.-.
A Different World
Hermione's head throbbed, as if a Quidditch Beater had set upon it with a club like a Bludger. Her eyelids refused to move, and she felt oddly detached from her body, as if her brain had lost all control over every muscle in her limbs. Despite this, she couldn't stop shaking; no, correction, she didn't seem to be trembling so much as her surroundings…
Wincing, Hermione furrowed her brow, distinguishing the sensation. She was laying flat, and whatever was beneath her was rumbling loudly, the train-like sound causing her to vibrate with it. She would have guessed that she actually was on a train were it not for the absurdity of the idea. How would she have gotten from a remote field to a train compartment?
"My?" Abruptly, someone grabbed her shoulder and shook it. Sharp pain shot through her head, and she bit her lip hard to restrain a gasp. "You all there, pet? My-y…"
'Your' what? she thought vexedly, but had neither the energy nor the desire to demand an answer or open her eyes. Bugger, her head was killing her…
"My. Oi, Harry, d'you think she's breathing?"
If it's me who you're referring to, then of course I am, you idiot.
Wait, is that Ron? And… Harry!
Forcing her eyes open, Hermione lurched forward. "Harry!"
Her two best friends jumped slightly at what must have been, to them, a rather sudden motion on her part. Harry - and Ron - were hovering directly overhead. Both of them. Alive.
Images flashed through her memory: of the battle, the deaths, the lightning, and Voldemort - Voldemort dying.
Voldemort was dead.
And all three of them - they had made it!
She didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Her subconscious settled for both: Tears sprung to her eyes, a tired but beaming smile threatening to explode across her face. "Thank all the gods," she breathed, hauling herself to a seated position and throwing her arms around Harry and Ron as tightly as she could. "I didn't think we'd-"
She was roughly pushed backward.
"Don't touch me," growled a voice that inexplicably sounded an awful lot like Harry's.
Simultaneously, Ron also disentangled himself from her with an expression that could only be described a sneer. "Right - Alright - Alright pet, don't let your makeup run; we get the picture." He looked over her head to Harry and rolled his eyes. "Her Majesty obviously hit her head too hard."
Her Majesty?
Hermione's smile froze. Throbbing again exploded through her skull.
What in the name of Godric's sword…?
It occurred to her then that the two of them looked nothing like how she'd last seen them. They were both strangely clean. And well-dressed. Harry, bizarrely, wasn't wearing his glasses, and Ron's - she squinted to make sure she wasn't seeing things - Merlin's beard, Ron's hair was slicked back, like Draco Malfoy's hair had always been once upon a time.
In the distance, a whistle screamed.
Great Godric, they were on a train.
She swiftly shifted her gaze from Ron to her surroundings. The spacious, extravagant Head Boy/Girl compartment of the Hogwarts Express – or, from her current perspective, the floor of it - surrounded her, fully decorated in rich reds, elegant golds, and beautifully polished accent tables topped with exquisite silver trays that were filled with what could only be described as simply beautiful finger food and bottles of brand-name alcohol she vaguely recognized as being extremely expensive.
Trying not to appear as confused as she felt, Hermione glanced at Ron, whose face held an expression of distinct annoyance. With no move to help her, he sat back on the plush train bench and haughtily straightened his robes. Harry gave her another dark expression and lifted himself onto the bench across from them with a very atypical sort of imperial regality about his movements. Ginny, nonchalantly sitting beside him, looked just as off, staring interestedly at polished red nails.
As if the final battle had never happened.
But it had just happened! They had all been there!
... Hadn't they?
"Wait a minute," she said slowly, gingerly helping herself up onto the open seat beside Ron. "What's going on?"
Harry leaned back and ran his hand through his hair, a motion he usually avoided because he said it reminded him of his father's arrogance. His lack of spectacles surprisingly altered his appearance staggeringly. "Seems that taking a bit of a spill's turned you into an uncharacteristically grateful bint," he said acerbically.
There was no mistaking the malice in his voice now, and Hermione's lips parted in shock. "A bit of a spill," she echoed in disbelief.
Ginny nodded her agreement in a very unconcerned manner for someone who had just witnessed a friend "take a spill."
"I'm not referring to why I was on the floor, although yes, I'd be quite curious to hear your answer for that, too," Hermione said, "I mean, why are we on the Hogwarts Express? What happened with Voldemort; with - everything?"
Beside her, Ron made a terribly rude noise rather than his usual squeak at Voldemort's name. "What are you going on about now, pet?"
