The young woman strode purposefully towards the medium-sized building, weaving through the moderate Paddington pedestrian traffic. She was wearing an outfit that was coordinated enough not to excite notice from muggles, but with enough concessions to magical style that it wouldn't be off-putting - at worst a little drab - to people with whom she met. Her hair's normal resistance to order was opposed only by being tied back into a ponytail with a saffron scarf, and she was sensibly - given the amount of walking she'd been doing - wearing trainers.
She took the stairs to the third floor - in a concession to maintaining reasonable fitness, the young woman never took a lift for less than four flights - and quickly found the correct door. She followed policy and checked her wand (in a Disillusioned waist holster), checked her PASS (active, two layers), took a moment to draw herself up in an official bearing, and knocked three times, firmly. A woman of middling years wearing a dark orange housedress answered the door.
"Mrs. Conphelia Alderdosh?" she asked. The older woman nodded. "My name is Hermione Granger, I'm here from the Ministry on a DRCMC check, may I come in?" She said it in a matter-of-fact way, pointedly not looking around or speaking in conspiratorial tones. There weren't any witnesses in the hallway, but while a hypothetical muggle who'd overheard might have thought the Ministry reference oddly non-specific, they'd be unlikely to think it suspicious.
"Oh, about Philbert? By all means, come in, come in," Mrs. Alderdosh chirped, retreating back into the flat. "Can I get you anything, tea?" she asked, after Hermione had stepped inside, closing the door behind her.
"No, thank you," Hermione said, politely, "I shouldn't need to stay long."
"Frizzy-haired rat's nest!" said an improbably large ferret, considerably less politely. It wasn't actually a ferret, of course, but a Jarvey - a magical cousin with an impressive ability to speak, and the unfortunate restriction of only doing so to deliver a steady stream of insults. "Bossy!" The speech and generally well-aimed quality of the insults ought to have implied some degree of sapience, but the relentlessness of the abuse had discouraged optimistic investigation on that topic, and Jarveys remained firmly classified as Beasts.
Hermione observed the condition of the flat, the creature itself, and its owner, and removed the short quill from the clipboard she held. On the form secured to the clipboard, she dutifully checked four boxes next to "3f, 24 Praed Street, Paddington/Mrs. Conphelia Alderosh/Jarvey x 1/Philbert", and under the columns "Creature Present", "Conditions Satisfactory", "Health Satisfactory (Creature)", and "Health Satisfactory (Owner)", respectively.
"Any plans to sell or give Philbert to anyone in the near future?" she asked.
"Testy! Nosey!" cried the Jarvey. Perhaps to the ward at St. Mungo's for Excessive Masochism? Hermione thought in a silent amendment to her question.
"Oh, no, I couldn't bear to part with him - he's all that I have for company since my dear Flurvis passed on," the woman said, smiling sadly.
"Senile! Shut-in! Cow-faced prune!" added Philbert, unhelpfully. Hermione checked off one last box, and nodded.
"Thank you Mrs. Alderosh, that's all I needed. I can let myself out." The other witch's smile was touched with disappointment.
"Oh, are you sure you don't want to stay?" Hermione felt a bit bad for the woman, who clearly would have enjoyed some polite company, but not bad enough to want to remain a minute longer than she had to. And she was on a schedule. Not that anyone but her would really care if she were less efficient.
"Sorry, I still have quite a few visits left today," she said, tapping her clipboard. "Thank you for your time, and have a nice day." She quickly left the flat, but couldn't close the door fast enough to avoid hearing a final salvo from Philbert.
"Heartless Ministry drone!" Hermione winced.
She wondered if anyone had tried Cheering Charms, or maybe a Confundus...obviously a Silencing Charm would've worked - but then, presumably the sort of person who opted to keep a Jarvey as a pet would prefer them just as they were. But this thought was less serious problem-solving and more to distract herself from how close to home that last jibe had hit.
As she went back to the stairs to go up two more flights to her next check-in, she wondered - as she often did these days - if she was doing the right thing. After she'd finished her N.E.W.T.s, joining the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures had seemed like a good way for her to do some immediately constructive things for magical Britain. She could leverage her personal experience with Elves, at the very least get the current welfare laws enforced more often, ideally push to get them expanded. Then Centaurs, Goblins, maybe even Giants! The idea of a world where all intelligent creatures were treated equally, given the same access to education and wands...it appealed directly to her idealism, and while Voldemort's final defeat - and his association with inequality - was fresh in the public's minds was the perfect time to do it.
Somehow things hadn't worked out quite as she'd imagined. Sure, she was helping with Elvish welfare in her own small way - she'd been responsible for nearly a hundred citations in her first six months alone - but it seemed that sweeping her exams and helping defeat Dark Lords didn't excuse her from Ministry policy, which for the DRCMC meant two training years no matter how smart or semi-famous you were. Endless check-ins with registered owners of Magical Creatures, making sure the things hadn't died, escaped, been sold, gotten loose and eaten their owners, etc. Occasionally there were warnings, or citations, almost never any excitement - if there's any active suspicion of problems or criminal activity, they don't send a trainee.
