Shattered Moments
By Rurouni Star
You guys get a big author's note today. A big one.
First off. The updates. I'm obviously in college now, and taking a few more credit hours than usual. I'm writing a book (well along, yes) and a comic, and starting a club, and keeping up as perfect a GPA as I can, because I have a scholarship to keep. My days are so horrifically packed, it's inhuman. And, yes, I did it to myself. (Ever wonder where Hermione got that particular characterization bit? No, no, nevermind…)
This doesn't mean I won't update. It means I'm doing my best, and it's not a top priority, as much as I really want it to be. Believe me, I would rather be writing fanfiction than doing Precalculus. Alas, the world just doesn't work that way.
Notes on this particular chapter: I had a few ideas to make it a little more interesting. Firstly, you'll notice I included a lot of allusions. It had always been a thought in my mind, that Future Hermione might be a bit more well read in the fiction and poetry department. Especially the grimmer things. Hermione's point of view is as absolutely confusing as it gets right now (which means it can only get better from here, possibly, theoretically), so I decided to add in some muddled thoughts, courtesy of other real authors. Poor girl.
And now, I get to explain The Past. For a quick note, before we get started on this. I'd like to say: ironically, this plot was always pretty well established in my mind, including the Horcrux. I had just decided the timeturner would be akin to Tom Riddle's diary. When book six came out and gave this dark, soul-preserving object a name, I was suddenly much more able to put this idea into words.
The explanation: Donahermurphy, as usual, comes out on top of the 'hey, I think I might understand what's going on' pile. Horcruxes are dark magic, and require an unwilling sacrifice (by my analyzation, anyway). What they pretty much do is split your soul into pieces and hide one in an object, so you can't die as long as that object is still there. Therefore, one Horcrux will have one half of the soul, while the body retains the other. That's what the timeturner is; it holds one half of future Hermione's soul. Because current Hermione is technically the same person, it counts as being her Horcrux. Normally, Time would squish her into little bits along with her Horcrux, but the timeturner is infinite, and cannot be squished. Therefore, she gets past Event Horizon and starts a new timeline.
Future Hermione was left research notes, the pensieve, and the timeturner from Dumbledore. In the pensieve, she saw Sirius tweak the Rutilus Vita, also dark magic, so that the requisite blood could come from him instead of a sacrifice (if you'll recall, he used it for the Order). This showed her how to work around the requirements of dark magic to lessen their impact. The only thing she could uncover with this information was the fact that she could split the 'unwilling sacrifice' into two parts – to put it more bluntly, force an unwilling person to kill a willing one, obviously with the use of the Imperius curse. At this, she hides the research and decides to ignore it. Alas, as it turns out, George finds her research and learns that there's a way to send someone back in time to fix what's happened (first among his concerns being Fred's death). He implements the solution she reached in her notes, and forces her to kill him.
You all know the rest.
Chapter 28 – A Game of Chess
"They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."
-Andy Warhol
There was a chess board.
There was a black side, and a white side, and the squares seemed to blur in her vision, so that they all turned into murky, dirty shades of grey. The pieces were in such convoluted positions, check and check and check and possibly, maybe checkmate in five turns or so, and in the end, she had no idea who she was rooting for, who she was playing for, if she was really playing at all.
My head hurts. Oh dear god, my head hurts.
"Check again, Harry. Come on, I know you can do better. Just – um – that rook, right there…"
"No, don't, Ron! I'm playing this one without your help!"
Really. My head hurts.
"He looks like he's winning," Hermione muttered.
"He's not. He's going down in two turns, and he knows it. Unless he moves that rook-"
"Ron!"
"All right, all right, shutting up. See me? Shut up. All shut up, not saying a word."
"And no pointing! Or- or gesturing!"
There was a muffled sound as Ron tried to deny vehemently through closed lips.
"I need to study," Hermione sighed, stacking her books up in her arms and pushing back her bushy hair. "You two… have fun."
Ron threw her an affirmative signal, without turning around. Harry sighed, and moved his rook.
Hermione headed up the stairs, trying to balance books and wand. Her head did hurt, and she'd had the strangest feeling of déjà vu all day. Or – maybe the reverse of déjà vu. Like she ought to know something that she didn't.
But I know everything, she thought, with a heavy sinking in her stomach. Everything.
She knew, for example, that Fred had once died, that George had once engineered his own murder, that she was desperately, horrifyingly, unquestionably in love with a memory in a pensieve that just happened to have a somewhat similar counterpart. She knew why, how, and where she had been put under the Imperius curse, the reason she had grown tolerant to it (don't think, dear, don't think about it, her mirror consoled). You don't allow it, after that. Even once, after that. You absolutely will not allow it.
In an absolutely different, but somewhat ironic vein, she knew T.S. Eliot's entire works almost by rote. She'd never read T.S. Eliot.
Never did. Never… have. Had. Never will, once upon a time…
But, she reflected, as she set her books down on her bed and sat down heavily against the door… she understood now that the world would end, not with a bang, but a piteous little whimper.
My world. This world and my world… my world is this world. It never would have existed without me. What does that make me?
She got to her feet, shaking her head, and went to lay herself down on the bed. Hermione pulled her pillow over her head and tried to breathe in the suffocating darkness. It was easier.
Philosophy is the last thing I need to consider right now.
It was… just the problem, with being overly imaginative. Overly analytical, more. She had to break things apart. She was a deconstructor. Fate had put her… no, no, Dumbledore had put her, a Dumbledore, one of them, or both of them, into the role of the constructor.
What had held true then, though, was still true now. However much she wanted to hide, Dumbledore had given her the one reason to fight she couldn't refuse.
The deconstructed dog. She would put him back together.
How?
Plan, Hermione. Plan. It's what you do.
I have no plan. I don't know what I'm planning for. I've changed things too much.
You're intelligent. We're intelligent. We have conquered the past, and the future. All we need is the present.
Arguably the easiest.
And hardest.
What do I do?
What do I do?
000000
'I'm sorry.'
Who said that?
It doesn't matter. Focus.
No. Who said it. I wanted to know, I wanted to find them, and tell them how much it wasn't enough. And thank them. And hate them.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
