Oy, where to begin. *facepalm* The notes are lengthy, but please take the 1 ½ minutes to read them before starting the fic.
TWILIGHT TWEAKS:
(1) There's no super-vampire-baby (sorry Renesmee fans).
(2) They found a loophole in the Treaty, permitting it to remain intact while still granting Bella's wish to become a vampire (to be explained in-story).
(3) Edward didn't cave to Bella's pleas because he was too horrified by the bruising from their first night & valued her life more than he needed to abate his physical desires. In exchange, she took back her offer to attend Dartmouth, instead returning to Forks & after making a show of leaving for college (& a quick trip to visit Renee one 'final' time), she stayed in the Cullens' house under tight watch following her being turned.
HP TWEAKS:
(1) Hermione's encounter with Fenrir Greyback when The Snatchers took the Trio to Malfoy Manor is more significant & prolonged than in canon. WARNING: There are depictions & mentions of PTSD connected to this 'tweak.'
(2) There will be no draws from JKR's US-based canon (I generally ignore it unless it serves a specific purpose in a fic).
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
1) I apologize to Twilight fans, as I'm not one. KEEP READING. I read the books, watched the films (even have the eBook collection with the Bree Tanner short), & despite not loving it, this plunny still bit (& proceeded to hound me for years [my notes show 18th of February, 2015]). My feelings toward the source material won't affect how I tell the story. I always bring my best efforts to anything I write.
2) I never character-bash, but a character's own canon flaws may show up if/when scene-appropriate.
3) About Jacob. His own creator didn't treat him well & I realized why. He wasn't created as a character in his own right, he was created as a complication for the couple who were always the HEA. He'll have a bit of a personality overhaul in this fic.
4) Jasper & Alice ... We're never given evidence they're romantic. We get Bella's perspective, which is based in others' views/comments, and yes, they do love each other, but that could easily not be romantic; Edward wouldn't have divulged that because it wasn't his place, and Jasper & Alice wouldn't have minded the misconception, because they're emotional beings whose needs were satisfied by their dynamic (hence why they also agreed to it when Carlisle suggested they marry [largely, Meyer's explanations for the things about their relationship that don't make sense feel like afterthoughts to cover up that not much consideration was given during the writing & any openly romantic affection was filled in by the film writers]).
Story takes place in 2008
Twilight character descriptions taken from book canon (though my personal visual for Jacob is definitely Martin Sensmeier, Native activist, model, and actor who is ... ugh, so ruggedly pretty).
Cultural Note: Many Native/Indigenous cultures view hair as an extension of one's spirit. I don't imagine creatures who are more in tune with their spirit severing this natural conduit for the sake of convenience/comfort. Therefore, the werewolves in my take on Meyer's world have long hair.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter or Twilight, and make no profit—in any form—from this work.
LAST BUT NEVER LEAST A shoutout to MaryRoyale, the Faith to my Buffy, who sees my terrible ideas and whispers, "Yeah, it's evil ... but do it, anyway!" Without her encouragement, this fic would still be a plunny collecting virtual dust. She will be starting a Jasper/Millicent crossover soon. I'll announce when she posts.
REVIEWS, REVIEWS, REVIEWS!
Reviews are not necessary, but they do make writers feel loved & supported in their efforts to continue creating & sharing, so if you've the time, please consider leaving one :) (if you're worried about being annoying or not knowing what to say, you could leave 'thank you' or 'good work' on every chapter I've ever written & I won't get annoyed [I've a reader who does this, and I light up every time I see their name, I also have readers who leave smiley faces and I love that]).
Chapter One
Hermione's forehead connecting with the desktop was the thing that jarred her fully awake. Snapping back up in her seat, she gave herself a shake and reshuffled the parchment scrolls unfurled in her hands. She hadn't even realized she had dozed off until she'd tipped forward in her chair, only to be rewarded with the sound thudding of her skull against the polished wood surface.
Groaning, she touched her fingers to the impact site in ginger exploration. "C'mon, Hermione. The answer has to be here, somewhere. You'll find something, you've just got to keep looking."
