"Why on Earth did you do that, Hermione?"
She looked over at the canvas where Older Hermione and Pandora were standing. The latter woman simply looked confused, but her older counterpart corrected her swiftly.
"She put enough into it to keep him unconscious the entire time. Sleeping charms are too easy to wake up from. If he could have brought himself to stun Hermione harder, we all wouldn't be here, unfortunately. So we owe little Hermione's life to Harry's unwillingness to hurt her. On the other hand, he didn't use a sleeping charm, either. He needs to know how it feels to be stunned and replaced. If he still thinks he did the right thing, that's ... understandable, perhaps. His younger self really was miserable. But now he has a better basis to make those kinds of decisions."
It was amazing how well the two Hermiones got along. It was like having an older twin sister.
"You know, I now think even if he'd succeeded older Hermione and I would have conspired against him and created this situation eventually ..."
"I'm not so sure," that woman said. "When things become frantic it's hard to sit and philosophise. He might have gotten me so involved in a war against the wizarding world that I didn't feel I could take a chance. I probably would have put it off till "after the war." I do that a lot."
With that, they discussed obliviation, memory travel, soul travel, time travel, dimension travel, what a person was, and other light topics. When they looked up, Mr Lovegood and Luna had returned after quietly making everything ready. They led Hermione downstairs. Harry was naked and already painted with the required runes. Hermione had been tempted to insist she do it as payback, but realised that could be misconstrued as a sexual gesture on her part, which made her shudder, and that the next person she'd be talking to would feel as violated as she had, anyway. Of course, Luna probably enjoyed helping, but she was too innocent to worry about.
It fascinated Hermione to see how the ritual would have worked in her case, and she took copious notes. She felt pity for older Harry, no doubt, but it hadn't been long enough to let go of her anger and fear enough to sympathise with him. Putting him where he put Harry would be a good start to reconciliation. She, at least, would never have dreamed of obliviating him to let younger Harry be the sole occupant.
Everything worked perfectly. Mr Lovegood sent a Patronus to Deputy Headmistress McGonagall saying that the family business Harry Potter was doing had needed Hermione's help and run on so long they'd had to travel to the Lovegood residence to finish it. Without explaining further, he said Harry and Hermione would return to Hogwarts by Sunday night before curfew.
If McGonagall or Dumbledore wanted to make a fuss, they knew Mr Lovegood would point out that pureblood students did things like this routinely, and make a bigger fuss, so the Quaffle was in their possession.
Hermione was going to have a hard time sleeping, and an easy time waking up too early, she decided. She was going to meet Harry Potter! The real one she added.