AUTHOR'S NOTES:

This story was entry #1 of 2 for the 2016 Dramione-Remix Fest (dramione-remix . livejournal . com). The fest is long over and reveals are out, so now I can post this for you here. This fanfic is finished. It is multi-chaptered, so I will put up a new chapter once a week or so until done.

My prompt for the fest was: Kyle Reese/Sarah Connor from "THE TERMINATOR" series

Many thanks to "Jillified" for her invaluable brainstorming help, giving me a beta on this story, and telling me when I was being too verbose for my own good. *smooches*

Thank you once more to our faboo Mods, "unseenlibrarian" and "withdrawnred" for hosting this fun fest (and forgiving me my zany scheduling).

DISCLAIMER:"Harry Potter" is the property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. This fanfiction was written entirely for fun, not for profit, and no copyright infringement is intended. Also, I've borrowed many quotes and references from the various "Terminator" movies and its offshoot television series for this fic. All kudos go to those writers (James Cameron, Gale Anne Hurd, William Wisher Jr., John Brancato, Michael Ferris, Jonathan Nolan, Paul Haggis, Josh Friedman).

TIMELINE: This story starts in an Alternate Universe future, then takes a trip into the middle of Voldemort's war during Draco's 7th year ("Deathly Hallows"). Everything after that is A/U.

MAIN CHARACTERS FEATURED: Hermione Granger x Draco Malfoy

SECONDARY CHARACTERS FEATURED (alphabetical order, last name): Lavender Brown, Cho Chang, Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle, Astoria Greengrass, Luna Lovegood, Theodore Nott, Pansy Parkinson, Padma Patil, Dolores Umbridge

SUMMARY: "I've lived through fire, and tasted murder, and I am infected by both. I will end her. I will save him. And I will free my soul."

RATING: MA (NC-17)

WARNINGS: Main & Secondary Character death, Explicit het sex, Explicit profanity, Time-travel theory (Alternate future, Changing the future), Sad goodbyes, Bittersweet ending & Happy ending (this warning will make sense when you get to it)

NOTES: If you'be never seen"The Terminator" series, watch it. It's worth it. The backstory is this - far into the future, machines have driven humanity to the brink of extinction. The human resistance, led by a guerrilla fighter named John Connor, deals the machines a crushing blow and defeats them in a decisive battle that turns the tide of the war. Knowing they have lost, the machines make one last desperate gamble: they build a time machine and send a Terminator robot back into the past, to a time before John Connor is born. Their plan is to kill John's mother, Sarah Connor, before he can be conceived. If they succeed, the resistance will fail in the future and the machines will win. The human resistance finds the time portal just minutes after a Terminator cyborg (a fairly tough, difficult to beat machine whose only mission is to kill his target, in this case Sarah) has gone back in time, so John Connor sends through the time portal one of his best soldiers: Kyle Reese. Kyle's mission is to go back in time and protect Sarah Connor from the Terminator. Unwittingly, Kyle and Sarah fall in love. In the end, Kyle gives his life to stop the Terminator and to protect the woman he loves...the woman carrying his unborn son...a son who would one day grow up and lead the human resistance against the machines. A boy Sarah names John Connor.

THE WAY HOME

By: RZZMG

.

"We're here to stop the end of the world."

– Sarah Connor, "Terminator: Genisys"

.

She believed in the fight.

There was always good in a good struggle.

And that's why Divination was a load of horseshite, as far as Hermione Granger was concerned, because the 'mystic arts' always told one not to bother trying, that the outcome was already set and that nothing one did—no amount of effort made, or blood shed, or tears cried, or skills proved—could alter the fact that what was meant to be always, eventually happened.

As she read the inscription above the doorway she'd just passed through, she felt vindicated in that long-held belief at last:

"The future's not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."

Whoever had carved that nugget of wisdom definitely knew what they were talking about, she decided, turning away to focus on today's big goal: actually proving that statement true.

