Author's Notes:
Another seriously revised chapter.
A Demiguise is a real canon HP creature. I did not make it up, although I did make up the explanation for its ability to turn invisible here.
I threw in some 70's slang from my youth - nostalgia!
Ral's reaction was unexpected; he seemed very disturbed by her revelation about the Unforgivables.
"I... I never knew any of that," he admitted, sounding a bit shaken and rubbing at his left forearm, over his Dark Mark. "Thank Merlin I've never cast one, but Rolph... I know he has." He glanced up at her, clearly rattled by what she'd told him. "So the Killing Curse is an abomination of Nature that drains your soul when you use it, huh? So, what, you end up like a ghost when you die, trapped for eternity on this side?"
She shrugged, unsure. He bought up a good point that she was sure had yet to be considered by some member of the Department of Mysteries who worked in the Death Room. "Who knows? Perhaps you become a Dementor, instead. That might actually explain where they come from, since no one really has an idea as to their origins or their reproductive strategy."
"Shizz, why don't they teach that kind of information to us in school?" Ral demanded, wide-eyed and clearly freaked out. "Maybe if they stated it like that, the Dark Lord wouldn't be so quick to use those kinds of spells."
Hermione considered that for half a second, then shook her head. "Doubtful. I think there's enough Chaos in You-Know-Who's soul, given how much it's splintered, that it just may be possible that he's acting in Chaos' interest. Maybe he's not even human anymore, but nothing more than an agent of Chaos, like Peeves, only a much darker version."
That was something she'd have to think more about, maybe ask Minerva...
They were quiet for a bit after that, both turning over their own thoughts on the matter. The antique German cuckoo clock on the wall ticked away the seconds of silence until, it seemed, Ral couldn't stand it any longer. "Fascinating though this has been," he said, finally breaking through the awkwardness, "I still don't understand how it is you're travelling through time without the use of a Time-Turner, love."
Time travel. Right. She'd gone far off-course there... although what they'd discussed about abominations would certainly come back around in this discussion, too, she knew.
"You're right. We were discussing the Unspeakables of a century ago. They wanted to crack the mystery of capturing and using dark energy for their needs, specifically to defeat Euclidean space and master Time. The first thing they had to do was actually catch some hot dark matter, though. However, as I told you, it moves faster than we can see it, so it's difficult to capture. By studying a Demiguise, however—a creature that has evolved a very specific talent for running away from danger by bending luminous matter in such a way that it actually becomes dark matter—the Unspeakables figured out how to extract hot dark matter. Basically, they butchered the poor things to get what they needed, which is why the Demiguise is an endangered species now."
"Very shady," Ral said, looking sincerely saddened by the loss. Yet another reason, she thought, to think him perfect; his compassionate nature resonated with hers. "So what spell did they use to steal the hot dark matter from the beasties?"
"A very powerful version of Petrificus Totalus," she replied. "They called it the 'Medusa Spell'. It basically petrifies the animal in the traditional sense, turning it into stone. The hot dark matter is then extracted from the dead creature." She shook her head, equally as disgusted as her lover over the cruelty of some humans. Firmly against the idea of testing on animals for any purpose, Hermione likened the doing so to the same category as abusing house-elves and hunting werewolves—it was simply sadism to reaffirm humanity's alpha-ness on the food chain. It wasn't as if those Unspeakables couldn't have determined a way to borrow the hot dark matter from the Demiguise without causing it harm; it was just more expedient and "cost-effective" to butcher them and steal it instead. Killing for profit. The thought made her ill. "It's tragically ironic that once they stole the hot dark matter, however, they were clueless as to how to use it to travel through time," she pointed out. "For that, they needed to consider Muggle mathematics, which was already taking leaps and bounds into solving the problem at that time. So for a few years, they stored their captured matter down in the Department of Mysteries, in a specially warded room we now call the Time Room, and they sat and pondered the idea that they had to swallow their prides and seek help from non-magical folk."
Ral barked a cynical laugh and leaned back against one of the wooden posts of the bed, settling back for the rest of the tale. "Bet they loved that. And it's strange to think a little guy like a Demiguise is the key to time travel." He shook his head, slightly amused. "That's like saying Pygmy Puffs hold the secret to the universe."
Hermione planted her bum against the small writing desk to give her feet a rest and shrugged. "Maybe they do. I don't speak Pygmy Puff, do you? How do we know they aren't discussing how best to survive the next Extinction Event?"