Her voice sounded confident, she reflected, which was not at all how she felt. She knew perfectly well that she wasn't the first person to try to find a cure for the lycanthropy curse, but she desperately wanted to be the last. Everyone she'd reached out to, however, had held up their hands—metaphorically speaking, of course—and told her there was no help they could offer.
This was exactly the sort of thing for which she could put her title of 'war hero,' and all the weight that came with it, to use without it feeling like an abuse of power. Simply figured that the doors it opened for her would have absolutely squat behind them.
She'd come away from the Second Wizarding War intent on this. In the rubble, as the dust settled, she had found Lavender Brown. The image of Fenrir Greyback tearing into the blonde witch's throat was still fresh in her mind, as though it had happened hours ago, not years.
Her heart dropped into her stomach unexpectedly at that observation. Years.
Had it really been so much time?
The air around her felt very still suddenly and she fought to focus. Along her spine crawled the sensation of someone close at her back, in her throat a bubble of panic swelled. A shiver of revulsion shook her back to reality at the remembered feel of his unforgiving fingers clamping around her wrist as he'd dragged her away from the others that day they were taken to Malfoy Manor.
It had all rushed back to her not as she watched Greyback nearly decapitate Lavender with not more but his teeth, no. It had been when she'd sat on the floor next to the other witch's prone form, gripping Lavender's hand in her own—they'd never been anything close to friends, yet it didn't feel strange to be at her side in that moment. Lavender's eyes had been full of tears, her jaw working as if to speak, though no words escaped her lips.
It had been then, as Lavender's eyelids closed in one last blink, opening again before she stilled. It had been in the way her fingers had gone limp in Hermione's grasp. In the way her chest never rose to take another breath.
Hermione had frozen where she sat, mired in the terrible sense that Lavender's murderer—Hermione's tormentor—was just behind her. That he was sitting, curved against her back, and smirking over her shoulder at the image of his kill.
Harry and Ron never knew. They'd not seen Greyback pull her aside on the journey to Malfoy Manor. They'd not witnessed the way his clawed fingers had squeezed her throat, nor heard the vile words he'd whispered in her ear, all the twisted things he swore he'd do to her murmured as though he spoke sweet nothings. They didn't know what it was like to feel the life start to slip from you only to have it rush back at some mad creature's mercy.
She still had the scars from the points of his claws along the back of her neck.
The wicked delight in those golden-amber eyes as he'd permitted her to draw a gasping breath was something she'd never forgotten. The memory of them battered at her brain as she'd clung to Lavender's lifeless hand.
They hadn't known the terror that had welled in her gut when Bellatrix Lestrange had said Greyback could have her, nor that it revisited her as they tried to pull her away from the other witch's body.
Somehow, it was made all the more horrifying that Remus Lupin had died while Greyback had survived. Remus Lupin, the only werewolf known to be good, the exception to the rule of what the lycanthropy curse brought about in its victims.
As she was dragged away so the bodies of the fallen could be tended, she realized a new purpose for herself. And it was this.
But this . . . . While it had become increasingly difficult for her to track the passing of years after the strange twist her own fate had taken, the sudden realization of how much time had ticked by while she searched fruitlessly suddenly pressed down on her. Ten years since that horrible day she'd watched so many people die. Since she'd held Lavender Brown's fingers as the last little spark of life drained from the other witch's eyes.
Ten years and not a week passed when she wasn't visited by at least one nightmare of golden eyes watching her menacingly as she lost the ability to breathe. As she felt the scrape of claws along the top of her spine. Nightmares that ended as he let the air back into her lungs. She always woke sitting bolt upright, gasping, only barely stopped from screaming by the awareness that her attacker had been left behind the moment she'd opened her eyes.
A decade had slipped by and she was no closer to an answer then she'd been before the head Medi-witch at St. Mungo's had delivered the startling news. Speaking of . . . .
Hermione checked the time. It was already so very late and she had a medical exam tomorrow morning. Sighing, she made her decision and went off to bed.
