Notes: I'm not at all happy with the way this chapter has turned out, especially given how satisfied I was with the previous, but I've been staring at the 85 % finished document of this for months and I'm certain if I stared any longer I'd have lost it. So I finished it up and polished it the best I could, because I really love this story and this idea, and I'm dedicated to trying my best to push forward with it, even if I'm not currently satisfied with the right now of it. I have faith that I'll come to where I need to be, and until then, I'll have to be okay with where I am now. That's the balance that writing entails, after all.
Thank you so much to the people who've come out and told me they enjoy this idea as much as I do, you lovely people are why we do this. 3
This chapter is wholly and completely dedicated to giraffelove92, my fanfic soulmate and - apparently - my creepiest fan (you straight up made me bark out laughing with that one, have to be honest). The fact that she loves my writing so much honestly floors me, because she's incredible. If you haven't read her Tomione fic 'She Rises' I'm honestly not sure what on earth you're waiting for. ;)
Thanks so much, enjoy. :)
Nineteen sixty-eight smelled positively wretched—putrid, actually, with the dank odor of sweat, urine, livestock and an indiscernible tang that had a remarkably unpleasant bite to it. Or perhaps that was just what the Hog's Head had always smelled like, and Hermione had been too entrenched in her teenage impudence and Dumbledore's Army heroics to notice. Groaning painfully as something sharp stung her lower back, she moved her aching bones slightly to get a good look at her surroundings. No wonder it smelled so bad — a chicken coop lay fenced in a pen not even a good few feet away, and various flies and other insects buzzed about in the dirt and muck in merry, ignorant bliss.
She took a slow, deep breath to ease her panic, and immediately regretted it. Her shoulders were strained, hips sore and stomach clenched, but she still managed to wrench open the door of the shed and tumble outside.
The first thing she noticed was that she didn't really notice anything at all. Nothing seemed different, nothing seemed out of place. She was a good thirty yards into the deep, tall grass surrounding the Hog's Head, but she could clearly see the outline of the building in the distance, the nice, crisp September breeze a stark contrast to the sticky, humid April air of just yesterday.
A quick 'Scourgify' to her clothing and matted hair — it would have to do for now, she supposed, and it wasn't as if she'd maintained a markedly improved countenance these past few months anyway — and she headed the trek through the brush - the nice, clean air and spring breeze reminding her starkly — painfully — of the land surrounding the Burrow.
She pushes the door to Hogs Head open with a sharp bang, an aggression and a finality that helps ease her fear and her worry just slightly - just enough - that she can at least see straight again. She orders water and a large pitcher of Ogden with all the firm belligerence she can muster - which, not so surprisingly given her emotional state at the moment, is quite a lot.
She settles on the barstool, regulating her breathing to the best of her ability. If she closes her eyes and focuses inward, she might be able to compartmentalize enough to pretend she's still in 1998. That she's still in the middle of the most disastrous wizarding war in modern history, but a disastrous wizarding war that was hers to belong to.
"I've never seen a woman who downed a pint of Ogden quite like that before, Miss."
Her head swivels to her left so quickly it leaves her somewhat disoriented, but that was nothing compared to her ire at the blatantly sexist comment. The man in question — he was really more of a boy, wasn't he? — was perched on a bar stool only three seats down, a malicious grin twisted on pink, plump lips set under startling blue eyes much crisper than Ron's lighter, cornflower blue shade. With his dark hair coiffed and cropped in that picture perfect pureblood manifest and his regal posture, it was very clear what kind of boy he was. And yet — a few anomalies gave her pause. For one, the only thing more unkempt and roguish than the ungroomed wisps of scruff along his jaw was his decidedly plain, commonplace clothing, to a point of straddling the line of undignified.
"I am no more a woman than you are a man; we're children," she spat this out with such a bitter disdain that it surprised even her. "All of us." Yes, factually she knew the past few years had taken its toll on her optimism, but she hadn't expected that. Not that level of vitriol that came out of her mouth.