"Extinction Event?"
Pushing her bangs out of her eyes, she shook her head and said, "The natural disaster and biological fitness talk can wait. Let's just stick to the topic of time travel for now."
"Right," Ral agreed, grinning wickedly. "Then we can get on with... other things. Because I don't know about you, love, but I can think of a much better use of our time."
Hermione gaped at him. Was that all he thought about whenever she was near? Godric, the man was over-sexed! "Just hold your royal horses, Lestrange."
Her lover made a whinnying noise and pretended to pull back on some imaginary reins.
She laughed at his crazy antics.
Merlin, who'd have guessed that Rabastan Lestrange was not just clever and sexy, but witty, too? Then again, he had teased her that night in the Department of Mysteries, hadn't he? Stroking over her aura like that... naughty, sneaky man.
She gave an inward sigh in resignation. He really was perfect for her, wasn't he?
"You're incorrigible," she cheerfully chastised.
Ral's grin was big and white, as if he took pride in that fact.
"As I was saying," she continued with her explanation, trying to ignore his cheekiness, "the Unspeakables working on the theory of time travel eventually consulted a Muggle physicist named Albert Einstein in the early 1900's. At the time, he was mathematically working through the issue of a general theory of relativity—that is, a scientific theory to explain how gravity works and its influence on everything in the universe, including time. Using Einstein's theories, and taking into account what they already knew about the magical world and how it affects the universe, the Unspeakables were able to come up with an idea for how to make time travel a reality. Basically, they'd decided to use hot dark matter to super-charge an Apparition spell so that instead of the spell sending you through a point in space to another in the exact same moment, it would instead propel you backwards through space-time."
"Do I detect cynicism from you, pet?" Ral asked, crossing his arms and leaning a shoulder against the bed post.
Was she that obvious, or did Ral just know her that well already?
"You do," she admitted. "The first experiments had predictably tragic conclusions that could have been avoided with a little forethought. It was the kind of splinching only read about in horror books."
She shook her head, still amazed at the foolish risks taken by the supposed 'top experts' in their branches of magic then. What those wizards had done was as dangerous and stupid a move, she thought, as the Muggle physicists in the 1940's who had tested the first atom bomb, not knowing whether it's explosion would ignite the entire atmosphere or not, but going through with it at full-steam ahead anyway. Some men, she thought, would hazard anything for personal glory, even the safety of the entire human race, it seemed.
Which was the whole point of Voldemort's war, wasn't it?
"In any case, at that point the Unspeakables finally realised that they'd have to come up with a way to control the speed of hot dark matter—specifically, it's tendency to want to stay at the speed of light once it's released. Slowing it down is extremely difficult and if one is not precise in doing so, one gets torn in half or loses body parts. Those parts are then spread all over the world and across various times, depending upon the exact moment of their loss. The first organic experiments were done on livestock that were roughly the same size as humans or bigger—sheep, cows... hence the awful cattle mutilations that, for the last century, Muggles across the globe have believed to be perpetrated by aliens from outer space."
"Couldn't they just slow down the hot dark matter by using the same nullifying spell they used to extract it from the Demiguise to begin with?" he asked. "Seems common sense to me."
Hermione smiled at how quick her wizard's mind worked. There was nothing more attractive to her than a man who could keep up in a verbal exchange, even if the subject matter was practically foreign to him.
The reason, she was beginning to see, was that Ral actually listened, rather than simply waited for his turn to talk. He didn't have to be an expert on space-time dynamics, but he'd picked up the gist by simply paying attention. That skill made him stand out in the crowd of other men of her close acquaintance, most of whom were fixated on hearing only empty flattery, sexual innuendo, and the latest Quidditch scores. Not to mention, it was charming that Ral was so focussed on her and their discussion. That kind of consideration made her feel as if her thoughts were important to him. He was, she thought, vastly more mature than others in her circle of friends, which only drew her in faster and harder and made her want to stay here with him forever.
Something, she now knew she could never do.
Her good mood plummeted, replaced with the hollow, sick feeling that had plagued her earlier, when she'd first discovered his identity and she'd put the pieces of their bizarre tale together. The ever-present awareness of time drawing the curtain down upon their story weighed heavily upon her heart.
Not yet. There's still a little more time...