The Death Chamber inside the Department of Mysteries hadn't changed a bit since her fifth year. Still painted as black as the Reaper's cowl, with torches along the upper walls that had come to life the moment they'd stepping through the door into the room, casting enough light by which to see the stairs that led down into the chamber itself.

Leading the way, Hermione hurriedly took those stairs down. They led to a raised dais in the centre of the room, upon which sat an ancient, forbidding stone archway with a tattered, pitch-coloured curtain that flapped in a mysterious wind.

The Dark Archway.

She looked away from it with a shudder, remembering the way Sirius had melted into the dark portal between the arches, his body dissolving from solid to spirit within seconds, as if his very essence had been siphoned away by the dark god, Thanatos. Would it be the same for her—for them?

Or would turning the door change not only the purpose of the arch, as Luna had contended, but also the sensation of stepping through it?

"According to Kingsley's Patronus, Umbridge went back in time today, an hour or so ago," she told her companions as they hurried down the steep stairs to the bottom. "After three years, we've finally come to the moment that changed everything: when the Dark Queen went back in time to tell her younger self how to win the war and beat Voldemort."

Pansy Parkinson hurried along at Hermione's side, her dark hair pulled back into a high ponytail that curled at the ends, her Muggle jeans just as faded and torn as Hermione's, but her chin held high despite how far she'd fallen over the years.

"That frog-like, flabby bitch," the witch snarled. "I'm still irritated that we couldn't kill her until now."

Hermione stopped and grabbed Parkinson's arm to force her to stop as well. "I know how you feel, but you know why we couldn't act all these years. You've read Trelawney's journal that same as I have. If we'd killed Dolores Umbridge before this moment, the past would be forever sealed in stone. We needed to wait until this exact moment, when she went back in time, so we could follow her and stop her back then, before her younger-self kills Malfoy. The timeline changes if we do this right. We stop her past-self becoming the Dark Queen today."

Pansy sighed and waved her off, jarring loose the hold on her. "I know the mission, Granger. We stop Umbridge from cornering Draco in the Slytherin dorms and killing him, and he remains the master of the Elder Wand. We change everything that came after that," she recited, rolling her eyes. "Draco can then give the wand to Potter instead, Potter can fulfill his prophecy and kill Voldemort, and the world is saved from ever having to live under the Pink Menace's fucked-up fascist regime. Hurrah."

The witch paused, touching the necklace she wore around her throat. She'd never taken off the small gold chain with its diamond solitaire pendant, not once since Blaise Zabini had given it to her as a token of his love, three years prior. It had been all she had left of him after Dolores had hunted him and his family down for their political fence-sitting, and Hermione knew the other woman clung by a thread to the hope it represented.

"It's the whole 'going back in time' thing I'm unsure of," Pansy admitted, clearly unsettled. She looked over at the ominous stone archway, which seemed to suck the very air from the room with its silent patience. "How do we know we're going to be able to do it?"

"Because our sacrifice to the Archway will be remarkable enough for it to permit us passage," Luna reminded them all.

Hermione winced at such bluntness, but knew her friend was right. She pointed to the dark cowl lying at the foot of the archway. "See there? Umbridge threw a Dementor to the Archway as her ritual victim. As non-beings, though, like Boggarts and Poltergeists, the Dementor's life would have generated only a paltry amount of magical energy. Frankly, the Queen was lucky the portal opened at all, much less that she was allowed to pass through it. We're sacrificing actual flesh and blood, however." Her gaze moved to Lavender Brown, who stood stoically near the back of the pack. "That should provide enough power to the portal to allow the six of us to pass through."

"You hope," Pansy pointed out. She glanced in Brown's direction as well. "You Gryffindors, foolishly brave to a fault," she murmured.

"And you Slytherins, always looking out for your own skins," Cho Chang snidely countered.

