Author's Notes:
I am sorry for the late update! I am juggling several stories, so I have to prioritise things. Thank you for maying38 and Sharnorasian Empire for reviewing and others who put this adopted story into their favourite and story alert lists!
I splitted the end of Chapter 1 and put it in Chapter 2. I changed some things as well, but the original plotline and events are still visible. I might do it for other chapters, when they require it.
Hope you will like it!
Chapter 1
This Strange World
A knock on the door draws me from my memories, both the sweet and the bitter. It has been three days since Ron's death, and I have become an apathetic lump, complete with my black mourning attire, sitting on the window seat of an unoccupied room (which now I claim as mine) in Twelve Grimmauld Place, watching the dreary houses outside the grubby glass of the window. The room is shadowed and heavily-decorated with tapestries. It is a surprising comfort to me.
Harry and Ginny, hand in hand, enter the room silently and seat themselves at my either side.
"Hermione, are you coming to dinner?" Harry asks softly in greeting, after a span of uncomfortable silence.
"I'm not hungry," I murmur, refusing to take my eyes away from the rain clouds in the patch of sky visible from the window.
"You have to eat something, Hermione," Ginny urges. "You're wasting away!"
"Good. I get to see Ron soon, then," I snap, but then start to cry. "I never got the chance to say good bye. Ron's dead and it's entirely my fault." And it is not fair to take all the anger and bitterness on them, my best friends, who had also been Ron's… I cannot control myself! I have lost control of it, actually, since three days ago in the graveyard of Little Hangleton, when I went in a killing rampage using the curse that had taken Ron. If only my best friends had not been there—
"You are not the only one who's lost someone, Hermione! Get over yourself!" Ginny hisses, exploding at last. "In case you haven't noticed, I lost a brother that day, and I've lost another brother in the Last Battle too. Imagine what that is like." And, with tears running down her cheeks, she storms out of the room.
A tense silence follows, stifling the air.
"Hermione, we have to move on. That was what I had to learn when I lost Sirius. Everyone has taken this hard. That's why we have to pull ourselves together and help each other up," Harry finally states, his voice soft and slightly hoarse, and his hand on mine gentle.
"I miss him so much. I never told him that…" I choke out through my tears.
"… You loved him," Harry finishes my sentence and, smiling sadly, pulls me into a comforting hug. I sob into his worn T-shirt as he gently strokes my hair. While I snuggle there in his arms, a strange determination comes over me as a plan knits itself together, becoming less vague by the moment.
"I have to set things right," I whisper while pulling away from him. I stride towards my desk, murmur a password under my breath, then rummage in the top drawer that has just been unlocked. My heart beats more rapidly when my blind hand stumbles on a small hour glass attached to a long golden chain. No, I must do this, for Ron.
Once I straighten up and grip my wand firmly in my hand, I notice Harry's green eyes staring at me in puzzlement. Then they drift to the Time Turner dangling over my chest, and widen with horror.
"Hermione – No. I don't think that's a good idea," he blurts, scared, while lunging at me, trying to prevent me from doing anything with the artefac. I do not pay attention to him as I dodge, my free hand clutching at the small hour glass as if a lifeline – and perhaps it is. He reaches out his hand to confiscate the item, but I quickly dash out the door, down the hall, and into another room, locking the door behind me. I can hear his muffled shouts through the door plank as he pounds his fists on it, demanding entrance.
"Hermione, Don't do this! Please!" I hear him call out frantically, pleadingly.
"Hermione dear, don't go through with this, please! You know strange consequences happen when you meddle with time!" Mrs. Weasley's voice urges, piping in when Harry's voice has broken into desperate sobs.
"I have to try!" I yell back, ignoring the knife twisting in my heart on hearing Harry's broken cry. I turn the hour glass to three days past at the same time.
When I let go, the rings of the Time Turner begin to spin; slowly at first, but then faster and faster. The room starts to blur.
Then suddenly everything seems to shift, no longer feeling right. I feel something grab me around the waist, and I am yanked up into the air. As I fly up into whirling space, the Time Turner shatters in my hand. My body is tossed about like a rag doll, before I am abruptly thrown onto the ground. The force of impact knocks the air out of my lungs.
I lie where I have fallen, face down, for a moment, taking in the smell of damp soil and the feeling of grass against my skin and clothes. Once my heart has stopped pounding and my breathing returns to normal, I push myself up to a kneeling position and look around.
I am surrounded by trees, apparently a small forest of sorts, and I have fallen on the centre of a small grassy clearing, with the autumn air permiating it.