She had to finish this, so he would understand and not be left wondering for decades why they couldn't be together. This was the only gift she had left to give Ral—an explanation so he could find closure once she was gone.
"That's exactly what the Unspeakables did," she told him, sticking to the account. "Which is why the hot dark matter appears as grains of sand when you look at a Time-Turner."
Clearly, he was impressed. "Slick. I take it the Petrifying doesn't have the same effect on the hot dark matter as it does us, though, or else they'd be rendered inert. No activity, no energy."
Despite her melancholy, Hermione was helpless not to smile a bit at her uncanny lover's ability to see patterns that most other people missed. "You're right. The hot dark matter isn't really petrified, not to the core, anyway. Nothing can really stop them on a permanent basis, because of their incredible energy levels. Instead, they're constantly vibrating, shaking off the Petrify spell. Which is why it needs to be continually re-cast upon them if you want to hold onto them."
"But no one really has the ability to do that without exhausting themselves, you said earlier," Ral stated. "And nothing replenishes its energy fast enough to..." He paused, and his expression changed to one of sudden enlightenment. "Ah, I see. They built a machine to do it for them—the Time-Turner."
She nodded, impressed by his logic leap. "It was designed with the help of a goblin horologist, a master of watch-making. At the behest of the Unspeakables, he was brought in on the project and tasked to craft an enchanted object that could store its own energy to fuel the continual Petrify spell on the hot dark matter. The brilliance of the design is in its multi-layered rings and its spinning motion. As long as someone spins the Time-Turner's hourglass once a day, the device stores up kinetic energy. That energy is the fuel used to cast the continual Petrify spell. That's why there are Unspeakables assigned to the Time Room now—not to study the science any longer, but to care for the Time-Turners."
"And when one wants to travel through time, I suppose the spinning of the rings lets the hot dark matter go so it can do its thing," Ral stated.
Hermione nodded. "The Time-Turner's pendant is an hourglass shape that turns on an axis. It has a winding pin and a spinning pin set opposite each other. As you wind the device with the winding pin, you build-up kinetic energy in the device. When you spin the dial with the spinning pin, two things happen: the first is that the device releases the Petrify spell on the hot dark matter, allowing it to accelerate towards the speed of light—which is what fuels time travel. The second is that it uses the kinetic energy you've built up by winding the pin to cast a simultaneous Apparition spell and a powerful Protego spell, to allow the person holding onto the Time-Turner to jump backwards through time and to remain unharmed while doing so."
Ral frowned. "How does the Time-Turner know exactly how far back to go and when to stop?"
This she knew well from her days during third year, hopping around. "One turn of the spinning pin equals about one sixty-minute period or thereabouts."
"And it allows only for backwards travel?" Ral asked, considering that. "Then how do you jump forward to where you started from, if you're from my future?"
This was the tricky part that had Hermione's mind whirling over the implications. "Usually, a time-traveller is supposed to wait for their time-travelling self to catch up to the exact moment they left to prevent the hot dark matter's energy from being used up. And they rarely go back further than twenty-four hours in a single jump because of the massive energy required just to go that far. However..."
"Yes?" he prodded her, when she remained silent for a moment.
"I went back years... and I haven't had to wait each jump back and forth. I go back instantly. Basically, I'm moving against the physical laws of the universe and using unnatural magic to accomplish that," she replied.
Ral frowned, trying to understand her implication. She knew the moment he got it by the look of horror that crossed his face. "You're saying that you're an abomination of Nature, too, aren't you?"
Hermione nodded, looking back down at her feet. "I've become one, it seems."
"Holy fuck, somehow you've become a Time-Turner! You're fuelling the jumps back and forth with your own magic, aren't you?" Ral quickly crossed to her, took her in his arms. "It's draining your soul's energy, isn't it?"
"I think... it's draining both of us, actually." She drew back, tilted her head so she could meet his eye. "Our souls are linked, Ral. We have been since the accident in the Department of Mysteries during my time. We were both in the Time Room when a cabinet was hit by a stray spell, exploding the contents inside it. A few moments later, I was hit by a different spell that knocked me out, but I healed later at the hospital. I'm not sure what caused your injuries that night, but they were worse than mine. You were brought to St. Mungo's in a coma. I don't know if you've ever woken up from it in my original time, but if you haven't, it's a good bet it's because of this connection between us."
He blinked, completely thrown for a six. "Me? What? How?"