Irritation and anger abruptly surged through her, sending another wave of pain through her skull. If this was some sort of a - a twisted joke, an 'oh, let's all celebrate the end of the war with a laugh on Hermione!', it was in extremely poor taste!
"I swear on Merlin's beard, Ronald, if you call me by that - that perfectly horrid name again, you'll regret it faster than you can say Hungarian Horntail!" she snapped. "Honestly - 'Pet?' "
He sighed audibly, looking bored. "Oh, don't be a such a lowe, bitty. You certainly weren't complaining about it last night."
Though Hermione had no idea what 'being a lowe' meant to imply, from the way he had said it, it certainly didn't seem to be positive. " 'Bitty,' now, is it? How very chauvinistic of you."
He burst out laughing. "Chauvinistic?" he choked out between guffaws. "T-That's - That's a big word for you, pet. Sure you-" gasp - "know what it means?"
Hermione stared at him in astonishment.
A chill crept down her back and into the very depths of her bones.
Instinctively, she reached toward her jeans pocket for her wand, but her fingers connected with with a soft, non-denim material. Quickly, she looked down.
It was a skirt. She was wearing a Hogwarts uniform.
In the pit of her stomach, panic, dark and insidious, began to churn.
Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. Not even the twins possessed this warped a sense of humor - not now, during the peak of the war. There was no conceivable way this was a joke taken too far.
Could she be… dead? Dying? Was this some sort of 'life flashing before one's eyes' phenomenon she was experiencing before she died?
But - No, Ron had never acted like this before, so that couldn't be it…
The wheels of her mind frantically spinning, she ignored a chuckling Ron and desperately looked back at Harry, hoping against hope that he could provide some sort of logical explanation for - for the complete irrationality of the entire situation. He was still sprawled casually against the backrest of the lounge-like seat, but he was staring out the window rather than at either of them.
"Harry," she said pleadingly.
He started, then looked at her, the gleam in his green eyes peculiarly… empty.
"What happened with what?" he finally asked, sounding utterly disinterested.
Hermione frowned, wondering why on earth this needed repeating. "With… Voldemort."
He cocked his head slightly to the right, studying her with an uncharacteristic, almost predatory shrewdness in his clouded gaze. "Volda... what?"
"She's talking gobbledygook as per usual; fall must have made it worse," Ron said none too quietly.
As per usual? Hermione thought in disbelief.
Harry regarded Ron emotionlessly before shrugging and turning his gaze toward the countryside, again shoving his thick mop of hair up off his forehead.
She froze.
For one of the very few times in her life, pure shock, and not a single thought, passed through Hermione Granger's mind.
The skin above Harry's brows was glaringly smooth. Blank.
Scarless.
He didn't know. Harry Potter didn't know - or didn't remember - the name of the man who had single-handedly destroyed so much of his life. Not only that - his scar was gone.
Hermione's temples throbbed. Hot pain burned at the back of her skull like wildfire. This couldn't be a simple nightmare; the pain she was physically experiencing was too real.
Systematically, she began to run through other possible explanations: Harry had amnesia, Harry's memory had been wiped - but no, neither would explain why they were on the train, or why his scar was missing…
Wracking her brain, she tried to remember exactly what had happened in the final moments she'd been on the battlefield. The white light had struck her, that much she recalled quite clearly, and it had obviously triggered the horrible experience that had followed. The Light Arts didn't elicit that sort of pain, so it must have been a form of Dark Magic, but in all her studies, Hermione couldn't recall a single curse, hex or jinx that embodied pure white light - and so bloody much of it - and produced this result.
She frenetically forced herself to calm her now-audible breaths lest they give her away. The curse that had hit her must have transferred her into a - a surreal mental state, that was it, most likely on account of -
A red handkerchief waving directly in front of her nose rudely interrupted her analysis. Hermione jerked backward, then glared at Ron, who was holding it out with his pointer finger and thumb like she was a small child with chocolate spread across her hands that he didn't want to get on his own if or when she took it.
"What?" she snapped suspiciously.
He gave her an exasperated expression. "You look awful, pet. Come on - here. Clean up before you make a spectacle of yourself; you never know when the press'll be around. You know how I feel about public appearances."
She stared at it blankly, then at him. "What am I supposed to do with that, Ronald, mop up my oh-so-plentiful mascara?" she asked sarcastically.
When he stared at her in with an expression of "Well, obviously," she snatched the kerchief from his hand and threw it in his lap, turning away from him with a huff.
