Notes: For knightessofwalpurgis, Disenchantedglow.

This was inspired by Aiman Rubab's prompt on Fairest of the Rare Love Fest 2020: Hermione/Filch, Soulmates.

Beta'd and alpha'd by the fantastic disenchantedglow, whose fault this entire thing is. I have no idea if this was supposed to be a crack prompt, but disenchantedglow and I sat down and discussed this pairing, laughing the whole time. The next day, both of us started writing this cursed ship. This is how cursed ships are launched. I hope you give this a chance to fall for Argus Filch.

Part I

Hermione first became an Animagus at the age of thirty-one.

Her first thought when she looked down at her four-legged self was that she would never hear the end of the jokes now. Ron had taken to comparing her to "old cat ladies" since she had completely lost interest in dating. On top of that were the similarities between her current self and her ill-fated Polyjuice transformation in second year. Hermione almost wanted to rethink this entire Animagus bit.

She was still regarding her furry striped cat limbs when she felt a tingling in her spine. Since she was adjusting to being a cat, with everything that came with turning into one, including the need to lick the fur sticking up on top of her paw, she ignored it. Then it happened again, that tingling in her navel.

The next thing she knew, she was being pulled through the dimensions of reality.

When Hermione came to, all she knew was that she had never felt worse in her life. She not only wanted to puke out her insides, she wanted to scrape out her brains with a spoon. With the nausea and the headache, she found that she didn't give two sickles that she wasn't the shape of a cat anymore. The fact that she was stark naked should have been worrying, but it faded in importance next to the distant hope of dying.

Trembling in a huddle on the floor and holding back her vomit, she tried to breathe as evenly as possible. Had she been transported by a dark wizard? To think she had been so complacent in recent years. Constant vigilance was too bloody right.

A soft padding of footsteps from the periphery of her eyes brought a pair of scuffed, brown boots into view.

Hermione willed herself not to panic and lifted her head hesitantly. The boots were topped with leather trews, the kind the older generation of wizards preferred when working with alchemy. It took all the energy she possessed to look further up to see a youngish man—well, around her age, at least—standing there with a wary expression and a wand held defensively high.

The body language and expression reassured her. She managed to sputter out, "I'm going to vomit," before she sprayed the contents of her stomach all over the floor and his boots.

By the time Hermione was herself again, the vomit had vanished from the floor, and a blanket was draped modestly around her. She sat on a small stool inside what was clearly a workshop. A fireplace dominated one wall, surrounded by a variety of metalsmithing tools.

"Alright now?" the man said tentatively, keeping a safe distance away from her.

"Yes, I think so." Hermione, finished with looking about the place, made sure her stomach wasn't going to rebel on her again before she turned in the man's direction. He stared back at her with similarly wide-eyed curiosity.

He was fairly normal looking, with a defined, sharp jaw and a patrician nose. Fair hair brushed back into smooth waves. Tall and lean in build. He looked innocuous, but Hermione had no intention of being fooled by anyone's appearance.

Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, he was no one she recognised, he had a British accent, and she was the one naked and without a wand here.

"Who are you?" Hermione asked in her calmest, most measured voice. "Where am I? And can I borrow a wand to change these into clothes?"

"Er—call me Gus." He coughed politely into his fist. His cheeks were pink after a downward glance at her clearly abbreviated state of attire. "And here—" He took a single step forward before stretching out his arm, keeping the rest of his body a respectful distance away. In his hand was his wand, the handle pointed out towards her and the length tucked alongside his arm.

Hermione gaped at him, making no move to take the wand. Who was this completely naïve stranger who didn't think twice about handing over his wand to a witch?

Then she recollected herself and her unclothed, vulnerable state and took the wand from him, sliding the handle inch by inch from his hand, trying not to touch any part of him.

When she looked down, she almost dropped the blanket and fell out of her stool.

She was holding the Elder Wand in her grasp.

"Why do you have the Elder Wand?"

Gus looked in surprise at Hermione, who was now standing before him, the blanket haphazardly transformed into makeshift clothing to cover her. She was also pointing the wand at him.

"Er, the what?"

"The Elder wand. I recognise it." She was more defensive than she would have been in her younger years. Anyone wielding the Elder wand could be up to no good, and no one had the ability to forestall him. Her hand was slightly shaky with the implication. Harry had thrown it away; she had seen him.