"The night of that fight in the Ministry, the last of the Time-Turners were in the Time Room with us, and when the cabinet was smashed, they were broken. All the hot dark matter inside of them spread everywhere. It got up my nose and irritated it. Meanwhile, you were injured that same night, knocked unconscious by a spell in the Time Room. You lay on the floor, bleeding. I think you were standing too close to the cabinet when it blew. I don't know the extent of your injuries, but I do recall seeing blood all around you. I remember breathing deeply as I passed by you, smelling your clove cigarettes... then my nose started bleeding, too. I think that was the moment we became linked... by Blood Magic."
He leaned away from her, his expression a cross between panic and repugnance.
Something very much like guilt and disappointment twisted hard within Hermione's guts. It wasn't her fault what had inadvertently happened that night, but she knew the implication of Blood Magic bonds from her readings. So, it seemed, did Ral. She stammered a bit as she explained her theory to him, her voice as shaky as her heart.
"Y-you probably know that Blood Magic is one of the most potent types of binding and sealing magicks in the world and that like the Killing Curse, its purpose is to do something against the laws of Nature—that is, it binds life to an unnatural purpose. It used to be incorporated into ancient marriage vows by pure-blood wizards and witches to ensure fidelity, to prevent breeding bastards, especially the half-blood kind."
"It controls one's loyalty—yeah, that much I know from how the Dark Lord operates," Ral stated with a cynical snort. "Blood magic is one of his favourite ways of controlling the Death Eaters." He held up his left forearm, indicating the sinister tattoo under his sleeve. His disgust over having been branded was evident. "A drop of his blood is in the ink in the Dark Mark, allowing for a one-way conduit."
Oh, God. She didn't know that Ral was magically tied to Voldemort through blood! If he tried to sever that bond by leaving Voldemort's circle, as she'd been asking him to do, it would cost him dearly. His own magical strength would be permanently diminished if he were to betray the Blood Magic to his Master. He might even be turned into a Squib! No wonder he'd been fighting her on the issue!
"You and I are linked by Blood Magic now, too," she whispered, touching a hand to her heart. "Our souls are connected, Ral."
"I... know," was all he said. "I feel your lingering presence, even when you're not here. That's why it hurts so much when we're parted, yeah? When you leave me, everything seems... less real, less alive. The joy leaves me and I struggle against my dark thoughts."
"It's the same for me," she admitted. "I cry every time I end up back in my own time, like I'm mourning your loss over and over again. I feel like a vital piece of me is missing, that I've left it in your care, and until I come back to you, I'll continue to feel that way. It's... painful."
For a long time, he stood before her, silent, and Hermione used the last of her courage to meet his gaze, refusing to flinch from the truth. His sky-blue eyes, she noted, were filled with storm clouds as he contemplated being tied to two distinctly different people who stood on opposite sides of the same war. In that moment, she knew he was considering his choice as to which bond he would betray: the one to his Master, thus betraying his brother, or the one to her, the witch he claimed to love. Either way, he'd be wounded; his magical powers would never be the same, for like an Unbreakable Vow, it was the one who shirked the Blood Magic who paid the price, not the injured party they left behind.
"I'm so sorry. I never meant for this to happen to you," she said, tears choking her voice, wavering before her eyes.
"I know," he reiterated, stepping towards her. Placing his hand over hers, he entwined their fingers. "It's not your fault, and I don't blame you. It was a freak accident. I'm not sorry for it, though." With his free hand, he reached up and stroked over her cheek. "I'll never regret how this came to be."
She pressed her forehead against his firm chest, and let out a shaky breath. "I know it is magic manipulating my feelings for you, but... but I think it would be possible to still feel this way about you, even without the bond. I think I'd love you no matter when or how we'd met, Ral." She turned completely into his arms, and let him hold her. "I never believed in fate until I met you."
"Me, either."
The strong beat of his heart against her ear was like the loud ticking of a clock, she thought... Time was slipping away, faster and faster. She could feel it.
"There's more you have to know," she said, reluctantly leaning away from him, knowing they needed to get through this talk.
"There always is." He sighed. "So tell me the rest. Tell me how it is you jump through time."
