The funny thing about Koldovstoretz was that it got warmer the further down you went.
Back at Hogwarts, the dungeons could always be counted on to be the coldest place in the castle. Hermione had some not-so-fond winter memories of teeth chattering through Potions class, huddled close to her brewing fire. (Warming charms weren't allowed, and it wasn't until she became an Unspeakable that she had learned that it was because the magic could have affected potion results — she had just thought Snape was being spiteful in another way.) And despite the fact she had never been, Ron and Harry relayed that the Slytherin common room was quite chilly as well.
Here, though, the topmost floors were the coldest. Koldovstoretz, like the Slytherin dorms, was submerged almost entirely in a lake. Only the main floor and some towers extended above water. Unlike the Hogwarts dungeons, however, the perpetual cold of the Baltic coast that permeated the top floors never managed to sink below water level.
Luckily, Professor Bezgoviy's research was mostly based in the lowest floor of the palace. (He had told her to call him Valeriy Gavrilovich, but even ten years after graduation, Hermione just couldn't shake the habit of showing proper respect to teachers. Harry had long since begun to ignore her impulsive corrections of 'Professor Snape'.) This was fortunate, because though she had been here for nearly two years, she had yet to adjust to Russia's colder temperatures. Every time she had to venture to the surface, whether it be for conducting trials on the small bit of land near the Quidditch pitch or for the occasional appearance to the staff table at dinner, she found herself shivering through warming charm after warming charm and still having to stave off a cold with Pepperup the next morning.
Hermione did not miss England, despite the weather. In fact, the primary reason she volunteered to help Professor Bezgoviy with his time travel was to get away.
Ron and she had split up in the year after the war, when she had returned to Hogwarts for her NEWTs and he had joined up with the Aurors to continue his career of heroism. Their schedules never managed to match up, and one too many disagreements without being able to spend time together afterwards had ended the relationship. After the fact, Ron found much amusement in telling others that they had split up over something as petty as robe fabrics. "Who knew 'Mione was such a girl?" he would laugh to Harry.
The argument was actually more about how the cloth would hold defensive charms. Ron had insisted that his senior officers wore dragonhide, but Hermione had insisted that a more common cotton-polyester blend could be safer, if spelled correctly. Dragonhide itself was far more durable and spell resistant on its own, but the very spell-resistance that attracted Ron to it would prevent the addition of any defensive charms. Cotton, on the other hand, was flimsy on its own, but with the proper spells it could achieve similar properties to dragonhide as well as more specialized ones. It had escalated to screaming, and they each apparated back to their respective homes to calm down. But they didn't see each other regularly, and with both too heated to set time away to meet, they had never moved past it. Hermione figured they had officially broken up when she picked up her morning Prophet to see a picture of a blushing Ron with Holyhead Harpy chaser Valmai Morgan plastered on the front page.
Things with the Weasleys were strained after that. She was rarely invited over, and Ginny often had excuses for why she couldn't meet up for coffee. Harry still made time for her, but things were different now that it wasn't the three of them. When it was the three of them, conversation was understandably awkward and always ended with Ron trying his best to joke about their relationship.
By the time Hermione was nineteen, one war and eight years of the wizarding world later, she felt like the eleven year old friendless swotty bookworm again. She discovered that making friends was rather difficult when you haven't faced mortal danger together multiple times.
She became an Unspeakable at twenty, and the profession came with a host of coworkers who could at best be described as 'quirky'. The younger ones were twice her age, and a good portion of them were thrice her age. The existence of an Unspeakable tended to ever so slowly fade from the minds of all those who knew him, and this isolation often affected the social skills of the Unspeakable. Of course, being a famous war hero, this wasn't an option for Hermione unless the Ministry wished to cripple the minds of nearly the entirety of magical Britain, but she figured that as an academic who had obliviated both of her parents for their safety, she would fit right in. She was right (the department was full of focused, competent bookworms) but it wasn't quite a good thing (the department was full of socially-deficient bookworms).