Since when did she speak so thoughtlessly in the first place?
The boy laughed, a good dose of condescension, which didn't surprise her in the least, but with a hint of something else... interest, maybe?
"I know girls... many girls." While for most boys she knew, wizards and muggles alike, would've said this with pride, as though their list of acquaintances was a self - accomplishment, his tone was so full of disgust and loathing that she found herself flinching on instinct. "You are not by any measure a girl."
"Thank you for that validation," Hermione snapped sardonically, her lips curved into some bastardized facade of levity she no longer considered herself capable of.
"What's your name?"
The question was sudden, but not inappropriate. Or even strange, in any way. Her reaction of immediate suspicion and threat was the odd one. Here, at least. In 1968. Under a regime of relative peace. Well, relative to her battle zone of a timeframe, which wasn't a hard feat.
"Hermione," was all that she supplied. Saying her last name was dangerous, and in some ways, she legitimately wanted to forget it existed. After all, the only other people she loved with the same name had already forgotten it themselves. "Yours?"
"Rabastan." His lips were wry, but eyes hard - not impenetrable ice, but glass. A hardness wrought from desperation. A counter-intuitive sort of vulnerability. "Lestrange," he added, as though it were some throwaway, superfluous add - on without importance.
The tight, dry closing of her throat and constriction of her lungs damn well did not agree.
She had met this man before - briefly, but sure as hell memorably. The manic desperation - disease - that radiated from his very pores had sent her body temperature spiked into an emotional tailspin. An eerie, chilling numbness burrowed easily into the crevices of her body, spreading cold shivers down from the sweat of her brow to the very tips of her toes.
(She might've been sliced right open like a Christmas Turkey, rapidly losing blood, resolve and coherence in one fell swoop, but in that firm, icy five second eye lock, she'd take her conviction to the grave that she couldn't feel a goddamn thing.)
"Not a fan?" He inquired, voice strangely and abruptly soft now and fingers twisted in some variant of anxiety - his derisive scoff that followed, however, was the very opposite of soft - twisted and bitter with vinegar and salt.
She shook her head adamantly, not in answer to the question, but in a violent and almost abrasive manner, a physical rejection of her own inattention. "I'm sorry?"
His eyebrow raised in bewilderment, or perhaps some innocent form of amusement, one somehow both harmless and still disparaging simultaneously. "You look stricken with the fear of fucking Salazar by just the mention of my last name - " he seems to tread carefully here, in direct opposition of basically every other syllable that has come out of his mouth.
His smile turns sly, but his eyes are still cautiously and unnerving concerned. "You've met Roddy, have you?"
Another face flashes in her mind - one with teeth, with severity and angles and a center of gravity that cracked the very earth beneath him.
"Not Rodolphus," she says, the truthful declaration spilling from her lips unbidden and dangerous, a whisper she's not entirely sure she's said aloud.
The smile on his lips, now joyous with the discovery of sudden intrigue tells her otherwise.
Fucking Merlin, what kind of imbecile had she decided to emulate today?
Her brain finally caught up to the moment, her stricken white face paling even further, affronted and horrified.
A final face flashes before her - an unhinged mass of wild curly hair, savage sharp curves and daggers both literal and figurative.
The word 'Bellatrix' forms on her lips, subconscious and instinctive, but it remains inaudible, her throat strangled, whimpering and bled dry in agony, not unlike a young girl strapped to a pristine marble floor with hate in her heart and innocence in tatters, crude slurs carved in her skin and a throat hoarse with a limp sort of resignation.
"Someone I used to know," is her only answer.
"Again," he reiterates, a resignation of his own embedded in the drop of his shoulders, "I can't blame you." He stands, so abrupt and unexpected that her disorientation takes a giant leap towards full blown nausea. "Her drink is on me, sir. I'll hold you to that poker on Saturday, ya' hear me Alph?"
