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"for the forever girl"
rate yourself and rake yourself,
take all the courage you have left
(Little Lion Man - Mumford & Sons)
Time is a circle. A never-ending, continuous circle that will run until the end of the world, and will keep running for aeons after the era of man has fallen into dust.
Hermione knows this.
She knows it as a thirteen year old, holding the tiny gold hourglass in the palm of her hand, agreeing with Professor McGonagall to adhere to the restrictions and regulations the Ministry have put in place to prevent catastrophes, and she knows it as a twenty year old who has been thrown twenty years into the past, directly into the pinnacle of Voldemort's first campaign of terror.
Her first thought as she floats back into consciousness is 'Harry's eyes aren't brown'; it's only when the grogginess has dissipated does she realise that the man before her is definitely not Harry, despite the startlingly similar appearance. No, it's his father – the legendary James Potter himself.
From then, she refuses to speak to anybody until she is presented to Dumbledore for an interview – alone, she adds significantly, before beginning her vow of silence. It lasts only for a day, since, unsurprisingly, the venerable wizard grants her request, and she graciously accepts the stipulation that she will be wandless for the duration.
When they exit the room, the other inhabitants of the safe-house remain uninformed of what passed inside, but the girl looks appeased and Dumbledore has a bright twinkle to his eye that has been dimmed the last few months with the losses of so many innocents and Order members in the fight against the Dark.
Please, welcome the newest member of the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore tells them, and, though there are a number of dumbfounded expressions, they receive her warmly, grateful to have another ally in the fight against Voldemort.
They learn her name, and she pretends to learn theirs, and within a month, Hermione Granger, muggleborn witch extraordinaire and one third of the celebrated Golden Trio, is a contemporary of her friends' parents.
She doesn't see much of James or Lily after the first night, and Remus is nowhere to be seen (probably a good thing, considering how well they know each other in the future), and fortunately the vile rat never ventures into the safe house while Hermione is there (she can only hope that she'll never meet Peter Pettigrew in the flesh because she has no idea if she'd be able to stand in front of him without attempting murder).
The young, untainted Sirius Black, however, flirts with her constantly – a point of equal mortification and amusement - and she sometimes has to plot a route through the house so she can avoid his attentions on the days when she's feeling especially melancholy and reflective. After all, he's dead in her real time, and hardened by twelve misspent years in Azkaban.
It hurts not being able to change things, but she agreed with Dumbledore at the beginning that the timeline must not be changed, lest Voldemort come out the victor.
Frank and Alice Longbottom come as a shock. Healthy and adorably in love, Hermione finds Neville's future parents to be the most paralysing of her new comrades. At their first meeting, she ends up holed away in the bathroom for fifteen minutes, trying to regain control of her tear ducts, because the last time she saw the kindly pair they had been tortured into insanity and beyond by Bellatrix Lestrange, and for some reason their vivacity in life is all the harder to witness than that of the Potters.
It takes her a little longer to be comfortable in their presence, but Alice is persistent, and eventually the little blonde wears down Hermione's flimsy excuses and manages to worm her way into being one of the select few who share the brunette's eternal friendship.
But the Longbottoms come as a package deal, so Frank, both startlingly alike and completely different to Neville, becomes a nigh-constant figure in her life as well, and the once 'dynamic duo' become a trio (it seems her life is full of threes!).
Frank has a wicked sense of humour, and a cool confidence that reminds Hermione of Kingsley Shacklebolt (who she discovers is still at Hogwarts, Head Boy and all), but when the three of them are sitting by the fire of an evening, books or a pack of cards their entertainment, Hermione can see Neville shining through him; they both share a love of Herbology, not to mention a talent.
She meets many Order members – names both familiar and unknown – and she becomes a master of disguising the flinch she wants to release every time the name of a to-be-deceased is introduced. Dumbledore can only be proud of her, she thinks, keeping to their plan the way she is, even in the face of such traumatising knowledge.
But while she knows so much, she also knows so little. Hermione Granger of the nineteen nineties can remember being shown a photograph of the First Order of the Phoenix; being told of the death of young, mouthy Dorcas, who was killed by Voldemort himself. Now, when she hears the news, it is a hundred times more devastating, but Hermione takes heart in knowing that Dorcas always gave as good as she got, and that her last words would have been flat defiance, with a healthy crotch-kick for good measure on anybody that moved within range.
Caradoc Dearborn; Benjy Fenwick – each death is a blow, but each success stokes the flicker of hope they all cling to with increasing desperation.
