The owls came next Tuesday night at dinner.
"What's all that about?" Hermione asked, leaning over Lily's shoulder to read the Daily Prophet in James' lap.
"AUTHOR OF A WIZARD LIKE YOU GRUESOMELY MURDERED" took up a huge portion of the special edition's front page, paired with a wizard picture of a crime scene only partly visible through the fingers of a secretive auror.
"My Mum's got that one at home," Dorcas said, nodding to the book jacket pictured at the bottom, "She wanted to explain to Dad how he's just as good as any other wizard, even if he was muggleborn."
"Woah," Peter said, his jaw dropping, "Looks like the bloke was crucio'd within an inch of his life before-"
"Aw, Pete, we don't want to hear all that," James said, his face twisting like he'd eaten the creamed cabbage.
Hermione, however, did want to hear it. She snatched the paper from him and searched for what she thought she'd read.
A little after the description of the crime scene, she saw what she'd feared she'd seen. "The body of Mr. Musgrove was found with a strange purple scar on his chest which his muggle wife, wailing and weeping over his body, swore hadn't been there the night before."
A further scan showed the list of suspects, and yes, Dolohov's name was listed among those wanted by the DMLE for questioning. A feeling like a swarm of bees moved into her chest. It was a nameless panic, spreading to each tensed nerve. When she looked up, all the fifth year Gryffindors were silently watching her.
She smiled grimly and tried to suck a full breath into her tightening chest. "Just...wondering if there was any connection to the mall attack."
"Was there?" Lily asked, putting her hand on Hermione's shoulder.
In a blink, Hermione knocked over the bench she, Lily, and Dorcas were sitting on and towered over Lily with her wand raised.
"What the hell?" James shouted, pulling his own wand out of his robes just a hair faster than everyone else at the table.
Instinct took over as Hermione wound an iron-tight defensive shield between herself and all the wands pointed at her. Duck and weave. They can't hit you as easily if you're on the move. Keeping her shield tight, she maneuvered around various obstacles, shot defensive spells behind her without looking, and then pulled herself flush behind a structure. She counted to ten before shooting off her first offensive spell around the side. You can probably hold your own here for a few minutes before they penetrate your shields. Think, Hermione, think!
"Hermione," a soft, female voice said. Hermione's wand paused mid-cast at the gentle tone, one never heard during the thick of battle. She blinked a few times. There were twinkling lights above her, she noticed, and… walls? Where did the trees go? She blinked some more, feeling like she was seeing double. The structure she was hiding behind. It was very tall, and covered in… leather?
"Hermione, can you hear me?" the voice asked again. Hermione, still gripping her wand, peeked around the side of the structure and saw Professor McGonagall with her hands held in front of her a few paces away. Her wand was on the table.
"Alright, Hermione?" a booming voice asked to her side, shaking her leather structure.
"Hagrid, please. Let me handle this," Hermione heard Professor McGonagall whisper. "Hermione. Do you want to come back to my office with me?"
Hermione just stared at Hagrid (Oh. Not a structure then.) and let her eyes glaze over the rest of the scene without taking in anything. Huh, there's a bunch of benches flipped over and some kids on the ground. Weird, there's bowls of food splattered all over the floor.
"Hermione? Come along, we'll have some tea in my office."
She mutely followed the professor's calm voice, and didn't realized they'd arrived in her office until she'd already finished half her cup of tea. Now there were two soft voices, whispering too quietly for the average human to hear, but Hermione could understand them just fine.
"Do you think she's a danger to the students?"
"There was that incident with her first transformation, but otherwise-"
"Perhaps she has a malformed lycanthropic virus? Maybe it infects her during non-full moons, too."
"Of course not, Poppy. Look at the poor thing. Dead eyes, exhausted, trembling slightly. Surely you read reports of veterans from the last Goblin War?"
"I… I don't understand. There hasn't been a war, at least not in the wizarding world. Have the muggles been in a war?"
"No. But I think…" Professor McGonagall trailed off, her breath hitching.
Hermione closed her eyes, trying to block out the sound of Professor McGonagall's sniffles. "Thank you," Hermione whispered into her cup, eyes trained on the floor. In an instant, she heard the swish of both women's robes rushing over to her.
"Can you tell me how old you are, Hermione?" Madam Pomfrey asked from a few paces away.
