Author's note: Well, I was too excited about this new story idea that I decide to provide more than one chapter.
PREVIOUSLY:
"We could…" She swallowed the ball of strangled emotion in her throat. "We could send him an owl. After we've left."
"No." Harry said firmly. "That family has had enough bad news by ruddy owl post. We tell him, face to face, or we don't go at all."
Hermione nodded her ascent, her eyes transfixed on the floor. "Okay."
… … ….. … …..
Hermione sat in the living room of the Burrow, feeling very out of place. There was a time when she had felt welcome, when the house was a warm and happy place full of laughter and a family who all cared for one another very much. Now it felt as if there were an ominous cloud of bad feelings forever situated above Ottery St Catchpole.
Across from Hermione sat Ron, refusing to make eye contact. He, like his father, had lost weight and his skin had taken on a sallow quality. Rough stubble adorned his jawline and under his eyes were dark marks, like he had not slept in the months since Harry and Hermione had last seen him. The only sound in the room was the steady ticking of the large grandfather clock, that rather than showing the time showed the location of each member of the Weasley family. Two hands pointing to 'Lost' was a painful reminder of exactly why Hermione had hatched a plan to go back in time in the first place.
Harry, when they had arrived at the Burrow, had insisted they both go up to pay their respects to the family matriarch. It had been an awkward encounter at best, with Molly Weasley hardly even acknowledging their presence in her bedroom. She had been dressed in a tattered old robe, her hair a matted mess, and had two knitted Weasley jumpers clutched in her hands, one blue with the letter F, the other a pale mauve with a G.
After trying but failing to draw Molly into conversation, Harry and Hermione had given up and gone off in search of the reason they had paid a visit in the first place, one Ronald Billius Weasley.
"So you're leaving." Ron had said gruffly when they had outlined 'the plan'.
"We have the chance to make things better, Ron." Hermione tried to explain. "We can stop everything bad from happening."
"You're leaving." He said in the same flat voice. "Running away."
"We want to fix things." Harry, at least, was trying to help.
"You can't fix things." Ron glanced over at the grandfather clock. "They're gone."
"But if we stop Voldemort before he rises, then they won't be." Hermione tried again. "Fred will be okay. Ginny…"
"Don't you dare say her name!" Ron was suddenly standing; he fists balled at his sides. "Don't ever say her name again."
"Ron…" Hermione was silently cursing Harry for insisting upon speaking to Ron before they went ahead with the plan. "I miss her too."
"You should have stopped her." It was the first time a member of the Weasley family had outright said what Hermione had known for going on a year; they did blame her for Ginny leaving.
"That's not fair mate." Harry warned Ron.
"What about you, then?" Ron turned to Harry with his accusing eyes. "You're leaving as well?"
"Hermione is right." Harry also glanced at the clock, the significance of where Ginny and Fred's hands were pointing not lost on him. "If we go back we can make it better."
"But you can't come back…" They had told him the whole plan. "So yeah, great, maybe Ginny and Fred and Remus and Tonks and everyone comes back. But you two are gone."
Hermione sighed, she had tried to explain the whole second timeline thing to Ronald, but she knew he was unable or unwilling to understand. As much as he wanted his old life back, pre-war, he couldn't let go of the past. It was a daunting, yet at the same time enticing, prospect to wipe out everything that had happened and start again.
"They will have never left." Harry supplied, trying to vocalize an idea that even he found hard to grasp. "You won't remember any of them dying, because it won't have happened. None of the bad stuff will have happened. The only ones who will remember will be the ones who go back."
"And you can live with that?" Ron asked venomously. "You can sit back and watch Ginny live and grow up and marry someone else because there won't be a Harry Potter anymore?"
"There will be a Harry and Hermione." Hermione tried yet again to explain. "It just won't be us."
"I'd rather live in a world where Ginny doesn't know me than in a world where there is no Ginny at all." Harry blurted out with rare tears in his eyes.
Ron nodded sharply, then turned away from the pair of them and walked over to stand by the cold and empty fireplace, his face scrunched up in deep thought.
"What if you go back and become some 97-year-old Muggle on their deathbed?" Ron asked suddenly.
Harry glanced over at Hermione, looking to her for the answers. Hermione pulled the battered book from deep within her robe pocket, that had been treated to an undetectable extension charm, and laid it out on the table before them all. Turning to about halfway she pointed out a few runes.
"This one's is the rune for self." She explained for Ron's benefit, Harry had already been shown this. "And this one here is the rune Aetatis Idem."