"Bloody hell, My! Throwing another wobbly again so soon? Really?"
Ginny's head snapped up. "Oh, stop your whinging, Ronáld, you're being bloody obnoxious and she knows it, too. No one can be perfect at every hour of every moment of every day - not even you, brother dearest."
"Just because you're a cock-up doesn't mean we all are."
Hermione risked a subtle glance in their direction, studying them both carefully. All right, Ginny and Ron arguing; this is normal.
Ginny actually started cackling. "I'm a cock-up? Who single-handedly lost us the Quidditch Cup last year?"
Wait a minute… Did Ginny just call Ron 'Ronáld?'
Ron scowled. "I didn't see you helping any."
"Well then, apparently you didn't see anything; you clearly missed the fourteen times the quaffle flew right past your head."
"At least I haven't shown my knockers to every bloke in Hogwarts who's looked twice at me," he sneered.
The youngest Weasley smirked a very Ginny-like smirk, but an unnaturally cruel gleam shone in her eyes. She tossed her long hair over her shoulder, looking haughtily down her nose her brother, and Hermione abruptly realized what was off about her: her hair was highlighted black.
"At least I haven't pathetically lost a duel to a wandless fusty," Ginny sneered back. "Twice."
For a moment, silence filled the compartment.
Ron gave his sister a filthy glare. "If that ever leaves this compartment, sister, I will kill you," he said in a low voice.
He sounded more deadly serious than Hermione had ever heard him. Surreal state or not, she had no idea whether she could still be affected by other spellcasters, and she certainly wasn't about to be caught unprepared if the situation escalated. She began inching toward the compartment door while surreptitiously searching for her wand, hoping she appeared as though she was doing neither.
Ginny let out an entirely unconcerned laugh. "Doubtful. Unlike you, I actually know how to use a wand."
"You little -"
Ron had hardly lifted his wand before Ginny's hazel one was leveled directly at his face. Hermione's hand froze halfway into the pocket of her robes. "No you don't. Stand down, brother."
Slowly, Ron lifted his hand from his wand, glaring daggers at her.
She shook her head, still chortling. "Better work on that draw, or our precious little House Wizard might just beat you again."
Ron ripped his wand toward her. "You bitch!"
"Stand down!"
Where is my bloody wand! Hermione mentally screamed, in the confusion plunging her hand into the pocket of her robes where she would have normally kept it and coming up empty.
"Both of you, shut your sodding mouths!"
Ron and Ginny stopped mid-incantation, wand tips inches from the other's face.
At the window, Harry had spun toward them, red-faced. "Thank you," he muttered vehemently.
Hermione watched in amazement as Ginny's face morphed from almost crazed vexation to the utmost concern in the span of two seconds. "Harry?" Tentatively, she touched his arm and then clutched at it. "Oh Harry, darling, we didn't mean to upset you. We won't do it again, will we, Ronáld? Ronáld?"
Both men ignored her. Unfortunately for Hermione, this meant that Ron decided to turn his attention back to her. Pouring himself a drink from a gold bottle that looked like it was covered with actual diamonds, he leaned back against the wall beside the window and ran a hand over his practically solid hair, preening. Slowly, he traced his eyes down her form with a smirk that moonlighted as an unnerving leer. "You really have outdone yourself this year, pet."
She tensed, clenching her fists, and bit her lip hard to restrain the tirade that pleaded to burst forth and let him - whoever he was, and whatever he had done to Ron - have it. This wasn't right, nor was it safe; these people clearly weren't the Harry, Ron and Ginny she knew and trusted, and they seemed to have a very different opinion about her, too.
She needed more information.
Thankfully, Imposter Ron's apparent love of his own voice made him only too happy to acquiescence.
"I know your only goal in life is to be socialite queen of the sovereignty, but buying the Head Girl-ship? Landing us in this compartment?" he continued. He raised his glass to her, nodding approvingly. "That was nicely done, nicely done indeed." He gulped down the amber liquid, then slammed the tumbler back on the accent table with a bang. "Getting your priorities straight, you are. Almost makes me wish I'd done the same so we could've shared those comfy quarters in private." He tilted his head toward Harry and Ginny in a quick jerk and then wiggled his eyebrows at her in a manner that... was he flirting with her? "Y'know, I always knew you could figure something out if you really needed to."
'I always knew you could figure something out if you really needed to...' What in the bloody hell?