"Nineteen," she murmured.
"And where you are?"
She looked up, noting the rows of bookshelves and the grey-haired witch standing over the armchair. "I'm in Professor McGonagall's office."
"Thank Merlin," Professor McGonagall said, letting out a breath and sitting down. She searched Hermione's face, looking for any sign of distress, but did not touch her. "How do you feel, Miss Granger?"
"I'm so sorry, professor," Hermione said, squeezing her eyes shut. "I don't know what happened. One minute I was reading the newspaper-"
"Let's not think about that right now, dear," she said, offering her a tin of biscuits. "I just want to know if you're feeling alright, first."
She shrugged. "I'm fine, I suppose. Though I do feel rather exhausted."
"I'll bring an extra strength dreamless sleep by your dorm, if you'd like," Madam Pomfrey said, still standing a few paces away.
Professor McGonagall nodded. "Why don't you go and grab some now instead? I'm sure Miss Granger has had enough attention for one day."
Madam Pomfrey nodded once and left quickly, leaving the room very quiet aside from the tinkling sounds of china cups, saucers, and spoons. Hermione felt herself relax; hearing the steady heartbeat beside her made her feel, strangely, like everything around her was real again, unlike the dream-like state she'd felt in the Great Hall. They sipped in silence for a while, and Hermione's tea was nearly drained before Professor McGonagall spoke in a voice thick with emotion.
"I'm so sorry, Hermione. I can't imagine what you've been through."
Hermione merely nodded, the corners of her eyes already beginning to prick and the back of her throat growing dry. She couldn't either, sometimes.
"What happened tonight is very normal for those who have been in battle, though. Did you know that?"
Hermione scowled. "No one I knew who fought in the first war ever did anything stupid like that. Professor Moody was always a little odd and certainly gruff, but everyone else was rather normal."
"Well, they would've had more than a decade to heal before you met them, wouldn't they?"
Hermione paused mid-sip, then put her cup back on its saucer with a bored sigh and grimaced at Professor McGonagall. "Time heals all wounds, right?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Professor McGonagall scoffed, taking a final sip of tea. Her Scottish brogue was quiet and firm when she continued. "I told you when you first came to make time to heal. It doesn't happen on its own, Hermione, nor with the passage of a magic number of weeks, months, or even years. Whether you had your heart broken or you fought in a war, you'll always need to make a conscious effort to accept the past and recover from it."
A half-dozen questions and rebuttals flooded Hermione's mind, but her sensitive hearing picked up the sound of Madam Pomfrey's footsteps coming up the stairs first.
"Here you go, dear," the matron said, brushing her apron absentmindedly and backing away after she'd handed it off. "Well, I must be back to the hospital wing. I've got a poor first year who completely split his lip. You know where to find me if you need anything, Miss Granger?"
Hermione couldn't even nod before her nurse's bonnet slipped out of sight.
"If you don't make that time to heal," Professor McGonagall said, inclining her head towards the closed door, "your pain and your memories will try and find their way out, often in ways you don't expect."
"But it's late now," the older witch sighed, rising from her chair, "you've got an extension for one night on all of your assignments, I'll see to that. Go back to Gryffindor tower and get some sleep."
Hermione stood up and tentatively stuck her hand out. "Thank you, Professor. For everything."
Professor McGonagall looked at Hermione's hand with a small smile. She grasped it with both of her older, softer, wrinkled ones. "You're most welcome, my dear. My door is always open if you need anything."
Hermione chose not to go back to her dorm and sleep, however. Instead, she hunkered down in her corner of the library, casting the strongest notice-me-not charm she could with her wand held limply and her eyes half-closed. She didn't want to study in her exhausted state, and according to Professor McGonagall she didn't have to, but she was even less willing to walk through the common room and get caught in the crossfire of every Gryffindor's question and stare. That was probably the best case scenario too, considering they'd all had their wands pointed at her recently.
Hours later, when even Madam Pince had left the library dark and silent, Hermione emerged from her nook massaging a crick in her neck. The prefects had finished their rounds by this point, and she took her time slipping through the dark hallways with shoes in hand, sliding in her socks over the smooth stone floors.
