Shattered Moments
By Rurouni Star

Sorry about the slow updates. I really am writing an original novel, and I'm hoping to give it to an editor at a convention that's coming up ridiculously soon. We're at 35,000 words. Rejoice! Break out the Mountain Dew!

This chapter is short, by the way, but really dense. Think of it as a singularity. (/really bad, geeky pun).

Also, yes – this is the end of separate POVs. You get to take a look inside Hermione's truly confused brain next.

Chapter 27 – Singularity

"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?"
-Tom Stoppard

The other Hermione leaned back onto her heels, closing her eyes with a deep breath.

"We're the same person. Whatever it is that makes Hermione who she is, at the core, is in both of us. The only difference is that I'm half her soul, whereas you've the whole-" She broke off, trembling. "By the end of this… you'll be one and a half. But hey, the soul is infinite… why should you notice a little more or a little less, right…"

She laughed, shaking her head. "There's a word for what I did, to get here – inside the ubiquitous timeturner. Because of that quality… it's the only safe place in any time or space during Event Horizon…"

Fingers in the sand, perfect fingernails dragging grooves in the infinite stars.

Her eyes lifted slowly, to meet their counterpart.

"Horcrux. The word is Horcrux."

000000

"Nudge."

George looked up at his twin from over his book ("Wizarding Business and You") to raise an eyebrow. "Did you- just say 'nudge'?"

Fred grinned. "I'm too comfortable to get up and do it. Anyway – Hermione's just come in. You want to take a break from your fascinating study to go declare undying love?"

George frowned at him. "You were the one who said we had to look into the bureaucracy of it all-"

"Time's a wasting."

George had already flicked his eyes toward the entrance to the common room, though, and decided that catching up with Hermione was enough to warrant an immediate end to the conversation. The book made a depressingly large thud on the chair where it fell as he got to his feet.

She seemed distracted. Enough so that he was able to stop her with a hand on her shoulder.

"Hermione?" Pause. What to say… he should've planned this…

"George, my- my head hurts. I need to lay down."

He frowned. "Look, I know you're avoiding me for some reason, but the least you could do is just tell me why instead of making all these excuses…"

"I know. Right. I'm a terrible person." She smiled sharply up at him, holding her forehead. "You don't want to talk to me right now, George."

"Your amazing mind reading powers must be off a bit today," he told her. "Because I really do."

Her eyes – they were that dark kind of something, as they looked at him. They were the same color, still, so it was hard to establish just how they were darker-

"All right. All right." Her smile, while pleasant, did not promise anything of the sort. "My room?"

George blinked. Not only was this not going anything like he would have imagined, but- "Er, Hermione, you know I can't-"

Her wand flicked at the staircase, where he hadn't even noticed it in her hand before.

"Of course you can."

She started up the steps without a backward glance at him.

He hesitated only a moment before trying to follow. The stairs let him up without complaint, all the way to the fourth year girls' dormitories.

Any other day, this would be cause for much patting on the back and blatantly immature snickering. Today, all he felt was an incredible unease.

Do I want to know? Came the sudden thought. I don't know what on earth I could have done, but do I want to know?

Hermione did look back at him, at the door. She opened it for him, waiting patiently as he entered.

000000

"Let me tell you a little secret – Dumbledore never once used any dark magic, not once in his life. But he'd no qualms about overlooking other people using it, as long as it helped him. Might even encourage it, without saying so. That was his research – all looked into, neat and tidy, and no one else could possibly understand it but me with my muggle ideas. But of course, the research said, you can't do this. This would be wrong. A horcrux is dark magic, and it takes sacrifices, and you shouldn't do it. But-" An acid twist of her mouth. "-he didn't destroy it, did he? No. And that timeturner, and the pensieve – those were blatant hints. First steps on the road to damnation."

Oh god. Oh god. She couldn't have. She wouldn't. No matter what, she couldn't have possibly – a sacrifice –

"But what do you know about the Rutilus Vita?" A tiny smile played on her lips. "That's the potion he gave you. It's supposed to take a sacrifice too, but he changed it. I watched the moment it dawned on him, and all the research after… one sacrifice, bleed slowly. You can fool it, he found. All it asked for was a sacrifice, it didn't have to be unwilling. He made a sacrifice of his own blood, in the other sense of the word. A horcrux, now – that's got to be an unwilling sacrifice… you can split it, but the end result was still horrific. I hid the notes and thought I would never do it and no one could reproach me because no one knew."

She leaned her head downward, chin resting on curled up knees. "Should've burned them. That's how you end things right. George found them."

One unwilling. One sacrifice. He wouldn't…

"For Fred? Of course he would. He made me kill him."

000000

The door shut with a quiet sound, and Hermione leaned against it with a kind of idle weariness.

Right. Girls' dorm. The hell… there had to be a chair somewhere, someplace safe to sit-

"What do you want to know?" she asked him, with sudden pleasantness.

George blinked, deciding for the moment to lean against one of the banisters. I'm still entirely in control, he thought, and tried to project this manner as much as possible. I'm one of those terrible twins mothers warn their ickle firsties to stay away from-

"I just… want to know what's wrong, I guess…" So much for that.

"It's really ironic you should ask that, George. Know why?" She moved, to sit down on her bed. He supposed it was her bed, at least. It had a large stack of books sitting next to it.