Six years of Unspeakable work went by, with minimal contact from the Weasleys, awkward time with Harry, and of course no contact from her parents, who still believed themselves to be Wendell and Monica Wilkins, happily living in Australia as they had always wanted. The Prophet would occasionally run stories on the female member of the Golden Trio, speculating on her reclusion, the quiet breakup with Ron, and her meetings with Harry alone. Her being a gold digger after the poor heart of the Boy-Who-Lived became a common topic once again.
Valeriy Gavrilovich Bezgoviy, part-time professor at the Russian wizarding school Koldovstoretz, part-time researcher of time travel, requested an Unspeakable with experience in Ancient Runes and interest in time travel to relocate to Russia to help him with research and trials. Hermione, the girl who would time travel every day to take her Ancient Runes class, and exhausted with England, volunteered.
Hermione reached one freezing, gloved hand into her bag of Legos, filched from the waiting area of her parents' abandoned dentistry practice, and placed a bright orange brick onto the ground of the clearing. She then took the modified time turner, its rings carved with runes and arithmancy symbols, turned them to calibrate them to the appropriate amount of years, and set the chain over the Lego.
The sounds of the quidditch pitch not too far away were rather distracting. She had thought Hogwarts's quidditch culture was ridiculous, but here it was far worse — they played on entire uprooted trees, in temperatures that would have had even the overzealous Oliver Wood calling off practice, for Merlin's sake.
She set her Dicto-Quill in the air, then cleared her throat to talk over the whooping of teenagers.
"Experiment ninety-five in object-based time manipulation over the medium term. The last experiment sent the object back 800 years, and I felt like I'd been churning water into butter while running a marathon. I suspect this time, the exertion will be far worse — I'll be trying for 1,500 today. This object is currently twenty years old."
She paused to look apprehensively at the Lego brick on the ground.
"Right, here goes nothing — strike that off the notes, by the way."
She knelt down, and after taking a deep breath, tapped the time turner with her wand.
She felt the magic draining out of her immediately, the time turner leeching energy from every part of her body. Suddenly, her eyes struggled to stay open, and she felt intensely sore in places she didn't even know could be sore until she'd started performing trials.
The body of the time turner rose off the ground and began furiously spinning, the chain quietly tinkling as it did so. It spun faster and faster, beginning to ever-so-slightly shake, until, with a flash, the brick was gone. The time turner fell to the grass with a light thunk.
Hermione took a sip of her coffee, both for the warmth and for the caffeine, and her arm protested against the simple action of raising her thermos. She bent down with a grunt to pick up the time-turner, feeling like her back was older than Merlin, and deposited it in her pocket.
"Object appears to have been successfully sent back. I'll be looking for it now," she relayed to the Dicto-Quill.
With a put-upon sigh at the thought of performing any magic so soon after powering the time turner, she readied her wand once again. "Accio orange brick."
A tiny patch of grass began to quake, around a foot to the right of where the time turner lay. It was suddenly pushed into the air, along with a good amount of dirt, as a muddy plastic brick emerged from the ground and flew towards Hermione.
She caught it, and after a quick Scourgify, she determined it was the same orange Lego she'd just sent back. It looked a little chewed-on, but otherwise intact. Hermione dug into her bag for the dating parchment.
"The object has been located, and it certainly looks as if it's been here for a while."
The dating parchment was of her own invention, inspired by the Muggle idea of carbon-dating. Professor Bezgoviy had figured out how to send objects further back than any standard time turner, and though Hermione had zoned out when he explained his goals of communication in meta-time, she had gathered that he had needed a way to determine quite how far back he was sending them to be able to adjust that period to certain specifications and later check that he was successful in doing so. Hermione, who had learned about carbon-dating in primary school, suggested he choose objects that would last a long time, find them, and check how old they were. A few tweaks to the idea later, and she had a runic array that allowed her to check the age of the polymer used in the Lego bricks.
