Chapter Three

November 10th, 1981
St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries

She was met with the smell of clean, sterile air and the lingering scent of potions—dittany to be specific. Slowly opening her eyes, Hermione winced at the brightness of the room, shocked at the difference in location from where she'd lost consciousness. There was no smell of smoke or blood, and no debris dust floating in the air, getting caught in her throat when she tried to breathe. The walls were white with little decoration other than landscape paintings that subtly moved.

She winced in pain when she tried to sit up and then noticed immediately she wasn't alone in the room when a man sitting to her right adjusted his position upon her waking. Blinking, Hermione stared at him, reminded by his face of where and more specifically when she was. "Remus," she whispered.

He stared at her anxiously, his posture stiff but the bags beneath his eyes betrayed his exhaustion. "You know me," he said, not a question.

She nodded slowly, her head aching. "How long . . . how long was I out?"

"Ten days," he replied. "I've been keeping guard."

She smiled at him, noticing the small scars on his face that almost distracted from his kind eyes. The last time she'd seen him was at Grimmauld Place. He'd fought with Harry because he'd wanted to come on the Horcrux hunt with them. Because Tonks was . . . Hermione swallowed nervously and looked down, perfectly aware that her appearance in the past had likely caused a butterfly effect of disastrous proportions. She hadn't made the jump consciously, of course, and was still confused as to how it happened; but she couldn't regret it. Harry had died in the future, in her arms, and now she was in a position to save him from everything. Unfortunately, she realised, that meant a lot of the future she knew would never come to pass. Remus and Tonks met while working with the Order during the Second Wizarding War. If Hermione had anything to say about it, there wouldn't be a Second Wizarding War. No return of the Order, and perhaps, no Remus and Tonks and certainly no baby that terrified the werewolf into running away from his wife.

No. This was a new world and one that she was determined to make better.

"Are you guarding me from others, or guarding others from me?" she asked.

He raised a brow. "Are you dangerous?"

She smiled. "No more than you."

He scoffed loudly. "That doesn't say much. Dumbledore told me to keep an eye on you. Even if he didn't, I would because Sirius appears to trust you."

She smiled softly at the words, feeling the magic of the Unbreakable Vow tingling around her wrist. Considering everything that had happened, earning Sirius Black's trust felt like a very significant thing.

"That's good," she said. "I need his trust. I'll need yours as well, Remus." Ten days she'd been in the hospital, and who knew what all had transpired since then. There wasn't time to dance around the things that needed to be done. "Can I trust you Remus?" she asked. "I very much need to be able to trust you here."

Raising a brow, Remus asked, "Where, exactly, is here? St. Mungo's?"

She shook her head. "1981."

"That's interestingly specific."

"You're interestingly not as suspicious as I thought you'd be," she said.

Remus shrugged. "I have my reasons."

"Care to share them with me?"

He leant forward, drawing a Cypress wand from his sleeve and waving it over her arm. Her eyes widened when a small, black, pawprint appeared on the webbing between her thumb and index finger. "What the . . . Sirius?" she asked. "Sirius . . . marked me?"

Remus nodded. "Hagrid said that you fell unconscious. Sirius had . . . things to take care of," he said in a tone that Hermione very much disliked, "and he wanted to make sure that James and I knew you could be trusted in case . . . well, in case he didn't come back, I suppose. He left a note, marked it with the same symbol. He used to do the same thing in his letters. It means that there's something hidden."

She stared at the mark, annoyed that Sirius Black had apparently decided to leave a permanent, magical post-it note attached to her skin. "What did the letter say?"

"The original or the hidden message?"

"Both?"

Remus removed a small bit of parchment and handed it to her.

Moony,

Hope your trip up north was decent and that you're in good health. We've had a bit of a rough time down here, obviously. Do what you can to help Prongs, he's going to need it. I've some errands to run. I left something very important with a friend and it seems he gave it to someone else. Need to see if I can track him down to hear his tale.

In the meantime will you water my little garden for me? Don't want to find out that the flowers have been whinging in my absence. Oh, and check up on my new friend. I like her very much. Might even consider marrying the bird. Harry would approve, I think.

Pads

She read over the letter and rolled her eyes. "He's not very subtle, is he?"

Remus blinked. "You understand the message, I take it?"

"Left something important with a friend and he gave it to someone else. Sirius convinced James and Lily Potter to make Peter Pettigrew their Secret-Keeper. Peter gave away their location to Voldemort," she said matter of factly. "He's tracking him down."

"How did you know it was Peter?" Remus curiously asked.

Hermione scoffed. "Aside from the fact that I already knew," she said. "Sirius says it right here. He wants to hear his 'tale'. He means Wormtail. I can assume that Dumbledore took Harry to Petunia Dursley?"

Remus's eyes widened. "How the hell did—"

"Water his little garden, whinging flowers. The Dursleys live in Little Whinging."

The werewolf nodded, impressed. "You likely already know the rest then. Sirius would never get married, so I assumed that meant that he'd made a Vow to or with you, something about Harry?"

Hermione nodded. "I made an Unbreakable Vow to Sirius. To protect Harry Potter. But I need Sirius and you in order to do so. Where is he?" When he looked away from her, she took a sharp breath. "Remus, where's Sirius?"

He winced. "Azkaban."

She groaned and fell back onto the pillow. "That idiot! We have to—" she began to say as she sat up, but suddenly felt dizzy enough that she lost her balance and braced herself against the mattress. "We have to get him out."

Remus shook his head. "There's no getting him out. He was sent there without a trial."

She frowned. "No, he . . . he wasn't the Secret-Keeper," she insisted.

His eyes widened a touch. "I know. Peter . . . Peter was."