Hermione rechecked the next address on her clipboard, paused at the door, then checked wand, PASS, and posture. Policy. She sighed, and knocked.
Coeur-arbre, she thought as she glanced down at her clipboard, that's interesting at least. It was a rare magical tree - limited sentience with no mobility beyond willingly shedding its leaves, but still barely enough to require check-ins. Beyond decoration, the only recorded use was the leaves, a Class E Tradable, that could be used as an ingredient in a few minor potions. Not love potions per se, despite the name, more like "nostalgia"...rekindling friendship, bringing back fond memories, that sort of thing.
Because she was still looking at the clipboard when the man opened the door, she missed his rapid series of expressions, from a look of irritation, to surprise and alarm, then determination. All she saw was the determination, and she hadn't even registered the import of the wand in his hand when he immediately hit her with a powerful curse and she flew backwards, her body and head slamming evenly into the opposite wall.
The curse - whatever it was - had shattered the outer layer of her PASS, but left the inner intact - the combined efforts of that layer and the Impact Absorbing Charm she prudently cast on herself whenever she was going near muggle traffic had likely saved her from a nasty concussion, or worse.
The man, a dark-haired fellow with a thin scar under his left eye, was wearing the sort of mismatched but highly functional robes and gear favored equally by Cursebreakers, Security Witches, and criminals. His wand was short, dark and gnarled. In the flat behind him...well, Hermione was a little dazed and still wasn't sure what she was seeing, but it was obviously highly magical and made her eyes as wide as saucers. Despite her slight dizziness and not having been in serious magical combat for almost three years now, she was grimly pleased to note that the clipboard had been dropped and her wand was already in her hand, poised equally to reinforce her PASS, stun, or deflect as necessary. Her attacker swore, and rather than following up with another assault, instead he slammed the door.
Hermione immediately restored the outer layer of her Persistent Accommodating Shield Spell, then added a third and fourth layer for good measure. Stacking multiple layers like this was a lot more difficult than it sounded, but then, she had invented the spell. The tiny, invisible hole in each layer - which allowed the spell to protect in all directions yet still permit outgoing magic - rotated around her in carefully mismatched orbits, and would only ever snap into mutual alignment for the split second it took one of her own spells to pass through them. Only once that was done did she hesitate. DRCMC policy when encountering a suspected criminal was to withdraw safely, Apparate to the DMLE emergency reception area, brief whoever was on duty and let the Aurors handle it. But her brief glimpse of the completely unfamiliar magic behind the door suggested a powerful ritual of some sort was going on in there, and given the man's immediate resort to violence, it probably wasn't a spell to summon kittens. There might not be any time to spare.
Also, she told herself, I am not a Ministry drone, no matter what Malfoy's spirit animal might say...I am a Gryffindor.
Hermione flicked her wand to open the door, and when - unsurprisingly - it did not open, she flicked it again in a wordless Unlocking Charm. When it still didn't open, she dismissed it entirely from consideration, took a step to the side, then hit the wall with a Silencing Charm and a Bombardment Curse in quick succession. She buried her mouth into the crook of her free arm to avoid choking on the sudden dust from the eerily soundless burst of frame wood and plaster that left a now person-sized opening into the flat. Another twist of her wand and the dust fell to the floor en masse like iron filings pulled to a magnet, allowing her a clear view.
The man, against a wall and half-prone from the blast, had nevertheless maintained concentration on his immediate task, which apparently had been enchanting a scrap of paper. It flew out the open window behind him, trailing smoke like a jet fighter's exhaust, and with similar speed. Seeing Hermione through the hole, he swore again and his features tightened. Unwilling to launch a stunner anywhere near the active field of an unknown ritual, Hermione ducked under the plane of eldritch light and physically lunged forward instead, but she was too late - her hand passed through the space where he'd been a moment earlier.
Hermione did not swear out loud, though she did allow herself to think a few extremely nasty phrases.
She didn't waste much time on self-recrimination, however, and immediately took stock of the situation. The flat was dominated by the Coeur-arbre, growing out of a large flat plot of dirt somehow - presumably magically - set into the floor. Every one of its rather pretty pinkish-silver leaves was strewn about the floor, leaving the tree looking thin and bare. Beyond that, a spinning contraption of some kind had been driven into the trunk of the tree. A luminous rosy silver fluid was dripping from it, as if it were a tap for maple syrup, but the intensely magical substance was twisting in skeins through the air of the room about five feet above the floor. It aligned in patterns above complex Arithmantic diagrams which had been laid out on the floor in chalk, and which Hermione had - miraculously, in her current judgement - not disturbed when she'd rushed forward to try to force a Side-Along with the man.