She read the runes off the parchment aloud, pointing her wand at the brick. With little fanfare, Hermione suddenly became aware that the brick's radiocarbon composition indicated an age of roughly 1,520 years.
Hermione told the Dicto-Quill as much. "This trial appears to be a success," she noted. "I'm off to dinner. Strike that from the record."
Hermione tried to show up to eat with the rest of the school at least once a week. She had a seat at the staff table at the head of the room, which was set up very similarly to the Hogwarts Great Hall, but with many smaller tables for the students rather than four large tables. The practice of segregating students based on "houses" seemed exclusive to the wizarding Anglosphere.
Meals here were somewhat unenjoyable — her heavily accented Russian prevented her from knowing any of the staff well, barring Professor Bezgoviy, of course, but he was a man triple her age who spent his free time with his colleagues. Even so, she figured dining among others at least once in a while would be good for her, so she forced herself to come. Potatoes and meat had comprised the overwhelming majority of her diet while in Koldovstoretz, mainly because she hadn't gotten the nerve to try the more exotic dishes, like kholodets or olivye, that the rest of the staff seemed to love. She was spooning potatoes onto her plate when the post came.
A great flock of owls fluttered in through the windows at the southern end of the hall, dropping packages and letters onto plates, sparking a rise in chatter from the students. Hermione had always wondered why the wizarding world at large had decided the most convenient time for mail to be delivered was during mealtimes, but never pursued the issue. After all, who knew why the wizarding world did anything?
She spotted the school's tawny owl that delivered her subscriptions to the Prophet as well as the local newspaper, the Belgorod Busybody. Understanding the Russian fully was beyond her abilities, but it was good practice and Hermione was determined to at least attempt to keep herself up to date on current events.
The bird swooped closer and dropped the papers into her potatoes. Delightful.
She counted out the appropriate number of rubles and gave it to the owl, who had nearly knocked over her pumpkin juice when landing, and shooed it away hurriedly. A glance over the Prophet revealed nothing but some quidditch news, in which she had no interest, and something about Eeylop's Owl Emporium changing ownership. Overall, a slow day for news. She sighed and set it aside, intending to take a crack at the Busybody, when she noticed the envelope that had been sandwiched between the two. It was a letter from Harry.
She found herself pleasantly surprised. Harry had written maybe twenty or so letters in the two years she'd been here, sending them with less and less frequency as time went on. The last one had to have been at least two months ago, and it had mostly been about how the Weasleys were renovating the Burrow to make a room for his visits and adding a second house on the property for Ron.
She broke the seal and unfolded the parchment.
Hermione,
It's been a while since you've sent that last letter, but things have been super busy around here.
She held back a snort. He consistently opened every letter with a variation of that excuse.
Everyone's doing great, thanks for asking. Mrs. Weasley has taken up cross-stitching, and Mr. Weasley keeps complaining about the little patches of flowers she's taken to putting on his sweaters. I've been able to keep her from adding some to mine, thank Merlin.
Hermione sighed at the thought of a Weasley sweater. She could really use one right about now, considering she was still chilly underneath her quilt-lined robe and the two layers underneath that. All of hers were just a tad too small though, and she felt awkward wearing them. She hadn't received one since things with Ron ended, and she didn't expect to — she had never been as close to the Weasleys as Harry was — but her old ones were still an unpleasant reminder.
The letter meandered on, discussing how the new room turned out and what the latest was with the Aurors.
One last thing — I've got some big news for you, 'Mione. I wanted to tell you as soon as possible.
Gin and I got married last week!
Don't tell anyone, because we haven't told the public yet. We didn't want to plan the wedding with the Prophet in mind, so it was a super small ceremony, close friends and family only. Getting the Delacours up from France without raising suspicion was pretty hard. Remind me to write to you about it later, it's a real hoot but I'm running out of parchment.
It was the best day of my life, 'Mione. We had it near the Burrow, like Bill and Fleur, and the stars were so beautiful that night. I'm not very good at putting feelings into words, but the way Ginny looked in white was unforgettable.
