There is a world out there where Harry Potter defeated Lord Voldemort during what was supposed to be his seventh year at the Battle of Hogwarts—where Hermione Granger married Ron Weasley and they lived happily with their small family—where Dumbledore died and Snape was more than a jilted lover. There is a world everything played out according to plan and everyone lived happily ever after, more or less.
This isn't that world.
.
.
.
July 1978
It was a random bloke in a random club two hours away from the small highland town where Jean Granger's sister, Mary, lived. Some Scotsman with an accent that made Jean's knees weak, and who made her forget, just for one moment, that her husband was a cheating piece of shit. And now, evidently, so was she.
Jean should have known that one reckless decision would come back to bite her in the ass.
She stared down at the tiny piece of plastic clutched in between her fingers and cursed the man from the club. She could barely even remember what he looked like—all that she remembered was his mop of curly brown hair. And his accent. Lord, his accent.
"You could go back to George," Mary suggested in between bites of potato chips.
Jean whirled on her sister, who was perched on her living room couch, alternating between glancing at Jean and watching tennis. Apparently, Jean's emergency wasn't big enough to warrant a break from her sister's favorite pastime. This was why they'd never gotten along. Mary didn't care about who she hurt so long as she got her way. Jean was adamantly against hurting people (unless in the practice of dentistry. That was an entirely different issue).
"Have sex with George and tell him it's his." Mary grinned. "My mate Ginger did that."
.
.
There is a world where Jean Granger did just that—where she lied to her husband just as he lied to her and they were never happy until their daughter erased their memories—where Hermione Granger grew up oblivious to the cousin she had living just down the hallway. There's even a world where George never cheated and Hermione was legitimately his.
This isn't that world.
.
.
Jean's jaw dropped. "I-I can't do that," she sputtered.
"Why not?"
"It'd be dishonest." Jean straightened her shoulders and puffed out her chest. She couldn't stand dishonesty. It was one of the things that had attracted her to George in the first place. He hadn't pretended that she was some great beauty. He'd been honest with her. And she'd appreciated that.
Ironic, now, all things considered.
Mary groaned. "When are you going to grow up and learn that life isn't a fairytale, Jean? You make mistakes and you pay for them."
Jean gaped. "You've slept with more guys than I have, Mary, and you've never had to pay for it." She'd only slept with three men in her life: her high school boyfriend Frank, George, and the mysterious Scotsman.
"You don't know everything that's happened, Jean." Mary crossed her arms and sank further into the couch.
The expression on Mary's face caused Jean to pause. Loss was plainly written across her face. Loss and bitterness.
A memory—so distant Jean barely even remembered it—flitted through her mind. Back in dentistry school. The car crash that killed Mary's boyfriend, Peter. The three weeks after that Mary had crashed in her flat and refused to tell her anything. The crib on the curb when Mary moved back in that she'd insisted belonged to her elderly neighbor.
Jean had never put it together before.
"I'm sorry." There's nothing else that she can say. "I didn't know."
Jean's apology hung in the air. Mary didn't accept it. Jean knew that she never would. Mary was as prideful as Jean—it was one of the only things they had in common.
"I'm going for a walk," Jean announced, eager to escape the uncomfortable house. Walks outdoors had always helped Jean clear her mind.
Dropping the test in the nearest waste basket, Jean grabbed Mary's spare set of keys and slipped outside. Once she was on the other side of the bright blue door, she released a sigh. She never knew her sister had been pregnant.
Pregnant.
She was pregnant.
Three tests and all the results were the same. What was supposed to be a quick escape from her husband after she discovered his affair with the medical student who lived in the flat below them was suddenly a lot more. Jean Granger was pregnant, and she didn't know the father.
Pushing off the door, Jean stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jeans and began to walk towards the center of town. The small village that Mary had moved to after their parents died was pretty much like every other Scottish highland village—that is to say, quiet, except for at the pub. Rolling hills spread out as far as the eye could see on one side of the town, and on the other side, there was the North Sea. It was pretty picturesque, Jean had to admit, but it was freezing cold during the winter. Their main industries were sheep farming and fishing. Nothing too out of the ordinary.
As she passed through the streets, Jean admired the small shops and handful of pubs. A flier in the window of the wool shop caught her eye. Haunted Tours, it read, and displayed a picture of an old mansion sitting on a cliff. The mansion looked oddly familiar—made of dark stone and covered in ivy with too many chimneys to count. Jean was sure she'd seen it before.
"D'ya need somethin', dear?"
Jean jumped, startled out of her thoughts. The old woman who ran the yarn shop gave her a gap-toothed grin and chuckled.
