*Song Recommendation: Time Is On My Side (The Rolling Stones)*
The Thesis
August 1998
15 hours.
That's all that was required for Hermione to virtually abandon her association with Britain's magical society:
One hour to impeccably pen an inquiry into the potential of future options within the DoM.
Two hours to receive an enthusiastic, yet bartering, owl in reply.
Three hours of Hermione tearing through the Black Library, scouring for preparatory material as well as counter-curses for those related books her Muggleborn self could not touch.
30 Minutes to floo call the DoM secretary and entice (read: vaguely threaten) the poor woman into scheduling her for a same-day meeting with the ever evasive, and somewhat reclusive, department head.
Another 30 minutes to prepare herself for said meeting.
Exactly 48 seconds to skip all pleasantries, receive the department head's offer, and seal the next lifetime away to their verging-on-cultish secrecy with a flourish of a quill. The ensuing five hours and eleven seconds were utilized to pick apart the man's brain and capacity for any job relevant intelligence.
One hour to politely decline Hogwarts' spurious honors, owl-order N.E.W.T. preparation books, and send a patronizing letter to the ministry's department of education on what sort of faith and support she and her public notoriety would hold toward the ministry should they not find it in themselves to understand and accept her humble demand- erm, request to sit her N.E.W.T.s despite her 'unfortunate sabbatical.'
A flurry of more letters dominated the next one hour: a privacy protection attorney, a jar to Ms. 'Me, Myself and I' Skeeter as insurance, and a request for Bill Weasley to reinforce the strength and creativity of the wards at number 12 Grimmauld Place.
X x
15 hours.
That's all it took for Harry to realize she was gone. His best friend may have survived the war, she may be residing in his home... but somewhere along the way, he'd lost her.
X x
August 31st, 1998
Hermione was sprawled among stacks of curled and aged parchment. She laid on her back, one knee bent and arms thrown limply across her face. Harry almost believed her to be sleeping until his attention was drawn to the unmanned clacking of keys from a nearby, avocado colored typewriter. It was quite amusing, really, to see such a Muggle object print and pound on the antiquated Wizarding parchment.
"What do you want, Harry?" Her question was punctuated by the harping ding and warbling swoosh of the typewriter as it shifted to the next line of parchment. He could tell she was perturbed by his intrusion, or perhaps his presence, he was wholly unable to differentiate between the two anymore.
"Hermione, are you...? Wait, how is that thing typing without you dictating?" Apparently inquiring after the obscure object was the correct path to take, as her arms whipped away from her face with an almost alarming exuberance, giving view to a rare and genuine smile. His heart constricted at the familiar sight of that expression. Too long had she been building and reinforcing her stoic distance from him. Too long had he thirsted for her spark of excitement toward her unquenchable educational thirst that he had often times bemoaned throughout the past. Too long had it been since he'd seen her.
"Oh! It was my father's old typewriter and then I found a book in-" Her smile faltered for a brief moment as she caught her nearly catastrophic mistake of mentioning 'the rooms' in her department.
"Well, I found a book."
"I didn't think that the unspeak- Well, I didn't think level nine much cared for that sort of thing."
Hermione shocked him further by actually grinning at his equally measured faux pas.
"They're not, really. I found a book, a spell, and I- erm- modified it?"
"Modified it? You say that like it's a question."
"Well, because I'm not entirely sure how legal it is. It's more a personal project and, erm, you know how the Ministry is with recreational use of office information and... legilimency."
Hermione practically whispered the last word and sat up to feign her perusal through a nearby manifesto, blatantly refusing to meet his eyes.
"Legilimency? But how did... I never knew you... well fuck, Hermione. When did that happen?"
Hermione pinched her eyes shut, clearly dreading whatever confession she was then felt coerced into admitting.
"Last year when we were on the run. I wanted- I needed to see what you saw when he entered your mind. I needed more information to process."
Shock. Anger. Betrayal. Above all, confusion. But which emotion was he supposed to express first?
"So you mentally assaulted me?"
Shock.
"We survived in our own personal Hell with only each other to help us survive, but that didn't make us close enough for you to talk about that with me?"
Anger.
"Instead you had to essentially rape me?"
Betrayal.
"Yes, Harry."
Confusion. Above all, confusion.
"And I suppose a one-word answer is supposed to suffice? I suppose I'm just supposed to accept what you say as the best possible route without question... like always?"
