A/N a bit thank you to sm_jl for betaing! And thank you to everyone who read and commented on the last chapter!
~Dot
Ron stared at Hermione as she sipped her morning tea. They were in their sitting room, the one that now belonged to Ron and Harry, which Ron had only just realised once belonged to him and Hermione.
She was sitting calmly–not fazed that they were back in their shared flat–turning the pages of the Daily Prophet with a light touch.
This had been their routine, Ron now remembered, sharing tea and breakfast before heading off to their respective jobs.
Sitting with her felt less like a memory and more like reality with each passing moment, but an uncomfortable feeling began crawling up Ron's body. Something wasn't right; something was missing.
"Where are you?" Ron asked with urgency, now knowing she wasn't truly sitting with him.
Hermione smiled as she looked up from her place in the paper.
"You know," she replied serenely.
"I don't!" Ron shouted, feeling fear and anger encompass him as he stood. "I don't know where you are!"
"You do," Hermione said, staying still and peaceful, not rising to meet his anger.
She pointed to the paper, which was no longer the Prophet but was now the sole picture Ron had of her: the picture of her with the other WWII nurses.
Ron began to shout again, to beg her to tell him plainly where she was and how to get to her, but no sound came out. Instead, the scene in front of him faded to black as he woke up in a cold sweat.
He ran down the stairs two-by-two to the sitting room he had just seen in his dream.
There laid all of the paperwork and research he and Harry had compiled discreetly over the last couple of days. They hadn't told anyone about their discovery or their investigation. Until they knew more about why Hermione had disappeared and who she was running from, it wasn't safe to run their mouths.
Alternatively, they had to do something they had plenty of experience doing—sneaking around.
They had books about the Regency Period, where Hermione's note indicated she was. Ron had hoped that they could find another picture (or as Harry pointed out, a painting, as cameras hadn't been invented yet) of Hermione, leading them to more information. But they had no such luck.
They had compiled way too much about the Regency Period, more than Ron could ever try to remember. There were books, museums and exhibitions, papers, pictures, and documentaries. It was too much for Ron to comprehend. So, he focused on the time travel aspect of Hermione's disappearances. Whereas the history of when Hermione was had loads of information, there was barely any about time travel. Or at least about time travel aside from the destroyed time turners.
Ron was sure they were going to have to break into the Department of Mysteries again just to see if they had misplaced a time-turner or two.
As Ron reached the extra-long dining table that held all of their research, his hand darted to what he wanted, ignoring the piles of historical books and articles about time travel.
He picked up the torn edges of Hermione's picture and tried to see anything he hadn't noticed before.
It seemed like an impossible task, as he had spent hours staring at the exact picture. Each time he looked at it, he marvelled at how he could possibly have forgotten her. It must have been the strongest of magic for him to forget his first, and only, love.
She had been everything to him—his better half. And yet, he had gone years without spending a single second thinking about her.
It made him feel sick.
But now wasn't the time to reminisce or beat himself up. No, now he had a mission.
He stared intently at her as she turned to face the camera. Even in black and white, he could see the twinkle in her deep brown eyes.
As the Hermione in the picture turned towards him and back again, over and over, Ron couldn't find a single clue. There was nothing he hadn't noticed before.
Then he looked at the bigger picture. He saw a young Rosemary, who didn't look much different than her current self, the only difference being a darker complexion and less of a permanent scowl. The other nurses in the picture smiled at the camera, looking young and gleeful, not at all like they were in the middle of a gory war.
Ron and Harry had managed to find every one of the subjects in the picture. Most of them were dead. One of them, Eleanor Walker, died from a bombing barely a week after the picture was taken. Not a single one of them led to Hermione or the Wizarding World in general.
They were all dead ends.
Ron scanned the rest of the picture, getting lost in Hermione's figure, as he did most times he looked at the photo. For a brief moment, she looked at him almost in shock, as if she wasn't prepared for the picture to be taken. But quickly, her body relaxed and turned to the photographer as she realised they were being photographed.
When she turned, her hand moved over her bag, and Ron noticed something he hadn't before. It was fast, and he couldn't be sure, but it looked like Hermione pointed to something.