The bartender - Alphie, apparently - with slick hair and a slicker smile to match the grime of his bartop does nothing but shrug in a show of mild affection. "I'll see what I can do, kid."
"Will I see you on the train, Hermione?"
"The … train?" She questions, hesitant and confused like the monumental fucking moron she seems to be channeling right now in her overwhelmed fog.
"For Hogwarts," he drawls out, slow and mocking, but with a twinge of something low and playful - and, all things considered, fairly light - hearted. "After all, if your impassioned cynicism is to be believed, we're all nothing but children craving healthy education, eh?"
Her faculties returning only slightly, she smirks at the mere thought of Rabastan Lestrange flirting with her, a thought so utterly absurd in any era or timeline the multiverse could cough up that she can't help but choke on a laugh, almost drunk on the mere impossibility of this moment. "I believe I'll keep you in suspense with that one," she says, taken aback by her own playful jab at this man - the sadistic, disturbed one with the manic, desperate - diseased - eyes, lit with malice and unhinged contempt.
(She passes it off as a desperate reach for levity and innocence in a landscape of trauma - she misses Harry and Ron, and not just the boys of yesterday who were guilt - ridden, weathered by responsibility and utterly broken, but her Harry and Ron - the foolish, lovable, exasperating gits who regularly stole her textbooks, dragged her out to get sun while they played Quidditch after dreary days holed up inside and snuck food into the library to emotionally manipulate her into taking care of herself.
She misses them, their idiotic barbs and well - intentioned jabs, more than she can possibly articulate.
And she'd do anything to feel that warmth now even for a single moment - even if it was only achievable by compartmentalized delusion, even if it was only achievable with the youthful face of a fucking madman.)
"Maybe it'll keep you occupied and distracted from that gothic horror show you call a family."
His bark of laughter is genuine, almost light, no malice, no desperation, not even the faintest shadow of contempt clouding his eyes - "That it most certainly is."
And as he turns, a final spark of interest between them, she jolts at the realization that the very last thing reflected in his eyes is desperation.
(She craves that innocence, that lack of poisoned blood, down to her very bones - wants to lap it up, hoard it, devour it, devour him until it seeps in and warms her soul.)
Her mind is fuzzy now, her vision bordering on blurry as she tries to stand, and promptly stumbles straight off the stool. Time - travel is clearly not recommended on an empty stomach, that's for sure. Her entire recollection of the last twenty minutes feels like drowning in a Pensieve, foggy and detached, or maybe one of her Muggle friend Bobby's grainy, baffling sword - fighting video games that always gave her a migraine.
Thankfully, her mind immediately jolts back into clarity, razor sharp and pulled to attention, but rather unfortunately, it's for a disastrous reason, as the first spark spreads fast and vicious without warning across the entirety of the bartop, sweeping flame rendering every single nerve frozen and every movement paralyzed.
She wakes seemingly a lifetime later, with a smoky burn in her lungs and a panic rising steadily in her stomach, the unmistakable harsh coil springs of a hospital mattress digging into her spleen.
"No," she hisses, horrifying possibilities brewing that she can't even fathom, swallowing back a thick, scorching bundle of heat that she wretches out in a deadly cough - "No!"
"Miss," the voice is tender, comforting - or, at least it's meant to be. She's not exactly in the position to dole out kudos for good bedside manner right now, after all. "Please, Miss, stop - "
"Shacklebolt." The name comes out of nowhere, sprung from the recesses of her mind, a deep - seeded anguish in her latching onto the name as though it's the golden ticket - in actuality, that's exactly what it might be.
"Please sit back, you can't be straining - "
"Kingsley. Shacklebolt." She enunciates both names clearly, in startlingly perfect diction, her manic desperation overtaking and downright incinerating the pain, a last ditch effort for her own survival, two words to epitomize the culmination of years of trauma, grief and sacrifice for a fight that was never hers to bear, a last plea - a last prayer - for the strength to claw and tear her way to the other side.