"You scared me." Jean placed a hand on her chest to still her beating heart. How long until she would be able to hear two heartbeats?
"I did." Holding the door open, the woman featured inside. "Why don't ye come on in an' tell Trudy what's on yer mind?"
"There's nothing-"
"I can tell something's going on up there, dear. I always can."
Jean frowned. A psychic? The last thing she needed was some old lady trying to scam her out of her money by reading her tea leaves.
.
.
There is a world where Jean Granger turned around and went back to her sister's flat—where she made up with Mary and the two of them figured out what to do about the baby together.
This isn't that world.
.
.
"How do ye take yer tea, dear?" Trudy called from inside the yarn shop.
"Two sugars." Jean set foot in the small yarn shop. The bell jingled as the door closed behind her.
"I couldna help but notice that ye were starin' at the old Wood house i' the window." Trudy placed the kettle on to boil and set two places at a table by the window.
"Yes." Jean nodded. "Is it really haunted?" She didn't know why she asked, but something about that house seemed different.
"Haunted?" Trudy laughed. "Na. Just abandoned."
"What happened?"
Trudy shrugged. "What usually happens—the family moved out. It was too much for even them to look after. They're all livin' i' the south now."
"The south?"
"Glasgow."
Jean laughed. She was born and bred in London. Never in her life would she call Glasgow the south.
The kettle went off and Trudy started pouring it into the teapot. "What did ye say yer name was, dear?"
"I didn't." Jean offered a polite smile. "I'm Jean Granger."
Trudy froze. The water stopped flowing from the kettle. Her warm eyes trailed over Jean's face, taking in each and every line. Her eyes widened as she continued to study Jean.
"Yer one of the Woods, then?"
Jean shook her head. "No. I've never even heard of them. Why?"
"Ye remind me of someone." Trudy shook her head. "It's probably a coincidence."
"Probably," Jean agreed. Disagreeing with Trudy didn't seem like an option—not when she had frozen as she had.
Trudy sat down across from Jean and folded her knobby hands together. "So," she said, "tell me, Jean. What's on yer mind?"
For some reason, Jean told Trudy the truth. She told her everything—from George's infidelity to the night with the stranger to the results that came from just a little bit of revenge. Trudy just drank her tea and listened. And, when Jean was finished telling her story, Trudy nodded.
"It sounds like ye need a little bit of magic," she said.
Jean sighed. "I need to reverse time. That's what I need."
"Well, I canna give ye that." Trudy grabbed her hand. "All I can offer is advice. Go up to the Wood house and take a look around. I've often found answers there."
.
.
There is a world where Jean took Trudy's words to be the ramblings of an old woman—where she eventually returned to London and started a small dentistry practice. There's even a world where she moved to Bath to work for her friend from school and they fell in love.
This isn't that world.
.
.
Half an hour later, Jean found herself wandering through the overgrown gardens of Wood house. It wasn't quite a house. Jean couldn't bring herself to call it that. The Wood house was older than a house, but it wasn't a castle, and it definitely wasn't a mansion of some sort. No. The Wood house was something all to itself. Something old and ancient with a power that Jean could feel in her bones.
Jean had never believed in magic, but something about the Wood house made her pause for just a second and think that maybe—just maybe—there was more to the world than she could comprehend.
The gardens themselves were like something out of a fairytale. Lavender and thyme covered the path that Jean padded across as she ran her fingers against the stone walls, tracing every dip and crevice. The stone was cold beneath her fingers.
With one hand on the wall, Jean touched her belly. There was something in there. A baby. Or what would grow into one. Wood house will have the answers you need, Jean mentally repeated Trudy's advice. It seemed stupid for her to let a house decide her fate, but Jean was looking for answers and she'd never been religious.
What she really wanted was a way out—a way to reverse every mistake she'd made and start over.
At the corner of the garden, Jean stopped. A small wooden door lingered just beyond her reach, waiting for Jean to open it and explore the insides. But something stopped Jean. There was a lingering feeling in the back of her mind—a buzzing that told her that if she stepped through the door that would be it. Nothing would ever be the same again.
.
.
There is a world where Jean listened to that feeling—where she sat in the gardens until late that night and stared up at the stars—where she got her answers from Wood house in a different way.
This isn't that world.
.
.
Jean pushed through the doorway. Her fingers brushing against the tarnished brass knocker and a shock raced down her spine. There was a tugging at the pit of Jean's stomach. For one brief moment, the world around her went white. She saw stars.
Then, everything went dark.
.
.
.