In April, Hermione meets two men; two red-headed stocky men with familiar features who carry in their genetics a painful reminder of all she's left behind in the future (if the awkward phrasing can be excused) – Gideon and Fabian Prewett, the younger brothers of Molly Weasley, both of whom are due to die in less than three months.
They are so much like Fred and George that she can feel her heart constrict each time one of them laughs or jokes or smiles. They are wonderful people, and she can't help the mournful, grief-stricken look that passes over her face the first time she sees Molly out the window. She doesn't go downstairs to make the young mother's acquaintance. She can't bear it, not when another pair of Molly's precious twins are so soon to be destroyed. The woman who became her second mother in the future disappears with the pop of Apparition, and Hermione realises that she's been holding her breath.
Part of her wonders, some days, whether she exists in two forms in the future, simultaneously as a thirty something and as a child, or whether Time decides to correct the glitch that brought her here, sending her back to whence she came. She wonders if she'd always been here, or whether the glitch was an anomaly in her present. Did Sirius know her back in third year? Did he make the connection between the two bushy haired Hermione's? Sometimes, she even ponders the idea that maybe none of her past has ever happened; after all, when she rescued – rescues – Buckbeak in nineteen ninety-three, he didn't die in the 'real' timeline because she used a Time-Turner to erase the possibility.
In the end, she decides that she must have always been in the past, because you cannot reach into the future, only wait to catch up with time. Of course, once she catches up, the cycle will start all over again.
She can't decide if that thought is comforting or all the more depressing.
When September rolls around, Hermione feels the sense of foreboding rise like bread in a baker's oven. She's been involved in rather more external missions of late, participating in the dangerous aspects of Order membership – patrols, stealth missions, information gathering and rescues.
Thursday the thirteenth, nineteen seventy-nine, begins like any other day: Hermione wakes up at her customary early hour and takes a cold breakfast with only Frank for company (he's been on patrol, and the length of the night shows in the bags under his eyes, but he's surprisingly sparky, his chipper attitude finally returning after the news of the Prewett's deaths). She legs it to the bathroom, determined to beat Alice, who she can hear rummaging through draws upstairs, and spends a nice ten minutes in the steamy tiled room while Alice thumps at the door. The blonde is hardly what you'd call a morning person.
She checks the roster, confirming her role for the evening's duty, and settles herself into the day, welcoming home witches and wizards of the Order and making sure everything runs smoothly.
Promptly at five forty-five pm, Hermione Disapparates for her own patrol with a 'crack'.
Disastrously, her destination is under ambush.
There are flashes of blue and red, and then the dreaded green. Time seems to slow, and one lucky ray of green light rings true. Perfectly on target, it hits her chest and everything stops.
Her heart beats no longer; her eyes see no more; her breathing is forever halted.
Hermione Granger ceases to be; she is dead.
At her funeral, six days later, Dumbledore astounds the grievers by giving the eulogy himself. Whatever she told him in that private audience right back at the very beginning must have been important, they think, because his respect for her is immense and unrestrained. They see his eyes twinkling though completely devoid of joy, the brightness caused by unshed tears, and wonder over this plain girl with untameable brown curls who has so affected the powerful Headmaster.
They don't quite understand his words for what they are, an apology and grateful thanks, honouring her for her work to defeat the dark, for her losses and ruin and the destruction of her world, but they weep and commemorate her as a friend and comrade nonetheless, in the little cemetery outside Hogsmeade with the sun poking out from behind the clouds.
Unbeknownst to the rest of the Order, Hermione Granger has provided them with the knowledge needed to defeat Voldemort. She leaves it in the hands of Albus Dumbledore, to give back to herself and Harry in the future. She knows that, as he did until the end, he will keep his cards close and make sure that nothing changes to give Voldemort even the slightest advantage when it comes to the final confrontation.
So tragically, Hermione is dead, six days before she is even born on the chilly morning of September nineteen, nineteen seventy-nine, to muggle parents, dentists Helen and Richard Granger. They have never heard of the magical world that will enrich and then destroy the life of their only child. Thankfully, they will never know the suffering her death would cause them because the memory charms placed upon them for protection are never lifted, and Wendell and Monica Wilkins, of Hobart, Tasmania, have no child (let alone a daughter).
Her gravestone holds only her name and a single date – that of the year – and only Dumbledore knows the true reason behind it; that as she dies in nineteen seventy-nine, so is she born.
The unending cycle, forever playing out the past, present and future continues, and Hermione Granger, ally of the Light until death, is the turning point of the war.
End.
Well, this is full of depressing things and drama. But I kind of like it regardless. What do you think?
Please, Read and Review Responsibly.