But the wand was unmistakable, knobbed in sections and the colour of old bones. The likeness of it was etched inside her brain.

His hands were raised defensively on either side of his shoulders, and he looked bemused at her aggressiveness. "Er...it was—well, that was the wand that chose me." He gave a self-deprecating laugh. "Gregorovitch didn't say anything about it being the Elder Wand."

At the name of that wandmaker who had been dead for over a decade, Hermione plopped back down on her stool, the hand holding the wand wavering slightly but still lifted against any potential threats. "What—what year is this?" She rubbed her forehead. She still had a headache, which meant it wasn't just a Portkey that transported her here. No wonder she felt horrible. Her stomach hadn't finished lurching.

"It's 1923," he said, carefully enunciating the syllables, not lowering his hands. "And...you?"

The hair on the back of Hermione's neck rose at his words, and she slowly looked up, her fingers tightening around the wand. He did not sound surprised to hear her question, and certainly any wizard confronted with a naked person asking the date would have been more than a bit disconcerted. "2010," she said slowly, watching him warily.

His mouth formed a small O of surprise, and then he scratched his head and laughed a little. "The millennium. Er. I was born not shortly before the first one, so…"

"You're not surprised by what I said. Why?" Her fingers slid down and bumped up against one of the knots on the wood as she rotated the wand in her hand. It felt strange and uncomfortable in her hand, and Hermione dearly wished to have her own wand back.

His eyes didn't miss her action or her clenched grip and he spread his hands helplessly, as though he had no good answers for her. A wry smile lifted one side of his mouth. "I'm the reason you're here. I called you here."

He looked so very diffident and inoffensive, but Hermione wasn't buying it. "Why would you do that?" Her voice was even.

"Because." There was something final about that word, as though he didn't want to explain himself. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "You're my soulmate."

Hermione couldn't help but laugh for a solid minute.

Her knee bounced up and down impatiently and she leveled him with a Look. "There's no such thing as soulmates. Try another one."

He looked equally surprised by everything; her laughter and her disbelief. "Of course there are. I used the Soulmate Spell—"

"What's the incantation?"

He inclined his head towards a table, as though asking for permission, and Hermione frowned and nodded, watching his every move. He flipped through the text, which was a very weatherbeaten leatherbound book, and turned it around to show her the printed page, along with the underlined words. Hermione inched closer so she could see, her eyes dancing quickly over the page.

"Hmm," she said. "That—book—looks interesting, but I find the whole concept very dubious. It shouldn't have been what pulled me here. Across decades . I've never heard of it in my time, and I've read almost all the magical texts there are." She didn't bother to tell him that two wars had decimated a lot of the magical texts and what there were now were in private libraries.

"Clearly not all ," he muttered under his breath.

"—which means ," Hermione said, shooting him a glare. "You've just called me all the way across the better part of a century for nothing . Now—"

"Just because you don't believe in it—"

"Because there's no such thing!"

"—doesn't mean it doesn't exist." He folded his arms across his chest. There was a pugnacious expression on his face. "What are you, a Muggle?" It was his turn to laugh at his own joke, while Hermione continued to glare at him. His laugh trailed off. "You know, because they don't believe—"

" I know what you meant!" Hermione shouted. "And it's incredibly offensive of you, given that I'm a Muggleborn and the two wars that happened—"

Gus lost his smile and blinked at her. "What?"

" I'm a Muggleborn ." Her expression dared him to make an offensive comment. The wand in her hand was back up and leveled under his nose.

He shook his head, completely nonchalant about her defensive stance in a way that only children were in her time. Clearly he hadn't been lying about the timeline and growing up unused to warfare. "No, before that. You said something about wars. Two of them?"

Damn. Hermione'd forgotten the first rule of time travel: Never interfere with the past. She was certain telling someone about impending wars would create lasting ripples.

She edged backwards until the back of her knees bumped against her stool, and she dropped back down into her seat. It seemed to be the only familiar thing here, and her legs were still shaky from her massive vomit attack. "Alright," she said with a sigh, and lowering her hand to her knee. "Tell me about the charm that brought me here. All of it. Everything that's not written down."

