A/n: Please read the disclaimers at the bottom. I added them after the chapter so as to avoid any spoilers but reading them will help you understand the fundamentals of this story.
This story was inspired by a concept taken from a story by Rule23 called 'No Place Like Home'. Please do read it and give it some love!
Summary: A tragic accident kills Harry, & Draco is plagued by vivid memories of the same accident, which he was never believed to be in. A decade later, Hermione makes a shocking confession and an even more shocking proposition: firstly, she went back in time and saved Draco from the same accident, & secondly, if they go back in time together, they may be able to save both Draco & Harry—except, at a cost...
Chapter 1: The Confession
Two flashes of light. The shrill screech of metal scraping wood. A sharp pain in his head. The taste of iron in his mouth. Startling green eyes contrasted by crimson blood. Unruly hair and a gentle voice calling out his name. A painful tug on his shoulder as he's wrenched to the side. The sensation of being wrapped in a warm yet nauseating vortex.
After an eternity of pain, everything is dark and quiet.
Then the nightmare starts all over again.
The snow crunches beneath his boots, unforgiving in its crisp iciness. Every footfall lands deeper in the fresh frost, the cold creeping up on him from every front, threatening to burn him from the inside while freezing him from the outside.
The undisturbed blanket of pure white is blinding even in the waning daylight, casting the cemetery in its unearthly glow, drawing shadows from every corner and crevice of the looming trees. They are crooked in their nakedness and menacing in their gnarled state, the tattered coats of snow barely covering their tangled limbs. Yet their shadows are soft and hazy, almost welcoming, blurring the lines between the real and the perceived, creating a gratifying illusion of peace and solitude for the tormented souls.
It is fitting, he thinks, that the land where they mourn the dead seems more akin to the netherworld than the world of the living. As he stands before a polished headstone made from pristine marble, he realises that the words etched along its surface, those written in memory of the dead but ones he refuses to acknowledge, are the only things that distinguish it from the white of the snow surrounding it.
If not for those loathsome lines of writing, those promiscuous declarations of misguided perceptions, the dead would be forgotten like a white bird in a blizzard: unseen, unheard, unremembered.
The thought disgruntles him, and he reaches out to dust the snow off the top of the curved edge, the sleeve of his dark robes standing out in glaring contrast against the snow-white backdrop. It reminds him, once again, of his bleak reality.
He pauses in his ministrations as he hears the telltale crunch of feet on snow, and quick as a wink, he spins around, his wand drawn and brandished before him. He blinks as he stands nose to wand tip, pausing in his panic only when he registers the person holding the other wand pointed at him.
Her unruly curls look wilder than usual from the snowflakes melting into her hair. But her frosted lips and pink-tinged cheeks stretch into a kind smile as recognition flashes in her wide brown eyes that shone with the crystal-clear intellect he had grown to admire.
"Draco." She addresses him softly, as though afraid to disrupt the quiet of their surroundings, and he nods in greeting.
"Hermione."
Their wands disappear into the sleeves of their robes as though never having been drawn, and he turns as she comes to stand beside him. They look down at the gravestone, Draco still unwilling to read the engraved words, neither speaking for a long, sombre moment.
The silence is broken by Hermione's muffled whisper into her gloved hands, her words soft but her voice filled with silent amusement as she says, "Interesting get-up you've got on."
Draco chuckles despite the seriousness of the situation. "Thanks," he says just as softly.
"Quite conspicuous, though," she continues. "I almost mistook you for a—for someone else." She corrects herself quickly, but her unsaid words linger in the space between them.
I almost mistook you for a Death Eater.
"The rather talented anti-fan who managed to get past the Manor's wards and leave this, and a mask stuffed with dungbombs, on my doorstep will be pleased to hear that their handiwork paid off," he responds graciously, ignoring her mistake and sparing her of its awkwardness.