She nodded, hating to break the moment. It had felt nice just to be held by him for those few stolen moments. "I used a Time-Turner when I was fourteen, as I told you already. As a result, I was vibrantly exposed to hot dark matter. Like radioactive material, it takes time for it to dissipate from a time-traveller's body, so it was still inside me when the cabinet exploded in the Time Room. Some of the newly released hot dark matter from that explosion was drawn like a magnet to the residual hot dark matter inside me. That's what kept my friends from being exposed to it and why they aren't, as far as I can discern, suffering its ill-effects. However, you were on the other side of the room, closer to the cabinet itself, so some of the hot dark matter on that side splashed all over you. When I passed by you on the way out, I ran into your hot dark matter, and when I inhaled and smelled your Kretek cigarettes, it caused me to get a nosebleed. That's when the Blood Magic activated between us. From then on, the scent of cigarettes was, for me, a stimulant for triggering an olfactory memory of you, which would cause me to want to be with you, and I would jump to you at a random moment."
"But why now?" he asked. "Why not when I was twenty or thirty? Why this moment?" he asked. "There has to be a reason."
Rubbing a weary hand over her eyes, she said, "There is. The first time I jumped into the past, I smelled your cloves coming through the shared hospital doorway between our rooms. I jumped accidentally... to the exact time and date of my birth - the earliest point backwards, it seems, I'm capable of going without an actual Time-Turner's aid."
"Why is that as far back as you can go?" he asked, curious.
"The jump was fuelled primarily from my soul's energy, which works a lot like a Muggle automobile's gasoline gauge – there's only a finite amount of energy stored in it at any one time," she explained. "It refills over time naturally, but if the tank is ever completely emptied, the car quits working. In humans, an empty tank means death. Without a secondary energy source to help fuel a jump further than my own birth, I'd die in the attempt."
"So, if you're draining your soul's energy to jump backwards, how are you getting back to your own time?" he asked.
She glanced up at him, noting how far his lips were from hers and wanting more than anything to close that distance and forget all of this for now, to lose herself again in Ral's touch and taste.
It would have to wait. Hopefully, when their talk was done, there would be one last chance for them to love each other...
"I believe our soul bond, created by the Blood Magic, is the reason I'm able to return at all to my present timeline after each jump back into the past. Your soul provides me the energy I need to return. That's why I said I think my being here is draining you, too. The first time I jumped, I was in the hospital. You were right next door to me, ironically enough, so I heard the Healers and Medi-witches discussing your prognosis constantly. When I returned to the present time after our first encounter on the train, you remained in a coma—and you continued to be in a coma even after I checked out of the hospital a week later. I think my borrowing of your soul's energy that first time slowed your healing down to a crawl, and the coma was your body's way of shutting down non-essential processes so your soul's energy could replenish. And I think every time I've jumped backwards in time to you since, in order to come back to my correct time, I've been stealing your soul's energy through our soul bond. That's why I think you may not have ever left the hospital. I think I'm unintentionally keeping you in a state where you're not physically getting any better. I could even kill you, accidentally, if I drained you completely."
Which is why this has to be my last jump back to you, she thought with such sorrow that it nearly brought her to her knees. Now that she knew the truth, though, she couldn't risk him any longer. Besides, she couldn't risk being stranded back in 1981 when there was a war going on in her own time. Harry and her friends needed her with them there, in 1998. Hermione had to go back... and she could never risk returning here, to the past. She had to stay in her right time.
"I... see," Ral stated, and she knew by glancing into his face that he did, in fact, get her implication. His throat moved as he swallowed and his jaw clenched and unclenched as he struggled to get himself under control. "You ended up on that train that night, and not somewhere else, someplace random, because the Blood Magic bond between us drew you to my side, right?"
"Yes."
"And you were in the hospital just before then?"
She nodded.
"Well, that explains the johnnies," he said with a wry smirk. "So, you're not injured, but what about all of that hot dark matter crawling all over you? It's not hurting you, is it?"
She waved him off, unsure herself, but not wanting to worry her lover. "As I said, it dissipates over time if there is no more exposure, or it burns itself out once it is used up. There have been no recorded long-term negative effects."
Except in Eloise Mintumble's experience. Somehow, she accidentally got stuck five-hundred years in the past and caused the 'un-births' of twenty-five people - people who should have been born, but weren't because of her time-travelling meddling. Her case threw a huge monkey wrench in the accepted idea of Novikov's Self-Consistency Principle (the Ministry's officially backed theory about travelling through time) that time is immutable - that going back in time only sets in motion the events that lead you into going back in time in the first place, creating a closed-timelike curve. Basically, it states that there is no such thing as changing the future by altering the past.