"Hermione?" a voice called softly from the couch when Hermione shut the portrait hole with a click. Lily's red hair raised up from the cushions, all bunched and knotted on one side from sleeping on it. "What time is it?"
"About twelve thirty," Hermione said, reading the clock. "Are you going to dock points for my being out past curfew?"
The younger girl shook her head, but made some room on the couch by pulling her knees up to her chest. "Can I ask you something?"
"Do we have to do this tonight?" Hermione already felt the start of a migraine forming, pulsing painfully near her temples. When she closed her eyes to rub her head, she swayed a little. "Ugh, I need to go to bed."
"Come sit on the couch, just for a second." When Hermione hesitated, her eyes narrowed sleepily. "You pulled your wand on me at dinner. I think I deserve at least one answer."
Hermione sighed and collapsed on the open side of the couch, waiting for the inquisition to begin.
"Did I do something to you?" she asked in a small voice, not even meeting Hermione's eye, "I thought we were getting along well, but if you want to move up with the sixth years, or take the seventh year dorm-"
"No no, it's nothing like that. You just reminded me of… something."
"Something," Lily repeated. "That must have been a really awful something. The shopping mall?"
Hermione knew the lie. She'd been telling people for almost two months now. But when she looked up and could just make out those sympathetic green eyes in the dark, eyes she knew so well, she straightened her spine. Professor McGonagall said she needed to accept her past, and there was no one more accepting than Lily. But still...
"You're loyal to your friends, Lily. Would you ever keep a secret from them?"
Lily thought for a moment. "Well, I've never told them about the time I accidentally threw up in Marlene's bed the first time I tried firewhiskey."
Hermione grimaced. "That's… not exactly what I mean. I mean can you keep something big from them? If it meant potentially saving their lives?"
Lily's eyes widened as she sat up straighter on the couch. "Well yeah, of course I would then. What do you mean? Are they in danger?"
"Not exactly. Not now, at least. I don't think." Hermione rubbed her face and tried to find a more comfortable position on the couch, spreading out her legs til they hung over the side closest to Lily. "Did Mary ever tell you something Pandora said when we first met?"
"No. I didn't even knew you'd met Pandora."
"I have. And she said that I was covered in these things called time mites, I think."
"Oh, don't worry about Pandora. She thinks she can see all kinds of creatures."
"I'll bet. I knew someone like her, back home."
Lily nodded, slowly. "Does what happened tonight have to do with your home?"
Merlin, this is difficult, Hermione cursed. She readjusted herself again, tucking her feet beneath her. "Well, yes."
"Something happened that you're not telling us?" Lily guessed, "The death eaters that attacked your family are going after the other girls?"
Hermione sucked in a long, deep breath. "I'm just afraid you won't believe me. It all sounds so ridiculous when I try to say it."
Lily smiled. "Hermione, we both lived perfectly normal lives for eleven years before finding out we were witches like out of a fairytale. After learning I could do magic, I started believing most anything."
"Right." Looking around for some kind of proof, Hermione finally pulled the thin, gold chain from underneath her jumper. "Do you know what this is?"
"Merlin, how do you have a time turner?" she exclaimed, lunging over to get a closer look. "I've wanted one for ages, but they're highly restricted."
"They're restricted for a reason. In my third year, Professor McGonagall gave me this so I could take all the available elective classes at once. I nearly went crazy from sleep deprivation."
"But you said you were homeschooled, Hermione."
In for a penny, in for a pound. "That's what Professor McGonagall and I decided would be the easiest lie. I… I was never homeschooled. I attended Hogwarts from my first year through my sixth, from 1991 to 1997."
From there the words just poured out, along with a fair number of tears. She covered how Voldemort grew in strength and number twice over, how she and her friends had to fight him almost every year in school in some way, how she'd been in the thick of the war for months towards the end, and how she somehow ended up twenty something years in the past when escaping from a monster on the quidditch pitch. Lily's face widened with every revelation, but Hermione could tell she still wasn't quite getting it. She gulped, and decided to make it a little more personal.
"I could tell you how almost everyone I've met since arriving here died. Dumbledore got the avada kedavra in the astronomy tower and fell. Sirius was murdered by his deranged cousin, the same cousin who tortured Alice into insanity. Voldemort murdered Dorcas personally. Everyone I've met, except for a few students who will become death eaters, is dead where I come from."