He sees her scrunch up her nose in distaste from the corner of his eye and finds himself chuckling at how ridiculous the entire situation is. There he was, former Death Eater, Draco Malfoy, wearing a long, dark robe with a hood and standing over the grave of his so-called arch nemesis, whose death he is still being wrongfully blamed for despite it having been a decade since the accident.
"Maybe it's finally time you move house," Hermione says.
"And deprive my anti-fans of the opportunity to harass me day in and day out? Never."
He hopes she will laugh at his feeble attempt at dry humour, but she doesn't, and they are left standing in stifling silence once again.
After a time, Hermione says, "None of us blames you. You know that."
Draco inhales a deep breath and lets it out as a long sigh. "Yet, somehow, I can't seem to get past this feeling that I was there that night and, by some miracle, managed to survive when he didn't."
"He wouldn't want you to think that," she says with certainty.
Draco finally lets his eyes wander down to the first line of writing etched into the headstone, a lump forming in his throat as the words finally register in his mind.
Here lies Harry James Potter
(1980-2002)
As his eyes flit across the second line, a sense of disgust filters through him, and he has the urge to re-write the quote, as he has every time for the past decade.
He was known as The Boy Who Lived, The Chosen One, The Master of Death, The Hero, The Saviour, and so on…
Nobody knew who engraved the originally unmarked headstone, but one fine day, Draco had arrived to find it etched with those despicable words, yet nobody had it in them to change it. After all, what would they say? What could they say?
"There's no way to know that," Draco says in response to Hermione's statement. "After all, he's been dead for ten years."
They lapse into an uncomfortable silence, and after a long moment of trying to quell the urge to pull out his wand, Draco succumbs to it. He casts a warming spell to melt the snow and ice around the headstone and then carefully re-writes the quote as he has wanted to for so long. It now reads:
He was known as The The Boy Who Lived, The Chosen One, The Master of Death, The Hero, The Saviour, and so forth… but he always wanted to be known as Harry. Just Harry.
Draco feels Hermione's eyes on him and turns to meet her gaze. She offers him a teary smile and holds out a hand. He hesitates for a moment before taking it, but when she squeezes his hand, the unsaid words pass through their interlocked fingers, and he lets out a long, dreary sigh.
"If you could go back in time," Hermione says after a moment of silent mourning, "do you think you could save him?"
Draco considers this as he has so many times over the years and responds with the only answer he has ever succeeded in coming up with. "I don't know."
"But if you could…"
It takes him a few seconds to catch on to her train of thought, and when he turns to meet her expectant gaze, he can't help but shake his head, afraid of the dangerous line of thinking she's indulging in.
"No, Hermione."
"Hypothetically," she says, letting go of his hand to hold her hands up in surrender. "If you were able to travel back in time…"
"No," Draco says again, firmer this time. He crosses his arms and glares at her for good measure. "I refuse to have this conversation with you again."
She seems more desperate now as she flaps her arms about, her eyes wild and her hair crackling with a crazed sort of energy. "But what if—"
"I'm leaving," Draco announces, cutting her off, determined on leaving before she talks him into entertaining hopeless pipedreams.
She struggles to catch up to his long strides but manages to grab his robe and tug hard, toppling them both over into the thick snow.
"Hermione!" Draco admonishes as he sits awkwardly in knee-deep snow, wet and freezing, his voice echoing around the quiet cemetery and returning to him as ghostly whispers. "For Merlin's sake, we are not children!"
"I'm sorry," she says, and Draco almost yells at her again, but her big, brown eyes are filled with tears, melting even his cold, closed-off heart.
Draco sighs and runs a hand through his rather long, un-styled hair, pushing it out of his face as he regards her with a measured expression. He is much too physically and mentally drained to fight her on this and decides to indulge her one last time, if only to put an end to this disastrous line of thinking and nothing else.
