Disclaimer: I know, you thought I owned all of this, I'm sorry. HP is not mine.
"Ready for this?" A young woman whispered to a tall, dark man, pushing unruly locks from her face as she set the last stone into position around a dais in a closed room. The air was loaded and beads of sweat had formed across her brow as she worked, thick winter robes lying forgotten on one of the higher rows of benches.
"As I'll ever be." He answered easily, smiling slightly and holding a hand out to her. He noticed the slight shaking as he lead her up the cracked steps.
She turned to look at him seriously; he bit his tongue to keep a joke in. It would have been in poor taste to jest about that man here of all places, and she was clearly distressed already. It wouldn't do to upset her further before what she was about to do. "You realize this could kill us both? You don't have to do this." He regarded her for a minute, deciding how to best tackle her last minute doubts.
"Hermione, if we don't do this they aregoing to kill me. I'm not even fully educated, and defense wasn't exactly my best subject, how long do you think I can stay hidden? This is probably my best chance at survival. If that wasn't the case I would still do it. You said it yourself, if I go with you, you have a much better chance at success. Even if I couldn't help you, you need someone. If you go back alone you'll go mad. Plus, I can be surprisingly useful sometimes. I am a man of many talents." He rested his arm around her shoulders as she twitched nervously.
"I think it might be too late to save my sanity. No one has done this successfully, even if we survive there is no telling what the consequences to us will be. I only have theories and they might not even apply. We don't know where we will end up, and there are no do overs if we get this wrong."
"Generally there are no do overs the first time around, I am well aware how lucky we are to have found this one. We've weighed the options and we both decided that the risk of us making it worse was much smaller than the chance of making it better. We both decided years ago that we'd happily die for this cause. People in this world throw around the phrase a fate worse than death a lot more than they should. Whatever happens to us, it is not a fate worse than the death of all our loved ones. This is going to be worth it, even if we can only save one person, we should to it."
"In the short term yes. But we don't know the long term consequences of Voldemort's rule."
"No, but I'm guessing it's not going to get good any time soon, especially if he's as immortal as
he thinks he is."
"And we don't know what the consequences to us might be. This kind of time travel is still untested, all we have is hypothetical scenarios based on completely different methods."
"Well then I guess we should document it well. You can be the first to do an in depth study of it. I'll keep a diary and everything." He grinned down at her and kept a hold of her elbow to keep her from turning away again.
"But..." She sputtered.
He almost laughed again. He wondered how it ended up being the two of them. It was almost funny how little they had know about each other before Hermione had turned up, bleeding all over his nice clean cave almost a year before. They had never really gotten along at school, not disliked each other, just never had much reason to speak. "It's all hallows eve, they're already calling out to find the disturbance. It's now or never. Where is that Gryffindor spirit?"
He had had some serious doubts when she explained her plan all those months ago, but she had convinced him of the validity of her theory. Now it was her turn to be nervous. That was the way it worked. She was absolutely certain once she had a plan, all the way up until it was time to put it into action. He knew what was happening behind her big brown eyes. She was going over every detail of the plan to find flaws. This plan had plenty of them, he knew, but it was also the best one they had. "We could come back next year." It was barely a whisper and neither of them believed it.
"If we're both alive then, and if we can get back in, and if far too many things and you know it. You are brilliant. It is going to work. Besides, we both know if I walk out of here you'll come back and go on your own and I can't let that happen. Now let's do this." The way his mind processed things almost completely opposite hers. He had had his doubts, but now, on the day, he was completely at ease with the plan. He was satisfied that they had done everything in their power to ensure their own safety and everyone else's.
"Right." She took both his hands and began a long chant. Had she allowed her eyes to stray from the veil that was moving at a steadily increasing pace she would have seen a bright spectacle of lights gathering around the pair as she took a small golden necklace from her neck without releasing her companion's hands and offered it to the veil. Dean for his part was free to look around. The words he spoke felt foreign in his mouth but he kept repeating them even as the lights rose to a blinding intensity.
The ground around them rumbled and shook and the cracks on the steps grew until they were threatening to dislodge the archway completely, one narrowly missed his foot. Blocks of stone were dislodging from the ceiling and the benches around the room were crumbling.
The veil brushed across the very tips of their fingers and swept the tiny golden hourglass from their hands before becoming completely still. Suddenly as though a great gust of wind had passed through the room the veil sprang to life again, sweeping across both young magic wielders and the steadily disintegrating room was left empty once more.
I feel like I owe some kind of explanation to my readers regarding the long absence. I won't be providing one, but I am acknowledging that I should, just to be clear. Jaws is pretty much dead.