Hermione inwardly sighed and wanted to slap a gag on Cho before things escalated further. She and Parkinson had not gotten on at all since the secret coven had been established. Chang was a woman who didn't abide mind games, and Pansy excelled at them. They were diametrically opposed on every level—except when it came to finishing off Umbridge. The two were united in at least that much, their hatred for the witch giving them a reason to cooperate.

Astoria Greengrass, having overheard the conversation, came up alongside Cho and put a restraining hand on her lover's shoulder, and to Hermione's relief, Cho seemed to relax. "Not to speak badly of the dead," the younger witch said, "and I know this isn't exactly the time to bring it up, but I need to ask it again before we go any further: do you really think Trelawney could be trusted as an accurate source for seeing the future? She always seemed a few Knuts short of a Galleon to me."

"The greatest white wizard of our time, Albus Dumbledore, kept her close because he knew she was a true Seer, not a charlatan," Padma Patil spoke up in defence of her former mentor. "I believe that's a good testament as to her legitimacy."

Glancing up the stairs, Hermione was once more caught and unnerved by the diamond-white stare Patil leveled on her. There was no colour to the iris of the other witch's eyes, just a thin ring of black on the outer rim of what had once been a shade of dark brown. The white backdrop was shot through by two black pinpoints that were the pupils, but that was all the colour there was to her gaze.

With the witch's powers as a Vedic Rshikä, a heavenly-inspired poet-seer, finally revealing itself upon her coming of age, Hermione wondered how much of what Patil saw anymore was even the real world versus some "enlightened" version of it.

"I have already explained that in her final journal entry, Sybill claimed there were two dimensions that had converged when Dolores Umbridge went back in time: 'the one that is, and the one that should have been'," the former Ravenclaw told the group. "Her last vision was of seeing the former transformed into the latter by a coven led by you, Hermione. After studying her writings, I believe that is the most accurate of any prophecy she'd ever made, as it was done at the very end of her life, when she was close enough to the Veil to see the cosmic tapestry of life very clearly."

Parkinson snorted, and Hermione knew it was because she'd never put much stock in Trelawney, despite their friend's belief in the woman. "Yeah, well she also predicted that Potter and Voldemort were supposed to face off, but in the end, it was Umbridge who killed the Dark Lord with the Elder Wand."

"That is the timeline that should have been," Padma stated, confident in that belief. "Umbridge changed that when she went back in time and killed Draco Malfoy. Then, as the new master of the Elder Wand, she took the wand and hunted down Harry Potter. Upon his death, she took his place in the 'Chosen One' prophecy, and thus was able to finish off Voldemort, becoming the Dark Queen." She adjusted the honey-coloured swatch of fabric that draped over her shoulder, allowing it to fall beautifully across her white and orange saree—the uniform of her holy office. "Trelawney's last prophecy states that we were meant to change those events by going back in time to stop Dolores Umbridge and set the universe back upon its correct course."

"So, since nothing has changed yet for us, does that mean that Umbridge's plan is, so far, on the path she originally set it?" Astoria asked. "She's still winning?"

Padma nodded. "Yes, this timeline will not change until one of the events that lead to our current timeline is altered."

Astoria gripped her head. "No matter how many times you girls say it, it's still confusing to me. I'll just trust you know what you're doing."

"My turn. Reassure me," Pansy said, raising her hand and waving it around obnoxiously. "Okay, so how do we know using the Dark Archway as a Time-Turner won't end up in us stuck between hours and minutes forever?"

"Because the arch isn't a Time-Turner," Luna said, looking down upon the artefact she'd spent the last two years studying, once she'd determined its importance in Umbridge's time traveling plans. "It's a doorway, not an un-winder of time."

"Explain it to me one more time," Pansy prompted her.

Luna seemed stuck to explain things simpler than she had, so Hermione picked up the baton and gave it a whirl in her friend's stead. "According to all the research Luna and I did on the Dark Archway, it opens a portal between the current date and one in the past of your choice, but it doesn't actually change the physical time of day. If you walk through the Archway when the clock strikes noon here, you will arrive at your destination in the past at noon."