"So," Harry started as he met her on the steps of St. Mungo's the following day. Her best friend's grin was so bright it rivaled the pool of sunlight in which he stood, "how did it go today? Same result as usual?"
With an expression that was half wincing, half smiling, yet somehow not quite either, Hermione threw back her head to look up at the sky. She hooked her arm through his as they walked along. "Well, Madame Ophie said that from the look of things, I can probably celebrate my 19th birthday this year!"
He chuckled, patting her hand around his elbow. "You're unbelievable. 'Oh, no! I'm stuck being young for a few extra decades.' Tragic fate, that."
The witch frowned, shaking her head as a rueful look shaded her features. In the medical exams performed on all survivors following War's End, it was discovered that Hermione Granger had managed to make herself a bit of an anomaly.
She hadn't aged since the Battle of the Department of Mysteries.
She'd been made aware time magic was unpredictable when Professor McGonagall had entrusted her with a Time Turner during third year. What she hadn't been aware of—what no one had been prepared for—was energy from prolonged exposure to a time artifact being absorbed into her system. Energy later activated due to close proximity when the explosions during the Battle of the DoM triggered all the Time Turners at once, knocking them into infinite loops and leaving Hermione . . . not paused, precisely. Slowed was a more fitting way to state it.
All things considered, it could've been worse, she was told—she could've been aged backward into infancy or forward by several decades. In comparison to those fates, being 'chronologically challenged' was a small price to pay for meddling with time.
Harry believed she was too serious about the matter, and of course, the elder witches who tended her medical care were of the mind that she should be grateful. It was theorized that her unique trait had been the thing which had saved her from Antonin Dolohov's otherwise lethal attack spell, that it had slowed the effects of the damage on her body enough that her death, an event that should've been imminent, was delayed, permitting Madam Pomfrey the time necessary to save her life. Hermione couldn't argue with that. She did, however, think aging an approximate year per decade—an educated guess from Madame Ophie, Madame Pomfrey, and Professor McGonagall putting their heads together—was bound to get rather tedious at some point.
Last night, when she'd realized she'd been obsessing over a singular pursuit with no results for ten years, had been that point.
They ended up, as they often did on Saturdays, taking an early lunch at the Leaky Cauldron. The atmosphere was comfortable and familiar, and no matter what her week had been like, the childhood memories that lurked here soothed her.
When their plates were set before them in their usual booth, Harry cleared his throat, entirely too focused on his meal. He knew Hermione would get suspicious in a moment, so he simply dove right in.
"How, um, how's your research going?"
Her shoulders drooped and she suddenly didn't feel much like eating. Swallowing her current mouthful, she stabbed half-heartedly at a bit of asparagus. "Um, I've decided to give up, actually."
Harry's heart wrenched. This had been the thing she'd been set on for so long, he was sure if anyone could solve this particular puzzle, it would be her. Maybe the surprise he had wouldn't go over so well, after all. "Why?"
"Harry . . ." she said his name in a whisper as she shook her head. "There was nothing to find. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. I wish I had a different answer, but . . . ."
He watched her give a hopeless shrug. Watched her push around the butter-drenched vegetables on her plate with her fork.
"And you're sure you're done with it, then?"
"Absolutely done." Something in his tone drew her attention and she looked up from her massacred greens. "Why?"
"Well, I thought there might be some stones you left unturned, so I reached out to a dozen or so Indigenous Tribal Councils in the States on your behalf."
Her brown eyes narrowed in suspicion. "I thought Indigenous peoples didn't generally associate with the Wizarding community." It was no small secret that the Wizarding World wasn't the only manifestation of magic in the world, but the Wizarding community's tendency to behave as though they were 'the only ones' did tend to be a sore spot with other communities versed in magical ways. She'd not considered reaching out to them because she'd thought none of them would give her the time of day.
It also had not occurred to her because she didn't consider the natural shapeshifters of other cultures the same as those afflicted by the lycanthropy curse.
"Oh, actually that's mostly the American wizards and witches they're not too fond of."
"Um, okay." She shook her head, refocusing. "Why didn't you tell me this sooner? It is my name you're using."
