A/N: I know, I know - another time-turner fic! It's overdone. That being said, it's my favorite trope to read and I figured it was time to try my hand at it. This is set not quite in the MWPP-era, but it's close. There will be romance! I haven't added a second character to the fic description because I'm not 100% sure how I want this romance to go, but I will update that once I'm sure. I'll have to see how the characters grow organically for a few chapters. Hopefully this is a little different from what you've read in the past and please, please review! Even if it's to tell my why you don't like this!
Thank you and enjoy!
Hermione had never been a particularly good swimmer. When she was about eleven-years-old, just a few months before receiving her Hogwarts letter, she remembered venturing out too far into the ocean on a trip with her parents. A rip current had taken hold of her and at the time, she'd thought she would drown. Fortunately, her father had realized rather quickly that his daughter was being carried out to sea. The memory had always been hazy, stuck in the back of her mind behind everything else.
She remembered it clearly now. She knew with a high level of certainty that she wouldn't be so lucky this time. She'd lost her wand with the initial landing, a silent bombarda sending her into the Black Lake. With the chaos of the fighting still happening on the grounds, no one would be coming for her.
On average, it took the human body a little less than a minute and a half – around eighty-five seconds – to overcome the initial instinct to hold one's breath. Unfortunately, she'd slammed into the water with such force that the wind had been knocked out of her, mouth gaping open like a fish as the water surrounded her. Although it had been expected, Hermione was still surprised by how much the initial inhale of water hurt. She was gasping, gasping, only to inhale even more water, limbs flailing frantically in an attempt to get to the surface. Something slick wrapped around both of her legs, pulling her down even further. She shut her eyes, black spots dancing at the edges of her vision.
This is it. All that, and you drown.
"Hermione," somebody said. The voice was familiar, but not.
She opened her eyes. She was in, of all places, her childhood bedroom. Sunlight filtered in through the window above her, where she lay tucked into her bed. Her eyes darted around the room, searching for the source of the voice. For some reason, she wasn't at all surprised to find Albus Dumbledore sitting at her little writing desk in the corner of the room.
"Professor," she greeted, confused. "Am I dead?" Hermione asked, sitting up and letting the bedspread – a soft, daffodil-yellow quilt she'd had since childhood – pool around her. It even smelled like home, the faint scent of her favorite candle – vanilla and lavender – mingling with parchment and ink; her mother's banana bread.
"Yes," Dumbledore replied, smiling sadly. Hermione frowned.
"Is this the afterlife, then? That's it?" she asked, knowing very well that her former headmaster had something up his sleeve. There was always a catch with him.
"No, Miss Granger, it is not," he said, still wearing that sad smile. "Harry is dead. Tom lives on. I had feared this, of course. I had wondered if that final fragment of his soul could not so easily be dislodged. It is difficult to understand what can happen to a Horcrux if implanted in a human host."
Hermione remained silent, her head spinning. She wasn't sure how to feel – Harry was dead, yes, but so was she. The revelation that Harry himself had been a Horcrux came as no great shock, even though she hadn't known. The last few hours of her life seemed incredibly far away from her, as if they had happened in a dream.
"Naturally, I formed a contingency plan. Something that I could only put into place, in good conscience, if all had truly been lost," Dumbledore continued.
"What's happening? Back on Earth, I mean," Hermione asked.
"Harry Potter dies on the second of May, in the year 1998. Beyond that, the world as we know it deconstructs itself out of existence. Humanity ceases to exist," he said frankly. "The last member of the Order of the Phoenix is Bill Weasley. He is slain on the fourteenth of July, just after his wife." He was no longer smiling.
"Where is Harry now?" she asked. Something with the way he had worded his explanation struck her as odd. If Harry was dead, why was she here with Dumbledore?
"His soul is still attached to the fragment of Voldemort's own soul," he said.
"What does that mean, exactly?" Hermione asked, voice low. She had a sinking feeling she already knew.
"To put it frankly, Miss Granger, Harry's soul is lost," he answered, solemn.
"Lost?" she repeated faintly.
