When she was young, her mother had warned her about the devil.
He had infinite forms, she said; he could be a doll come alive to whisper sweet malice in her ear, or a bird fluttering smoothly by with the breeze, or a serpent hissing promises of arcane knowledge if she only reached out and took a bite of his proffered fruit. Or, she told Hermione finally, he could even be her own image in the mirror, reflected so that her thoughts (dreamy and innocent though they were) twisted perversely to manipulate her into wicked deeds only the worst sinners would be capable of.
There was one truth her mother conceded to: the devil could not be trusted. And as long as she didn't come to believe in him or allow herself to stray from her own natural goodness to sympathize with his carnal lies, she would be safe.
It was with this thought in mind that Hermione approached the top of the dim, spiraling staircase that led to Albus Dumbledore's office. The air here was stale. She breathed in slow and deep to a count of five, but this calculated inhale did little to calm her precipitous heartbeat. Her hands were slick, as they were wont to be, and she anxiously rubbed the sweat off on her robes.
After another calming breath, she knocked on the heavy-handled oaken double doors separating her from her former headmaster.
"Come in," his voice called, more solemn than she had remembered it.
Hermione slid open the doors and closed them behind her as she walked, gait heavy, into his office. It was larger and darker than she had imagined it; she had only Harry's hurried descriptions to compare the vision to. He had told her it was small and cluttered and bright, magical and enchanted objects overflowing from every cupboard. With every step, he had said there would be a new trinket glimmering to catch her eye, and when he had last been here, he had told her Fawkes crooned a fiery song at him from his cage.
Now, Fawkes was dead. The rumors were that he had soared out of the office on a rainy day and fell in a dancing flurry of feathers to the ground. Some thought the bird had committed suicide.
"Headmaster Dumbledore," she addressed him, her voice raspier than she intended.
He looked up over the top of his thin, wiry glasses, blue eyes settling on a spot midway down the bridge of her nose. She noticed he had acquired a few more age spots over the time she had not seen him; his skin now seemed spotted and fragile, like aged leopard hide. He looked tired, though his eyes had now lazily flicked up to stare at her own and she realized that, despite everything he had been through, they still shone soft and bright as the stars in the night sky.
"There is no need for such formalities, Miss Granger," responded Dumbledore. His tone was not unkind. "I am your headmaster no longer."
"Forgive me, sir, but some things I find I cannot part with. Addressing my headmaster as such is, well..."
He brushed her off with a wave of his hand, which, she saw, was shaking. She could not see his other hand and assumed it had turned as blackened as she feared. When she sat down, Hermione closed her eyes and could not bear to look at him. Though they said nothing for a few moments, the air around them turned melancholy. There was no use in pretending now.
They both knew why she came.
When she opened her eyes, she looked straight into his unsmiling, wizened features and nodded her head numbly up and down, her neck a metronome.
"When did it happen?" he asked her then, sliding a glass jar half-full of candies to her side.
Hermione sighed before answering. "Two days ago." She reached absently for one of the gently wrapped sweets before abruptly placing her hand back on the arm of her chair. Her grip was iron. "We were returning from Grimmauld Place."
At Dumbledore's questioning look, she continued, "We had only planned to stay there for a day or two, no more, but the months of running and sleeping on our backs in a tent had left us longing for some stove-cooked food, beds. Something to remind us that we were human, really, not just animals hiding from our captors. And we couldn't decide where next to look; Harry wanted to go to Gringotts first, but I said that was too risky to try without a solid plan. We were tired. Nobody argued. We spent five days there until we knew we finally had to leave.
"So we Apparated to a clearing, one where I thought we would be safe." She paused then, gulping down saliva, or worry, or bile that would corrode in her guts. "I had been there as a child a couple times with my parents, and Harry and Ron and I had stayed there before. I thought that no wizard would approach it, or at least no Dark wizard, but when we got there a werewolf pack was waiting for us.
I have no idea how they found us, what they could have possibly used, but I terribly miscalculated, Headmaster. I made the most awful mistake," said Hermione, ignoring the pitying look Dumbledore sent her way. Instead, she continued, speaking through the stinging in her eyes, "I had Apparated at night, thinking it would be easier to disguise ourselves, but two nights ago, unbeknown to me, there was a full moon."
Dumbledore's face remained impassive, but he was no fool. He knew how this story would end.
"Merlin... I was so tired, too. Sir, Dumbledore, I was so tired, so unprepared. When they attacked, we didn't stand a chance. They were so fast and so ferocious, like they were rabid, like they were dark creatures so far from human. They did not use the Wolfsbane, or otherwise they relish in it, this... terrifying wildness in them.
