4 years 3 months and 25 days
that's how long it's been since the war.
She's sitting by her desk in the Ministry, staring to the furthest wall.
Was this what she wanted?
Is this how her life was supposed to go?
It's been 3 months and 25 days since she broke up with Ron.
3 months and 25 days,
and she doesn't feel like this is her life.
It's not the break up that bothers her. They should have done it months, maybe years, ago.
She did love him.
Still does, but there was always something not quite right about him. Not him in person, but him for her.
Something,
some feeling.
Something she missed, and tried to find from him.
But couldn't.
So, she gave up.
Told him they wanted completely different things and moved out.
But now, almost 4 months later, she still doesn't know what it is she truly wants.
What's the part of her life she seems to be missing? The cause of this hole in her soul she can't fulfill?
So, she sits there, knowing she should work.
But not feeling like working.
That's when Draco Malfoy knocks at her office door.
He works at the ministry too, she knows that.
Sees him in the cafeteria at lunches.
They never talk, but she knows he did something for the ministry after his trials to make amends and that's how he got the job.
Sometimes she feels he's watching her but when she turns to look, he's having a conversation with his colloquies, not paying any attention to her.
Besides, why would he?
They don't know each other.
They fought on different sides of the war. Although she did speak for him in the trial because she believed he did what he did under immense pressure, and he was just a teen then anyway.
So, he got out with house arrest and some community service for the ministry.
That's about all she knows.
Although sometimes in her nightmares about the war, his grey eyes still haunt her.
The way he looked at her in the empty corridor on their sixth year and told her the exact date the Death Eaters were going to invade the castle.
It was the wrong date.
But she never believed he gave her the wrong date on purpose.
And after what Harry told them about the night Dumbledore died, she never could put the whole blame on him.
Now he's standing on her doorway, calculating look in his steely eyes.
"Morning Granger." He drawls.
She's not sure why his voice alerts her so today.
"Morning, How can I help you?" She asks like it was any other ministry worker at her door.
He walks to her desk and puts a note on it.
"There's a timeline test in the Department of Mysteries. They're searching for volunteers. Thought you might be interested."
She looks at the paper on her desk and then to him.
"What made you think that?"
He shrugs casually, "Somehow this boring office work doesn't strike as your ultimate goal."
She's staring at him.
How would he know what her ultimate goal would be? He doesn't know her!
"What made you think this would be?" She asks suspiciously nodding to the paper.
"I thought you might relish the idea of finding new levels of magic."
He's right: that's exactly the kind of thing she'd be interested in doing. But how does he know this? Why does he bother?
"Besides it only takes a couple of hours of your day and pays fairly well." He turns to leave.
Suddenly she has this urge to stop him. To ask him more questions about how, after all this time, he came to think of her of all people!
"Think about it. You might find something about yourself that you've missed." He says and ads: "Come on, Granger. Live a little."
Then he walks away.
His words bother her the whole day.
Like there's something she should remember, but doesn't.
Something she has missed!
Wasn't that exactly what she had been thinking just mere minutes ago?
What was his deal?
.
.
.
After two days she's sitting on the chair in the Department Of Mysteries, in line with other volunteers, waiting to sign some papers about the timeline experiment.
The room where they sit is wide with chairs lined up. But the most intruding thing is the clock.
A huge ticking thing with golden rims. No numbers, but hundreds of pointers moving on different speeds.
The ticking is the only sound in the quiet room. Like a rhythm to their waiting.
Just by looking at it, you could never guess what it does? what it stands for?
She's sure it's more than just a clock.
Maybe she should apply to be an Unspeakable? Seems a lot more interesting than her current job.
Malfoy is not there with the other volunteers.
She doesn't know why she thought he'd be. Almost like she anticipated to meet him here.
"Miss. Granger." They call her like a doctor to an appointment.
In the room, that looks just like her own office, they give her a thick layer of papers.
"Read them thoroughly and then I need you to sign here, here and here." The assistant taps the papers, "Take your time, make sure you understand everything."
It doesn't sound too exciting.
