Author's note time! I'm finally posting the third installment of my trilogy! Yay! I'm terribly sorry about the delay and won't make excuses, but thank all of you who come back to read this. I'm not going to try and guess a timeline for it to be done, or even a length at this point, but I promise I WILL finish this if it kills me. This is the sixth draft of this I'm posting as I write mostly so I don't delete the whole gorram thing again and am forced to continue with this specific version of the same story I've been writing for over a year now. For those of you who have been reading since I first posted Steal the Glamour from Death, I thank you for your interest and patience and hope it can hold out long enough for me to finish this thing. In a related story, I've decided that if I do get around to writing another story after this, I will avoid silly things like trilogies. I know generally how this story goes and ends and have since halfway through Back to the Disaster. Because of that, my interest keeps wandering on top of legions of other issues in getting this written. Being generally stubborn, though, I refuse to explore those other ideas until I actually have this finished and posted.
Disclaimer (for this and all the following chapters): I own nothing. Except a car, a lot of books, and too many cats. Seriously, if anyone wants a kitten, I've got quite the variety. If anyone wants their mother, please take her, she's the only cat I've ever met that doesn't like me. I won't even tell my husband, who actually likes her. It'll be our secret. Point is, I don't own Harry Potter, the characters, any lingering plot points from the books and/or movies I choose to take advantage of, etc. etc. etc. Don't sue me, I work an hourly customer service job. You won't get money I don't have. =)
PROLOGUE:
As the train ride wore on, Hermione was recalling details of her new life easier and easier throughout the conversation. When she became aware of this, she took a moment to remember where she had been, all that she had done, and was disturbed to find huge chunks of memory missing from her previous life. When the majority of the compartment got up to stand in line at the trolley outside in the corridor, she looked over at Fred, who hadn't noticed anyone leaving and was chewing his lip nervously.
"Did this happen to you? Did you start to forget?" she asked quietly as she sat down next to him, causing him to look up at her sharply.
"No. I remembered everything the same way you did this morning...until now. Is it because we're both back in our proper timelines?" he whispered back, looking as concerned as she felt.
"Perhaps. I can almost remember being told something about a second chance...it's so fuzzy now. I can barely remember even getting the amulet!" she clutched the ever-present amulet around her neck, looking down at it.
"Tell me about it. Where did you get it?" he asked, looking at it as if he'd never seen it before.
"A family vacation. It's important. It's supposed to help me see better. It's going to make the future bright again," she told him, scrunching up her forehead trying to remember details. "I can't remember exactly, but I shouldn't take it off. It needs to stay with me at all times."
"So we're forgetting everything. How long until we're just normal kids again, you reckon?"
"I don't know, Fred. By putting us back on the morning of our first year, I daresay we'll walk into Hogwarts as first and third years to the best of our personal knowledge," she looked up at him with tears pooling in her eyes. "I'm not sure I want to forget everything. I certainly don't want to forget you."
"You won't. I won't let you. Even if we're left with just this life, I made sure we were friends. We've been close. Not as close as we were at the end, but closer than we ever were the first time around," he assured her, hugging her tightly. "This - you and me? It's real. We'll have it again when we're older. And it'll be built on years of friendship and laughter, not too many deaths, hardship, and terror. Even if we don't remember before, we still have now."
"Promise?" she asked in a small voice, willing the tears away and allowing a small smile at the picture he painted for their future.
"Promise," Fred told her as seriously as he'd ever said anything in her presence, pulling away and smiling at her. "So long as you reconsider Ravenclaw."
"Aw, is ickle Hermione worried about the sorting again?" George broke in as he plopped down on Fred's other side, dropping a box of jelly slugs in his twin's lap.
"Just a little. I didn't have any friends before I met all of you," she reminded the compartment as they returned, Draco taking the seat at her other side. "What if no one else likes me? What if I get sorted into Ravenclaw and I have no friends in my house?"
"I already told you I'd make sure I joined you," Draco reminded her as everyone looked a little uneasy trying to figure out what to say. "It's not like I really had friends before mum started working with Gideon and I met everyone. I mean, I had Dora, but that was it and only when she visited and my grandmother didn't find a way to keep me from seeing her. We're in the same boat here. But you're right. What if everyone else in Ravenclaw hates us? You could get by in Gryffindor, but I'd be an outsider there even if I managed to talk the hat into sorting me with the rest of this brash lot of weirdos."