A Finite probably isn't going to cut it here, Hermione thought, swallowing against a suddenly dry throat.
The patterns in the air were shifting with increasing speed. Hermione edged back out from under the the active magic, then turned carefully away. She pointed her wand to a clear space near the hole in the wall, concentrating firmly on Dearest Ronald, but thinking about the message she wanted to send to the DMLE, which was roughly as follows: Go to the duty officer in DMLE emergency reception, and tell them DRCMC trainee Hermione Granger reports that there is an unknown ritual in progress in 5c, 24 Praed Street, Paddington. One male suspect - dark hair, scar under left eye, wand, uh, seven inches, gnarled, ash I think - assaulted me and Disapparated. Ritual appears to be self-sustaining, may be unstable, I will begin efforts to analyse and contain it, but you might want to call in an Herbology specialist and maybe an Unspeakable, as it involves previously unreported properties of a Coeur-arbre.
"Expecto Patronum!" she cried, with the appropriate brandish. The shining otter that burst from her wand did a tight lap in the air around her head - the brief look of reproach it seemed to give her might have been due to the length of her message, but was probably just her imagination - then streaked off. That much handled, Hermione quickly (and belatedly) added a Muggle-repelling Charm to the area around the hole in the wall, then addressed all her attention to the animated skeins of what she'd decided for the moment to call "Coeur-arbre syrup". Carefully moving around the active area, she stepped close to the edge of the Arithmantic diagrams on the floor. From what she could gather at a glance, they were doing very little active functional transformation, and instead seemed to be simply focusing and concentrating the syrup itself, along with whatever properties it held. Presumably with the intent of leveraging those properties to some purpose, but you never could tell with people who were crazy enough to do unsupervised magical research.
Hermione inscribed a quick Arithmantic series of diagnostic formulae in the air - glowing symbols trailing from her wand's tip - as close as she could to one of the skeins at the edge of the field. Almost immediately the formulae flared into painful brilliance, then exploded into motes. Hermione tensed...one of the Fundamental Magics...at least one. Her wand darted into action again as she swiftly traced out more symbols, starting a much more involved set of formulae. Hopefully, these would hold and she could get at least enough of a handle on what was happening here to safely-
Her hopes and inscribing both were interrupted, as someone came sprinting into the flat through the hole in the wall, skidded out-of-control on the dust-covered floor, and slammed bodily into her. Hermione fairly shrieked in shock and spun around with the hit, allowing her a view of a young woman her own age. The woman's echoing shriek, and the expression of dismay that was straining her own features made it difficult to be certain, but, considering the line on Hermione's clipboard for this flat had listed the tree's owner as "Ms. T. Davis", she could see a certain resemblance to her former classmate.
"What are you-" the woman began to shout, but her eyes widened even further - to the point where they threatened to eclipse her forehead - and she reached out towards Hermione, who felt herself tipping off-balance from the spin. The woman's fingers closed around Hermione's arm at the same time Hermione's head intersected the skein she'd been trying to analyze, the lambent syrup cutting through four layers of PASS like they hadn't been cast at all - or more precisely, like they hadn't been cast yet.
Hermione felt it happen, and she wanted to be exasperated, but somehow as all light and thought vanished, all she felt was contentment, familiarity, wonder.
o-o-o
She looked around, in considerable confusion. The flat was gone, the Coeur-arbre, the ritual, Tracey (if that had actually been her)...instead, she was in a bookshop. Which was still somehow comforting, despite its current inexplicability. Hermione recognized it almost immediately as Flourish and Blotts in Diagon Alley, which at least answered - partially, anyway - one of the dozen or so questions now fighting for attention in her mind.
The shop bustled with its usual activity, with witches and wizards of all ages criss-crossing the shop and politely elbowing each other for room. It thus did not take long at all for Hermione's confusion to shift gears when one of the aforementioned joints - belonging to a passing witch - sailed through her body with no resistance, or indeed reaction on the part of its owner.
"Er…" said Hermione. Her first thought was that the Coeur-arbre syrup had acted like a Pensieve, but she'd finally had the chance to use one during her DRCMC training (for "first-hand" exposure to otherwise excessively rare or dangerous creatures), and while her current surroundings did have a very slight hazy cast to them, it seemed like a subjectively different sort of hazy cast. She then examined this thought, did not think highly of it, and wondered if she might be suffering some sort of after-effects. But only idly...it didn't seem important, somehow.
Her attention was drawn to a small commotion - a pair of wizards were leaning over to observe something hidden from her view behind a small stand of copies of perennial-bestseller, Hogwarts, a History. She walked around the stand to see better, and suddenly felt like she'd been punched in the stomach. There, sprawled on the floor, was a young girl in muggle attire, a mass of brown bushy hair framing her face. On one side of her was a bag from Flourish and Blotts, filled with the official class books the girl had responsibly purchased before beginning her personal browsing. On the other side, beneath her fingertips, was a crisp new copy of Hogwarts, a History.