According to Gus and the entire wizarding community in 1923, soulmates were all everyone talked about. The Soulmate Charm was used in conjunction with the designation spell to locate a soulmate's whereabouts by marking them. In certain circumstances, it'd been known to draw the two together across time.

Hermione snorted with disbelief. "And I suppose you have this 'mark'?" She couldn't help wiggling her fingers in air quotes.

He pulled his left sleeve up to show her a light blue smudge on the inside of his left wrist. "This showed up the first time I did the ritual."

Hermione surveyed his arm in silence. A birthmark. That was his undeniable proof of soulmate-hood? No wonder Pureblood wizards had to intermingle with Muggles to stay sane. They would believe anything. And they called Muggles gullible. She pursed her lips and took a deep breath. Yep. She'd heard enough. "Alright. How far is it from Hogwarts? I think that's where I need to be."

"You have the mark, too, don't you?" Gus asked. Before Hermione knew what he was going to do, he had reached forward to grab hold of her left hand.

"What—hey!"

On the inside of her left wrist was a birthmark, which was why she didn't believe in soulmate markings. There was also her scar from the war, now much diminished due to Fading Potions. Either way, her left arm was starting to hold a collection of unsightly blemishes.

"You have it too." His hazel eyes were wide with suppressed excitement, going from her arm to her face. He hadn't let go of her wrist.

Hermione gingerly pulled free. "It's a birthmark . I've had it since I was born."

"Because of the ritual." His response was matter-of-fact, and Hermione had to suppress the groan bubbling up in her chest.

It was always the normal-looking ones. "Exactly how many times have you done this ritual?"

"Every year since I turned twenty-five," he said with a small shrug. "I'm not getting any younger. Wizards are only living to two hundred now."

"But I'm confused about one thing. It doesn't say anything about time travel. Why would it pull me through time?"

"I've my own theories about that. Have you ever heard of the Entanglement Concept?"

Hermione shook her head and stared blankly at him.

"Essentially what it says is this: some soulmate relationships are fragmented through time and space, but as long as their lives overlap, it creates enough consonance to create a soulmate connection . Under the proper time and conditions, the ritual could pull you through time and space to me."

"This time period is much too concerned with soulmates," she said. Consonance. Overlap , he had said. Hermione turned the concepts over in her head. "Wait. Our lives overlap in real time? So...you're an old man when I'm born then."

He looked mildly offended by her dismissal. "Wizards live to two hundred years old. I'd still be in the prime of life at one hundred, I'll have you know."

The thought of a baby Hermione with a one hundred year old was still fairly disgusting to her. She surveyed him with a frown. He looked—she had no idea how old he was. "How old are you?"

"I just turned thirty-one," he said.

"Me too," she said slowly. "That can't be a coincidence. But why thirty-one? Why now? Why not earlier in my life? Why not later?"

"I don't know. Maybe thirty-one is a magical number?"

Hermione huffed out a slow puff of air, shaking her head. "And I just became an Animagus, too."

His eyes lit up. "That's it. That's the answer."

Hermione still didn't see how that had anything to do with the Soulmate Spell, which was a damnably rackety notion if there was any. She gestured impatiently for him to continue.

He ignored the look of patent disbelief on her face. "It has to do with elements of transfiguration and alchemy," he said patiently. "An Animagus transforms by rearranging all the particles of his being and essence into something else. It's far more than transfiguration, which is transformation into an inanimate object-which suspends you in time. As an Animagus, when your physicality changes so drastically, for a moment all the components you're comprised of split apart, and you become nothing but a collection of elements— things —lighter than air—"

"Atoms?"

"Which then, combined with magic calling you-as I did with the spell-can pull you across time and space."

"You're saying that Animagi can time travel more readily than other wizards? That's—quite a theory," she said. Though her arms were folded across her chest, she couldn't help but stare at him with interest. Professor McGonagall, when giving her the Time-Turner back in her third year, had gone into great detail about how some people are chosen by elements of time. Something about her speech at the time had made Hermione think that the professor was no stranger to time travel. In which case...Gus was actually saying something that might hold some basis.

Even if he was clearly someone who put too much in store by divination ( soulmates , really?), he was also saying very interesting theories that she had only briefly heard of. Time-Turners had been completely defunct by the end of the War when she had graduated from Hogwarts.

