Prologue.
"It's Time," Hermione whispered. "Time."
She stared at the grotesque figure; the baby's head on a man's body, for a second longer before tearing her eyes away, looking frantically around the room. Time was valuable, and there had to be something in there that could help them escape from the nearing Death Eaters.
That was when she saw them: the Time-Turners. But there was something wrong with them. The counter they lay on tipped suddenly, as though an invisible force had knocked it over, and the collection fell almost to the floor. Almost because before they could get there, the counter was upright and they were back in their place. Hermione watched as the counter tipped and the necklaces fell again. They were stuck in an endless cycle of falling and falling again.
All of them…except one.
One Time-Turner lay haphazardly on the floor, right next to Harry's left foot. Of course, he hadn't noticed it; he and Neville were still transfixed on the strange man-baby. She ducked down and grabbed it, opening her mouth to tell Harry of her discovery. However, the words didn't come, for she was interrupted by a crashing sound and a scream that had come not from her still-open mouth, but from the distance.
From Ron.
Harry called out for their friends and Hermione yelled Harry's name to alert him to the fact that the Death Eater had managed to remove the bell jar from his head, and was now flailing his arms around narrowly missing Harry.
Harry pointed his wand at the odd figure, his words forming the beginning of a spell, but Hermione grabbed his arm in disbelief.
"You can't hurt a baby!" she scolded. Harry readied himself to argue but the approaching footsteps stopped him. He ran toward the exit, yelling for Hermione and Neville to follow. Hermione pocketed the Time-Turner before running after the two boys.
Fear and adrenaline coursed through Hermione as they raced through the dark corridor of the Department of Mystery, as Harry dragged her into one of the offices to escape from yet more of Voldemort's followers. Their freedom from the Death Eaters was short –lived, however, as two of them burst into the room before Hermione had a chance to finish casting the colloportus spell on the door. She, Harry, and Neville were violently thrown backwards. Hermione did not see where Neville and Harry had landed, for a shower of books fell on her as soon as she impacted with the case, causing every cell in her body to ache.
"WE'VE GOT HIM! IN AN OFFICE OFF-" one of the men began, but Hermione was too quick with her silencing spell as she struggled to her feet once more.
Harry hit the other Death Eater with an excellent body-bind hex and Hermione couldn't help but congratulate him. Or so he had tried to, but the silenced man had taken advantage of her momentary distraction. She saw the swooshing action he made with his wand before everything turned black.
A/N-Hello, dear readers! Welcome to my new story.
Just an FYI, this story will be fairly AU, it will disregard some canon details about the Marauders in the later chapters.