And in cramped text, like he'd forgotten to put the line in before signing:
It was good to hear from you, write to you soon.
Harry
Hermione set down the letter.
Harry had gotten married, and she hadn't known.
Sure, she had known that she'd been growing apart from him and the Weasleys. But he was still her closest friend, and Ginny right after him, and she hadn't even known they'd been engaged, much less been invited to the wedding.
'Close friends and family only'. They had invited Bill's in-laws up from France, for the love of Merlin, but couldn't be bothered to invite her?
She huffed in indignation, and though she would never admit it, the threat of tears burned behind her eyes. But there was nothing to be done. She folded up the letter and put it aside, vowing to write back and subtly inquire about her lack of invitation.
Hermione removed the Busybody fromher potatoes and made a half-hearted attempt to brush the grease off it. A few of her tablemates were shooting glances at her, likely for not managing to push her plate out of the way in time for the owl, but she couldn't find it in herself to care. It was a ridiculous expectation for a ridiculous system.
After a cursory glance over the front page, she decided to look at it more in-depth later and opened the newspaper to skim over the rest. Her own face greeted her, blinking from a small picture on the third page. Today was just one surprise after another, wasn't it? She recognized her name in the article's title, and after squinting some, she realized it had been paired with a rather uncomplimentary word.
Of course the press about her would reach Russia, especially once bored journalists realized Hermione had been a frequent subject of the papers back in England. She sighed, not bothering to even try and read the rest of the article.
Well, that was just great. The whole point of coming to Russia had been to avoid this whole thing — to avoid being called a suchka in all the tabloids the wizarding world so loved. And clearly the distance between herself and Harry was not merely geographical, as she had wanted to believe.
She caught a whisper of her name from the transfiguration professor to the astronomy and astrology professor, and she shamefully realized they were side-eying her for the article.
The Busybody's thin paper crumpled easily into a ball, which was abandoned on her plate. She pushed away her potatoes, which were probably dirty now anyways, scooped up the Prophet and her letter, and left the hall with her head held high.
It was the most dignified way she had fled a room in recent memory.
Doing another trial today was unnecessary, but Hermione didn't feel like being in the staff quarters wing. This one would be a repeat of the last — 1,500 years — and it would just be to check she could replicate results. The brick for today was a minifigure's head, with the face half-rubbed off. It had buckteeth.
She tossed it on the ground and slipped the time turner out of her pocket. It was still calibrated to 1,500 years.
She knelt to touch the chain to the plastic head, and stopped. 1,500 years ago was roughly when Hogwarts was founded. The idea of a Muggle toy being around for that important bit of magical history was a funny idea, and Hermione let herself chuckle. What she wouldn't give to be that minifigure.
An idea occurred to her: She could be that minifigure. Nothing was stopping her.
They hadn't tried sending any living creatures back, as decay and the isolation of Koldovstoretz would prevent confirmation of success, but in theory it should be safe. All the plastics' aging had been uninterrupted by the travel, and there was no damage to them.
Besides, what was keeping her here? She had grown apart from all of the people she loved, and even putting such a great physical distance between them and herself hadn't helped her pretend everything was fine. But putting great temporal distance might.
She stared at the time turner for a while, dangling it in front of her face. It glinted invitingly.
Before she could change her mind, she scooped the plastic head off the ground and shoved it into her pocket, and with practiced movements, slipped the time turner over her head. She pointed the wand at the time turner resting above her sternum, and thinking of the founders, tapped it.
The second she felt the drain on her magic, she regretted it. She wasn't dressed to be outside for too long, and she had nothing but her wand and bag of Legos on her. She wasn't prepared to relocate to the past — she was hardly prepared to go for a walk around the grounds!
Desperately, she stowed her wand in her pocket and tried her best to clamp down on the steady flow being fed to the time turner. It floated around her neck, spinning, and she scrambled to get the chain over her head.
It pulled over her thick curls and she threw it away from her; she could see it land in front of her before bouncing up and floating again. It continued spinning, and she knew it was too late.