She continued on towards their goal and glanced at her wrist watch as they hit the bottom stair. As the watch wasn't quartz or digital, but mechanical, magic never interfered with its function.

"It's a little past nine in the morning right now. We know from history that around ten in the morning on the fourth of March, 1998, Umbridge enters Headmaster Snape's office at Hogwarts from the Ministry Floos above us. She then makes her way down into the Slytherin boy's dormitory, and around half-past eleven o'clock, she kills Draco as he's returning from his morning classes and getting ready to go up to the Great Hall for lunch. In doing so, she kills the master of the Elder Wand and becomes the wand's new master. Then, she heads over to Dumbledore's tomb nearby and physically takes the Elder Wand into her possession around noon. From there, things progress as we remember them."

"We're cutting it a little short. Isn't it likely that Dark Queenie has already contacted her past-self with the plan?" Pansy asked.

Hermione nodded. "Yes, I knew weren't going to be able to catch her before that happened, because we didn't know the exact date that the Dark Queen originally went back in time from this end of the timeline. We were always going to be playing catch-up, needing to sneak into the Ministry, but only after we were alerted by Luna and Kingsley that Umbridge had made her move. Our best chance of changing the timeline was never going to be stopping her from going through the Dark Archway, but from preventing her past-self from killing Draco Malfoy. If at least one of us can beat her to the Slytherin dorms and get Malfoy out before she arrives, and afterwards do our best to keep him alive and out of her hands, the others can put into play our plan to kill the Dark Queen. Then it's just a matter of erasing the past Umbridge's memories–"

"I vote for killing her outright," Cho stated.

"Or finding a way to end her life," Hermione agreed, knowing it would be impossible from asking any of these women from exacting their rightful revenge upon the woman who had brought them all so much suffering. "Either way, Umbridge never becomes master of the Elder Wand and the timeline changes. Harry remains the 'Chosen One'…and hopefully finds a way to kill Voldemort someday."

She looked around at her gathered companions seeing the trepidation on some faces.

"Look, I'm not going to sugar-coat it: we all know this is a one-way trip. Still, this is your last chance to back out. At least if you stay behind, you'll simply be erased from history, if we succeed. That's a painless and instantaneous death. I can't guarantee that will be true if you follow me through the Archway."

Glances were exchanged and everyone in the coven nodded silently their agreement that they were in. They would not be turning back.

"Okay." Hermione nodded to Padma. "Show us what you've got."

Patil reached into a pouch hanging from her hip and withdrew something from its depths. She held out her hand to them, and in the centre of her palm were six rings, each with a different stone. "When we all agreed to this plan last year, I began working on these, with Hermione's and Luna's help. They are enchanted with Holy Song and bespelled with a powerful Reversal and Stasis Charm, similar to that used on Time-Turners. While we are in the past, they will keep us in a state of time-suspension."

"What the hell does that mean?" Pansy asked, eyeing a platinum band with the round-cut emerald.

The Seer started handing out the rings to the group as she explained. "Because we did not attempt this plan previously, just by stepping through the Dark Archway today, we will shift the universe from its current path to another. That changes everything, including us. These rings I've made will prevent you—the person you are right here and now—from disappearing as our original timeline is erased and rewritten. They will allow us all to be magically displaced from time so we can fulfill our purpose."

Hermione glanced at the ring in her hand. It was a round-cut fire opal in a gold setting. She slid it onto her left ring finger, deciding that was the closest she'd ever come to wearing a commitment ring in her life, so she might as well marry the cause.

"When any one of you has finished your task in the past, you need only turn the stone in its setting a full one-hundred and eighty degrees and the spell upon it—and you—will then be broken and you will become 'un-stuck' in time," Padma explained. "You will disappear as if you never had existed as a result of the changes you've made to the timeline. Your past-self will go on to live the fate you've arranged for her, and you will phase out of existence."