July 1926
Quinnigan Wood, known as Quinn to his friends, although he did not have many, stared at the North Sea out of his office window. The white waves crashed against the rocks below. It was beautiful, but violent, and Quinn had never been a fan of violence, so he turned away.
He directed his attention to the gardens where his eldest son, Fletcher, was struggling to keep his broom straight as he flew a mere foot off of the ground. Only four years old, the sight of Fletcher on a broom still scared him.
Ye're bein' silly, he could practically hear Elise's words in his ear. He's got McGowan blood from me. He's gaun'ae tak tae flyin' whether ye like it or no.
His late wife had been right about that. Fletcher took to flying like a fish to water. It was hard to pull him away from a broom, so he just left him alone. Elise had been the flyer—not him. If her life hadn't been so tragically claimed, Quinn would have seen her out in the garden right then. She would have glanced up at him and smiled, gesturing for him to join them. And he would. Quinn would have grabbed two year old Sebastian from his nursery and joined them on the lawn.
Quinn sighed. His broad shoulders slumped and his body deflated. "I canna do this without ye, Elise," he muttered. He couldn't. It had been almost a year, and he still couldn't make it on his own.
He was useless as a wizard. Always had been. Elise, for all that she'd been in Gryffindor, had always been much better at magic than Quinn, who had been a Ravenclaw himself, had. Quinn was good at maths—he was good at arithmetic. He was lousy at spells. He was lousy at flying. He was lousy at a lot of things.
"Da!"
Quinn was jerked out of his thoughts by Fletcher's exclamation. His son was now standing before him, his arms crossed expectantly. His bushy hair was all Quinn's, but his sparkling blue eyes were Elise's. They were one of the only things he had left of her. All he had left of Elise was his two children. Fletcher and Sebastian were his whole entire world now.
"What?" The words came out harsher than Quinn intended.
"There's a woman in the garden." Fletcher stared at Quinn expectantly.
"There's a woman in the garden?" Quinn repeated, unable to fully comprehend the words coming from his son's mouth.
Fletcher rolled his eyes. "Yea."
"How did she get there?"
Fletcher shrugged. "I dunno. D'ye wanna see her or no?"
If there was indeed a strange woman in his garden, Quinn supposed that he ought to check it out to see how she got into his garden uninvited in the first place. The family wards should have kept her out, which meant either she shared his blood or was a very powerful witch. He hoped it was the latter. He'd rather deal with an evil witch than his Great Aunt Eilidh.
So, Quinn followed Fletcher down the stairs and out the back door to discover that there was indeed a woman lying on the ground, unconscious. She was not very tall—if they had been standing, Quinn was quite sure that he would have towered over the woman—and, by most standards, she was not very pretty. She was too freckled—too tan—but her features were sharp and intelligent.
"How'd she get here?" Quinn asked his son.
"I was flyin' and then BANG!" Fletcher clapped his hands together for emphasis. "She was there."
Quinn studied her. She didn't look like a witch—not any he'd seen before anyways. Her clothes were too odd to be from around these parts. She was wearing trousers, which was totally unheard of for witches and rarely heard of for muggles. There was something about her…
Slowly, a theory began to form in Quinn's mind. It was totally outlandish—completely mad—but there might be something to it. Maybe.
Quinn summoned his wand and levitated the woman off of the ground. He was a decent enough wizard for a levitation spell. After a quick diagnostic spell to figure out if the woman was indeed a witch—she wasn't—Quinn placed her in the downstairs guest bedroom.
She wasn't a witch, Quinn knew, and she wasn't a member of his bloodline. Although, one tiny blip showed, just for a second, when he ran his spell. The woman in his guest bedroom was carrying a magical child, and that child was—somehow—a member of Quinn's bloodline.
How odd.
.
.
Jean Granger woke up with a pounding headache. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Jean was aware that she was in an unfamiliar room. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Jean realized that the small figure with a mop of brown hair at the bottom of her bed was a child. But all that mattered at that moment, was Jean's pounding headache.
Aspirin. She needed aspirin.
"Da!" yelled the little boy. "She's no sleepin' anymore."
Jean almost laughed at the kid's accent. At least she was still in Scotland.
The pounding of feet was quickly followed by the appearance of a tall, bulking man, whose bushy brown hair matched the boy at the foot of Jean's bed. When he realized that she was struggling to lift herself into a sitting position, the man rushed over and helped her up.
"Ye're probably thirsty." He offered Jean a kind smile. A glass of water appeared on the bedside table. Jean blinked. Okay. That was new.
The water rushed down Jean's throat. It felt heavenly.