She looked up in shock. "Was?"

He nodded. "You're right. Sirius went after him and . . . he's dead. But . . . so are twelve Muggles and the Ministry isn't budging on the fact that Sirius killed—"

"He didn't," she interrupted. "Pettigrew killed them."

He stared at her for a long time in silence, observing her curiously. "Are you really . . ." he tried to ask but then choked a bit on the words. "Was it a Time-Turner?" he asked. "How far?"

She shook her head. "A very long time," she answered. "But, no, it wasn't a Time-Turner. I don't know how I got here. I just . . . showed up. But we need to fix this. I know things that can fix this. Remus, I need your help. I will save your friend, I swear it." She sighed in frustration. Of course Sirius would be the thorn in her side. "But first, I have a Vow to keep," she said while looking down at her wrist. "Why isn't Harry with his father?"

He hesitated. "James is here in the hospital as well. When the house . . . he broke his back and it's taken a long while for them to regrow the bones properly. With Sirius in Azkaban and well . . . I'm hardly a fit guardian," he said, his expression one of anger. "Dumbledore took Harry to Lily's sister."

She reached for her pillow and placed it over her face, screaming into it in frustration. When she removed it, she looked up to see Remus staring at her nervously as though he fully expected her to have a breakdown right there in front of him. "I'll tell you everything I can if you tell me everything that's happened in the last ten days."

He glanced down at the black paw print mark on her hand and then reluctantly nodded his head.

She summarised the best that she could and he sat there, his hands held together, cupping his chin the same way he did during her third year when he was her professor and would listen to students giving presentations, offering them his complete attention. When she was finally done, he sat back and worried his bottom lip between his teeth in contemplation.

"It sounds like it could be Death Magic," he said softly, his brows furrowed in thought.

She blinked in annoyance, never enjoying when someone knew something that she didn't. "What's Death Magic?" she asked.

He looked up at her in mild surprise. "You're a Muggle-born?" When she nodded, he smiled. "Death Magic isn't taught in school," he said and watched as she looked a bit appeased by the information. "Old traditions passed down in families, really. I've never heard of it happening to someone so young. Generally, when the head of a family, usually the patriarch or matriarch, is on their deathbed, the eldest living relative or heir is summoned to their side to hold their hand as they pass into the next world. When they die, they transfer the last bit of their magic. Since it's usually at such an old age, there's very little left. Death Magic is fleeting and is usually used to finalise a last request or . . . in some rare cases, inflict injury should the witch or wizard have been murdered. Generally, it's whatever is on the mind of the receiver at the time of passing."

Hermione took in the information, eyes wide. "Harry gave me his magic?" she asked, horrified.

Remus frowned. "If what you say is true and Harry was the last of his family, he would have had a great deal of magic to pass on, especially at such a young age. Enough magic that, theoretically could—"

"Oh Merlin . . ." she gasped. "He gave me the last of his magic and I . . . when he died, I just remember thinking and wishing that I could have stopped it. That I . . . I wanted Harry to be alive and happy and . . . and Voldemort to be dead."

Remus frowned. "Well, it seems like the Death Magic granted your wish."

She buried her face in her hands. "Yes, but at what cost? I should have known about this. I should have known about Death Magic so I could have been more specific . . . so I could have saved Harry's mum."

Remus winced, reminded of the death of his friend. "She . . ." he said hoarsely. "She died a hero, protecting her son."

Sniffing, Hermione wiped at her eyes and smiled sadly at Remus. "I'm so sorry, Remus. I know Lily Potter was your friend."

He nodded his head in thanks and then sighed. "I'm more worried about James. He . . . he's a mess."

"What are people saying?" she asked. "About what happened; about Harry."

He shook his head. "Nothing much about Harry. Papers didn't even mention him by name. Lily's been proclaimed a hero, the witch who destroyed the Dark Lord. They've already built a statue of her in Godric's Hollow. But, other than to say she left behind a husband and child, they haven't said much about Harry or James," he said.

She breathed a sigh of relief. "Hagrid and Sirius listened to me. Now we need to make a list. First, we need to get Sirius out of prison and Harry away from the Dursleys," she insisted. "I suppose I'll need to meet with Dumbledore, that will be strange," she mumbled recalling the last time she'd seen her former headmaster, in Hagrid's arms, being set down upon an altar that would magically form itself into a tomb. Here, however, he was alive and well. "Dumbledore can help free Sirius. The information I have should be enough evidence that he wasn't the one who killed those Muggles, Pettigrew did."

Remus nodded, summoning a Patronus that took the form of a wolf. "Get Dumbledore. She's awake and we have information," he said to the spectral creature that vanished through the wall. He ran his hands down his face and sighed.

Hermione frowned. "I'm sorry about Peter."

"You're sure he's alive? And that he was . . .?"

She looked down. "I'm sure. I've seen him in the future, heard him confess everything. He betrayed them, he killed those Muggles and faked his own death to frame Sirius. We won't let him rot in that hell hole, Remus. I swear it."

He looked up at her with pleading eyes. "And everything else?"

"I Vowed to keep Harry safe and happy," she said. "Making sure Voldemort doesn't return is a part of that. His father survived. Last time he had no one. I've already changed everything." She felt like the unknown was trying to swallow her whole, reminded that the world she left behind wasn't just one where Harry had died, but one where Ron was missing, the Order scattered, the Ministry corrupted, and her parents . . . "I . . . I don't know what's going to happen to me," she said. "Do I even still exist in this time? The other me, I mean."

"Indeed you do, Miss Granger."

Her eyes widened and she looked up at the door, shocked at the sight of Albus Dumbledore standing before her with a smile on his face and a familiar twinkle in his eyes.