Eloise's incident, however, made Hermione believe that it was quite possible that instead of changing the past, one created a parallel universe when one jumped back in time... In which case, perhaps she could alter Ral's future by forewarning him of events to come without risking the timeline too much.
Could she manipulate the future she knew, change it so Voldemort was defeated now, in his time by telling Ral about it, though? More importantly, should she? If she did tell Ral about the horcruxes and he set about destroying them here in his present timeline, would he be able to fundamentally shift events, as Eloise had done? Dare she risk unwinding everything she knew, perhaps even changing the course of her own future so that the person she was right now, right here no longer existed?
Ral gently tugging on one of her curls brought her back to the here and now, where he held her against his warm body in a gentle embrace. "What are you thinking, love?"
She swallowed the heart-shaped lump in her throat. "I'm afraid that the future I know will disappear if I stay here any longer with you. I think we're at a cosmic crossroads. More, I can't risk draining your soul of the last of its energy with any more jumps back."
He went rigid in her arms. "Meaning?"
Her gaze dropped to his chin. "Meaning I can't come back to see you anymore, and I think I've told you too much already about the future. You know enough now to change the course of my history. Who knows what repercussions that could have on the world? It didn't work out so well for Eloise Mintumble when she did it."
"But she used a Time-Turner that, for some reason, went haywire, according to the books," he pointed out. "You... you are the Time-Turner in this case."
"Which makes the situation even more convoluted and confusing," she argued. "Will I remain untouched while the world you change from any knowledge I give you moves around me? How will the people I know and love treat me when I reappear in my normal time? Will I still be friends with Harry, or Ron, or the Weasleys? Will there still be a war on?" She gripped his shoulders in a tight hold. "If you change things too much, we won't meet in the Department of Mysteries. The accident won't happen and I won't become a living Time-Turner. I won't jump back in time and meet you or..." Her gaze returned to his beautiful blue eyes that reminded her of endless summer skies and freedom and all the things she wanted for her future. "...or fall in love with you. I'll be stuck with these memories, but will exist in a world that doesn't know me as I know it. I'll go mad, just like the books warn."
"Or, you could tell me and I only tweak one or two things, enough to cause us to end up to meet in the Department of Mysteries in your future, setting everything into motion as it was meant to be," he refuted.
She shook her head. "You don't understand! In order for that to happen, you-"
Abruptly, she shut her mouth, realising that she couldn't tell him his future - that in a little more than a month, Voldemort would be on the receiving end of an Avada Kedavra gone wrong, that the First Wizarding War would end and that he, Ral, would end up in Azkaban for years, surrounded by Dementors, barely holding onto his sanity. How could she tell him that he would not die, he'd simply wish he had?
Strangely, Voldemort would be doing him a kindness when he breaks Ral out during the year of Umbridge's terrorizing.
Ral sighed. "Look, you know the future as it's meant to unfold, but I've already gleaned enough from you to know that you're fighting against my Master and that this war is still on-going seventeen years from now. It tells me there are still Death Eaters out there, and that I'm still a part of their organization, so obviously, I never join up with the Order. I can guess what that means for me, if I tried hard enough. It means that whatever I'm going to do here and now will either damn me or set me up so that we can be together sometime in the future, even though it'll be nearly twenty years away for me. I'm willing to take those repercussions on the chin if I can be with you then, since I can't be with you now." He gave her a small, sad smile. "Besides, right now, you're only a baby. What am I going to do for the next seventeen years but wait for you to grow up?"
Her eyes filled with tears again, and this time, she let them fall. The weight of this responsibility, of what they were giving up... it was too much for her tiny shoulders. "Oh, Ral," she whispered, and flung her arms around his neck, kissing him as she'd wanted to earlier. She let herself fall into him, feeling his heart pounding hard against her chest. He was obviously as scared as she was by the enormity of their responsibilities and their feelings.
He kissed her back with a matching, desperate passion.
When he pulled them up for air, he rested his forehead against hers and met her eye. "Is this it for us, then?" he asked, his voice choked by emotion. "You definitely won't come back to me again?"
"I can't," she sobbed. "It'll kill you. And... and I'm not meant to be here. I have to go back. I have to fight and put an end to Voldemort once and for all, for all our sakes."
