Hermione Granger walked up the garden path pushing her cart ahead of her. It was loaded with fresh cut flowers and vegetables from her patch. She moved slowly because of the arthritis in her knees. She wore a bright straw bonnet with flowers tucked into it and was dressed in a long but light summer dress. Her body, now quite shrunken and thin, was still wiry and agile. She pushed hard to get the cart over the tree roots and over the rocky path. She was working diligently to prepare for her company.
She had known for fifty years that she would have visitors on this day. She had had time to rehearse the words she wished to say and to try and relay a very important message to the two people who were going to join her. Her visitors were none of her six children or any of her fourteen grandchildren. No, she knew exactly who was going to step through her garden gate at half past three.
She stopped on the path and drew in a breath. The sun was very warm and the smells of the summer day drew her thoughts to another time. She stopped and stared off across a meadow thinking about another summer day many years before. Then shaking herself free of the memory she gave the old wooden cart another shove and rolled into the shade of an immense oak tree that spanned the entire front garden in front of a rather quaint old-fashioned cottage.
She looked at it and admired the shining windows that she had spent a day cleaning and the little path, where she had been on her swollen knees pulling weeds, and she felt satisfied. She had almost entirely forgotten what it was like to live in the muggle world where everyone had a lawn mower or a hedge trimmer. She either did the work by hand or more often using her wand which was always tucked into a special pocket in her apron.
She felt its familiar thud against her thigh and nodded to herself as if she were having a personal conversation. 'Yes, yes,' she seemed to say and then actually stopped and talked to the dog that was walking lazily at her side. It was an old dog but her constant and sole companion. "We have to be getting a move on Hagrid. They will be arriving this afternoon and I want to be prepared. This is so important don't you know."
The dog managed to raise his graying muzzle and accept the gentle pat she gave. The old dog wagged its tail and then wandered on up the path towards a tree swing where it threw itself unceremoniously to the ground in the shade to pant a little, snort and then sleep.
Hermione eyed the little table and the chairs she had placed in the shade and studied the arrangement of the dishes and the tablecloth. She began to pull flowers from the little cart and started arranging them in the crystal vase she had placed in the center of that table. Although she knew she could do it with her wand, she was forever doing things the 'muggle way'. And she enjoyed it, telling her, now fully grown, children that there were things worth doing the muggle way. It was very satisfying sometimes, she would say
Her visitors were no ordinary visitors. She knew that she risked a great deal if anything went wrong. That's why she had been preparing for over a half century. She knew that if she proceeded it would change her life. And although she loved her life and her children and grandchildren she knew that she owed a debt that had not been repaid. This risk she took would repay that debt, and then some. It was, however, not the only reason for doing what she was about to do.
She caught herself fingering the petalsof a bright pink rose and hurriedly slipped it into the bouquet that she then placed on the table. "No use going over this again," she said aloud, chiding herself. "They are coming regardless and I can either be stupid as a goat or make a difference. Since I don't have a choice, then I shall not play the part of the goat." The dog raised its head, looked at her bleary-eyed and then plopped it down into the moist cool grass again.
She spoke to no one in particular, not the sleeping dog or the tree under which he lay. The cottage was surrounded by green rolling hills and a small copse of trees and nothing more. She had lived in this house since she was eighteen and the view had never changed. She liked it that way. It felt good to not have sudden and abrupt changes in one's life, se considered.
She pushed the cart away from the garden and around the house to an old shed. She placed it neatly in its' space, closed the door and glanced at the position of the sun. She knew she would have time to bath and change her clothes and pull her long graying hair up before they arrived.
She was almost sure they would arrive since she knew with almost certainty that nothing had changed. She and her friend Harry Potter had apparated to Godric's Hollow on July 31st, fifty years before. They had walked the lane towards the cottage that sat in the small hollow between two hills and had met a very neatly dressed older woman sitting in her garden waiting for them. She had very sweetly introduced herself as Hermione Granger.
And so Hermione had been one of the visitors and Harry had been the other and she had only known that period of time from the point of view of an eighteen year old girl meeting her sixty seven year-old self. Now as the sixty-seven year old woman who would be sitting in that very garden fifty years later she would be greeting her eighteen year-old self. This time she knew that she would have much more to say then she had fifty years before. This time she would be giving them information that was going to make a difference. She clenched her fist and lightly hit the top of the garden gate. "Yes, indeed!"