Her finger was gone in a flash as the photo started over again. He watched her movements repeatedly, trying to make sense of it.
Finally, he decided to grab a magnifying glass, to try to get a better look.
As he gaped, his face inches away from her photo, he could just make out an image at the end of her pointer finger; there was something on the edge of her bag, a sign he had never seen before.
Hermione was trying to tell him something.
Books about ancient runes, decoding, and magical languages brought up nothing. The symbol Hermione pointed to, which looked a bit like a spiral with a line through it, could not be traced.
"There has to be more we can do," Ron whinged as he gulped his second cup of coffee of the morning.
The men had spent another night researching Hermione's disappearance, with nothing much to show for it.
"It has to be a sign, I know it," Ron continued. "She was telling us something."
Ron had told Harry about his dream the night before and had gone over it in his head about a million times. While he wasn't one to believe in divination, it was the only current connection he had to her.
"I need to see her," Ron said. "I need to remember exactly what she said the last time we talked."
"I'm sure we could come up with a reason why we need to use the Auror's pensieve," Harry suggested.
Thankfully, they had another long, dull workday spent in the office, where they could easily slip away.
The Aurors pensieve was kept in a room full of knick-knacks. There were interrogation devices, equipment for overnight missions, and other wizarding paraphernalia.
Ron was now practised in using the pensieve, largely to remember every detail from missions when he was struggling to solve a crime.
As he poured his last memory of Hermione into the basin, he took a deep breath, not because he was about to put his head in the liquid, but because he was bracing himself to see her. He had missed her more and more each day since he became aware of her disappearance, and he wasn't sure how he'd take seeing her but not actually being with her.
It was hard, to say the least, not to run to Hermione; to hold her, to kiss her, and to bring her back to him.
He knew he wouldn't be able to do any of those things. She was just a memory—a whisp—not something tangible or real.
Instead he, with Harry, watched as a younger Ron poured his tea and listened to Hermione talk about her day.
"It's such a strange case," Hermione said, "the one I told you about the other day. We're–me and Alec–are going to check out the house we think all the forbidden magic is coming from."
Pensieve-Ron nodded, appearing to only be paying some attention to Hermione's words as he chugged his caffeinated tea to wake up. He had never been a morning person.
"There have been sightings of illegal creatures all around, but when it's investigated they're nowhere to be found. But, there has been a report of a shack in the middle of the forest with what the muggles called fireworks, but probably is magic, since it's so near the creature sightings. The strange thing is, this shack has never been noticed before. Even Aurors have searched and it's never been seen."
"That is strange," Ron agreed. "You sure you and Alec will be safe, just the two of you?"
Hermione scoffed at the suggestion.
Pensieve-Ron stood, ignoring Hermione's indignation, and put his arms around her shoulders. "You sure you don't want some protection?" he asked in a flirtatious tone. "I'm sure they could spare me at the Aurors." He leaned down and kissed the back of Hermione's ear. "Then we could have a little time together."
Harry coughed and current-Ron tore his eyes away from Hermione's form. He could remember this, and he knew there wasn't much more that Hermione would say, so he nodded to Harry and they both left the pensieve.
"There's probably a record of that shack," Harry said. "Even if record of Hermione is gone, the place she mentioned had been investigated before."
Ron nodded his head, his gut in a twist over something else.
"Do you remember Alec?" Ron asked.
"Vaguely," Harry said. "He worked for Accidents and Catastrophes, right?"
"Yeah. Do you remember what happened to him?"
Harry's face dropped. "He was the one who went missing…about three years ago."
It had been more difficult to look through old cases on their own time. Ron and Harry were already on probation after skiving off their archiving task. They couldn't just go and look at old case files; they needed a key, which meant they needed approval from a supervisor.
Which they didn't get.
So they decided to rely on their natural talents and broke into the case file office.
Ron already knew he was willing to break any law–risk his life–to get to Hermione. He didn't care about the consequences, he'd do anything for her. So breaking into an office that they technically could be in felt like nothing.
It was hard narrowing down where to look since they had no location, name, or identifying information about the case. But, in the end, they were able to find a couple of candidates.