The girl's face was pale, her eyes closed, and the wizards were arguing about whether to try another spell since Rennervate hadn't worked, or just have one of them set straight off for St. Mungo's to fetch a Mediwitch, and if so, which of them would go and which would stay.
Hermione realized several things in quick succession. The girl was herself, on her first trip to Diagon Alley. This was not a memory, Pensieve or otherwise, because she certainly hadn't fainted in the bookstore. The unknown ritual with the Coeur-arbre had presented as involving at least one Fundamental Magic, one of which, of course, was Time. And finally - and most alarmingly - as she watched her younger self grow paler, she herself felt increasingly invigorated, her thoughts more clear.
"A Horcrux?" she whispered, horror racing with bafflement and edging into a slight lead. Her dismay easily tripled as one of the wizards looked up, then back and forth in her general direction, as if he'd heard her, but wasn't able to see her. Yet.
Immediately, she stepped forward and kicked her own hand away from the book.
Or at least that was her intention, if perhaps an ill-considered one given her current intangibility. As it happened, her hand did move away from the book, but it was entirely due to the full-body startle she gave when she abruptly found herself inhabiting her younger self's body, staring up at two suddenly-relieved-looking wizards.
"See, it must've just taken a moment to kick in," said the shorter wizard.
"Are you quite all right, young lady?" asked the other. "Do you need help to St. Mungo's, or perhaps finding your guardian?" Now incarnated, she could somehow feel her younger self's mind beneath her own, as if it were an egg on a table and she was pressing her hand on it with steadily increasing force. With all her willpower, she rejected this sensation, "pulled" her hand away. And it seemed to work, her younger mind felt less endangered. But at the same time, she now felt a "hollow place" at the top of her own mind, very slowly pulsing, pushing out cracks. It was a deeply disquieting sensation, but she could obviously cope with it in the short term if the alternative was somehow draining her own life force away.
That handled for the moment, she regarded the book on the floor warily, as if it were a live, poisonous snake. But there was no point in getting rid of it...if it was somehow a horcrux akin to Riddle's diary - or something close to it, since she certainly hadn't killed anyone to create it (unless she'd killed herself?) - it wouldn't matter, she was already linked to it. And it seemed to be working much faster, perhaps because it was her own spirit trying to (or trying not to, rather) steal her own life force. But there appeared to be a degenerative factor in her refusal...possibly if she just waited it out, the link would fade and break.
"Miss? Miss?" One of the wizard's repeated calls finally penetrated, and Hermione realized she needed to begin acting immediately to limit any changes to History. If she - or a part of her soul - had been flung back through Time by whatever had happened, the normal "protections" of a Time-Turner might not apply. She hastily picked up her (soon-to-be) copy of Hogwarts, a History and her bag of other books and stood up, past the gentle pressure of the wizards' hands as they urged caution.
"I'm all right now, really. Just a medical condition, ah, Transient Ischemic Fluctuations, happens to a lot of muggle-borns…" she said, hoping neither of the wizards themselves were muggle-borns. They still looked concerned, but a little less so - jargon could be comforting, putting something in a nicely defined box that said that someone understood it, even if that someone wasn't you.
"You still really ought to get that checked at St. Mungo's," urged the taller wizard, "They can deal with most muggle diseases pretty easily, you know."
"Oh yes," said Hermione, "my parents have a pamphlet, they're taking me there straight away after we finish shopping, I'm just browsing while they get everything else. They'll probably be back here in no more than two hours or so, if you want to wait?" This was a gamble, but she hoped the assurance combined with the inconvenience of minding her for up to two hours would dissuade the would-be Samaritan wizards.
"Ah, well, that's probably all right then," said the shorter wizard. "We ought to be going anyway. But you might want to use one of the chairs in the Reading Corner," he suggested, pointing towards a nook off to the side of the clerks' registers, "just in case you fall down again?" Hermione nodded encouragingly.
"Thank you, that's an excellent idea...I just need to buy this first. Thank you so much, you've both been very kind." The taller wizard still looked uncertain, but allowed his companion to pull him away as Hermione headed towards a register queue.
She bought the book, and quickly performed her traditional ritual of inscribing her name - though she suspected whatever strange magic was at work had marked the book far more securely as hers than anything she could have done deliberately. Bringing her first trip to Flourish and Blotts to mind, she recalled finding Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century next, so she put Hogwarts, a History into her bag of purchases and hurriedly found the proper shelf. She put one hand on a copy, then paused.
Her sense of her past self's mind suggested that even if it wasn't in control, it was active somehow, at least a little, and Hermione feared that meant she'd remember some of this...certainly enough that she'd ask questions about it that she'd definitely never asked.