Hermione winced slightly but turned to face him. She'd always been so emphatic in everything she did. She was quick to anger, quicker to forgive and quickest to apologize for any unintentional hurt she's sourced; Harry had no idea as to how to handle this new Hermione, this cold and shrewd Hermione.
"I can apologize if you want to hear those words, but I will never be genuinely sorry for what I did. Your thoughts on legilimency were established when you tried to learn occulemency from Professor Snape, you wouldn't have let me in, and as our strategist I didn't just need to know, I needed to see."
Harry wasn't sure if he was more upset at her for the heinous omission of truth, or at himself for his comprehension that she'd been entirely valid in her analysis.
"It saved us, you know, my legilimency. The more you work with legilimency, the better understanding you have of the mental magics, and the stronger your occlumency becomes as a result. There's a reason Bella- Bellatrix never attained any information from me."
Any anger Harry felt immediately dissipated. She's right. Goddamnit, she's right…again. Was all that looped through his consciousness.
"It's also the reason we escaped."
Hermione watched as his jaw loosened a fraction, just enough to allow for his sharp intake of breath. She had never spoken to them about their imprisonment at Malfoy Manor. Harry and Ron had seen the scars, they'd listened to the screams that chilled them down to the porous marrow of their bones, but Hermione had not once been forthcoming with the full recount of her torture.
"Malfoy... Draco... was near me all but the full time. He was terrified, so very and truly scared. His eyes were wide and clear, and he just kept staring at me unblinkingly. Direct eye contact, Harry. I implanted a thought there, like you'd do with a memory. I put the image of a house elf there. I'd studied wards copiously, knowing we'd need them that final year, and I knew wards such as the Malfoy's could only be breached by a house elf. Dobby was abused my Lucius, but practically raised Draco, and furthermore was freed by, and devoted to, you. I'm sure he was the first elf to come to mind."
Harry briefly wondered if this was how the Pre-Socratics felt when Aristotle evidenced the earth was round. When had his life been become composed of nothing but harsh contradictions? He had died, twice, yet he was alive, his best friend and sister was a stranger to him, and now his bitter rival and sometimes enemy was his savior.
Harry did the only thing he could think of in that moment to cope with the unsettling onslaught of information, he sat down beside Hermione and pulled her into his side. For the first time in weeks, she reciprocated by wrapping her arms around him and burrowing her face into his shoulder. He felt no desire to disrupt the moment of utter contentment, but knew the instant must be broken, and all too soon.
"You better get ready, Hermione. We're expected over at the burrow in just a few minutes."
"The Burrow?" She questioned in confusion. Had she truly been so deeply immersed in her work that she'd forgotten an engagement? The truth of the matter was that she could not even properly sort out which day it was, let alone a social obligation, the likes of which she avoided entirely.
"Yes, Hermione, the Burrow. Remember? Ron and Ginny's going away party since tomorrow he goes to Hogwarts? We were going to mercilessly tease Ron about the irony of him being the only one of us to go back?" He asked her in a teasing manner, attempting to jog her memory while jesting her simultaneously. It was to no avail, she didn't remember any of it.
"Oh, well, I don't think I'll be going... too much research. Have a nice time."
Harry simply stared at her, jaw slightly ajar. There was no embarrassment at having forgotten, no tidings of her love and good wishes toward their friends, no passing along admonishment to Ron should he owl her for a forgotten book or more detailed notes. Instead, as quickly as she'd returned to him, she'd disappeared and engrossed herself in her tomes.
How long would he have to wait to see another glimpse of her, the real her?
"Can I at least ask what you're doing? You know, since you've displaced your commitment to the people who care about you?"
She didn't shudder at his accusation, she didn't even blink.
"The compromise for me entering the DoM now, before N.E.W.T.s, was that I complete a thesis, just like the ones you do at a Muggle university. If it's approved and I'm trained as an unspeakable it will double as my first theoretical application... my first project."
"Oh yeah?" Harry was still quite miffed at her sudden drift back into stoicism and complete dismissal of their surrogate family. "And what would that be?"
"You know I can't tell you that." She snapped at him, having circled back to her original annoyance at his interruption of her work.
"How about this. I take a wizards oath and you tell me as compensation for fucking violating my bloody brain last year."
… He wasn't sure what to expect as he furiously swore to Merlin his silence and confidentiality, but it certainly wasn't what she'd told him in return.
"Time, Harry. I'm trying to break the loop in time turning. I'm trying to find a way to, when turning, to not just fulfill time, but to change it."