"There will be no afterlife for Mister Potter," Dumbledore said. Her grief was sudden and palpable, curling in the pit of her gut and threatening to choke her. It rushed through the heavy feeling of nothing, rushed right through the haze that had been clouding her head. Without a soul, everything that had ever been Harry was gone. Her best friend. Years of fighting, for what? Just for his soul to spend eternity linked to Voldemort's? She felt like she'd been unmoored, left in the dark sea to drift.
"What was the contingency plan?" Hermione asked, voice shaking.
"Time exists on a plane that we, in our human shells, cannot understand. It is not so much linear as it is another dimension, which we exist within," he explained. Hermione studied him for a moment, mulling over what he'd said.
"You want me to go back," she said. "Why me?"
"Your thread has already been tampered with," he answered.
"The Time-Turner," she said, frowning. Part of her wondered if allowing her to use it in the first place had been part of his plan. "How did you manage any of this? You've been dead nearly a year."
His face, if anything, grew more solemn.
"Dark Magic, Miss Granger," he said. "A very old, black ritual intended to realign fate's path. The soot is mine, so you need not fear being tainted by the rite if you accept. That being said, I cannot force you to do this," he said. "If you choose to continue on to Summerland to meet your loved ones, I will not attempt to stop you."
Hermione sat up straighter, not letting herself think about the soot on Albus Dumbledore's soul, or on what sort of awful price had to have been paid for such a ritual to be possible. Right now, she could not think.
"I'll do it," she said. How could she even consider leaving Harry behind? She was dead, anyways.
"The fates are tricky, wily things. You and I do not choose when you are placed," Dumbledore warned. She nodded in understanding. And with that, the damnable twinkle was back.
She returned in much the same way she left. She was Ophelia, drowning in the river, the same black spots dancing at the edge of her vision –
Somebody grabbed her around the waist and yanked, her head finally breaking the surface. She gasped, still choking on water – it was seawater this time, the tacky, thick taste of it lining her throat and her mouth and her tongue.
"Hermione," the man said, frantic. He sounded like he was crying.
She opened her eyes, coughing up water. Her insides burned with it. Unbidden, tears welled up in her eyes. She'd never go near the water again if she had the choice.
"Dad," she mumbled, the word coming naturally. He had deep-set dark eyes and a dusting of freckles all over his face. His hair, from what she could tell, would be almost black even when dry. As she'd thought, he was crying.
"You scared me so much," he said, voice thick. "Let's get you out of the water." Hermione hung limply in his arms, crying freely. A deep sadness settled over her, thoughts of Harry and Ron and her real parents swirling in her mind.
The woman she knew to be her mother was waiting at the shore, riotous black curls dancing in the sea breeze. She looked nearly as frantic as her father; eyebrows crunched together and full lips pulled into a frown.
Memories slowly formed as she was wrapped in her mother's embrace, both of them patting her down as if to make sure she was really there.
Blueberry pancakes every Saturday morning, hers with a smiley face of maple syrup; falling off of the monkey bars and breaking her wrist at the park; an English Springer Spaniel laying at the foot of her bed as she reads a worn copy of Treasure Island; little white house, dog roses and foxglove growing out of brick red planters; her father conjuring a robin's egg blue tablecloth for Easter –
Her mother threw a beach towel around her shoulders, a fluffy green thing with fish all over it, and wrapped it tightly around her.
"We should head back," her father said, concern still marring his features. Her mother nodded in agreement, hands going up to tie back her hair.
They took a Muggle car back, with her mother in the driver's seat. Hermione stared out the window the entire way back, willing herself not to cry. She'd lived through years of war and now was the chance to prevent all of it. Countless lives could be saved, not to mention Harry's soul. Lonely as she felt at that moment, it was cold comfort.
Her name was Hermione Wilding. She was eleven years old, had bushy hair, and loved – more than anything – to read. She lived in Scarborough and had no siblings. And, oddly enough, she was a half-blood.