Working with a light, instinctive touch, she experimentally ran mental fingers through her younger mind as if it was a book, and found she received impressions of what was on each "page". Encouraged, she continued, until she found a section that felt correct, right up at the "end". Hermione hesitated a moment, wary of relying on inexplicable abilities she didn't understand, but every moment that passed increased the risk to History. She closed her eyes and whispered.
"Sorry, but this is for our own good."
Hermione pulled sharply, tearing, and she felt it as a searing burn across her own psyche. She felt herself slipping and deliberately turned it into a sort of fumbling mental acrobatics, "flinging" her younger self's mind "upward" while she dropped "beneath". Throughout the maneuver, she was relieved - sort of - to note that the hollow place stayed firmly affixed to her own mind.
Hermione couldn't have explained how she'd done it, but it had worked. Her younger self, now in control again, shook her head slightly, then withdrew the copy of Great Wizarding Events and began scanning the table of contents, not acting as if she'd experienced anything bizarre and inexplicable. And Hermione herself no longer seemed to have a body of her own, she was simply watching through her past self's eyes, hearing through her ears, and - somewhat less distinctly - feeling the other normal operations of her body, even while her mind still reeled from the shocking pain of having attacked her own memories. Did that pain mean that this "now" was still causally linked to her own, and the pain was a flavor of backlash? But she'd acted to preserve her own episodic continuity...maybe it was just a sympathetic reaction, since they were somehow sharing the same brain...
By the time her parents and Professor McGonagall showed up to collect her and go buy her wand, her past self had purchased all the books she'd remembered purchasing this trip, and the adults had said the same things she remembered - or loosely, at any rate, her memory was not quite as good for speech as it was for written material, and it had been nearly a decade. But if she'd had lungs, she would've sighed in relief. Whatever was going on with her, History, at least, seemed to be safe.
At least, it did for the seven minutes it took to walk to Ollivanders.
o-o-o
Hermione watched, with increasing concern, the not just different, but downright bizarre version of her first visit to Ollivanders. It was concerning, but not really alarming, until the enigmatic wandmaker appeared to come to a decision.
"I have little doubt you will learn...everything in Time, Miss Granger. But it will not have been now, nor from me," he intoned. Merlin, he's going to Obliviate you! Protego, dodge, do something you little idiot! Hermione tried to reverse the maneuver she'd pulled before, to take control, but she could gain no purchase. A bright flash issued from the tip of Ollivander's wand, and Hermione felt a thousand-thousand delicate threads of magic slice through her past self's mind, breaking connections, rending apart associations. Her past self didn't seem to feel it, but for her, it was as if she'd been dropped into an active lava flow, it was like being Crucio'd by Bellatrix all over again but with Greyback tearing her to pieces at the same time.
She screamed, soundlessly. Waves of agony and alarm washed imperceptibly over her younger self's mind, nestling into the cracks in the banal replacement memories Ollivander's spell was painstakingly constructing. Hermione did not lose consciousness exactly...consciousness was all she was. But under the unrelenting assault, her thoughts grew thick and dull and dark, and it was equal parts horror and mercy, for she lost the pain in a dense, slow fog of confusion.
o-o-o
By the time Hermione's mind regained coherence, weeks had apparently passed - she found herself lying in her bed at Hogwarts, staring up at the dark canopy over her bed. Something seemed a bit off about it, but her first priority was to take stock of both her own mind and her past self's. Thankfully, the younger mind, now sleeping, showed no sign of damage - as awful as it had been for Hermione, Ollivander had patched over his own work much more smoothly than the scar she had left from her own desperate efforts in Flourish and Blotts. Though there did seem to be strange ripples of her own experience woven distastefully through the former, like a few cat hairs sticking out of an otherwise delicious pudding. But even more relieving, there was no sign that the degeneration had affected her other self. It seemed, even in her insensate state, Hermione had retained her conviction not to draw upon her past self's life force.
Her own mind, however, was another matter. The cracks and gaps had spread throughout, and widened - and though she could sense them with the strange awareness she had in this state, through some self-referential flaw, she couldn't interpret them the way she had with her past self's memories. She knew that important parts of her were going, and she had no idea which. It ought to have terrified her, but it felt more irritating than anything else, and that frightened her a little bit.
With her younger self asleep, she did seem to have regained control of their shared body at the moment, and it occurred to her that if she couldn't fully rely on her own mind anymore, she ought to keep some kind of notes. Besides, note-taking always helped her think even under normal circumstances. If she gained control every time her younger self slept, and could keep the notes secure and hidden somehow - even from herself - maybe she could compile enough research to undo this whole mess, get back to her own time.
Accordingly, she slipped out of bed quietly, so as not to disturb her roommates - Lavender in particular was a light sleeper - but her trunk was not where she expected it to be, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from crying out when she stubbed a toe. But apparently the small sound had been too much.
