Otherwise known as: How Luna tore apart the fabric of reality so that her friends could get decently laid, and accidentally saved the world in the process.
A/N: Welcome to Chapter Eight! A bit shorter than usual, and unedited, my apologies for this frankenchapter. I unexpectedly spent the afternoon at the hospital, so I had to rush to finish this one.
Thank you for your replies in the reviews, I'm loving hearing what you think should/could be happening here! I'm trying to lay some thick groundwork here, people, I'm gunning hard!
Unbetaed as always.
Love Always,
Eli x
Disclaimer: I do not own the works herein, all characters from the Harry Potter Universe belong to JK Rowling, and all characters, storylines, situations, plots and the like do not belong to me. I make no money from this work.
Warnings: Rated M for situations, swearing, violence... The whole lot, basically.
Iacta Alea Est
Chapter Eight
The door Evans (she called her Evans, now, as part of a new scheme to distance herself from the inhabitants of this time that she had decided upon in the fifteen seconds since she had left Evans' illustrious presence – the girls wouldn't like it, but Hermione was determined that they would return to their own time and it mattered not that they had themselves convinced that this was fate or whatever, it just wasn't logical) had indicated led to a guest room where Dorea and Ginny surrounded a healing Lavender. The patient looked pale and strained, but not too awful, for which Hermione was glad. It would be just their luck if she'd suffered complications.
Ginny glanced at her upon entry, but immediately turned back to Lavender. Dorea spared her a warm smile. "Miss Granger. We were just explaining the situation to Miss Brown."
Hermione eyed the new werewolf and frowned, "do you think that's wise?" She asked, moving closer to inspect Lavender. "She looks a little tired."
"I'm right here, Hermione," Lavender rolled her eyes, still bright despite the events of the past twelve hours. The girl was still ridiculously pretty, even with half of her face disfigured and the tension of a patient hanging over her. More so, Hermione had to admit, for now she had an aura of wildness that gave her previous nymph-like looks some grounding in the reality, like she might run out into the woods at any moment and be one with the land, free of all mortal constraints and happy about it. Hermione had never known a person before their change into a werewolf, so she had never had the chance to compare the befores and afters in her mind – Remus' (Lupin's!) feral nature was always there, humming under his skin, but in her naivety Hermione had assumed it was simply a part of him – some dark, masculinity she had never experienced. It didn't occur to her until now that one of the things she found most attractive about him was the very wolf he loathed.
Shaking herself, she moved to stand on the other side of Lavender's bed. "Are you well?" Hermione asked.
"I'm fine. I'm ready to hear everything – besides, it's hardly fair to keep me in the dark, leaving me out of the big decisions, is it?" Lavender feebly twitched a finger, which Hermione thought might have been her attempt to gesture something. "After all, I think I'm the one most in danger, don't you?"
Not wanting to think about this, Hermione grimaced and turned to Ginny. "How far have you gotten, then?"
"Only about where Luna smashed the Time-Turner," Ginny replied promptly. "We were about to explain how and why we got here."
Hermione scowled at the redhead, ignoring Dorea and Lavender. "You couldn't have called for me?" she demanded of the redhead unrepentantly. "I should have been here to help."
Ginny snorted. "It's not all about you, Hermione. I thought that Lavender could use a friend." The last word was emphasised almost cruelly, as Ginny glared at the brunette. Hermione opened her mouth, then closed it, chastised. "Besides, we didn't need you causing an argument while we tried to sort things through."
"Lavender deserves to see the whole picture, not just your airy-fairy pureblood superstitions," Hermione snapped.
Dorea suddenly loomed up in the space between the two younger women, her face thunderous. "Ladies," she all but growled, "please step outside for a moment."
A whipcord of magic shoved them towards the door just incase they were hesitating, and they found themselves in the corridor facing a livid Dorea Potter. Her eyes aflame, her face tight, Hermione could see with great clarity the Black in her blood, and it cowed her. "This is my home," Dorea hissed, looking between them. "That is my patient," her voice was laced with magic, bearing down on them and summoning their shame in a way Molly Weasley could only hope to achieve. "You will not cause a disruption to her healing, or you must find somewhere else to stay." Pulling herself up to her full height, her features set and haughty, she added – "and sort out this enmity before you come back. How you expect to complete your mission while acting like children, I don't know."