As everything he said sank in, Hermione's heart started to pound too loudly for its own good. Tiling her head down slightly, she saw that the Head Girl badge was indeed pinned to her robes.
A thousand screaming thoughts exploded in her mind.
Not a single one of them made the slightest amount of sense.
Her anger quickly morphing to a subtle fear, Hermione jerked her attention back to an expectant Ron and forced a smile to her face to ward off the inevitable dialogue. They were talking about things she had never done, or at least never remembered doing, and indirectly insulting her intelligence in the process. But maybe… here… she – or someone who sounded like her and perhaps looked like her - had done those things?
"Thanks," she finally said cautiously, her gaze surreptitiously slipping across the compartment to study Harry and Ginny's reaction to her response.
She coughed back a choke.
Ginny was pressed up against Harry's right side, her bare leg draped over his knees. She was snogging the right half of his face as if her very life depended on it. Meanwhile, he sat stone-faced and unresponsive, staring out the window at the pastoral landscape blurring by.
Hermione had no idea how much time passed before she blinked rapidly, jarring herself from shock. So many things were wrong with what she was witnessing that she didn't even know where to begin: Ginny and Harry usually never participated in such public displays of affection; Harry would never ignore Ginny like this; and he certainly would have been doubly respectful knowing that Ron -
Oh dear Merlin, Ron!
Even though the youngest male Weasley had grudgingly accepted Harry's and Ginny's relationship the summer before, Hermione worriedly shifted her gaze back toward him, fully expecting to hear a familiar bellow of brotherly indignation at any moment –
His face was less than a wand's length from hers.
Hermione jerked backward. "Sweet Morgana!" Clutching her thundering heart with one hand and the edge of the seat with the other, she gasped in a lungful of air. "Merlin, Ronald, haven't you ever heard of the concept of - of personal space!" she spat.
In only a matter of seconds, Ron had covered the small distance between them; despite her words of warning, he didn't make any attempt to move away. He didn't seem at all concerned with his sister's very one-sided dalliance with his best friend only feet away. Instead, he actually chuckled, low in his throat, and gave her a crooked smirk. "Oh, stop trying to be amusing, pet. You were never any good at being clever." He again raked his gaze over her figure with what could only be described as a leer.
"Stop staring at me like that," Hermione said warily, gritting her teeth. She fumbled around for her wand, reaching up her sleeve, around the waistband of her skirt - Oh Merlin, it wasn't in any of the places she normally kept it…
"Come now, pet," Ron breathed in a husky voice she would have never believed he possessed, simply leaning closer the faster that she backed away from him, "am I not allowed to look at something of mine?"
Before Hermione could process that statement, his arm was around her, pulling her to him, crushing her to him, his lips sucking the life from her mouth, her throat, her neck -
For the second time, all thought momentarily flew from her mind.
Ron. Kissing her. Ron was kissing her, her brain managed. His hands were everywhere, doing everything that she had always looked at Ron and wondered what it would be like to experience, and as his teeth grazed her collarbone, she sucked in a sharp intake of breath and unconsciously arched her neck into his downward onslaught. His mouth moved sloppily across her skin, lower… lower… dangerously lower –
Hermione, no! This isn't the Ron you know! That doesn't make a lick of sense right now, but it isn't!
Her eyes flew open. They swiftly widened in disgust at the first sight that greeted her: a mass of greasy, slicked-back hair. Frantically, she yanked away from him with all the strength she possessed, her hand flying toward his face in the same motion and connecting with a resounding slap. "I said stop!"
Without bothering to check his reaction, she scooted to the farthest end of the suddenly very tiny compartment, gasping in gulps of air and furiously fluffing her hair over her shoulders and out of her face. Somewhat hysterically, she continued to dig around the pockets of her robe.
Ron… snogging... snogging her?
No, no, this is not happening…
What, he finally decides he fancies me when he's turned into a dodgy, peacocking narcissist?
My wand… Where is my wand?…
A bright, angry handprint had appeared on his freckled face, which was steadily turning purple in outrage. "Bugger, My, what in the bloody hell has gotten into-"
Abruptly, he trailed off. Ignoring him, Hermione vehemently reached down to fling her hitched-up skirt over her now-bare legs... and felt her fingers connect with a slender stick of wood, stuck down the inside of her thigh-high stockings. She closed her hand around the familiar wand and briefly closed her eyes in relief before swiftly pulling it from its "hiding place." How on earth had anyone thought that was a good idea?