Harry held up his hands in a placating gesture. "I didn't want to get your hopes up if I turned up nothing, and I didn't want to create confusion by using my name to handle something that was for you."
"Then should I assume you're telling me now because there was something?" Hermione fought hard to keep herself from feeling any sort of elation.
He lowered his hands and reached for his drink, taking a quick sip before answering. "Well, it seemed like that was a dead end too, at first—turns out some tribes' particular shapeshifter legends are so terrifying they won't even speak the names of the creatures, and after doing a little research of my own into that, I understand why—and I was ready to give up, too."
She waited, her brows high.
Harry reached into his back pocket and extracted a parchment envelope. He held it out, waiting for her to take it. "It's not exactly what you want, but it could be a start."
Accepting the envelope, Hermione had to remind herself to breathe before she opened it. Pushing aside her barely-touched plate, she slid the response to Harry's query from its sleeve and unfolded it on the table before her.
"Miss Hermione Granger,
"Our wolves and your wolves are not the same, but we acknowledge a connection and that your people's moon curse is a terrible magic which must be undone, if such a thing is possible. Our tribal council has reached a decision. While we have no answers for you, we believe time spent among our wolves might set you on a path toward finding some. Your people are no strangers to secret keeping, should you accept our invitation we ask that you extend us the same courtesy in whatever you learn here, and that you do not come unless you can offer our ways and our protectors your utmost respect.
Billy Black, Quileute Tribal Elder."
Holding her breath, she read it through a second time. Following the somewhat messy scrawl was contact information. Exhaling, she said in a whisper, "It could be a start. It . . . could be more than I've had to go on all this time."
"So?" Harry asked, smiling, "What're you going to do?"
Chewing at her lower lip as she thought it over—as she accepted that there was nothing to consider, no options to weigh, no answer to give but one—she mirrored his bright expression. She looked at the return address. "I suppose I'm going to Washington!"
Jasper looked up from the book open in his hands to see her lingering in the doorway of his study. He nearly smiled—Alice always made him feel at ease, simply by being close—yet, the mirthful expression faded faster than it'd begun to form as the emotion in the air around her drifted toward him.
Anxiety, he could feel the ripple of it in the pit of his gut as if it were his own.
He closed the book and set it aside, responding automatically by trying to settle her nerves. "What's wrong?"
Stepping into the room, her stride light and graceful as always, she shook her head. "Please let me keep what I'm feeling."
With a frown, he stood and rounded his desk to stand before her. He dropped the attempt to ease her jagged emotions and simply searched her face with his gaze. "Alice, what is it?"
"It's nothing that's wrong, exactly," she said, a watery smile playing on her lips. "But, I've seen that it's time."
"Time?" he echoed, instantly wary. He remembered suddenly—how foolish that he'd forgotten—that long-ago conversation they'd had after she'd first found him. There was the chat everyone knew . . . and then the one that they'd kept to themselves, the one they'd buried so deep even Edward couldn't dig it out of their minds.
"We'll be each other's happiness," she whispered, her eyes fixed off in the distance, as though seeing something he couldn't—a notion he already knew to be true. "For a while. The nearest and dearest of companions, likely what some might consider soulmates."
He only frowned. The voice of the girl who'd brought him out of the dark with a touch of her hand sounded whimsical, yet the tone was shadowed; it carried something deep and weighty he didn't dare think on.
"But it's only while we heal." Those eyes dimmed but remained far off. "That will take time, we'll even be happy. Someday, though, I'll see a new path for each of us, and then . . . it will just be time to go find our happiness apart."
His usually serene features pinched. "What if I don't want it to be time? What if I want things to remain the same?"
A corner of her mouth plucked upward and she reached one arm toward him. Jasper wasn't a person who fretted often, and she didn't like how it sounded from him.
Sighing, he reached back, twining his fingers with hers.
Alice dropped her gaze to their connected hands and then returned her attention to his face. "You would keep me here just so things don't have to change?"