The guest room's door slammed behind her before they had even realised she moved, and then they were stood staring at each other.
"Nice one, 'Mione." Ginny sighed, sending a bolt of rage through Hermione's veins.
"Oh no, don't you start that, Ginevra. I've been doing my best to make a bad situation better, all you've been doing is Lording it over me at every chance!"
Sucking in a deep breath, Ginny's face turned almost puce as she geared up for a reply – before suddenly she deflated and smiled a little sheepishly. "This is what she was talking about, isn't it?"
Hermione shook herself. "Yes… I think so." With a sigh, she scrubbed her hands over her face. "You know I love you, right, Gin?"
"I know," the redhead grinned. "I love you too, you great hairball. You're my best friend and I don't know what I'd do without you."
"But…" Hermione tilted her head to one side and eyed the other girl cautiously. "You don't need me right now?"
She was visibly dithering over the answer. It seemed to cause the girl actual pain to try so hard to make her answer politic, Hermione thought amusedly as she watched Ginny's face scrunch up in concentration.
"It's not that we don't need you, we do." She finally said, taking the older girls hand in her own. "We need your research, knowledge, organization skills and power. We need kind, loving Hermione who makes dumb jokes and comforts us when we're down. We need strong, in-control Hermione who doesn't take shit from no person." They shared another grin that spoke of their years of familiarity, love and family. "The last thing we need is discontent, though. Dorea is completely right - we can't do what we need to do if you're tugging the reins in the other direction. I know you don't want to believe us about the reason we are here, and I didn't expect you to take us at face value in the first place, but we need you to stand by us either way. It's us four against the world, you realise." Warmth oozed through her words, though her eyes were steely as she continued, "And we will rip apart the fabric of reality, with or without your help. It's just that with you we might be a little more successful."
"Oh, Gin." She wasn't sure she could do this. It went against every bone in her body to even try, to cast aside the rules and tear their way into a new future. Hermione didn't even know if it was possible – Ministry research on Time-Travel was often contradictory on the subject of alteration, what with Eloise Mintumble as the main example of changing the timeline, and then evidence of causation triggers elsewhere. There was a whole grey area of mumbled stories and folk tales where you couldn't tell which was real and which was fake and which had been embellished over the years for entertainment value and they probably would never solve those mysteries. It was against every rule the Unspeakables had, every law the Ministry upheld, but something was tugging at her mind, begging her to give in.
She could tell what that was, too. It was her instinctual brain, her emotional brain, the bit she kept cut off and safely locked away since the end of her sixth year and that heart breaking scene in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing - "Dumbledore would have been happier than anybody to think that there was a little more love in the world", what a feeble excuse on which to latch desperately – the bit that had shattered, broken irreparably at the end of the battle, looking down into sightless green eyes. That area where she stored her curiosity, her amusement, her love and desire. Curiosity was scratching at the door, demanding to know, to take on this experiment. Why not? It asked, demanded. Why not?
Desire was not far behind, whispering what-could-be into her ear where it wormed insidiously into her soul where it could hook, if she let it, and stay until… well, until it was broken again, she supposed. And that was the terrifying part. She could remember the split-second glances, the soft dance of his lips over hers, the dark other side of her that she had released and allowed to run wild the second she'd smiled that fateful day. The echoing snap in her soul when he was struck down, the pain, the never ending sorrow, the weeks of intermittently crying and cursing him for what he had turned her into. Finally, swearing that she'd never do it again. Learning Occlumency. Becoming as blank as Professor Snape had been. Not touching a single man since.
Second chance, this one moaned.
But it wasn't a second chance for that, Hermione decided, quashing her desire firmly. He'd never wanted her in the first place so she wouldn't moon after him now. That didn't mean she couldn't pursue the knowledge, though, the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The side of her that had always been a little more green than red perked up, smirking in the back of her mind. If they were stuck here, as everybody seemed to believe, then why not? Who would know except for them three? They couldn't hold the sins of the others against them for they were in it together, were they not?
"Us four against the world?" Hermione chuckled, her decision made. "Merlin help them."