"We fought them best we could, but it was dark and cold and when I heard their howls wane I realized they were dragging someone into the forest. I couldn't tell, then, whether it was Harry or Ron, and I ran after them, but even with my strongest Lumos I couldn't see far ahead of me, and when I reached them they ran away, taking... a body with them. I caught a glimpse of the back of his head before they pounced off, and the hair... it was black.
"I tried to run after them, but my leg snagged on something as I chased them, and I fell head-first on the forest floor. I woke up in the morning. As soon as I did, I realized I was separated from my friends and that one of them was likely bitten, or dead, or worse, and I didn't wait to learn which one. I realized I had to notify you, but it took me two days to get here."
She paused then, to collect her thoughts and to wipe her wet hands on her thighs. "Dumbledore, it had to have been Harry." She looked down. "I know werewolves don't often remember their transformations if they aren't on Wolfsbane, and I don't know what state they left him in, but I know it couldn't have been good. I only hope they didn't recognize him, or that they weren't affiliated with Voldemort, but -"
Hermione's head fell limp onto her hands. "It's useless. We've failed."
When she finally garnered enough courage to look up, Dumbledore's face looked as if he had aged another five years. If she were completely honest with herself, she would have said she was surprised he had held out as long as he had. After sending herself and the others on a dangerous mission to defeat Voldemort's horcruxes midway through their sixth year, Hermione believed she would not see him for much longer. At one time, he had, to her, seemed ageless, an old man perpetually in his seventies, wise and powerful.
Now, she knew better. She had never idolized him as Harry had, but now whatever heroism she once found in him had been tamped out by age and experience; she trusted him only to do what was best for the outcome of the war. Sometimes, when she was awake alone in their tent, Hermione would look around at her friends and wonder if Dumbledore cared for any of them at all as anything other than pawns in his game.
Still, he had not fared well with the advent of the second war, and as she looked at him, she realized he understood that better than anyone.
"I had hoped it wouldn't come to this, Miss Granger," he stated, his expression grim, "but there is hope yet."
"What do you mean? The Prophecy stated... well, you know what the Prophecy stated, and if Harry is dead, then there is only one other conclusion."
She didn't want to say it out loud because the thought was horrendous, but she was certain Dumbledore knew which conclusion she meant.
"There is another way."
Dumbledore stood slowly and made his way to a stand on which she thought, in another time, Fawkes's cage might have perched. He conjured a rusted key with his wand and touched the key to the third drawer on the stand, which opened unceremoniously.
After shuffling its contents for a minute, Dumbledore cradled an object small enough to be hidden in his hand before walking back to sit, once again, on his chair.
"It will require great strength and clear resolve," he stated, eyes like headlights glaring right at her.
"Headmaster, I don't understand what you're trying to impress upon me, but if it means defeating Voldemort then..."
"Miss Granger, it means making sure Voldemort never existed."
Hermione shook her head warily, furrowing her eyebrows. "I'm not sure what you mean. If I heard you correctly, sir, then what you are suggesting is impossible, unless you were referring to time travel, but... time travel is a closed loop. Everything that was meant to happen will happen and everything that has already happened was destined to happen. We can do nothing to will Voldemort out of existence, let alone erase everything that has occurred up to this point."
Dumbledore smiled at her then, the twinkle setting his eyes alight once again. "Yes, time travel magic as most understand it has been exactly that, but what I hold in my hands now is something different altogether. This is very, very old magic, Miss Granger."
He unclasped his hands as if unwrapping a present and let the object dangle from the tips of his unblackened fingers. Rocking back and forth in his grasp was a bronze chain, the links fastidiously tied together, with a clock hanging from its center. There were no hands on the clock, no Arabic numbers; two Roman numerals instead, I and II, marked the twelve o'clock and six o'clock times on a normal watch.
Even from a foot away, Hermione sensed the magical significance of it. She had never seen anything like this, though she had spent a year using a time turner and reading every book in the Hogwarts library on time travel; this looked archaic.
"This amulet is very powerful," Dumbledore cautioned, his voice gentle, "and it must never fall into the wrong hands. I admit I have never used it before, but I know how it must work. It latches onto the wearer's thoughts," he looked directly into her eyes, "and it takes them where they wish to go. The laws of our universe do not apply."
"H-how? How is that possible? How does this exist?"