"I'm Quinn Wood," the man introduced himself. Wood. The Wood house. Memories of what happened hours before — and decades later — flooded back to Jean.
"Jean." Jean pointed to herself.
"I'm Fletcher," piped the boy.
Jean chuckled. Quinn shook his head, but his eyes were mirthful. "Why don't ye go play outside, Fletcher? I need to talk to Miss Jean..."
"Granger," Jean supplied. "Mrs. Jean Granger." Because she was still married, even after everything that had happened.
Quinn smiled. "Nice to meet ye, Mrs. Granger." He ruffled Fletcher's hair as the boy hopped out of the room. After the door closed behind Fletcher, Quinn turned to Jean, concern written across his face. "This will sound odd, but what day is it?"
"Sunday."
"What year?"
Jean frowned. "1978."
Quinn's frown mirrored Jean's. "I really hope ye believe what I say next."
"What are you going to say?" Dread built in Jean's gut.
"It's 1926."
Jean's jaw dropped. "No."
"Unfortunately." Quinn pulled up a woven chair and straddled it. "There are ancient spells on this house that even I dinnae know. I think that ye were lookin' for a way out, and, since ye've got a bit of Wood blood in ye, the house offered ye one."
Spells? What the… Jean straightened herself, and met Quinn's eyes. He didn't seem like a lunatic. He didn't seem the type to make something like this up.
"Okay." Ever the scholar, Jean nodded. "Tell me your theory." If his theory was sound, then, maybe, she'd start to believe him.
And so, Quinn Wood began to explain his theory to Jean Granger.
Magic, curses, and spells aside, his logic was incredibly sound, which irritated Jean. But only a little.
She had asked for a way out and now she had one.
.
.
.
August 1926
In the gilded halls of Malfoy manor, Ségolène Malfoy gave birth to a son. He was delivered by a veritable army of house elves. Her husband, Napoleon, knelt by her side, clutching her hand and whispering words of reassurance. Theirs was a love match, much to his own parent's dismay, and he loved his wife with all of his heart. His Slytherin friends had scoffed at him when he took a Veela to be his wife—to them, Veelas were beings to lust after, not to love.
But what did they know of love?
Staring down at his son wrapped in a silk blanket, Napoleon felt love swell in his chest. "He's beautiful. What should we call him?"
"I was thinking Abraxas," Ségolène offered. "I've always loved the name."
"Abraxas." Napoleon spoke the words to his son, who looked like a wrinkle potato. The baby turned his head. "I think it's perfect. Everything's perfect."
For that moment, and for the few moments that lasted beyond it, everything truly was perfect.
.
.
And then the world decided to come crashing back through.
.
.
.
December 1926
The story they decided on was this: Jean was a past love of Quinn's very recently deceased wild brother, Rauridh, and, having nowhere else to go, she'd come to live with Quinn. It was a variation of the truth, as they figured that the man in the bar had to be one of Quinn's however-great-grandchildren. It wasn't a story that Jean really liked, but there weren't many people she had to explain it to. Once Quinn told the local muggle bartender, everyone else in town suddenly knew.
Jean didn't know what she thought of 1926, but she quickly grew to adore Quinn's children, Fletcher and Sebastian. Fletcher loved to fly—a trait that Quinn said came from his mother. His eyes would mist over as he spoke about the woman he had loved, and Jean would wonder if George missed her. She had no idea what he thought had happened to her—or what Mary thought, for that matter. She hoped they didn't hate her. She hadn't meant to leave.
People disappear all the time.
But not Jean Granger. She wasn't one to run away from a fight. She believed in people.
Sebastian was two, so he didn't have as many interests as his brother. For the most part, he enjoyed watching butterflies flit across the garden and discovering which various objects were edible. His favorite was grass. Quinn and Jean started a competition to see who stopped Sebastian more often, and, currently, Jean was winning. Just barely.
When the snow fell, the Wood house stayed magically warm. Jean appreciated magic. It made up for what the past lacked in modern extremities. Magic, Jean was coming to discover, quite nice to have around. Quinn insisted that he wasn't very good at it, but he had mastered all of the basic household spells, and Jean often thanked him for it.
Jean refused to live off of Quinn's money, and found a job working for the local doctor, a man by the name of Paton with an open mind and an appreciation for an extra set of hands. It was a good trade—although she refused to go anywhere near the antiquated dentistry set she'd seen of his. It gave Jean something of her own—something to look forward to.
And so, Jean Granger made a neat little life for herself in the highlands of Scotland, and, although she would never admit it, she liked it.
She liked it very much.
.
.