"We've had this conversation before," he says finally, his voice sounding taut and strained. "Hypothetically, even if you did manage to gain access to a Typical Time-Turner, you would be unable to go that far back into the past because of the Hour-Reversal Charm. And even if you did somehow manage to make the trip, the distortion you've caused by meddling with the natural order, and traveling back so many years in time, would rip a hole in the time-space continuum and create an infinite time loop that you may never escape." He inhales deeply, his voice barely above a whisper. "You could end up trapped, watching him die over and over again for all eternity."
The tears spill down Hermione's cheeks and a sob escapes her trembling lips. Draco swallows thickly, upset that he has hurt her with his words but knowing that she needs to hear them. Before he can say something in consolation, however, she pipes up.
"Don't you ever wonder why you can see such vivid images of the accident even though you were nowhere near it when it happened?" she asks in a rush, as though not having heard one word of what Draco had just said. Without waiting for an answer, she pushes on. "Have you never wondered if these fragments are actually memories and not just hallucinations?"
"That's impossible, Hermione," Draco says, his voice rough with emotion. Unwilling to entertain any more of her nonsense lest they trigger yet another repeat of his nightmares, he stands, dusts off the snow, and casts a warming spell on himself.
"But what if, Draco," Hermione says hurriedly as she struggles to her feet. "What if you were actually there?"
Draco frowns. "That's impos—"
"Hypothetically," Hermione interjects.
"Hypothetically," Draco snaps, "if I were there during the accident, then I shouldn't be alive right now."
"Exactly," Hermione whispers, and the look in her eyes sends shivers down Draco's spine.
"What…" he says, her words and her behaviour making him draw forth the worst conclusions, "what did you do?" When she doesn't answer immediately, he grabs her by the shoulders and squeezes. "Hermione, please tell me you aren't going to say what I think you will."
She shakes her head, the tears spilling down her cheeks. "I didn't know you were there," she says, her voice breaking. "I only intended to save Harry and nothing more. I didn't think I would find you there and end up saving you instead!"
"Merlin's blue balls," Draco groans, taking his head in his hands, his mind whirring. If what she was saying was true—and he refused to believe that it was—then Hermione may have actually succeeded in creating a True Time-Turner, one that allows you to travel back in time indefinitely, something he knew she has been working on secretly for the past decade. He snaps his head up and grabs her again. "How did this happen? What did you do?"
She shivers, then seems to have enough presence of mind to cast a large bubble charm around them and trap them in a globe of warmth before drying their clothes. Draco shakes her, urging her to answer his question, desperate to know but not know at the same time.
"You know I've done it before," Hermione says, drying her tears. "Traveled back in time to save a life, I mean." She shakes her head. "So I thought I could do it again and succeed, but I failed to take into consideration the fact that the consequences of time travel under such unstable circumstances would be much harder to predict."
"So, what are you trying to say?" Draco asks, his heart now racing. "You went back in time and saved my life instead of Harry's? Why?"
Hermione's head drops into her hands and she moans woefully. "I told you, I didn't know you were there! I never know, no matter how many times I go back, because although I somehow managed to return to the right timeline successfully, I created an infinite time loop of that moment!"
"Wha—how many times have you done this?" he exclaims.
She ignores him and continues on with her story. "I arrive just after the accident and find the two of you together, nearly dead. Just as I attempt to save Harry, he begs me to take you instead because he's in worse shape and won't make the journey back. I then make the most difficult decision of my life and pull you out of the crash just before the car explodes. On instinct, I manage to Apparate the two of us to a Muggle hospital and Obliviate you, immediately after which I'm forcefully returned to my timeline."
She looks up at Draco, who is simply staring at her in disbelief, and shakes her head. "I never remember what I've done until after I've returned to this timeline because of the loop."
There are so many things Draco wants to ask and say, but his brain is too overwhelmed at the moment to make sense of his muddled thoughts and emotions, so he only manages to say, "So, us meeting and becoming friends…" he trails off, uncertain of finishing his question.
"Is all genuine." She moves closer to him and takes his hands in hers. "I never knew you were in that crash until now, ten years later, Draco. This whole time, I thought only Harry was in the crash and intended to save just him. Please, believe me."
