And she'd been saying that same line for the last 5 years.
Slowly, her eyes started to open on their own, but she slammed them shut again soon as the bright light hit them and shot its way through the back of her head. She gave a little cry and clutched the back of her skull, feeling a dampness there underneath the tangled curls. She pulled one of her hands away and looked down.
"Oh," the voice inhaled sharply. "Oh, that's not good. Blood is never a good sign. Come on, we'd better get you to the infirmary." Another hand grabbed her other arm and forced her into a standing position. "Can you walk, or should I levitate you?" The worried voice asked. Hermione's eyes began to adjust themselves to her surroundings. The edges were blurry, and the bright light was still there in her periphery, but she could make out familiar sets of stairs and the outlines of snoring portraits along the wall.
"I'm back?" She asked. "How—" She looked around again, making sure her vision wasn't playing tricks on her.
"Back?" The voice asked. Hermione turned her head a little and got a good look at the body that belonged to the voice. A petite Slytherin girl was standing next to her,; she had stick straight, luminescent blonde hair pulled up in a messy bun and secured with two black feather quills and a pair of curious grey eyes. Her wand was the source of the bright light—a lumos that stretched all the way down the hall. Hermione studied her for a minute, trying to place her face. She couldn't have been older than Hermione, and she didn't look younger either, which meant that she was in either Hermione's year or the year below that. But she didn't look terribly familiar, just a part of her did. Hermione couldn't figure out what it was, but there was something strangely familiar about the slope of her nose, the way her hair looked almost white, the grey eyes.
It was all familiar, but she couldn't place the face or the features with a name, no matter how hard she tried. If she didn't know any better, she'd think she was having one of those Senior Moments Mrs. Kennsey always talked about—where you know something but you don't know you know it. She wracked her brains trying to place the girl's face.
And suddenly, everything was just too much. The pain in her head, the sharpness in her back, the way her brain seemed to be running nonstop without making any sense of anything. It was too much. She needed peace. Peace to put everything together and remember what had happened at the Department of Mysteries and how she had gotten back to Hogwarts. Hermione's eyes slid shut in search of the peace.
"OK, time to get you to Madame Pomfrey." The blonde decided. She slipped an arm around Hermione's waist and began directing her down the familiar path to the infirmary. "You'd better walk, otherwise you'll fall asleep and you can't fall asleep if you have a concussion. I don't know why, all I know is you're not supposed to. Hermione's head was pounding, and it didn't mean thinking about the strange turn of events any easier. "What's your name?" The girl asked. "Come on," she shook her slightly. "Unless you've got the right potion, you can't fall asleep if you have a concussion. Sometimes they can't even wake you up after that." She shook her again. "Come on!"
The girl was talking again, but the words were jumbled, foreign sounds to Hermione's ears, which felt as though they'd been stuffed with the gauze pads her parents used in the office. She felt her eyes slipping shut again, and her legs started to shake, turning to jelly where she stood. She thought the girl was shouting at her now, but she couldn't be sure. Everything felt so—wrong. Hermione's legs gave out and her knees hit the floor, followed by the rest of her torso and then her head. Her vision swam for a moment before everything went blissfully dark and she found the peace she had been craving since the whole mess began.
Unfortunately, that peace didn't seem to last long. There were voices seeping through the wonderful nothingness, forcing her back into consciousness. Her head was still sore, but the horrible prickling in her back was gone. She tried to focus on the voices, but all she could hear were bits and pieces of a conversation that made no sense.
"—fell through the ceiling—passed out—don't know."
"—recognize—a student?"
"We—wards around the castle—side."
"—think—awake—miss?"
A hand slipped under her head and pushed her upwards. Something cool was pressed against her lips and titled back, sloshing some sort of liquid against them. They parted on their own accord and a bitter liquid splashed over her tongue and down her throat, making her choke. She struggled to sit upright, trying to get the nasty taste out of her mouth before whatever she'd swallowed came back up.
"Easy," a kindly voice said. "Here," a goblet was pressed into her hands. "Augmenti." Hermione brought the goblet up to her mouth and drank the water down. It helped, but not much. She slowly opened her eyes, hoping to avoid another blinding incident, and was met with the soft glow of the torches in the infirmary instead. She let out a sigh of relief and opened them fully. It was blurry at first, but then Madame Pomfrey slowly swam into sight, a concerned look on her face.