It was a dark and stormy night. The cold winter wind whipped through the cracks of the windows and the door. The radiator was broken. An infant's sharp cry broke and was swept up in the wind—in the banging of shutters.
Mrs. Cole stared down at the infant lying in the arms of a dead woman. She frowned. Another mouth to feed.
With a sour expression, Mrs. Cole peeled the infant out of Merope Riddle's arms. "Tom," the mother had wished with her last breath. "Like his father."
Mrs. Cole hoped the father was dead, but she knew the look of heartbreak. He was probably alive and well—all too aware of his son's existence. But she hoped, for young Tom Riddle Jr.'s sake, that he was dead.
.
.
.
September 1927
Jean Granger gave birth to a girl in the local muggle hospital.
She named her daughter Hermione.
.
.
There is a world where Jean Granger and Quinnagan Wood's strange little family only had five people – where Hermione Granger grew up with two annoying cousins and no one else – a single girl isolated in her own little world.
This isn't that world.
In this world, Hermione has a sister.
.
.
.
May 1932
Jean Granger stared at the little girl sitting on the chair before her. She was tall for her four, which couldn't have been more than four – probably around the same age as her Hermione. She had dark hair that curled in lazy ringlets, so different from Hermione's bushy hair. What surprised Jean the most, however, were her eyes. Bright violet orbs stared up at Jean, seeming to notice every detail about her. She felt like the child could see right through her. It was creepy.
They'd found her in the garden that morning – her and Quinnagan – lying unconsciously in the exact same spot Quinn had discovered Jean a few years earlier. By some small mercy, none of the children had found her first. Fletcher was seven now and sure to have questions, Hermione was four and never stopped asking them, and Sebastian didn't have the first clue about how to properly keep a secret.
"D'ye think she's from the future?" Quinn asked.
Jean eyed the girl, focusing on the plastic butterfly clip pinning back her curls. She was from the future all right. Jean would bet money on it. She nodded. "What I don't understand is how she travelled back? And all by herself? It just doesn't make sense." Quinn flicked his wand, running tests as Jean bent down so that she was eye to eye with the girl. "What's your name, sweetheart?"
The girl blinked at her. "Lavender."
Lavender.
How appropriate, Jean mused as she stared into the girl's eyes. Based on her posh little accent, she was british. Rich, too. Someone somewhere was probably missing her.
"I've got it!" Quinn exclaimed. "She's got McGowan blood – on her mother's side by the look of things. If the runes connected her to Elise, that could explain how she ended up here."
"Still doesn't explain why?" Jean said. She focused once more on the girl before her. "What are you doing here, sweetheart?"
"The stars led me here," Lavender answered plainly. "They said I was needed."
Jean glanced back at Quinn. "Stars?"
"She's probably slightly psychic."
A psychic. Inwardly, Jean groaned. This was the last thing she needed. She'd come to accept that magic was real. She'd even chuckled a little when Quinn told her how some wizards tried to peer into their futures. It called to mind the memory of an old woman pouring over tea leaves. She wasn't quite ready to believe that the child before her was a psychic. That seemed too far fetched – especially for a child like her.
When she stared at Lavender, she saw her own daughter. What would she want a mother to do if her own daughter was suddenly, randomly transported to another time? She'd hope – she'd pray – that they looked after Hermione. And she'd do everything in her power to get her daughter back.
"What's our story this time?" Jean asked Quinn. "We need to tell the kids something. Fletcher isn't likely to believe that he has another secret cousin."
"We adopted her?" Quinn offered. He sat down on the ground beside her. Lavender sat between the two of them, looking back and forth from Quinn to Jean. "I don't know. I don't know what sort of wizard would allow us to adopt such a child."
Slowly, an idea began to form in Jean's mind. "So, let's say it wasn't a wizard. She's obviously magical. Maybe she started displaying signs of magic and her parents left her at a church. Pastor Caihlbin knows us. He'd know to call us if he discovered an unusual child."
Quinn nodded. "I think yer onto something there." They both turned to look at Lavender. "What do you think about that?"
The little girl shrugged in response.
Jean nodded. "Alright, then. Let's introduce her to the rest of the family." And they did.
.
.
.
Welcome to the Lavender-Brown-deserved-better-and-Hermione-Granger-needs-girl-friends-in-her-year club. I hope you stay a while.
Thanks for reading the prologue to Another Time. This is probably the weirdest story I've ever written. Period. I wanted to write a Lavender/Hermione sisters AU and a time travel AU, and this is what came from it. You will see several beloved characters in the coming chapters, including a teenage McGonagall.
Please let me know if you like it and want more. There's more to come. See you with the next chapter.