"Wait a minute… " Ron said slowly then.
If a face could truly light up malevolently, his had. Hermione paused to glare at him while swiftly buttoning her white oxford. (How had it gotten unbuttoned? Had it been unbuttoned before?) "What?" she snapped.
The lanky redhead – so similar, and yet so, so different – stared at her as if he'd never quite seen her until that moment. "You're… you're playing hard to get, aren't you, pet," he said, phrasing it as more of an excited statement than a question.
In your dreams, she thought fiercely. But from the corner of her eye, she noticed that even Harry had torn his dead eyes from the countryside and was watching them apathetically, Ginny still halfway on top of him.
Wonderful, an audience, she thought sarcastically, but it reinforced her growing dread that she somehow needed to give responses that would be most in-character for this person who sounded like her - and may have looked like her - who they were calling 'My' and 'pet.'
She sighed heavily, weighing her options.
"Yes, Ronáld, that is exactly what I'm doing," she eventually said flatly... certainly better than to deny it, anyway.
Ron… Ronáld… let out a feral little growl that would have never passed the lips of the Ron that Hermione knew, a delighted smirk on his face as if she had just whispered the most inventive not to mention hottest come-on ever invented, and he was downright up for the challenge.
Bugger, not quite the effect I wanted to have, she thought with a fresh wave of alarm, trying to stay composed while glaring at him coldly. "So keep your hands off me," she snapped, raising her rediscovered wand toward his eager countenance just in case he didn't catch her point.
He heaved a heavy, self-suffering sigh. "Alright, My," he said with a deep roll of his eyes, "I'll play your little game." Another smirk jumped to his face as he leaned toward her and wagged his finger knowingly, lowering his voice in a tone she supposed was meant to sound seductive. "But not for long, pet."
She only lowered her wand slightly despite his agreement. "Believe that if it'll help you sleep better at night," she retorted sourly.
Ron – Ronáld - broke away from her and rolled his eyes at Harry, twirling his finger around his ear in the universal signal for 'madwoman present.' At the motion, Ginny actually paused in her mouth massage of Harry's face to let out a downright unnerving screech of laughter that reminded Hermione of Bellatrix Lestrange.
A burst of utter desperation finally broke free and surged through her exhausted mind.
It was too much.
She wanted her Ron, her Harry, her Ginny! Not these... these dark versions of them! Even though her robes still said Gryffindor, she felt exactly as if she were sitting in a den of Slytherins, but it was real: there was nothing fake about the lingering sensation of Ron's slobber on her neck in place of the boy she was so exasperatedly fond of, or the way that this Harry's dull eyes were so opposite the fiery, determined Harry who was her best friend.
Hot tears pricked at her eyes, and she blinked rapidly, fighting to restrain them. She - She was only nineteen years old, for the love of Merlin, and she'd already spent years evading Voldemort's forces, searching for horcruxes, and rallying people to fight. Sweet Morgana, she was tired! And now, just as the end had literally been within grasp, could she truly have been brought to a place where it might quite possibly be worse? Why had this happened?! What more could the Universe possibly want from her?
All right, Hermione, stop and breathe, she told herself sternly. Breathe! Think logically. You're the only one here who's still yourself, so the spell must have been done to you, not to Harry or to anyone else. Suss out what happened to you, and you might be able to sort out how to reverse it. Now, which spells would create this sort of effect?
Swallowing desperation, she began to run through her mental catalogue of charms and enchantments. Illusionary charms… coma states… nightmare hexes… pensive locks…
It took immense restraint to resist banging her head against the nearest solid object; with the way her luck was going, it would most likely end up being Ron – Ronal – Ronáld and his loathsome hair. The list of possibilities was not only vast, it was endless… and that was only if whatever was happening to her was purely mental - if she was trapped somewhere in her mind and nothing more.
But… there were other types of spells... spells that altered reality, spells that were rumored to transfer the enchanted from one universe to another. Some worlds were similar and some were practically identical, but others were rumored to be completely different – and if transference magic was the culprit, this universe was quite obviously among the latter. Of course, inter-dimensional transfer theories were passed off as just that - theories - but that didn't mean they were impossible.
And because it was highly likely the spell that had resulted in this nightmare had been cast by a Death Eater, that didn't even begin to delve into any Dark Magic that may have been able to accomplish the same thing.
Bloody Morgana… where am I?
A/N: Reviews are so gratefully received; please be kind and leave one behind!