"No… I don't, really. I'm really sorry, all right? I don't know what it is, but I'm sorry for it." She had to believe him. It was pathetic how much he wanted her to believe him.

"Because," she said, her eyes muddled and tired and somehow smoldering with anger in spite of this. "Because this is all directly your fault." Her fingers were twined up in something, a chain around her neck…

He tried not to gape at her – at the sheer absurdity of this statement – but it was all right, considering the circumstances, that he failed.

"There's only one way to go back in time and make a difference," she told him, pulling on the chain. There was a tiny golden hourglass on the end of it, dangling strangely. It was out of sand, but it was made such that it could clearly be overturned to fix that little problem. "Only one way I could find, between Dumbledore's research and my own stupid stumbling about. And I didn't want to do it. In spite of everything, I didn't want to do it. Hermione Granger is not that kind of person, not now or then or ever."

"There's only one way, but there's variations on the actual process," she said, looking up at him with her tired smile and her dark eyes. "So this is the question that'll make it all make sense… if it was between saving Fred or not fucking me up completely, which one would you choose?"

Something like tears had begun to collect at the edges of her eyes. She wiped at them with shaking fingers.

This wasn't true. It couldn't possibly be true. It was too crazy.

"I wouldn't," he whispered dazedly. "There's no way I would…"

"Not now. But you… you would… under the same circumstances…" Her voice was breaking. "I'm sorry, George. I shouldn't have said anything. I can't – I can't blame you for this. How on earth can I blame you for something you haven't done yet? Now… you might never do it…"

He stared at her, purely shell-shocked. I did this? Impossible. I did this to her? She'd said it. Direct result.

"…I can't hate you," she said in a small voice. "There's one half of me that really wants to, but can't, and there's the rest of me that really… really likes you. I shouldn't have done this."

Maybe she's crazy, the thought came. Maybe she is, that would make it all… somewhat better…

But regardless of her state of mind, or the future, or the past future, or any kind of anything, Hermione was still sitting on the edge of her bed crying.

Know what? Later. I'll think about it later.

It seemed an eternity ago he'd done this exact same thing, pulling her carefully into him while she tried to find the present. She was tiny, compared. Soft and shaking.

"I don't… understand," he told her honestly, his fingers dragging through her hair. "But whatever else… I know I wouldn't… not… me right now…"

Her fingers closed around his shirt, dragging him down with a surprising amount of strength. Her mouth closed on his, desperate and lost – searching for something she instinctively knew she wouldn't find in him. Someone else. A different him.

He could feel her fingers, tracing his face. There, over his cheekbone, down the line of his neck. That much would be the same, wouldn't it? Before he could begin to make sense of that, his own hand slipped to the base of her neck, careful. This was Hermione, whatever else in the world was true, and she was kissing him like that…

Her lips curved up against him for a moment. That made it all worthwhile.

When she drew back, her hand was still resting against his cheek. There was some kind of understanding light in her eyes that hadn't been there before.

"I… really could have loved you," she told him.

It sent a strange kind of shiver down his spine, as he brushed his thumb over her bottom lip. He allowed himself to think, for just a moment, of that strange future of hers where she did love him. The possibility was…

"But we're… neither of us are who we were…" A sigh. "I shouldn't have done this, you remember? And from here, I'll be no better than Dumbledore."

Her wand… the wand in her hand…

"Confundus."

000000

Hermione looked at her, trying to find the broken insanity inside. All she saw was darkness, in those dark pits of her eyes. Worse than Azkaban. A living singularity, unclothed.

"So you brought me here, somehow… because while I'm in here, Time can't get to me?"

"Seven out of ten, Miss Granger." Whisper. The sand was descending, and the sky was rumbling ominously. "But you're missing the obvious. I didn't bring you here. It tried to destroy you, already. But you can't die. You've a horcrux, in an untouchable place. Event Horizon brought you here."

A pause.

"Do you know? My one regret? I shouldn't tell you. You don't need to hear it. But you know I'm more selfish than you, at this moment in time… I'm going to tell you anyway."

Sad and tired and dark and she could still smile wistfully.

I wanted to touch him again. Just one more time.

000000

"She's really not doing well."

Fred sighed. "That all you talked about?"

George shrugged uneasily. "It's not easy to… talk about other stuff, when someone's like that. I'm leaving off, Fred. Least… 'till summer."

Fred rolled his eyes. "You're a lost cause, mate."

George sat down heavily, picking up the book again. "Yeah. I guess so."

000000

Breakfast this day would rank among the top ten strangest things ever to happen to Draco Malfoy. It would in fact, by complete coincidence, take the spot that 'turned into a ferret and bounced around a corridor' would have occupied had time not decided to eradicate that particular event.

As it was, the letter that dropped in front of him was unexpectedly ratty and covered in bird droppings.

He swore beneath his breath – at the owl that had just departed, at the post, at anyone who happened to be nearby, in general.

"I'm not opening this piece of…"

The writing was strangely familiar.

"Fuck."

Despite it all, the letter disappeared into his bag.

000000

Her white, shark-like smile, beneath dead eyes, is the last memory of the unreal, everywhere place. The older Hermione, standing in the eye of a breaking storm – white shirt billowing, snapping, in the wind. Short hair shadowing the eyes.

"I hate you," she informed her, because it was what they both expected, and they both knew anyway.

"I know." Soft. "So don't become me."