A/N: I realise it's been a bit more than a week - this is due mostly to the fact that the wireless connections in Italy and Edinburgh were nothing short of awful. Anyway, only about 5 chapters left now, and I'll get the next one up sometime next week. Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter, and I hope you enjoy this one too. =]

Tempora Abducto.

by Flaignhan.

Conjuring furniture was not a speciality of Hermione's.

She was competent enough to conjure what she needed, but trying to match it all up to be exactly what she wanted in her first house was proving to be quite a test of her skills. Tom had offered to help. She had politely declined.

It was only as darkness fell that she decided to call it a day, settling for upholstery on her sofa that didn't quite match with her armchairs, resigning herself to the fact that yes, the bed frame would always be a slightly darker shade than the wardrobe.

There had been some debate over the colour of the bedspread. Naturally, she had wanted red, and naturally, he had wanted green.

They chose blue.

"It feels empty," she said, settling onto the sofa, taking a much needed rest.

"Well we're not exactly brimming with personal belongings are we? You've only existed for a year and I'm...well. You know."

They had quite a hefty collection of second hand books between them. Though Hermione had saved as much of her wages as was humanly possible over the last month, she wasn't quite ready to face real life without a proper selection of reading material. She had relied on the library during her Hogwarts years, but now they were over she would need to build up her own supply.

On the day her Gringotts account had her first lot of wages land in it, Hermione had rushed down to Diagon Alley as soon as she finished for the evening, withdrew enough money for her half of the rent, as well as a few extra galleons, before heading straight over to Flourish and Blotts.

"I wish I could have some photos, or...anything," Hermione said, frowning at the empty mantelpiece.

"We've got a roof over our heads, we're out of the way, we'll be fine."

"So this is it?" Hermione asked. "We just hide out here for fifty years? What are you going to do when you quit the shop work?"

"I'm trying not to think about it."

Hermione sighed.

"I'll only end up drawing attention to myself by being brilliant," Tom said, only half joking. "I might as well just curl up into a ball and die."

"You can't. Horcruxes, remember?"

Tom shot her a filthy look, and they said no more on the matter.

It was there. Just sitting there on the dresser. Her hand hovered above it, wanting to pick it up. She had told him she wouldn't have any dark magic in her house (and after all, it was in her name, so her house, even if he did pay half the rent) so it should be safe, shouldn't it?

She didn't want to ask him about it, it would raise his suspicions. No, it was best she was left alone to do it.

She didn't even know if it would work, she didn't know how the stone worked, whether it would bring back people she'd lost or just those that had already been lost up to this precise moment in time.

Biting the bullet, Hermione picked up the ring, closed her eyes and turned it over three times.

"Hello."

Her eyes snapped open. "Remus."

He looked younger than she remembered, his face was fresh and there were fewer scars. His eyes twinkled merrily, even in this ghostly, pearlescent form. He smiled at her and sat down on the bed, hands on his knees, surveying her carefully.

"I can't tell you what you want to know," he said after a minute, in a tone that suggested that he knew she was aware of that already. "I died long before the end of it all, I never saw the outcome."

Hermione looked at the floor. "Yes, of course. I'm so sorry."

He waved her apologies away. "For what it's worth, and that may not be a lot, but I think you're doing the right thing."

"Really?"

"Funny how you accept things that don't add up when it appears to be the only option...don't you think? There never was much human in him...Tom's ten times the man he was, now he has you."

She shifted awkwardly on her chair. She wasn't quite ready enough for people to be tying her to Tom quite so definitely. She didn't argue though, she was quite sure that she would be spending the foreseeable future with Tom, in their cottage in the middle of nowhere, trying to hide the fact that really, he didn't want to be a mass-murdering monster.

"I'm sure it will be fine," he said reassuringly. "And I know Harry and Ron will be so relieved you're alive and well."

"I'll be in my seventies when I next see them. And for them, it might only be five minutes after I was eighteen. It's...it's too much."