"And what if one of us dies while in the past before we can change anything significant?" Cho asked.

"If someone is killed, the same will occur as if their stone was turned," Padma explained.

Everyone was quiet for a moment, the fear of failure again gnawing away at their confidence. Hermione couldn't let them dwell there long, knowing that doubt was an eater of souls.

"Remember that we're going back to a time when Voldemort controlled the Ministry, which means Disillusionment Charms and Apparition are warded against inside the Ministry lobby," she reminded them all, getting back to business. "Therefore, it's going to require stealth to make it up to the Lobby from the Department of Mysteries. A Silencing Charm on your shoes would be the smartest precaution."

"Yeah, and once we're there, the Dark Queen might be waiting for us to keep us from interfering in her plans," Cho pointed out. "So prepare your shields."

"Or, she could be waiting for us in the Headmaster's office when we Floo into Hogwarts," Astoria added.

Hermione agreed. "Either way, I think it's prudent to expect a battle before we get to the Slytherin dungeons."

"We all know the plan, Hermione," Pansy said, putting a hand on her arm. "You've done an amazing job getting us here and preparing us."

And yet, it didn't feel like enough, Hermione thought.

She looked around at her companions, women she'd secretly been working with for most of the last year, if not two, since she'd initially formed this coven at Padma's insistence. They hadn't all been friends when this had begun. In fact, it had taken some serious convincing (and a lot of fighting, shouting, and blocking a hex or two) for Pansy, Cho, and Lavender to finally believe that Trelawney's prophecy had been meant for them. But now they were like her sisters, even when they squabbled.

–And today, she was sending them all to their deaths, whether they succeeded or not, because the absolute best outcome they could hope for from this undertaking was that their timeline would be erased and everyone with it. This was a no-win scenario for the whole group, and they all knew it.

Despite that, they looked to Hermione for direction and with determination, accepting of their fates. They were all going to do whatever it took to stop Dolores Umbridge from winning.

In her secret heart, Hermione was determined to protect Draco Malfoy as well. Terrible, terrorized boy that he'd been, trapped between his parents' lives and a madman's rule…

Reaching into her jeans pocket, she ran her fingertips over the faded and wrinkled Muggle photo she kept there, reminding herself once more of what she'd given up once, and would never again. Not if she could help it.

She'd save him, no matter what.

"Right then, onto it," Hermione said with a sharp nod. She turned and glanced at the horribly scarred face of Lavender Brown. "Any last requests?" she asked the woman in the same kind of quiet, solemn manner one use at a funeral.

Brown's fingers traced over the scars on her cheek and throat, her disfigured mouth twisting with dark cynicism. "Save Parvati, kill Greyback, and burn that Umbridge bitch to ash," the witch replied, her voice unwavering, her tone dark. Her mismatched left eye, now a sickly yellow-brown colour that reminded Hermione of diseased phlegm, twitched and looked angrily upon them, while the right, a stunning blue the colour of a spring sky, looked passively back at her. Fenrir Greyback's attack during a rather heated skirmish outside Covington had forever tainted her DNA, turning her into a Jekyll-Hyde type of chimera. Right now, the human side was in control, but no one knew how long that could last. "That's all I want for my birthday," she finished.

Astoria saddled up to Lavender and hugged her from the side. "We'll make sure your candles go 'boom' in that Pink Boggart's face," she promised her friend.

Brown patted Astoria's blonde head in unspoken thanks, and then gruffly disentangled herself from the girl. "Let's get this show on the road," she said and turned to the arch, heading up the dais to it and standing at its side.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Preview of next chapter...

Hermione gripped her wand a little tighter in her hand and followed Lavender towards the dais where the Dark Archway sat. The others came behind her, as solemn and serious, now that they'd come to it.

...

"You ready?"

"Fuck, yes," her former housemate growled. "I hate my life anyway. At least this way, I'll get the satisfaction of using it up for a good cause."

Please review!

XOXO,

- RZZMG