He scratched his head and chuckled a bit in boyish self-deprecation at her mild approval. "It's not completely a surprise. Changing your physical form changes everything about you, rearranges your physicality in a way that goes beyond mere identity." When he looked up at her, his expression dared her to argue with his logic. "This proves it. It proves that we're soulmates. While I've been performing this spell for the past seven years, the first time it's been able to pull you through was when you became an Animagus. Literally, minutes after."

Hermione looked at him uneasily.

Gus shrugged and leaned back against the table. If she knew him better, she might have labelled his entire posture and expression smug . "You were always meant to be pulled back in time on this date."

"So who are you?" Hermione asked.

They were sitting down at his cluttered table eating bread and cheese with a pottage soup. Rather medieval fare, actually, but her stomach was empty and shaky after her time travelling session. Hermione decided that traipsing off to Hogwarts could wait until she had more information and food.

"Argus Norris."

She chewed the hard bread for a moment in thought. "I knew an Argus Filch. He had a cat named Mrs. Norris."

"Filch is a Squib name," he said. "Filch or Figgs or Fipps. It's their identifier, imbued with a protective charm. It marks them so that they are untouched and unharmed by wizards. Without it, they'd be nothing but Muggles or worse-targets for Muggle-haters."

Hermione nodded in agreement. "He was a Squib. He was Caretaker of Hogwarts when I was there."

"That's a funny coincidence," he said. "More proof of our connection." He smiled in a way that was clearly meant to be winsome and charming.

Hermione was completely unaffected. She snorted. "Since you're eighty-some years into my past, I'm sure our worlds will overlap in multiple ways. Who knows? Maybe Argus Filch is your descendant." She smirked at him.

He blinked. "It's not unlikely. There's nothing wrong with Squibs in any case. But it's my opinion that they should live in the Muggle world, where there are more opportunities for them. When was he born, the man you knew?"

"I'm not sure." Squibs were usually left out of any wizarding texts like their presence was an anomaly. Argus Filch could have been Caretaker for seventy years for all she knew. His name had never crossed the pages of Hogwarts: A History. "Felt like he was seventy? Eighty?"

"Squibs do live, on average, a longer lifespan than Muggles. It's not impossible for him to still be working at Hogwarts at eighty. Was he seventy years old in 2010?"

She shook her head. "I really couldn't tell you. I mean—I felt like he was seventy when I first met him. In 1991."

Gus—she couldn't think of him as Argus—mumbled under his breath in thought before nodding. "Right. In which case, the numbers add up. He could be our child."

" Ugh!" The exclamation was torn out of Hermione.

He watched her with apprehension. "Well, we are soulmates. You might as well accept it. Most people do, eventually."

"I mean, I don't want to imagine that man as my child." Hermione shuddered. " You don't come into it."

"Because he's a Squib?"

"No, because he was a horrible human being! All he ever cared about was his mangy, mean cat. He hated children—I have no idea why he even got a job at a school. Dumbledore—" Hermione broke off and snapped her fingers. "I need to talk to Dumbledore."

Gus's eyebrows rose. "You can't mean Percival Dumbledore? Or did you mean Aberforth, who's the head of the family now?"

"No—Professor...I mean, Albus Dumbledore."

"The Diviner?"

"What?"

"He's—well, he's the one who developed the Soulmate Spell."

" What?"

Albus Dumbledore was the creator of many a spell, but in 1923, he was known as the Diviner for the spell that had taken the wizarding community by storm. It was a spell designed to find the other half of yourself—or some such nonsense.

Hermione couldn't believe she had revered the man for so long without knowing this aspect of him. Of course, she had known of his particular affinity for divination and prophecies. She shouldn't hold this incident against him.

"Well, then," she said after Gus's explanation. She pulled her ill-fitting cloak tighter around her and straightened. "He's the man we need to speak to."

Gus stared at his feet for a very long time after that before looking up and nodding. He wasn't smiling now, and Hermione realized that up until then, he always wore a very cheerful expression. He seemed like he was someone optimistic and easygoing; traits that were not common in Hermione's time. Obviously, he was also persistent, given his tenacity in performing this spell at the same time every year for seven years. That was more time than Hermione had given Ron to confess his feelings to her.

1923 was clearly a happy time for the wizarding world. No wars, no Grindelwald, no Voldemort. She'd probably be just as light-hearted if she lived in this time period.