"Madame Pomfrey," she croaked. She grimaced at the sound of her voice and took another sip of water, missing the matron's surprised look. Hermione tried to look around to see who else was in the infirmary, but her vision was obstructed by the heavy white partitions the mediwitch used for student privacy during examinations. "Where's everyone else?" She asked, panicking. "Are they ok?"
"Everyone else?" The matron parroted, looking dumbfounded.
"Harry, Ron, Ginny, Neville, Luna—are they ok?" Hermione asked, more insistent this time. "I—I mean, they have to be, don't they? No one—" she couldn't finish that train of thought, not wanting to even entertain the possibility that no one else had made it out. The partitions were starting to make her feel claustrophobic Madame Pomfrey looked over at whoever was on the other side of her bed, a hopeless expression on her face.
"I'm afraid no one else was found with you, Miss," a familiar voice interjected. Hermione looked over in the direction of the voice. Professor Dumbledore was standing beside the cot, clad in a ghastly purple robe with shining silver stars and moons splattered across the material. He was studying the palm of his hand as though it held all the secrets of the Universe. Beside him was Mad-Eye Moody, wand drawn at the ready. It was a common sight (she had spent the summer in Grimmauld place, after all) but what shocked her was the fact that he was no longer 'Mad-Eye.' The magical eye was gone, his 'natural' eye in its place. His face wasn't scared as badly, the walking stick was missing, and he had both of his legs. His hair was also a much brighter red than she remembered it ever being. He looked younger. "Lower your wand, Alastor," Dumbledore said mildly. Hermione noticed his beard was shorter and had a few streaks of silver-grey running through it.
"You don't know who she is, Albus," Moody protested, never taking his eyes off her. "This slip of a girl manages to get into the castle without anyone noticing, you don't know why she's here. Can't trust anyone these days, you know that."
"Constant vigilance," Hermione mumbled. The Auror's eyes brightened at that.
"Exactly!" He cried. "Constant vigilance! That's a good philosophy, I might use that," he said distractedly. Hermione's chest tightened. She realized what felt so wrong. She'd experienced it once before, on a much smaller scale, but the feeling was still the same. It was the same feeling she got when she tried to be in 6 different places at once, when the maximum was supposed to be 3, just amplified so it was a thousand times worse. "Constant vigilance," he said again, still half-smiling. It was an odd expression, to Hermione at least, who had only ever seen him scowl, rage, or have a completely blank expression. The amusement was short lived, however, and Auror Moody returned with a vengeance. "Poppy, get some veritaserum," he ordered.
"There's no need Alastor," Dumbledore interjected. Moody stared at him with thinly veiled impatience, waiting for an answer. "Interesting things, Time Turners," he murmured, still staring at his hand. The Auror and mediwitched exchanged a look, wondering what the Headmaster's most recent non-sequitor had to do with the young girl.
"I thought the Ministry was still in the process of developing those wretched things," Pomfrey huffed.
"You don't approve, Poppy?" He asked, finally looking up at them.
"People shouldn't be given the power to traverse through time!" She huffed. "The complications of such a venture could be catastrophic! What would happen if an untrained person—or worse, a student—were to get their hands on such an object and slip too far into the past?" Dumbledore glanced over at Hermione, eyes twinkling in that infuriating, all-knowing way of his.
"I have a feeling we're about to find out." They were all staring at her now. She shifted uncomfortably, looking down at her hands.
"A Time Turner?" Moody demanded. "Impossible! Those are—and would be—heavily regulated by the Ministry!"
"She's 16! She couldn't have gotten her hands on a Time Turner!" Pomfrey exclaimed. Hermione looked up at Dumbledore.
"What year is it?" She asked quietly, resigned to the fact that the wizard had pieced together the fact that she was from the future. There would be no use trying to lie about it, especially not since she would undoubtedly need his help to get back to her rightful time.
"1977." Hermione's eyes widened. "I trust you didn't expect to go back so far?"
"I didn't expect to go back at all!" She cried. "I don't have a Time Turner anymore! I gave it back at the end of my Third Year!"