"Be quiet," murmured an irritable voice, and Hermione winced as much for waking Lavender as for her smarting toe.
"Sorry Lav," she whispered, feeling around for the trunk's unfamiliar position. But her reassurance apparently had the opposite of the intended effect, as she heard the soft sound of the girl sitting up in bed.
"What did ye call me?" came a whisper from the shadows. Hermione's heart juddered. Whatever parts of her mind might be missing, she was certain that Lavender did not have a Scottish accent. She leaned forward and twitched the curtains slightly to let a bit more of the dim moonlight into the room, and was additionally disoriented by how high the view seemed to be, and furthermore of the wrong side of the castle. But that was nothing compared to seeing the completely unfamiliar face glaring at her from the adjacent bed. Hermione desperately tried to bring her thoughts up to speed.
"I...I meant sorry, I have to use the lav," she whispered. "I just stubbed my toe."
"Bards will sing of your tragedy," the girl responded, scorn dripping from her own hissing whisper. "Next time, daen't apologize, just be quiet." With that, she flopped back down and pulled the blanket back up - also, somehow, scornfully.
Hermione, not wanting to risk further noise or conversation at the moment, quickly moved to the bathroom. And stood frozen in utter shock, for from the complete lack of lions in the fixtures, it was obvious that it was not a Gryffindor bathroom.
o-o-o
After some unknown period of quiet panic, Hermione tried to get a grip on herself. Step one was to orient herself. Looking at the fixtures closely, they were all eagles and ravens. So apparently, while she'd been "out", her past self had been Sorted into Ravenclaw. She had seriously changed Time. Hermione became a little dizzy and a bit nauseated, and felt the need to spend a while sitting on the bathroom floor with her arms around her knees, rocking.
But even if it was hard to remember, in a not-quite-twelve-year-old body, feeling like this - in a bathroom, no less - and surrounded by paradox-laden bird fixtures, she eventually reminded herself that she was a Gryffindor, she was a confident adult woman, and fugues did not solve problems. So Hermione pulled herself together again, and came at it from a different direction. It had been weeks, at least, since Diagon Alley. Plenty of time for Butterfly Effects to become shocking and disorienting - instead, she withdrew into herself and reached for that strange sense of her younger self's mind again. She tried carefully paging through it, spending enough time to get as much detail as she could from each bit, noting each change from her recollections, compiling a new mental timeline. But she found it difficult to keep things straight, to stay focused.
Notes, right. She was going to keep notes.
Hermione judged it had been long enough that whoever the Scottish girl was - not Cho Chang, she'd have recognized her...who'd been in Ravenclaw her year? Mac-something... Anyway, that she was hopefully solidly asleep again. So she ventured back into the bedroom proper, and with achingly slow, silent movements, managed to extract her wand, a quill and some paper from one of her trunks, then make her way back to the bathroom. She sat carefully on the side of a toilet seat - stall door closed and latched - lit her wand dimly, and began to take notes, though they came out a bit more stream-of-consciousness than she'd have liked.
She filled a full page with everything she could remember about the Coeur-arbre, the Arithmantic diagrams, the man who'd attacked her and fled, and continued them on a second sheet. Hermione decided that, given the name, if anyone had better information than Hogwarts on Coeur-arbre, it would be Beauxbatons, though contacting them without making things worse could be problematic.
Next was compiling changes. Obviously there were the two wizards in Flourish and Blotts - she really should've gotten their names at the time, but there really wasn't much she could do there at this point. But the next thing was Ollivander's bizarre behaviour, and there wasn't enough time for what happened in the bookstore to have spread changes that far. Tracey had grabbed her just before it happened, what if she'd been pulled in too, but to an earlier time? But then she really ought to have noticed more changes, as soon as she arrived. Hermione considered contacting Ollivander, since he clearly knew something, but that had the same difficulties as Beauxbatons, and plus, he'd essentially assaulted an eleven-year-old. For all she knew, he had been under an Imperius, or had been Polyjuiced at the time or something.
The bit with Tonks...her younger self must have arrived at King's Cross slightly earlier, so that was easy enough to explain. But what had possessed her to actually make Pettigrew's fur yellow? Yes, she didn't know what he was, but still...that hadn't even occurred to her in her own version, even though she had seen the spell. Ah...she'd thought it was Tonks, Ron had mentioned his brothers, which must have reminded her of Tonks' conversation about pranking and her own disapproval of the same. Such a little thing... There must've been some earlier changes, but she couldn't find any obvious ones. And then after that… Hermione paged further into her younger self's memories.
Madam Pomfrey was dead. Madam Pomfrey was dead. Because she'd been forced to examine Pettigrew, because he'd bitten Goyle while being yellow.
Because of her.