They'll put her to sleep for a couple of hours, and during that, send her consciousness to a different timeline. She's supposed to stay in that timeline for some amount of time, see how it differs from the one they're living now. They'll run some tests and so on. And when she returns, no matter how much time passed there, she would wake up in the afternoon of this same day she'd left. The usual time spent in another timeline is two or three days. A week is the maximum.
There's a list of warnings though, about darker timelines, stressful events there and feeling detached after.
But after all, she gets a choice whether she wants to keep the memories of the timeline she visited or if she wants them obliviated.
So, there's no true risk, is there?
It sounds like an adventure!
She can feel the excitement bubble in her as she signs her name to the papers.
It's been so long since she did anything even remotely exciting.
After the war and the endless days in Horcrux hunt she thought she needed peace!
But now she thinks it's been too long since her last adventure!
She goes to the experiment room. There are beds for them to be comfortable during their trip, and there's a clock too.
Similar to the one in the waiting hall.
She wants to ask about it, but doesn't get a chance.
"We'll send you to the between space at first. It'll look like a tropical beach, but you won't be staying there for long. It's just for the transaction from one timeline to another. When you arrive at the timeline you're supposed to study, you won't remember this timeline."
She nods, feeling giddy.
Adventures of the additional timeline, welcome!
.
.
.
5 hours later
She's sitting on the bed in the Department of Mysteries, blinking.
Her head is spinning and memories of two different lives make her feel disoriented and confused.
"Miss Granger, welcome back!"
She looks to the woman standing next to her, somehow surprised she can hear her.
Nearly two years.
That's how long she was gone in her mind. But here, almost no time has passed.
Two years in silence.
Everything looks the same as the day she came here, but everything is different.
The castle,
the silence,
the dorms,
the room,
the tower,
Draco…
Draco! she almost screams out loud.
Was any of it real?
Was he even real?
Was he just a creation of another timeline?
Was she supposed to go to the silence with only him as a company? Was that the timeline chosen for her?
What about all those months as a ghost? Living in two worlds and not really existing in either?
She puts her face to her hands to stop the spinning.
"When you're ready, the head Unspeakable Graywitch would like to speak with you." The woman tells her, and she nods faintly.
Then she's left alone. The ticking bangs her eardrums, making her remember the night it started.
Her memories are flying around like a flock of bats scared of sunrise.
Which of all that really happened and what is just a product of the experiment?
She remembers the day he asked her about her pendant,
and the day he told her about the attack.
But now she has two memories about the events: the ones she lived through and then others when she was a ghost, screaming to herself to notice him.
Him…
Her heart aches when she thinks of him.
Coming back and realizing it wasn't real doesn't take away what she felt for him.
What she feels for him.
But is it really him she feels for?
The Draco of this timeline,
the one she spoke for in the trials,
who gave her the paper about the timeline experiments,
does he go through his days without knowing any of this happened? Without knowing what they went through?
Will he never know how much she loved him?
"Come on, Granger. Live a little." His words come back to her now and she realizes she has heard him say that once before,
in a different time,
in a different reality.
Could it be that some of him was real after all?
Is he still there? The boy she loved so.
The boy she was ready to do anything for.
The boy who she wanted to live so badly she was ready to give up her own life,
to live as a ghost,
to not really exist, if it meant she got to be with him?
She needs to find him and ask!
Needs to make sure.
But first, she goes to the head Unspeakable Greywitch.
He's a middle-aged man, who looks more or less like all Unspeakables: Secretive and introverted but powerful all the same.
"Miss Granger, please sit down."
She does as she's asked to,
and waits. Because she has no idea what is expected of her.
"As you may have noticed your timeline experiment didn't go quite as planned."
The man looks at her with a serious face.
She's still not sure what she should say, so she waits for him to elaborate.
"You must understand, Miss Granger, that it's not very clear for us what really happened. But I'm trying my best to explain."
Then he tells her all the ways the experiment went wrong on her case:
The test subjects are supposed to stay in the alternate timeline for one-week maximum. But the minute they sent her away they noticed something was wrong. The silent castle she got sent to was not a real timeline at all. They were not exactly sure what it was, but it worked completely different than the timelines they usually used. One of the special features was that they couldn't fetch her back like they could everyone else.