"Look…" she said slowly, her hands fluttering helplessly. It's not personal , she wanted to explain. It's not you I object to. It was this entire concept of soulmates and staying forever in another time.

His hands, strong, tanned hands used to metalworking, turned his knobby wand over in his hands. There was a crease between his brows, and Hermione almost felt a surge of pity for him, for wishing so hard for a soulmate that he could accept the prospect of someone he didn't even know.

He glanced up finally, and their eyes met. Up until then, Hermione had always considered brown eyes boring. All around her, there were people with grey and blue and green eyes, and her own colouring seemed so bland in comparison.

For the first time, staring at Gus's clear hazel eyes that was almost like looking into a warm cup of tea, Hermione considered that brown eyes weren't so terrible after all. They looked so warm and open and pleasant. She almost felt a prick of guilt at running roughshod over his objections and dismissing all his romantic ideas so quickly out of hand.

"Listen...Hermione." He spoke slowly, as though he were carefully picking out the right words to say. "I honestly didn't even know what I expected when you fell through the sky like that. I've been casting that spell for six years, and it's never worked. I guess I thought that perhaps I didn't have a soulmate." He laughed self-deprecatingly; a soft, light sound.. "Albus, though, he swore by the charm."

"Did he?" Hermione asked, raising her eyebrows. Albus Dumbledore's biography had never mentioned any emotional ties other than the odd friend or two. "Does he have a soulmate then?"

Gus nodded. "Gellert. Gellert Grindelwald. That's how he knew it worked. They're thick as thieves. They're very alike in a lot of ways, but…" His gaze fell away, and he rubbed the back of his neck. "Anyway, I don't want you to feel as though you're bound to me. This is—this type of connection should be mutual. You know?"

He looked at her with those intense eyes, with something pleading behind them, but also resigned, as though he already knew what her response would be. He wasn't trying to argue with her in the slightest, and that was different.

Everyone argued with her.

She smiled at him. "You're—a very nice person, Gus," she began and sputtered when he snorted in response. "You are! I'm not making fun of you."

"It sounds like you're trying to reject me. Isn't that the classic line?"

"Well…" she trailed off, not knowing what else to say to not sound completely cold and heartless.

"And, yes, I'm aware that it was bad etiquette to pull you from your life in the future." He sighed, and there was a thread of wistfulness in his voice when he spoke. "Is it—is it very nice in the future?"

"Er, well." She tried to think of what she could tell him. "I've—already told you about the wars." She sighed. If she stayed here any longer, who knows what else would slip out of her and potentially affect the future?

"Wars aren't so very bad if it only affects the Muggles," he said and he raised both hands defensively when she glared at him. "I just meant that it doesn't affect the wizarding community! Not that I'm going about actively hunting down Muggles."

"No, it wasn't Muggle wars, though there's also—a few of those as well." She sighed. 1923 was looking better than ever. There would be at least two decades before WWII.

"Do…" His mouth twisted as though he were considering his question and whether to ask it before he apparently decided to go for broke. "Do you have a husband? Children? Is-is that why?"

"Oh, no," she said. "Nothing like that. I'm a career woman. I just went back to school to master Transfiguration."

"Ah. The Animagus thing, right." He rose to his feet, but didn't advance on her. He held out his hand to her with a smile.

If his smile looked a bit forlorn, she didn't address it. She looked away and shifted awkwardly before realising she still held his wand. "Oh, right. Er—here."

He took the wand from her. "Thank you. The Elder wand, you said?"

"I honestly thought it belonged to Grindelwald at some point," Hermione said, tilting her head to the side in thought. "But biographies have been known to be wrong."

He was nodding, his mind undoubtedly already elsewhere. "So, Dumbledore?"

Albus Dumbledore in 1923 was a handsome tall young man with blazing blue eyes. He pulsed with restlessness and energy and a full schedule. They had to owl ahead to make an appointment with Albus and wait a further three days before he could see them.

After a full three days with her supposed soulmate, Hermione almost didn't want to admit to herself that Gus Norris was really a very nice person. She had, in fact, never met anyone so gentlemanly. Perhaps it had to do with the time period, in which case she could understand the allure of staying in 1923. She had stopped dating for very good reasons, after all. Men who would not hesitate to rudely treat your living room like it was a hotel being one of them.