The older and wiser Hermione had given the course of events tremendous thought. She had used a time turner back then, and instead of retreating into the past, she and Harry had gone into the future. There had been a terrible need then and even with all of the warnings flying through her head at the time she had agreed to his demands and they had used it. Now, having lived through those fifty years Hermione knew that she must change the course of those events by doing something different then she had on her first meeting. And she had purposefully stopped herself from thinking about how time had become a circle, where she had initially met herself as at eighteen and now at sixty-seven would meet her younger self again.
"That leads to madness," she said to the gate as she opened it and headed for the cool shade of the house and her very neat upstairs bedroom. It was time to bath and change.
It is very much like preparing to die, she thought. If I tell them what they need to know I may not be alive afterward. I may not survive and therefore may not be here tomorrow, live in this house or have my children and grandchildren. And if I do not tell them, then I will wake up tomorrow and I will know his fate and my own. And I cannot live with that I think. I have lived with that destiny for fifty years and it has haunted my dreams.
She knew what would have to be done.
At first, they would be confused and then have to be convinced that she was who she was saying she was. Of course she knew what would happen, she'd already gone through it once hadn't she? Now Hermione, you silly woman, we are just rehearsing again, she told herself as she spritzed on perfume and studied her reflection in the mirror of her dresser.
She would take them through the house, Harry's parent's house and one she had not left; had never left. She could not leave it and forego this chance to meet herself again and right the wrong she had unknowingly caused so many years before.
Then, as they walked through the house she would point out the pictures on the wall and pick up an item here and there to show them. These were old things, Hogwarts memorabilia that she had placed for the occasion.
All of this had happened before, but instead of being helpful she had remained silent when they had asked their questions. She had been an old lady living out her last days in the cottage where Harry would have returned if he had lived. And perhaps they would have been husband and wife and the children that were hers might have been theirs. She adjusted the rose she had pinned to her bodice and started out the door, still thinking as she went. But he had not lived, had not defeated Voldemort. And she, Hermione had known that she had loved him only after he was gone.
"I was only eighteen," Hermione said as she stepped into the coolness of the sitting room. "How would I have known my heart then? I was a child." That was the reasoning she always gave herself. Se didn't think she was doing this because of selfishness. She knew that if she were successful Harry might still live and her life might be much different, but it was the reason for doing it as well. She wanted to correct the mistake she had made and maybe make a difference, to all of them.
She thought of the fifty years she had spent thinking of this day. Hermione Granger, she said to herself aloud as she smoothed out the material of the buttercup yellow dress she wore, this is your last chance.
The clock on the mantel rang out the hour and three chimes told her that the time was near. She could feel butterflies from nervousness and sat down in the high-backed, winged chair in her sitting room. The room was dark because of the shade of the tall tree in her front window. She pulled her wand out and gave it a casual twirl to produce a tall glass of iced lemonade. She sipped at it with her lips pursed and leaned her head back against the chair.
"Calm yourself down," she murmured. "You were an Auror. One of the Ministry's best. Now look at you, scared as a rabbit and you are just meeting yourself." And seeing him again, she thought.
The thought of seeing the seventeen year old Harry again was what was giving her nerves. He had been a sweet boy and good looking. He had been her best friend; he and Ron. School would have been a difficult experience without the two of them. Of course, there had been all the worry about Voldemort and the Horcruxes and she had watched Harry suffer from it. All of that had been dreadful. They had all fought so hard and in the end, of course, Voldemort had killed him.
"That's going to change," she said to the fly buzzing on the window sill. She sat the lemonade down and touched her wand, still in its' customary spot, and then stood. "Yes, I will make sure of that. Even if I never see you again Harry or speak your name I will make that change today."
The clock ticked away soothingly and she finally turned and glanced at it one more time before opening the front door and stepping out once again into the shade of the tree. She sat down at the table and watched the front gate. At exactly half past the hour- she could hear the clock chiming from her seat- she saw the two figures walking towards her gate.