"You could always take an ageing potion," Remus suggested with a shrug of his shoulders.

"A permanent one?"

"Well, I don't know. Two of the most talented students Hogwarts has ever had are going to be cooped up in a cottage for fifty years with not much to do. Why don't you invent one?"

Hermione opened her mouth to respond but it was a few seconds before any noise came out. "I wouldn't know where to start!"

"Neither did Nicholas Flamel. And neither did Lord Voldemort, when he tried to resurrect himself, but he got there eventually, didn't he?"

Hermione wasn't sure she approved of the second analogy too much, though the point still stood. Perhaps Tom would be glad to have a project – the shop work was so dull, and it wasn't like he had never been interested in life-lengthening solutions.

"So," she said awkwardly, snapping out of her train of thought, "what's it like where you are? I mean, where are you?"

He chuckled. "I'm perfectly fine – everyone is. They all send their love...and luck."

Hermione wasn't entirely sure that having luck sent to her from people who had all been forced to an early grave was necessarily beneficial, but she appreciated the sentiment all the same.

"Make him hide it soon," he said, gesturing to the ring. "It'll only tempt you if it sits there."

"I know where he hides it though, it's not much of a hiding place," she argued.

"Yes, but if you go and get it, Dumbledore can't. Don't go and change history now, not after you and Tom have sacrificed so much to keep it as it was."

"I wish I didn't have to keep it as it was. So he doesn't want to be Lord Voldemort, let's just leave it at that!"

"Something worse would happen, I'm sure of it," he replied firmly, leaving no room for argument.

"Yes I suppose you're right," Hermione sighed.

Remus smiled and stood up, patting her on the shoulder, though she couldn't feel a thing. "You'll be fine. Let go of the ring though, and don't use it again."

She nodded. "Tell everyone..."

He waited patiently while she tried to put into words how she felt, but what could you say to the dozens of people who had lost their lives in a war that she was ensuring would happen?

"Tell them I miss them," she finished, unsatisfied with such a generic expression.

Remus nodded, his hand leaving her shoulder, and, after taking one more look at her former professor, she put the ring down.

She was serving up dinner when he returned, a little later than usual.

"Guess what I've got."

Hermione turned her attention away from her task to see him dangling a gold locket in front of her face. She swallowed the lump in her throat.

"Great!" she said, feigning enthusiasm.

"Do you even know what it is?" Tom asked sceptically.

"Of course I know what it is!" Hermione snapped. "It doesn't mean I have to like it, does it? That thing almost killed my best friend, for your information."

Tom looked between the locket and Hermione as though he was impressed, and she huffed, turning back to the dinner plates. With a wave of her wand they floated over to the kitchen table, and Tom slipped the locket into his trouser pocket, taking his seat at the table.

"It was my mother's."

"I know."

"You know Burke only gave her – "

"Yes," Hermione said impatiently. "Can we change the subject?"

"Is this the treasure you were talking about?"

Hermione set her fork down before she had even managed to take her first bite and sighed.

"I just want to know," Tom said defensively, placing his fork on the edge of his plate, too.

"There's something else. How d'you feel about a project?" she asked.

Tom's eyebrows rose, and he abandoned the subject of treasure immediately. "What kind of project?"

"Well...this might sound vain, but I just want my old life back really, but I don't want to be an old woman the next time I see my friends."

"You want the elixir of life?"

"Well no," Hermione said, frowning a little, "I don't want eternal life...I just want to make it hang around a bit until I'm ready."

Tom sniggered. "Yes, okay, that sounds incredibly vain. But I do suppose you only want what every woman wants."

"Excuse me," Hermione said heatedly, "You tell me who was the last woman to be sent fifty years back in time and was then told the only way to get back was to live through it! I want what's rightfully mine! My own life, in my own time, with my own friends, and I don't want to be trying to sort out the history of the world because somebody doesn't want to be a mass murderer anymore!"