"Hey! Majority rules here! You two are the weirdos!" Harry protested, half joking.
"And you haven't been sorted into Gryffindor," Hermione pointed out, grinning. "Who knows? You might end up a weirdo like us."
"Doubt it," Harry brushed off her warning, quickly hiding the worry that flickered over his face.
"If you're so worried about being accepted, why don't you ask for Hufflepuff?" Ron asked, making one of his randomly acute observations. "Aunt Cassie loved it there. Said everyone's really accepting and even if they didn't get on too well personally, they always had each other's backs. The whole loyalty thing. Cedric from over the hill's been Hufflepuff for a few years and he seems to be pretty happy with it too. So's Dora - you almost never see her out of a good mood, but that could be her…" Ron thought about it briefly through a mouthful of chocolate frog before shaking it off as unimportant.
"Point is, that was the goal of Helga Hufflepuff from what you were telling us, wasn't it, Hermione? She'd take in everyone who didn't feel like they belonged anywhere else? Aunt Cassie told me they were all about loyalty and work ethic," he paused to wrinkle his nose at the last bit. "Tells me I need to be more Hufflepuff any time I'm complaining about chores. But you've got loads of work ethic. And you're plenty loyal. Both of you, actually. Seems like a lot of worry for nothing."
"That's...remarkably astute, Ron," Hermione finally commented after gaining her bearings. Everyone else was still looking at him like they've never met him before. Ron just shrugged and nabbed one of Harry's chocolate frogs before the boy snapped out of his surprise, biting the head off before it had a chance to take it's one good jump.
"I get one of those every few months or so."
"That's how we knew he was a wizard, actually," George jumped in, eyes sparkling in a shared look with his twin.
"Thought he was a squib until we realized these random bits of wisdom just had to be accidental magic. I hate to think of all he'll lose once he gets control of himself," Fred finished the thought, earning a half-hearted swipe to the head from a grinning Ron while everyone else laughed.
"Maybe he'll have control over that too - be able to call it up on demand," Neville offered.
"I thought his accidental magic was locking Fred out of the house in his skivvies on Christmas morning...?" Draco mused, trying to remember the story.
"Any more of that talk and you're banned to Slytherin," Fred warned the blonde, causing the compartment to explode in laughter once more.
The friends forgot their worries for a while longer, laughing and joking until one by one of them fell off to sleep, lulled by the gentle rocking of the train, the end of the candy-induced sugar high, and the general drop of the conversation that had started to meander into nothingness. Hermione was leaning on the shoulder of a napping Fred just dozing off herself when she felt someone pulling on her sleeve.
"Draco?"
"Would you feel better about Hufflepuff?" he asked, looking anxious again.
"I don't know...are you really that worried about it?" she asked, forcing herself to focus.
"I can't be Slytherin. They'll destroy me. Sure I'm plenty cunning and ambitious, but they know how I was raised, who I was raised with. My grandmother's told me stories of what happens to people who have known weakness in that house. There's nothing I can do about it, they already know and nothing I do to hide it will work. She was trying to make me stronger, I think, or more like my father, but that's not who I am. And I'm not Gryffindor. I can't follow the rest of them. I just…" he paused to choose his words.
"You're new to the magical world, Hermione. But I'm a Malfoy. That still means something to people. It's why my mum uses Aunt Andy's name on everything. No one's afraid of a Tonks. There's no horror stories about what their family's done for centuries," he stopped, looking around to make sure no one else was hearing his confession. "I can't go in there alone. The only house I stand a chance in, I don't belong in."
"So you really don't care where you are so long as it's not Slytherin or Gryffindor?" Hermione mused, searching his face for deceit. "I suppose Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw would be helpful in staying under the radar. Is there one you prefer?"
"Not really. It'd be nice to have a chance to be in a house as united as Hufflepuff, but I'm more likely to be ignored and left alone in Ravenclaw. Both have their advantages."
"I know what you mean. Well, not exactly the same advantages, but they'd both work. How about I talk to the hat and figure it out from there?" she offered, vaguely remembering the fear his name had inspired in so many in her previous life.
"It's probably the only way we won't spend the next couple hours talking it in circles," he conceded, reaching out a hand. "We do it together then?"
"Together," she agreed, shaking his hand with a smile even as a shadow of her previous life looked on aghast, asking who she thought she was dealing with. Shaking off the shadow and it's vague memories, she laid her head back down on Fred's shoulder while Draco returned to the book he had been reading.