"What the…" I murmur dazedly as I rise slowly to my feet. "Where am I?" It is certainly not the graveyard where we ambushed the Death Eaters three days ago, where Ron died. It does not feel like anywhere I have ever been also, because the air is too clean and the foliage too green and fragrant.
And there is a feel of… something… in everything around me, as if this place were young and saturated with magic. That both thrills and scared me. It does not feel like the earth I know.
With nothing better to do, I raise my wand, which was clutched painfully in my hand during the unexpected turmoil, and let it lie balanced on my palm. "Point me," I murmur, hoping that my magic will not tamper with the ambient power I am – strangely – able to feel.
I restrain myself from squeaking and dropping my wand when it springs to life for a moment and spins. It points to my left, before going dormant again on my palm. My heart beats rapidly.
That is north, then.
With a shaky smile, I turn and begin to walk, praying that civilisation is nearby. But that does not mean I am not engulfed in how beautiful and pristine everything is around me. I even enjoy weaving among tree trunks, leaping over roots, and dodging tree branches. I feel like a child again, going camping with Mum and Dad for the first time in the forest of Dean.
And for a moment, I forget everything I have been experiencing these three days.
I crest a hill for the umphteenth time, but this hilltop is bare, so I can see far to the distance to any direction. Forest upon rolling hills, like the one I have been traversing, dots the vast green land, and becomes a dark clumping line on the far east. But nearer to where I stand, a group of little smoke tendrils float up into the clear, clean autumn sky, although I cannot see where they come from. (If I did not know any better, I would have said that those plumes of smoke come from the hills themselves!) Regardless, I take it as a sign of civilisation, and begin to make my way cautiously there, hoping beyond hope that I will meet hospitality instead of hostility.
I halte before… who seems like a child… with a small, round face framed by light-brown curls. He stares up at me with surprise and curiosity in his bright blue eyes. He looks no taller than Harry when we firstly met in our first year, with oversized feet and furry soles that seem both odd and unique to me.
He seems to have been reading under the apple tree by the small path where I found him. The neglected tome in his hands falls to the ground by his side with a heavy thud, as his interest hones in on me. I feel guilty for disturbing him, as I do not like people disturbing my reading at inopportune moments either.
"Erh… Hello," I greet him self-consciously.
The child (Or is he a young man? Come to think of it again, his eyes look… older.) replies pleasantly, but I do not know in what language he talks. Probably the words are a version of "How do you do?"
Oh crap. How can I communicate my need if I do not even understand his language?
And I have never heard such language either in all my extensive learning in my whole life.
Apparently, he realises my predicament, for he smiles encouragingly and points a finger at himself. "Frodo Baggins," he says, with a meaningful stare. I nod, hugely relieved. Body language! Ah, such a blessing…
I mimic him, with a – faltering – smile of my own, and say, "Hermione Granger."
He giggles, perhaps finding my name to be funny. But since I detect no malice in him, I giggle with him. I sit beside him and point at the book, while throwing him a questioning glance. Nodding, he picks up the tome and gives it to me. Inwardly, I hop around with glee. This man-child is so smart!
But my delight deflates just as quickly.
I do not recognise the runes etched on the sheets of paper. My heart plummets down to the bottom of my belly. They are not what I have learnt at Hogwarts, nore the types I have studied myself in my spare time. That brings again the question I have briefly forsaken: Where am I?
A light touch on my trembling hand. A soft, soothing string of words. I look up and meet the man-child's concerned, compassionate gaze. I shake my head. Trying to convince him further that I am all right, I arch a small smile. But it seems that he does not buy my pretence, for his eyebrows rise to his hairline. He looks wiser and more mature in this way, and my respect towards him grows.
Then, suddenly, the sound of a soft singing and the clattering of a horse-drawn wagon reaches our ears.
A smile creeps across Frodo's cherubic face, and now he looks just like a child getting his awaited birthday present. He Stands up, beckons me to follow him with a cheery wave, and takes off running in the direction of the newcomer. I try to keep up to my best ability, the book having been jammed into the first pocket I find in my Wizarding robe. It is not easy, since his action had startled me into a motionless state until seconds later. He shoots out and runs down the criss-crossing paths like a pixie! I have to keep my eyes on his blue waistcoat to keep track of where he is going.
But my effort pays off, at least, in the end. And, in hindsight, I am thankful that I met this lovely fellow just in my entrance to this world – wherever this is.