"You must understand," Greywitch says again, "That we did everything we could to get you out of there as soon as possible."
So, they had used a timeline clock, similar to the ones they had on the walls, trying to stop her pointer to get her back. But it hadn't worked, obviously.
"We were not ready for what might happen when a person spends that much time in a different timeline. The final conclusion we could think of was that the memory vials you made, prevented us to touch the timeline you were in." Greywitch looks at her seriously.
Suddenly she remembers the sound of glass breaking when she fell down the stairs.
"I broke my vial? that's how you got me back?" She asks a million things running through her head.
The man nods.
"But I wasn't in the timeline I got sent to all that time? I was... I think I was, like a ghost, living in between two realities! Like I was watching the real timeline. How is that possible?"
"We still are not sure. Put the hypothesis is that by making the vials you bind yourself and Mr. Malfoy together somehow. And when we got Mr. Malfoy out, the vials still kept you linked."
His words sink in…slowly… "You got Mr. Malfoy out?" She repeats.
Greywitch nods, "Yes, you see, you two got trapped together. The experiments we did with the clock worked finally for him taking him back here. But because of the mishap, somehow the version of him that was with you in the wrong timeline blended with the timeline we're living in and he didn't lose the memories of the time he spent with you."
She doesn't quite understand what he's saying.
"So, he… he remembered all of it? All this time?"
Greywitch nods, "Usually the events of the other timelines never blend with our original timeline. But somehow Mr. Malfoy really lived through all that happened in that timeline. He tells us that he knew it when he volunteered. That he had all those memories that didn't really make sense before he attended the experiment."
She's staring at the Unspeakable.
Wrong timeline blended with the timeline we're living in.
He knew when he volunteered.
"Everything that happened, when I was trapped in between, really happened in the real timeline?"
The man nods again.
He asked for the vial, he stopped her in the corridor, he did all those things, because she told him to?
Everything they went through, going to Dumbledore and not getting any help, it all happened for real!
She was with him in dreams.
"The dreams!" She thinks she sounds somehow broken now, "What were the dreams on the beach? They were real? He was really there?"
Did he go through their sixth year talking to the ghost of her every night?
"Yes. It seemed when you slept in the clock room, you were closer to getting back here. But we still think it was the power of your vials that made you impossible to reach."
She stands up, so hastily the chair she had been sitting on, falls to the ground.
"We understand if you want to press charges. But we'd like to remind this was a volunteer program. We did inform you there are always risks." Grywitch says.
"No," She shakes her head, "It doesn't matter. I understand! I… I have to go!"
She rushes out of the room, out of the Department and out the Ministry.
It's a clear autumn day as she steps out and takes a deep breath.
It was real!
It wasn't supposed to be, but it was!
Everything they went through! He remembers as she does!
Except he has remembered it since the sixth year, while she had no idea any of it happened before this day!
She feels like falling.
She promised to him!
She swore she'd be with him
and she left him!
A sob escapes her lips and she lifts her hand to cover her face.
The sixth year when Harry was sure Draco was a Death Eater, he went to Dumbledore for help.
He sat on his bed every night desperately willing to be somewhere else,
to be someone else, without the burden, he had to carry.
He repaired the cabinet and warned her on the corridor.
He climbed to the Astronomy Tower, still hoping for salvation that never came.
And then…
The she knows only what she saw from afar: The Dark Lord lived at his house.
Then he came back to school and had no choice but to stand with Slytherin.
Then he watched as she got tortured in his house.
He got in the battle.
And no one knew he never wanted to fight for Voldemort! No one knew! He had no one!
She left him!
She loved him more than anything and for four years she lived a life where she didn't know!
The hole in her soul,
the feeling of missing something,
was it him the whole time?
And now... What did he think of her now? Did he blame her for leaving him alone?
She thinks of the day he came to her door.
He knew then already!
He knew that if she participated, she'd remember.
He wanted her to volunteer! He had to know what he was doing!
She has to find him!