Hermione pointed to a circular rune with a smaller runic symbol inside.
"And these two are the ones for Somnus Sine Mente." Harry nodded his understanding.
"The three of them together roughly translate as…"
Ron cut her off, looking down at the page. " Aliquem in saeculo aetatis idem, somnus sine mente. Anyone in the world the same age, who is asleep without mind."
Hermione looked at her red headed friend in surprise. "How did you…"
"I don't know. I think I read it somewhere." Ron shrugged apathetically.
In the past, Hermione or Harry might have stirred Ron with a quip about him ever picking up a book that wasn't about quidditch, but they knew that those days had long passed.
"So we take over the body of someone around our age who has lost their mind." Harry stated, trying to ease some of the tension in the room.
"That's the gist of it." Hermione supplied.
"Well let's hope there are three comatose teenagers somewhere in the world then." Ron pushed the book back over to Hermione. "Or this plan of yours will fail before its even begun."
"Three?" Hermione queried, not knowing if she should dare to hope.
"I'm going with you, obviously." Ron said dryly. "Anything has to be better than here."
Harry grabbed his male best friend and pulled him into a grateful hug, slapping him on the back a few times for good measure. Hermione smiled at the two of them with tears welling in her eyes, feeling emotional. Ron wanted to come with them. They would be the golden trio again. Maybe he could even come to be in the same room as her without sending her an accusing look once in a while.
"So how long will this all take?" Ron asked, gesturing vaguely to the book on the table. "I mean it can't be easy or anyone would just do it."
"Oh, it's not easy, and it's very illegal." Hermione assured him, looking to between her best friends nervously. "The runes need to be drawn in a very specific order, we each need to be holding a runed item from the time we want to end up in, and we have to prepare the ink from a solution of acromantula venom and phoenix tears, which can take a month or so and…" Here Hermione dropped off, knowing that neither of the boys would like the last requirement for time travel.
"What is it, Hermione?" Harry asked, suspicion at her sudden silence clouding his expressive green eyes.
"We sort of… well... we have to die."
"What?" Ron looked at her with fury, even Harry looked taken aback.
"Didn't think to mention that part, did you?" Ron was livid. "I can't do that to my family."
"It's the only way to move between the branches of time." Hermione insisted. "It's in everything I've read. It's like reincarnation. We die, and then wake up as someone else. It's the way of changing time without creating a paradox. There will never be a double up, because Hermione, Harry and Ron won't exist anymore."
"I don't like this." Harry said quietly. "But if it's the only way…"
"It is!" Hermione assured him, showing the most intricate of runes in the book, the one she had been keeping from Harry since she had first started pondering if it was possible to change time. "It says right here, 'vitam post mortem'. Life after death."
Harry nodded, turning to Ron to see whether he would come over to the idea any time soon.
"I'm not going to die." Ron glared at them, as if daring his friends to argue. "Unless I talk to mum and dad first."
Harry and Hermione sat together in the living room, waiting for Ron to finish speaking to his parents. It was a rather strange request, but Hermione understood where Ron was coming from. They had already lost two children unexpectedly. It would be beyond cruel to not at least warn them of what they were trying to do. They deserved to know, to be forewarned, of what was to come. Mostly she was surprised that Ron was still going ahead with the plan, even though it meant having to die.
"Wait a minute," Harry said, breaking the tense silence in the room. "You said if we can't find a host body we come back. How can we come back if we are dead? Unless we only properly die in this timeline if we make it to the other…"
Hermione smiled, proud of her friend's deductive reasoning. "Yes, if we don't find a comatose body to take over we simply wake up like nothing at all has happened."
"How do we die?" Harry asked, turning his part curious part weary gaze on her.
"The ink for the runes." Hermione reminded him.
"Acromantula venom and phoenix tears." Harry supplied. "Both very expensive by the way."
"You can afford it." Hermione rolled her eyes at his complaint. "Well, we don't exactly draw those runes on the ground. We draw them on ourselves. With the poisonous ink. The phoenix tears will stop us from bleeding to death, healing the runes as faint scars. Nobody will even be able to see them on our bodies after the deed is done. And if we don't pass through to the other timeline then the tears will null the effect of the poison. It's quite ingenious really."
"You got all that from a book in a language you don't read?" Harry looked skeptical.
"I really am very good at what I do." Hermione teased, knocking her shoulder into his.
"If you two are quite done." Ron's voice said stiffly from the doorway. "I'm ready to go."
Well, there's chapter two done and dusted.