"Oh how very selfish of me, I do apologise. Would it make you feel better if I went out on a murderous rampage?"

Hermione sighed. "Fifty years Tom, fifty years, here. Just you and me, no one else, because it's too risky. No one else, because I don't have anyone else."

"So this cure for ageing," he began.

"Not a cure," Hermione stressed, "I'm quite happy to age along with my friends once I'm back in my own time, it's just a temporary measure. I don't want to be nineteen my whole life."

"Oh I don't know, that doesn't sound like such a bad fate to me."

Hermione gave him a withering look and finished eating her food.

The fire crackled merrily, though the mood in the room was far from merry. Tom and Hermione were surrounded by stacks of leather bound books, all in varying degrees of disrepair. Tom exhaled loudly, setting the final book down.

"Nothing."

"We need more books," Hermione said determinedly, as she began going through the pile next to her again.

Tom grabbed her wrist to stop her. "You won't find anything in there. We'll just have to...start with a basic ageing potion and...experiment."

"Experiment?" she raised one of her eyebrows. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Well, we won't experiment on ourselves, obviously. But we're good, we can figure this out. If anyone can, we can – no doubt about it."

Hermione found it hard to share his enthusiasm and optimism. In truth, she was finding it hard to get excited about anything these days; her job was repetitive, so was her home life – even weekends weren't fun. Tom had to work on Saturdays so she was in on her own all day, nobody to talk to, and the long, grey prospect of fifty years staying hidden lying ahead of her.

When she had been at school, she had had her studies to distract her from the reality of her situation. She could almost pretend she was living the life she wanted to, but now she was being forced to stay out of sight, to not fulfil her potential. If Hermione Mercer ever did anything worthwhile, they'd be sure to learn about it at school, and the secret would be out.

The worst part was that she enjoyed torturing herself. Fifty years was over two and a half lifetimes for her, or, six hundred months, or, two thousand, six hundred weeks, or, eighteen thousand, two hundred days. She hadn't dared to venture into hours, minutes or seconds yet. That would be dangerous and depressing territory for sure. Not that days, weeks, months and years wasn't, of course, but once you're getting on for twenty thousand of anything, it's best to quit while you're still sane.

Tom put an arm around her, pulling her in and kissing the top of her head. Despite all of her Occlumency training, despite all of her successful sessions with Dumbledore, Tom always knew what was going through her mind. And the worst part was, he wasn't even using Legilimency, he could just tell. She hated being so obvious, especially to him, who was probably the most un-obvious person she had ever met.

"Let's call it a night," he said, getting to his feet and taking her by the wrist, hauling her up. "We can carry on tomorrow."

Hermione nodded, and allowed him to lead her upstairs to bed.

The cottage soon became an organised mess of tatty books, cauldrons, potions ingredients and scraps of parchment with notes scrawled on them. At first, Hermione had attempted to clear everything away each night, but soon found she was back to work as soon as she got in from her day at the Ministry. Soon the tools for her age-prevention quest became part of the furniture, as much as the table at which they sat each night, heads bowed over text books, squinting to read the tiny print.

Tom had got hold of some morally questionable books (she didn't ask how) and it was with a bitter taste in her mouth that Hermione opened them, looking for anything that could be of use. When they had proved to be useless, Hermione found herself almost pleased, while Tom seemed to take it personally that not even dark magic would provide an easy route. Yes, he could split his soul, but holding back the years? No. They were resigned to figuring it out the hard way, mixing variations on the usual ageing potion, none of which seemed to be of much use.

"It's not going to happen straight away," Tom told her, after a huff of impatience had issued from her one Sunday afternoon. "I don't even want to think about how long it took Nicholas Flamel to create the elixir of life. This could take years."

"At least it'll keep us busy I suppose," Hermione sighed. She closed the book she had been studying and pushed it away from her. "Let's go out."

"Where?"

"Anywhere."

"Sounds good," Tom agreed, and he too closed his book. "Let's get out of here."