Hermione stormed up the stairs and slammed the door. That old fraud, she thought. She's just making things up! Pretending she can "see" things with her Inner Eye, whatever the hell that is. Is Dumbledore mad, hiring her? Well, I guess he is a bit mad, but still! She was very good at internal arguments with herself. She sighed and threw herself onto her bed. The dorm was empty, as it was the middle of the school day and everyone else was in their classes. She had had enough of Professor Trelawney, or Professor Crackpot, as she'd been calling her in her head for the past few months. She'd found satisfaction in the appalled faces of her classmates as she'd left the room. She didn't think Trelawney would punish her, she would probably claim she already knew this would happen.
She reached into the neck of her robes and pulled out the long chain of her timeturner. It didn't look like anything special, just a glass hourglass on a thin golden chain. But Hermione knew, this could change the fate of the world. It was a timeturner. Professor McGonnagall had to send a large quantity of owls to the ministry to get it for her. It was to help her with her classes, as there wasn't enough time to take everything she wanted. It would be easier now that she wasn't taking Divination.
She stared at it, the glass catching the sunlight, making it sparkle. There had been so many things she had been tempted to do when she got it. She could fix almost any problem, do her towering pile of homework in a matter of seconds, and relive the moments she savored most. But she had promised she wouldn't misuse it, and she was smart enough to know what would happen if she did.
She absentmindedly turned it in her fingers, wondering what she could have changed if she went back in time. She could have destroyed the mirror of Erised and stopped Voldemort from getting the sorcerors stone. She could have killed the Basilisk before Tom Riddle did anything to Ginny. Knowing what was to come would be amazingly helpful. She was deep in her daydreams before she realized what she had done.
People were zooming in in and out of the room unnaturally fast. She saw herself and her dorm mates in fast motion, doing their everyday things. The sun was rising and setting out the window in a matter of seconds. Hermione had been turning the timeturner, and was going back in time.
But something was strange about this. The people were moving even faster than they usually were when she went back. Days were passing, instead of hours like they were supposed to. When she looked down at the necklace it had stopped moving, but she was still going back in time. She began to panic. When would it stop? Would it stop? Could she be stuck moving through time until the very beginning? Then what? She desperately hoped it would stop, and soon. There was nothing she could do but wait.
She sat against the wall in the corner of the room, watching time pass. Now no one was coming in to the room, it remained empty as the days passed. Then it filled up again with new people. Familiar people. It must be last year, and I just went through summer vacation. Was she really moving that fast? It had only been five minutes (technically) and she was already in last year. Something was terribly wrong. It had never acted this way. Did timeturners malfunction? Nothing she had read ever said anything about timeturner malfunctions, but it could probably happen. Heck, it was happening now.
Two years had passed. Three. Four. How long had she been sitting here? A variety of different people had come in and out of the room. People she knew from the Quidditch team and elsewhere, and people she had never seen before. All of them girls, obviously. As time passed, it seemed to speed up. The days went faster and faster, she couldn't even make out the peoples faces anymore. The world was a blur. She needed to get out of this. Somehow, it all needed to end. She was about to go insane. The sun went up in down in less than a second. Hermione wished she had never even gotten the stupid timeturner.
Suddenly, a thought occurred to her. She could just take it off. She removed the chain from her neck. Everything stopped. She felt really stupid. Why hadn't she thought to take it off before? Now she was in a time period she didn't belong in. Where, or when, was she? Even though she knew it was a bad idea, she was curious. She would find out when she was and then go back, assuming the timeturner
still worked.
She got up and stuffed the timeturner back in her robes. It was midmorning. If it was a weekday then everyone was in their classes. Judging by all of the personal belongings, it was during the school year. When she looked out the window, the trees were bare. It was winter. But when? It was time to find out.
The Gryffindor common room looked exactly the same as it did in the future. The armchairs, the hardwood floor, the fire place. It was as if she had never left. Hermione dashed down the stairs and through the portrait hole. The Fat Lady was still there, snoozing in her frame. She closed the portrait and started down the hall. She had no idea where she was going, or what she would do. She just wanted to see what things were like now.
A door closed. Hermione jumped. "Hello there." A voice called out. When she saw who was there, she did a double take. "Harry?"
"Uh, no," he said. "My name is James." That's when she saw his eyes. They weren't green, like Harry's.
They were hazel.