"Then how'd you get here?" Moody growled.
"I don't know! One minute I'm somewhere in the Department of Mysteries and the next—" she clamped a hand over her mouth.
"Department of Mysteries?" The Auror hissed, advancing on her. Oddly enough, she didn't find him as menacing without the magical eye. "Poppy, get the veritaserum."
"Alastor—"
"No, Albus, I'm putting my foot down. This is now an official investigation!" Pomfrey disappeared around the curtain, presumably to her office to fetch the truth serum.
"While she is in this castle, she is under my protection," Dumbledore said, the twinkle gone from his eyes. Hermione had only seen that look once before, when Umbridge had tried to kick Trewlawney out of the castle.
"She just admitted she was in the Department of Mysteries before finding her way into one of the most heavily warded buildings in the Wizarding World. She's in a student uniform, though no one knows who she is, and she recognized Poppy, who clearly didn't know her. I want answers!"
"Then perhaps you should try asking a question first," Dumbledore suggested mildly. "For example, you might start with asking her name." Pomfrey returned with the vial in hand, looking extremely apprehensive. "Well?" Dumbledore prompted, looking at Hermione expectantly.
"Hermione Granger, sir," she said quietly.
"And what year are you from, Miss Granger?"
"1996, sir."
"Do you know how you got here?" He asked. She shook her head.
"We can check that with a little veritaserum," Moody said, glaring at her.
"I don't!" She insisted. "I—I was hit with a spell, but it was just an expelliaramus! Nothing that would have sent me 19 years into the past!" Moody opened his mouth to say something else, but was cut off by the Headmaster, who held up his hand.
"Do you see this, Alastor?" He asked. The palm of his hand was covered in a thin sheen of a golden dust that almost looked like sand. Hermione gasped, recognizing the dust from the tiny hourglass in her Third Year. "This is the sand the Department of Mysteries is experimenting with in the Time Turners."
"How do you know that?" Moody asked, looking skeptical. The older wizard chuckled.
"Nicholas and I spent some time helping develop it," he said. "It's housed in the Department of Mysteries—"
"In an hour glass," Hermione finished quietly. That had been what she had crashed into in the strange room. Dumbledore nodded.
"I suspect that that is what the spell knocked you into," he said.
"The glass exists now though?" She asked hopefully.
"Yes," he nodded again. "However, the Time Turners are still unstable magical objects. And there has yet to be a design that will transport someone to the future." Hermione swallowed thickly, feeling the familiar prick of tears stinging behind her eyes. "I'm afraid, Miss Granger, that until further research is conducted and such an object is created, we have no way of returning you to your proper time." Hermione nodded, not trusting her voice. She felt the tears welling up in her eyes now.
She was stranded in 1977. Without her friends. With no way of knowing if everyone was alright. She was stuck in the time of Harry's parents. When the Marauders ruled the halls with their pranks and the Death Eaters were just starting to heavily recruit followers for Voldemort.
And she couldn't do anything about it without completely destroying the timeline that had already been created. She couldn't save anyone without damning the entire world with a Paradox. She felt the tears sliding down her cheeks.
"Out!" Pomfrey demanded. "The both of you, out! Miss Granger needs her rest now, and the two of you aren't doing anything to help!" Hermione fought the urge to laugh at the mediwitch's outburst. Even in the past, the woman's fearsome expressions and the intensity with which she looked after her patients was exactly the same.
In a way, it was comforting. Maybe there were a handful of other things that were still the same.
Pomfrey ushered the Auror and the Headmaster out of the infirmary before returning with a Calming Draught, which she practically forced Hermione to drink at wand point. It tasted better than the ones in Hermione's time—which confirmed her theory that Professor Snape made them taste nasty on purpose.
Drowsy, her head still swimming from her fall, Hermione settled back against the pillows and let herself drift off, silently praying that when she awoke the next morning, her memories from tonight would just be one horrible nightmare.
For those of you who stuck around to see how this new story's going to work out, thanks! For those of you who're new, welcome; hopefully you stick around.
Originally, I started this story as part of a bet (which I lost) so there are certain criteria I have to meet. If anyone's interested in knowing what I have to include in this story, check my profile. All the details are there.
Thanks for reading!