She cried for a while, until it felt like she might be crying more for herself than for Poppy, then wiped away the tears harshly and continued her analysis. Was there any point in turning Pettigrew in? He'd probably go back to hiding, and so many parts of History depended on him being where he'd been, doing what he'd done. But he hadn't killed anyone this early before, and Riddle is here...how will he react to that? What if they found each other early?
Hermione tried to concentrate, but felt herself inching closer to drawing upon her younger self's energy, and flinched away. She considered the possibility that she might not be able to survive in this state much longer - at least not and retain any thoughts recognizable as her. I've traveled far further back through Time than I ever did third year, and yet I somehow don't have enough. Even Dearest Ronald would laugh.
She briefly considered just running to Dumbledore straightaway. There was nothing to be done about Poppy, but how much other death and horror could be avoided if Dumbledore knew everything, and now - or at least as much as she could access, the way her mind was? But for all she knew, Poppy was only the first backlash from her changes, inadvertent or otherwise - changing Time was dangerous. Yes, by abusing her Time-Turner they'd saved Buckbeak, and Sirius...if only temporarily - but it was pure luck that they'd had sufficient room to avoid contradictions that time and dodge around paradox. Here, paradox was stacking up rather fiercely.
She'd compromise...record everything she remembered - it was only right that it be preserved - and think of some way that the information be revealed if things were already going further wrong than they had already, or than they had the first time? That way it ought to limit the repercussions-
Hermione frowned. The word she'd just written had vanished. She scribbled a little, tried again. Those marks vanished as well. She looked at the quill - it wasn't that the self-inking enchantment had run out, it was making marks, they just weren't staying.
As she tested further, she watched in mute horror as the rest of her notes faded away, leaving the paper fresh and clean.
A Vanishing Ink Quill? Why in Merlin's name had she bought a joke Quill?!
She slumped wearily, one of the now-blank pages slipping from limp fingers into the toilet bowl below her, and she stared at it dully. Was this some kind of cosmic metaphor? Everything she'd done with her life was going to be wiped away and be flushed down the loo for good measure?
Hermione went ahead and flushed the useless page, then returned to her bed, finding the Scottish girl sitting up again, glaring. She didn't have the mental capacity to deal with this. She ought to Memory Charm her, she knew the spell well enough, but her body's muscle memory for the proper gestures wouldn't be present, plus there were her...issues...she might foul it up, the girl would naturally raise an alarm...
"Sorry," she whispered, instead. "Please don't tell anyone?" The girl just stared, and stared, just long enough for Hermione to actually recall the last thing she'd said to her, and cringe at the fact that in her inattention she'd done the opposite of what the Scottish girl had asked. The girl then only nodded curtly, her lips twisting, and lay down again. Hermione, feeling very much not herself, quietly put her things away, then got back into bed and waited for morning.
She wondered if it was a problem that in her current state - though she felt terribly weary - she didn't seem to have any capacity for sleep at all.
o-o-o
The next day was troubling, and the least of it was the constant low-level wrongness of her being a Ravenclaw. She was shocked to find herself visiting the Hogwarts Elves in the kitchens, treating them respectfully but not making a fuss - how had her younger self managed to come to terms with it, ethically? Hermione tried to recall what had gone through her own mind when she first discovered that Hogwarts kept house Elves, but the memory was disconcertingly fuzzy.
The conversation with the Weasley Twins at least cleared up most of the mystery of the quill and her notes, though something about it seemed not quite right, something important, but it was so hard to think when her younger self was awake, she just couldn't put her finger on it. Maybe it was that she'd kept the quill afterward?
She cringed at her brief misplaced sympathy about Scabbers' supposed death - or maybe it wasn't misplaced, since it was technically sympathy for Ronald, but either way it felt odd. But the thing with Lavender in Charms seemed highly suspicious. Pettigrew, in his Animagus form, clearly had some way of getting into and out of Gryffindor Tower - and perhaps the enchantments on the girl's dormitories only applied to male humans, in which case he could've stolen Lavender's wand, so anything he did to cover up Poppy's murder wouldn't show up on a Priori Incantato on her wand. That did leave open the question of what he had done, though.
Defence class definitely raised some concern, as Quirrell was obviously distracted in a way that suggested he was thinking about the murder. Not that him thinking about it was the real problem, but it was a symptom, since presumably Riddle was thinking about it as well. She wondered how the Slytherins would react if they knew they were effectively making sport of Voldemort. Riddle himself probably wouldn't actually mind, since they were targeting Quirrell - about whom he presumably cared very little - and they were only reinforcing Quirrell's oh-so-Slytherin deception about being harmless and beneath suspicion. But the first-years would probably wet themselves, and this thought took a bit of the edge off her very real concern about Riddle gaining some advantage as a result of her changes.