"And me?" Lily whispered, horror draining the color from her face.
"You died saving… someone you love. It was a brilliant piece of magic that repelled even the killing curse. There was a holiday named after you."
Lily went so quiet Hermione could hardly hear the air going in and out of her lungs. She worried she'd been too descriptive when a sob tore its way out of Lily.
"How? How can you have been through so much?" she asked, pulling Hermione into a hug that tangled their legs on the couch. "I'm so sorry. I had no idea."
"It's alright," Hermione said, rubbing her back, "it was my life. But now I'm here, and I really need you to not tell anyone. Professor McGonagall thinks I was sent here to change things, but I can't if everyone knows where I'm from. If I tell the wrong person, Voldemort himself will be after me, I'm sure of it. He wouldn't want someone from the future trying to muck up his eventual victory."
Lily broke away. "I promise I won't tell. But you really could change everything! If you know how we all died, you just make sure we're not there on that day or at that time. You could teach us spells from the future and tell us when the death eaters will attack muggles and-"
"Woah, Lily. Believe me, I've thought of all that. But it won't work."
"What do you mean?"
Hermione's head was getting too heavy to hold up on her own so she leaned into the couch. "I don't understand everything perfectly, but it's a mysterious thing, time. It's powerful, and when meddled with, dangerous. If I tried to simply save people from dying, someone else would die in their place. Or they'd die the next day when I didn't know how to save them. It would be like trying to bail out the Titanic with a beach bucket. Bad stuff would keep finding its own way in."
Lily, tears slipping down her cheeks, carded her fingers through Hermione's hair, and Hermione felt herself relax for the first time since she started the conversation. Lily let her nails lightly scratch her scalp in a way that made Hermione close her eyes, then she exhaled a shaky breath.
"I'm sorry. I asked for the answer to a single question and now you've worn yourself out. You want to head up to bed?" Hermione nodded, eyes still closed. She felt Lily grab her hands and pull her up off the couch, then they shuffled in the dark up to the dorm.
Lily stopped at the door. "If this is weird, you can say so and forget I asked," she said, sounding uncomfortable, "but my older sister and I would sometimes share a bed if one of us had a bad day, or a nightmare, or something."
Hermione remembered how many times she, Ron, and Harry ended up sleeping in a pile on those cold nights on the run, or when they were too tired to fully set up camp. Harry would sling his arm over her shoulders and Ron's chest would make a perfect pillow. A few times when she'd woken from a nightmare, shaking in her curtained, shielded bed, she'd imagined their arms holding her tightly until she fell back to sleep.
"That sounds nice, actually," Hermione said, "but let me take a dreamless sleep first. Madam Pomfrey gave me an extra strength dose tonight. She didn't want me waking the whole tower with a nightmare after what happened at dinner."
Lily's face only showed surprise for a second before she nodded, then pulled the curtains and comforter over to make room for a second girl.
Lily fell asleep rather quickly, her slow, even breaths tickled Hermione's shoulder and made the corners of her mouth curve up slightly. Ginny used to do that the few times they shared a bed at the Burrow. With her eyes closed, Hermione could almost remember the sound of Ginny's snores that would come soon after. Lily's body was curled up a few inches away from Hermione's, but Ginny always kicked in her sleep and slept with her arms or legs splayed out all over the bed.
Hermione sighed. Even with a warm, comforting body next to her, it was still the ghosts of her friends that eventually sent her off to sleep.
We love you, Hermione, they would say, their familiar whispers washing over her until she nodded off. Go to sleep. You're doing a brilliantly. Don't worry, you're safe. We're watching out for you.
We'll always watch out for you.
A/N: Thank you all for being so patient! Not only was I dealing with some gross health issues (still am, actually), but this chapter really fought me. What you see now is literally the fourth draft.
Speaking of drafts, I'd like to send out a call for an alpha reader. I'm not worried about my spelling/grammar, but I recognize that a second pair of eyes before publishing would be really helpful. If you're interested in helping me (with pacing and clarity especially), say so in a comment or drop me a PM!
Even if you can't/aren't interested in alpha reading, I'm still happy to hear all your comments, and I'm so grateful to those who have supported this story. I love writing, and you all apparently caring about this is the most wonderful feeling.
As always, thanks for reading.