There were no more chances for meetings such as this. Ironically, she and Ral had finally run out of time.
He bent forward to cradle his face into her throat. "I don't know if it's a Blood Magic bond making me feel this way, or if it's something more that we created together. I only know that I love you, Hermione. No matter what happens, know that I love you, okay?"
She nodded, crying, understanding only now why it was every time she returned to her present she felt as if she were in mourning: because a part of her had always known that this would be their fate. That someday, she would have to let him go.
However, existing in a closed timelike curve had assured that this moment—their last together where their ages and circumstances were the same—would allow them to build a future together many years from now. At least, that's what she hoped.
He stepped backwards while still keeping her close, guiding them towards the wide, comfortable bed. There, he stripped her of her clothing, as he stripped her heart of its defences, and as he laid her down in its centre, she felt their bond for the first time as a tangible melding of their souls. They made love one last time, and it was urgent, desperate, filled with memorizing touches and burning need. Their gasps and cries filled the room as they came together in sweet release, one after the other.
As they held each other in the afters, she whispered in his ear, "I love you, too… Rabastan Alastair Lestrange."
Darkness slowly crept along the sides of her vision the moment his true name left her lips.
A sudden, inexplicable panic gripped her and she, in turn, tightened her hold around him.
A split decision had her tossing aside every logical reservation she had, knowing she was breaking every rule of time travel set down by the Ministry in the doing, she did the unthinkable anyway: she told Ral how to change his future. "Take Dumbledore's deal today," she instructed him. "Turn spy for the Order. Voldemort's going to be defeated in a month's time by a fluke of old magic turned against him, and there will be war trials afterwards. If you turn now, you can get leniency and stay out of Azkaban. In a dozen years, though, Voldemort will come back in the future to kill my friend, Harry Potter. He's figured out a way to come back, but Harry's the key to defeating the Dark Lord once and for all—Sybill Trelawney's prophecy said so, and Dumbledore believed it." She cupped his cheeks, staring into his beautiful blue eyes. "If you turn now, you could help us then, too. You could infiltrate the Death Eaters and pass information to us. You could tell Dumbledore what you know."
He kissed her hard. "I'll do it," he promised her, anguish thickening his words. "Know that I choose you, Hermione. I choose us."
She choked on another sob, knowing what it would cost him to break the faith with his dark Master and his brother, whom he loved in his own way. He would be diminished, one step closer to mundane than magical—and all for her.
"Fifteen years from now, meet me in the Department of Mysteries," she cried, as shadow quickly swallowed her up, taking her from him. "And don't you dare be late, Ral!"
"I'll be there," he promised.
She opened her mouth to tell him just once more that she loved him, but quite suddenly, there was no more time.
~.~.~
Hermione blinked.
~.~.~
The sounds of the ocean birds gulling and the rushing waves pounding the shore outside the window told her immediately where she was.
Shell Cottage.
Hermione rolled over in Fleur and Bill's spare bed and sobbed her heart out as Ral's loss once more slammed into her hard and without mercy. That awful, swamping depression overwhelmed her again, and this time, she let it runs the gamut of its full fury, crying, screaming into her pillow. She even beat the mattress with her fists as she loosed her hot frustration and cold sorrow upon the empty side of the mattress.
Eventually, the storm passed, leaving her wrung out and emotionally exhausted. Lying on her back, softly hiccupping, she looked up at another white ceiling in another foreign room and contemplated her next move.
Had anything changed from her divulging that last second information to Ral? Had her lover escaped his fate in Azkaban or had Novikov been proved right, and there was no changing one's fate? Where was Ral now? Was he even alive, or had that last jump done him in?
Wiping the tears her eyes, she realised there was only one way to find out: she'd have to risk a trip to St. Mungo's Hospital in London... which was crawling with Death Eaters and Snatchers, all under Yaxley's command and who most likely had orders to haul her in on sight, no doubt.
With a deep sigh, she realised that this was going to be a difficult sneak-job, but then she thought, she never did things the easy way, did she?
TO BE CONTINUED...
Author's Notes:
A LONG chapter, but important explanation. Hopefully, it worked for you - all that science and magic melding stuff.
Up next... Hermione goes looking for the Ral in her own time. And Remus Lupin makes a startling revelation the night he comes to Shell Cottage to announce the birth of his son.