Draco pulls his hands away and presses his palms against his eyes as he falls deep into thought. After several minutes of processing this information, he asks, "So, then, why did you asked me if I could travel back in time…"
Hermione's eyes shine then, and she clasps her hands together. "I think I've figured out a way to break the infinite time loop."
Draco is shaking his head before she can even finish speaking. "No, no." He waves a hand to dismiss what she is suggesting. "I think you've done quite enough time travel for a lifetime, young lady."
"Yes, I agree, which is why I'm asking you to—"
"No!" Draco exclaims, taking a step backwards and shoving his hands deep into his pockets. "No, I refuse to take part in this madness."
"But—"
"No, Hermione." Draco spins on his heel and begins to make his way towards the cemetery's gate, shivering as he exits the bubble of warmth and is welcomed by the icy embrace of the December air.
"But I saved you." Hermione says, and even though her voice is soft, it carries far. "I chose to save you instead of Harry, despite it going against everything I worked so hard for this past decade."
A wave of anger washes over Draco, and he glares at her from over his shoulder. "Are you trying to guilt me into sacrificing my life for a choice you made?"
"The least you can do is listen to what I have to say," Hermione replies, and she sounds so helpless and desperate that Draco doesn't have the heart to say no.
He knows he's going to regret it, but he concedes, nevertheless, with a sigh of resignation. "Fine. But only if you give me your word that you'll respect whatever decision I make and leave it at that."
Hermione hesitates for a moment and then nods. "You have my word."
Draco sighs again and jerks his chin towards the gilded archway that led to the Apparition point.
As Hermione catches up to him, he asks, "So...your place or mine?"
Disclaimer 1: The only part of this story that conforms to Cursed Child canon is the creation of two "True" Time-Turners. Except, the one that created them is Hermione, not Theodore Nott, and the reason behind why she creates them is the sole purpose of saving Harry. Nothing else in the story follows Cursed Child canon.
Disclaimer 2: The rules of time travel followed in this story are based on a logic that I have created from my understanding of the infinite time loop that the Typical Time-Turners are able to create (as explained in the wiki about why the Typical Time-Turners in the Ministry became unusable). To explain my logic in simple terms using a canonical event, when Hermione and Harry used a Typical Time-Turner to save Buckbeack in PoA, they created an infinite time loop of the distortion—which basically is an endless repetition of the same event in that point in time, caused by the distortion in the time-space continuum—which can be witnessed when Harry and Hermione reappear in the present just as the past version of themselves travels back in time (hence Ron's confusion of "but you were just here and now you're there" because that event essentially loops around itself endlessly). Because of this time loop, the person that travels back in time inevitably finds themselves doing the same things over and over again, in every alternate reality or timeline that is created by the time loop, and has no memory of the event until after it has happened. Which is why Hermione doesn't know she saved Draco's life until a decade later, after she does it and returns back to the present.
Please don't try to use actual scientific logic to understand this because it's a fictional concept based on a little bit of science and isn't real.
Disclaimer 3: Everything that isn't recognisable as being a part of canon is my own creation, but all due credits go to JKR.
Disclaimer 4: James, Albus, Lily, and Scorpius do not exist in this story because, in the original timeline, Harry dies before Ginny can get pregnant the first time, and Draco is never able to commit to marrying Astoria because of his survivor's guilt, so she ends up with Blaise (a headcanon taken from my other Drarry series, Iridescent Lies). In the alternate timeline, Harry and Ginny are broken up, and Draco never gets together with Astoria. Please also remember that Draco from the original timeline is ten years older than Harry from the alternate timeline. So Harry is 22 and Draco is 32.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a review and ask them, and I'll reply to your review and clarify things as best that I can. Even if you don't have a question, please do leave a review on your thoughts!
Also written for Assignment #12 of Hogwarts: Games and Sports, Prompt - Write about someone adding, taking away or changing the rules for something or someone.