"This has been passed down from one headmaster of Hogwarts to the next. Legend has it Rowena Ravenclaw herself enchanted it. I have never seen anything else like it."
Hermione's mouth agape, she yearned to stretch farther and snatch the amulet from Dumbledore's hands. This was the sort of knowledge she had always yearned for, the bookworm in her, though with a wan smile she realized this knowledge would no longer be of use in their world. With Harry gone, Voldemort would be emboldened to grab hold of more power and possibly even unseat Dumbledore in Hogwarts. Nowhere was safe. The Death Eaters had no use for masterful work like this other than to destroy it, to set fire to whatever stray flickers of hope in the hearts and minds of the people. This was why she had come here: to let Dumbledore know she was prepared to admit defeat.
"Miss Granger, listen to me. You must use this to go back in time, to when Voldemort was a child."
With these words, Hermione's head snapped up abruptly and the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach escalated, as if she were on a Muggle roller coaster and only seconds away from dropping.
"If what you say about Harry is true, this is the only way we can make sure of his destruction," Dumbledore sounded sepulchral. "When Voldemort was young, he was still vulnerable."
Though her head felt hazy, Hermione found herself nodding.
Dumbledore returned her gesture and continued. "However, because I have no personal experience with it and because, as far as I am aware, it has never been used before, I cannot be sure whether it was meant for multiple uses. By that, I mean I do not know the user will be able to return to their original time."
Glancing down at it with reverence, Dumbledore caressed the smooth metal before muttering, "I would use it myself if I had not been alive and in contact with Voldemort, with Tom Riddle, at that time. Even with this magic, I do not think the universe would be able to fare with duplicates of the same person."
With that, Hermione's head jolted up. He meant for her to use it, then.
"Headmaster, are you saying what I think you're saying?"
"Yes, Miss Granger," he stated, his expression unreadable.
She might not be able to return.
If circumstances were different, and if she were not so tired, Hermione would turn away from her former headmaster and Apparate to a clean elsewhere. Anywhere. She remembered her parent's house, and the room in which she spent so much of her childhood, whiling her time away with books on fantastical creatures and mathematics and Muggle history. She remembered her mother's laugh, her superstitious nature, the tales she would weave to entertain her.
Her parents didn't know her anymore. Even if the war was won, they would spend the rest of their time with each other in Australia, effectively childless.
She thought of Ron: the way he called her name, the happy sounds he made when he stuffed his face with food, the tense exchanges they had had these past few months. She remembered the way he blushed when she came near him and the firmness with which they hugged. When she was younger, she would think about her life after graduation, and in each of these dreams she had been with Ron.
She remembered the fear from their time on the run, the fear from two nights ago.
In another world, they might have had something. They might have been something.
Her eyes now swimming with tears, she thought of Harry. No words came to mind, no joyful memories; she felt numb. There was a dull ache deep in her chest as she thought of her best friend. Of what she knew had become of him.
What did she have left to return to?
With Harry dead, the best case scenario would be a life spent in the shadows, always running away after the dark forces that chased her in a ceaseless struggle for survival. More likely, she would be caught in weeks. She had no life to live here.
"Okay."
She reached out her hand for the amulet, which Dumbledore gave her with reluctance.
"You must use it with intent, Miss Granger," he said when she slipped the chain over her head to dangle freely from her neck. "You must prevent this war, whichever way possible. You must destroy Lord Voldemort."
Hermione nodded grimly again, looking at the iridescent blue eyes of Albus Dumbledore.
She glanced around the room again, this time reaching for and grabbing a candy from the jar before placing it gently in her pocket. Something to remember this place by, no matter how small the token was.
"And Miss Granger..."
Hermione looked over at her former headmaster and, though her head was pounding and tears were welling in her eyes, she found the courage to smile weakly at him.
"Good luck."
"Thank you, Headmaster," said the girl. "You too," she added quickly, though if she were successful he would not need any luck for this world would never have existed.
She thought of her mission then:
I must destroy Lord Voldemort.
The Headmaster's office spun around her, Dumbledore's face growing blurrier as the earth turned round and round until she finally closed her eyes and let the darkness overtake her.
Author's Note:
So what am I doing ? I have no idea! Does this story even have any Tom in it yet ? No, hahahaha, but by next chapter hopefully we'll all see him in his gorgeous evil glory ! Does this even make sense ?
Maybe not because I have no idea how the heck time travel works ! This was just a long ramble about Dumbledore and useless plot points like why do you care? Idk!
but NEXT CHAPTER. Next chapter will be good man oh man I promise we'll get right down to business