It was remarkable, really, how much this Hermione looked like her old self. The hair was darker, that near-black brown her father had, but the texture was the same. Her eyes were still brown, dark lashes fringing them in the same way they always had. Her skin, maybe, was a shade paler, more of a cool tone than the freckled pink of her past. Hermione was happy to note that her teeth were a perfectly normal size.
Not that any of it mattered. Her only concern, really, was the bit about being a child. What, exactly, did fate expect her to do like this?
"Merlin," she mumbled, examining herself in the bath. Everything about her was so bloody small. She didn't fancy going through puberty a second time around, even without the buckteeth to worry about. And at maybe ten years old, Hogwarts was unavoidable.
"Hermione, dear, are you all right?" her mother asked through the door.
"I'm fine, mum!" she answered, looking up from her tiny hands to unplug the tub. She was decidedly not fine.
Her mother was waiting just outside the bathroom door when Hermione emerged, wrapped in an even fluffier towel than the one from the beach.
"Did what happen at the beach today scare you, sweetie?" she asked, wrapping an arm around Hermione's shoulders.
"Yes, mum," Hermione mumbled, ducking her head to avoid making eye contact. There were about a thousand things ahead of her day at the beach on the list of "Things That Scare Hermione."
Boris, the dog she recognized from the new set of childhood memories that had become superimposed over the old, was snoozing at the foot of her bed when they walked in. Her mother had already laid out a set of pajamas for her daughter to change into for the night. Regardless of it being barely five in the afternoon, Hermione felt strangely grateful. There was nothing she wanted to do more at that moment than to slip into bed and be alone with her own thoughts for a while.
"I don't want you to worry too much about what happened today. Your dad and I would never let anything happen to you, Hermione," her mother said. For the second time that day, Hermione felt tears welling up in her eyes. She hadn't had much time to think about just how much the lack of her parents' presence over the last year had affected her and the amount of concern evident in her mother's tone almost hurt.
"I know," she found herself saying, the fact that she was moments away from crying evident in her voice.
"Oh, Hermione, honey, don't cry." The feeling of this woman – her not-mother, a person with such obvious love for her – wrapping her arms around Hermione's shoulders only made everything worse.
"I'm not crying," she lied, holding the tears back as best she could. All of her emotions were at the surface, whether because she was back in a little girl's body or simply due to the situation she currently found herself in. Hermione had yet to check a calendar, but she could hazard a guess from the decorating style throughout the house that she was probably in the seventies. There would be no Harry and Ron to help her through this.
"I know you and your dad were planning a trip to Diagon Alley tomorrow, but maybe we should postpone it," her mother said, brushing wet strands of hair from Hermione's face. "Your school things can wait a few days."
Her school things? How old was she? She had evidently missed her Hogwarts letter.
"No," she said, more sharply than she'd intended. She itched to have her wand back in her hand. The other woman laughed, though, and Hermione realized she must have been kidding.
"Look how quickly those tears dried up," she said, smiling.
"I wasn't crying," Hermione insisted, frowning. Her mother laughed again, this time harder, forcing a tiny smile from Hermione.
"It's been a taxing day for all of us! No need to be ashamed," her mother said, giving her a quick kiss on the forehead. "I'll go and fix up dinner. Give you some privacy." Boris trotted out after her, the door shutting with a soft click.
Hermione sighed, shoulders slumping. Hogwarts. Again. The thought brought her little joy. It made sense, though, for fate to plan it this way. Voldemort had a Horcrux hiding in the Room of Requirement that she would need time to find and destroy. And the basilisk couldn't very well stay in the castle, regardless of the unlikelihood of Tom Riddle's diary ever making it into Ginny's hands this time around.
There was a writing desk pushed to one side of the bedroom, not unlike her original childhood bedroom. The bed was an ornate, white four post, and the rest of the room's furniture matched. A bit princess-y for Hermione's tastes, but she knew that her new mum loved it. She sat down at the desk, staring at the journal and the mass of colored pencils spread out over the surface. Grabbing a purple pencil – the least offensive of the colors, in Hermione's opinion – she opened up the journal and began to write.