Then there was Transfiguration. Hermione hadn't made quite so comprehensive notes in her own first class, and while her first effort had reached the same endpoint, it hadn't been nearly as fast or dramatic. She had no idea that drilling down so far on contrast and conformation could have that kind of effect on speed, and felt a peculiar jealousy towards her younger self. Not that she seemed likely to have a particularly easy time of it, with all the obvious complications involved in the secrecy imposed by Professor McGonagall.
History of Magic was about as dull as she remembered it, though the house pairing was different, and there was - based on where she directed her gaze - her younger self's peculiar fixation on Slytherins. Yes, the Sorting wasn't exactly fair, but experience showed it was essentially accurate. But seemingly having more sympathy for them and less for the widely oppressed Elves gave Hermione some pause about the girl's moral judgement.
The conversation with Professor McGonagall was curious. For one, that it had never occurred to Hermione that the student in Minerva's class introduction might have tried to Transfigure radioactive material. It wasn't that she'd discounted the theory because it would've been a terribly reckless thing to do - which was true - she simply hadn't thought of it. Instead, she'd just accepted the Professor's lesson that Transfiguration was dangerous and she needed to follow the rules at all times, and given it no further attention. And then there was the very obvious realization - at least in retrospect - that Minerva must have had her own Time-Turner. Since Dumbledore had his own enigmatic responsibilities outside the school, he passed a significant amount of day-to-day responsibilities to her, and unlike him, she had Transfiguration to teach as well. It made her respect McGonagall even more, given all that had happened over the years, the difference a few extra hours of preparation might have made in so many situations, that she'd resisted the temptation to fiddle with Time. Or maybe, like Hermione, her respect for rules - at least, sensible ones - was so strong that intervening simply hadn't occurred to her without someone else to urge her, as Dumbledore had for Hermione? But then why hadn't he ever prompted Minerva similarly? Or maybe he had, and things would have been even worse otherwise…
o-o-o
She'd taken care to note how all Y.H.'s things were arranged this morning, so when the girl finally went to sleep, Hermione was able to navigate more confidently in the dark without disturbing anyone. Enough to gather clothes, wand, Self-Inking quill (a proper one this time), and paper. She decided to wait to change out of her nightgown until she was half a turn down the stairs, though. There was no sense in tempting fate with Morag again, who seemed to be holding a serious grudge about having her sleep disturbed, but thankfully she hadn't specifically mentioned it to her younger self.
Once she'd dressed, Hermione considered Disillusioning herself, but Disillusionment wasn't perfect, and if she was caught anyway, it would be much harder to explain having cast it as a first-year. Instead, she settled for charming her clothes to a uniform grey that fairly matched the castle's stone, then Silencing herself. She even, for a moment, considered trying to use a Summoning Charm to borrow the Marauder's Map, but even supposing there was an open path via which it could make its way to her, the risk that the Twins would see or hear it leave seemed too great. For all she knew, they were using it this very moment, roaming the castle after curfew.
That thought gave her pause. If they were using it, they'd be alert for anyone moving around the corridors, and it was impossible to predict how they'd react to seeing her name. At least it'd be her name either way, and that complication had been avoided - though the Twins seemed not terribly observant in that regard, or they'd have noticed Pettigrew or Riddle this year (presuming the latter showed up somehow superimposed with Quirrell, at any rate). But if they did, and decided to track her down, discovering her sneaking about Silenced, in charmed camouflage, like some sort of ninja witch, would be an awful tangle. Maybe she should've just left her nightgown on, allowing her to more easily claim sleepwalking, or something? In the end, she shrugged off these concerns. She was fairly certain that even in Y.H.'s body, she could subdue Filch and Mrs. Norris or the Twins, and Memory Charm them as necessary - with no one else around, she'd have enough time to do it slowly and carefully. On the other hand, if she encountered Snape...well, she'd cross that bridge when she came to it, and in the meantime just avoid going near his office or the forbidden third floor corridor.
Fortunately enough, she encountered no difficulty getting out of Ravenclaw Tower and making her way to the Library, despite the unfamiliarity of the route - in contrast to the path from the Gryffindor common room to the Library, which she knew better than the house she'd grown up in. The Library wasn't even locked, which Hermione found surprising given Madam Pince's predilections. Maybe it simply didn't occur to her anyone would dare intrude off hours?
Despite the eerie gloom, Hermione took a moment just to revel in the comforting familiarity, running her fingers along the shelves. Two years at the DRCMC...she'd thrown herself into her work, but lost her sense of identity. This was what was important...thousands of years of recorded knowledge, perfect and immutable. She could just climb onto one of the shelves and be content, secure. Madam Pince would never let anyone change her history, scribbling out what was meant to be written on her pages.
On her pages?
Hermione shook her head foggily and reminded herself what she was there for...researching what had started this whole mess, and making a hidden copy of what she knew about her future, so...so...no matter what, it wouldn't be lost? Yes, that was it. She began to thread the stacks more purposely, pulling volumes on uncommon magical plants, Fundamental Magics, and certain Arithmancy texts.