- Winky is coming too.
The voice was small, brittle like a crystal ball on the verge of falling off from the edge of the table, but even before it could crash on the floor, shattering to the ground with a shrilling scream, wounded fingers reached out, collecting gently in the bruised palm a pained face the house-elf buried in the bloodied sweater, hiding her battered form in the reassuring shadow of the young woman who was sitting on the floor, every inch of skin covered in old scars and fresh cuts that kept on bleeding to the floor with a sickening ticking that followed the slow turning of the time-turner clutched in her other hand.
Hurried steps echoed in the hallways beyond the closed door of the Great Hall, hissing voices that carried curses and words she already knew by heart, words that, with time, had become hollow sounds without meaning, without importance, not where she was going to go.
Her wand laid on the ruined fabric of her ripped skirt, to the side, her eyes fixed on the floor where, with every step they made, with every breath they took, the runes she had carved in the stone with the tip of her wand dipped in her blood was beginning to throb like the beating of a bleeding heart.
The floor quivered under the surge of magic that made windows shake and doors croak, the crackling of a faraway fire a sound her ears were glad to hear, while the air loaded with the thundering voices she could hear beyond the door that a spell blasted in a burst of splinters of wood, yet, she did not raise her head.
She already knew who was pointing at her their wands.
She already knew who was marching towards her with the word mudblood chewed between gritted teeth.
And she did not care.
- Cruciatus!
The curse flashed in the dark hall like a thunder ready to strike and burn a tree, bouncing on a barrier the young witch had silently cast while her eyes kept on focusing on the runes that had begun to burn as they were supposed to burn, as she had wanted them to burn, flashing on the ground as if the floors had been clawed by a beast with bloodied talons.
When August Rookwood crossed the aisle that separated him from the young witch, a dark chuckled echoed in the hall while new curses thundered in the air and death eaters surrounded the small form that still ignored their advance, their wands pointed at her.
- Time to reach your friends underground, mudblood.
The necklace of butterbeer caps that laid right above her heart followed the gentle rising and falling of her chest as Hermione Granger tilted her head to the side to follow the scared twitching of the house-elf in her arms who was trying to escape the cruel stares sinking her small body against her chest, gripping the sweater between her fragile little fingers to keep them grounded, to keep them together, while the magic began to crackle in the air that, slowly, was taking a strange burning smell.
As if something was beginning to burn.
As the flames had begun to reach out.
She let Winky crawling in her chest, just as she let the dark wizards advance.
Just a little closer.
Just a little more.
Everything would have ended soon, after all.
She could already feel her body fade, she could already see the world shaking around her.
Yes. Rookwood was right.
It had come her time too, only, not in the way he hoped.
The awful smell of burning flesh preceded the screams that followed the roar of the ground as flames erupted from the magic runes in the form of beasts of fire, monsters neither of them was able to fight.
Fiendfyre was a curse dangerous to cast, dark magic it was not wise to use nor to mix, but Hermione did not fear the flames, she did not want anything of what surrounder her to survive.
Hogwarts was burning, and she was thankful for that.
The fire could purify them all.
All the sins. All the deaths. All the body of the friends she had buried in the ground, close to the Whomping Willow.
Ashes began to sail in the wind with the roaring of the flames while even her body began to fade, to crumble in small grains of sand the time-turner in her hand was sucking in a whirlpool of magic and blood.
An angry snarl and the sound of breaking bones brought her eyes up, framing the melting face of a wizard who, despite the crumpling of his flesh kept on baring his teeth at her, on hissing words that began to get tangled and to get lost in a swirl of sounds Hermione listened to with a heavy heart.
The clattering of forks.
The lively whisperings of excited teens.
The sound of home.
When her flesh ceased to fade, when the shaky corners returned to frame the world, her eyes did not leave the burning man who crumbled in front of her in a mass of ashes she blew away from her face with a weak puff of air, blinking through the blood that soaked her hair to see the sea of faces she did not recognize, but it did not matter.
Because she recognized the warmth of the hall, the gentle cold of the floor, the mild weight of a gaze Hermione Granger tried to meet despite the pain, despite the broken state of her mind, turning just enough to search for the man she had hoped to meet once again.
Even if in a different time. Even if in a different world. Even if as a different man.
But alive.
- Professor Dumbledore.
Her broken words echoed in the hall like the haunting call of a ghost, but there was a smile on her lips, there was triumph in her eyes, and when she fell to the floor with a thud and a trembling elf in her arms who was crying her name with fear, Hermione Granger could almost hear Harry's proud voice echoing in her ears, lulling a sleep she welcomed with open arms and the awareness to have succeeded, in the end.
You are brilliant Hermione. Truly brilliant.