The question bothered him, tore at him. No, of course he would never force her to do anything simply for his sake. If she felt it was time they parted? Yes, he would let her go. He knew they'd been together, healing each other, nurturing each other, for decades.
But now that it was at an end, it felt like forever and yet like barely a day had passed, all at once. The awareness set off a hollow sensation in the pit of his stomach.
"No. I want happiness for you, too," he answered, his voice low. Jasper had always known this day would come, so he supposed in a way he was braced for it. "Besides, it's not forever."
"No, it's not." She closed the distance, standing on her toes to drop a kiss on his cheek. "We'll be part of each other's lives again, when we've both found our happiness."
"I don't . . . I don't believe I can explain it to the others. They're not going to be glad to see you go. I don't think they'll understand."
"Carlisle and Esme will, I've seen it," she said, her voice full of confidence on that point. "Edward is just listening now, so he knows my feelings. I think he's probably surprised we managed to keep this from him. Emmett has always wanted whatever is best for all of us. It's Rose and Bella who'll take my absence hardest."
He smiled, the expression tight, mirthless. "No, it's not."
Alice clung tightly to his hand and lowered her heels back to the ground, her gaze never leaving his. "I love you, Jasper."
That smile became a touch more genuine. "I love you, too, Alice."
"I'll deal with the explanations," she informed him, taking some of the burden she knew he must be feeling off his shoulders. She couldn't let him blame himself for this, not when she was the one making the decision for them both.
Their fingers still twined, Alice pivoted on her heel and started from the room, tugging Jasper to follow.
Jacob pulled himself from beneath his car—yeah, he should probably restore something roomier now, but he still loved it, still did his best to upkeep it, despite that his bike and running were both faster and freer—and sniffed at the air. Even with his nose, it was a little hard to tell in here with the overpowering smells of grease, oil, old rubber, and the myriad other things that came to mind when one thought of antiquated automotive parts and plastics. But something in the air seemed . . . .
Different. And he absolutely refused to think of some stupid cliché about 'the winds of change.'
Snatching up the rag from where he'd dropped it beside him earlier, he climbed to his feet. He wiped his face and hands while he circled the dense line of shrubbery and trees that separated the bolted-together shed he called a garage from the house he shared with his father.
When the little faded red building came into sight, he flinched. Crinkling the bridge of his nose, he looked about. No, it wasn't a smell, not exactly. Weird. Giving his head a shake—just as he would were he in his wolf form right now, an instinctive attempt to clear out his nostrils—he continued up to the front door. Maybe his dad would know what—
"Jake."
The voice came from behind him. Billy Black's scent was all over the area, so it was never a surprise to Jacob that his father—even wheelchair-bound—could sneak up on him here. Of course, that also had to mean Billy had been sitting there waiting for Jacob not to have heard him, either, and that he'd simply hadn't noticed Billy when he'd emerged from the treeline . . . .
Okay, so maybe it was embarrassing that a man in a wheelchair could sneak up on a werewolf. Jacob would blame it on this whatever-it-was in the air this afternoon.
As Jacob turned to face him, Billy spoke again, cutting off his son's chance to speak. "Gather the wolves, the council needs a word with all of you."
Jacob's brows shot up. "Have we done something wrong?" he asked, his tone wary despite knowing they hadn't done anything—recently—that would get them in trouble. At least not since the last time they'd been lectured.
They were never exactly 'in trouble', not really. The protectors were too honored, too respected for that, but damn could their elders give them one hell of a talking to.
Billy's expression didn't change, though that hardly helped as there was no reading his face just now. It wasn't happy, or angry, or sad . . . no, it was that it was blank and his dark eyes were guarded that concerned his son.
"No," Billy said after a heartbeat. "We just need to speak with all of you about a serious matter. We're expecting a guest."
There was something in his father's voice then, something secretive underlying that last word.
Jacob nodded, trying to keep his own features schooled. "Sure, sure. I'll get them."
More than just that secretive something, the way Billy watched him as he turned and started away unnerved the werewolf. Shaking his head again, Jacob frowned.
Who could this guest possibly be to have his father acting so strangely?