Warlock Dumbledore had an office within the Ministry, which in 1923 was a brightly lit, airy building, unlike the dark, tomblike ordeal it was in Hermione's time. His office, like the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts, was decorated with a variety of portraits and contained a tiny, red-gold bird with long tail feathers.

The moment Hermione saw the bird, her eyes widened and she exclaimed, "Fawkes!" before she headed straight towards him.

That got Albus's attention like nothing would have. "I just got him last week," he said, standing up and surveying Hermione curiously, leaning one hip against his desk. "And I don't believe we've met." His inquisitive bright blue eyes were fixed on her face.

"Er…" she said, stopping just short of Fawkes's perch. The urge to confide everything to her former Headmaster was overwhelming. He was dead in her time, but Harry had trusted him implicitly. On the other hand, she wouldn't know where to start if she began to speak. She glanced helplessly at Gus, who nodded his understanding at her quandary.

Gus closed the door behind him with a loud click and moved farther into the room. "She's my soulmate. At least according to your spell."

Distracted, Albus looked away from Hermione, and she subsided with relief behind a chair. "Ah, it worked for you then. Good. Glad to hear it." Albus rounded his desk and in passing slapped Gus on the back with a heartiness that made Gus lurch.

"Well," Hermione said. "Not exactly, Pro-Warlock."

"It's pulled her from the future," Gus said.

Albus, clearly thinking that they were only here to discuss a spell that no longer interested him, had turned away and began to flip through papers on his desk. At Gus's comment, he paused and whirled around, his eyes immediately finding Hermione and raking her over more thoroughly this time. She could tell that he was thinking rapidly and almost took a step back from the intensity of his eyes. "The future." The word was whispered with a sharp, yet soft reverence.

"Eighty-seven years into the future, to be exact," Gus said, and Hermione nodded.

"Well," Albus said softly. "Well! That does complicate things, doesn't it?"

"So," Hermione said, the word falling harshly into the silence that had prevailed.

The room was not meant to hold extended, heated debate. Both of the men had taken off their outer robes and rolled up their sleeves. Hermione herself was concentrating on trying to stay calm. She took several long deep breaths to prevent herself from crying in front of two young, strange men. "Basically, you're saying I can't go back."

Albus spread his hands. "Which is why I have disassociated myself from the spell entirely. It's much too dangerous. Divination indeed." His own lips were pressed thinly together, and Hermione suddenly recalled a line from his biography where he had had a falling out with his "childhood friend." Apparently not all had been tickety-boo with his supposed soulmate, his childhood friend Gellert Grindelwald.

"Listen," Gus said softly, persuasively, his voice intruding upon the small silence that had fallen. Hermione looked up to see him giving her a concerned sideways glance. She glimpsed a line of worry between his brows before Gus leaned in towards Albus, his hand gesturing towards the notes on the table. "There must be a way. You developed the spell; you know it intimately."

"All I know is that it was never meant to call people across time. I had no idea what I was doing when I factored in the notion of consonance . Given that wizards live to be two hundred years old or more, consonance could span an entire millenium. Can you fathom the implications?"

Gus and Hermione shared a glance before turning back to Albus. "Yes, I've an inkling," Hermione said dryly at the same time Gus said, "It might have occurred to me in passing."

"Therefore—"

Gus rose to his feet, putting him taller than the warlock bent over the desk. "You developed the spell." His tone was no longer persuasive but held a hard edge. A stubborn look of determination crossed his face. "You have to try to help her."

Albus was in the middle of helplessly spreading his hands when Gus spoke in a dangerously soft way. "Look, fix the problem, or I'll call for your removal from office. This isn't the first time your 'spells' have landed someone in trouble."

Albus's eyebrows rose; Hermione blinked at Gus, wondering what else had happened to make him take such a tone with Albus Dumbledore. To her knowledge, there had never been anyone who had dared stand up to Albus Dumbledore. If nothing else, Gus seemed absolutely fearless.

He also didn't give up. "According to the Wizengamot Warlock Functionality of Office Protocol, a wizard can be considered—"

"Unfit for office," Albus said softly. His blue eyes were no longer intense but sympathetic as he took in the tense lines of Gus's face. "Yes, I'm aware of the regulations. Alright. We'll experiment. But I cannot promise anything."