Luckily, the next day was their day off, so they set off early in the morning to look at the locations they had tracked down. By midday, they were losing their steam, but with only one more place to look through, they charged on.
They were exhausted from trekking through the woods, when the two men finally found what only generously could be called a shack. It was small, barely big enough for them to stand side by side in, with withering wood panels hardly keeping the whole place up.
After doing a multitude of safety spells and counter-charms, the men entered the falling-apart space. There was even less to be said about the inside than the outside. It looked abandoned, if it had ever been in use at all.
Ron felt a pang of worry that they still hadn't found the right place.
Even with his concerns, they carefully swept the room, casting anti-illusion spells as they went. It was a large undertaking, despite it being such a tiny space, as neither wanted to miss a single inch.
"Ron," Harry said, and Ron turned quickly with his wand raised, wary of what Harry could have found.
In his swift movement, Ron almost tipped over Harry, who had been crouched down, investigating the floor as Ron took the higher places. There seemed to be no danger so Ron lowered his wand.
"It's hard to tell," Harry said, shining his wand at a spot on the floor. "The ground's not exactly clean, but does that look like…"
"Blood," Ron said. He knew the dark burgundy colour well. "Can you get a sample?"
Harry nodded, and Ron tried to get back to his search. It was proving difficult as his mind was stuck on the small blood splatter. He hoped more than anything it wasn't Hermione's, but only time would tell.
Ron pressed his hand against the rickety wall to steady himself and refocus on the task at hand. He expected to feel the rough texture of unsanded wood and perhaps a splinter or two, so when his hand felt something entirely different, he flinched.
Using his wand to illuminate where his palm had briefly rested, he saw something that made his heart triple its beats.
"Harry," Ron said urgently as he began looking deeper at the raised shape—the same one that Hermione had embroidered on her bag.
The men soon began casting every spell in their arsenal on the embossed sign, trying to unlock its mystery.
Finally, one of them cast the correct spell, and the spirals began to unwind until the spot on the wall opened up and showed a small hidden shelf.
As the shelf became visible, Ron let out his first sigh of relief in days; they were finally on the right track–in the right place–even if they were a few years behind.
He closed his eyes for just a second, picturing in his head what could be hidden in the space. A letter from Hermione? Maybe a map? Or perhaps a way to get her back to them? The possibilities swam through his mind, and he was filled with hope.
So when he opened his eyes to see that there was nothing in the hidden space, he felt his heart drop.
Frantically, they cast as many spells as they could to try and uncover anything that could be still hidden. But, it seemed their luck had run out.
The men, though defeated, continued to search the shack until the sun began to set.
"What about the forest?" Ron asked with desperation. He didn't want to give up, not now that they had a clue.
Harry sighed and Ron knew he was as exhausted as he was. They had barely slept over that past week and had spent their every waking hour searching, digging, and doing backbreaking work. Still, Harry followed Ron to the surrounding trees and they began their newfound investigation.
It became dark quickly and they had to create little blue lights to illuminate their work. The darkness didn't slow their determination and the men worked as hard as ever, combing through every twig and stone and tree.
After hours of this, with their hopes and energy drained, they turned to leave empty-handed. Ron turned to do one last sweep, just in case, as the very last ounce of hope he had once felt began to drain.
His eyes flittered over the blueish forest, with a copse of trees surrounding the shack they stood in earlier. While it seemed wild and untamed, its looks deceived. The trees were carefully planted along the building, to hide it, but not to overtake it. The trees were evenly spaced and provided small trails heading off in every which direction. Ron looked at one of the paths, as a ball of light brightened it. There he saw something, almost invisible on the grain of a large tree. But there it was—the symbol.
They dug and dug around the tree–no longer feeling their exhaustion–sweating and grunting as they desperately searched for another connection to Hermione.
Finally, Ron hit something hard. He scooped the unknown object up frantically and brushed the dirt off of it. In his hands was an ancient-looking box, dirty and rusted and heavy.
But most importantly, it had the symbol they had been searching for emblazoned on its top.
Unlike the hole in the wall, it did not take magic to open and unlike last time, it was not empty.
Ron wasn't a professional, but he was fairly sure he knew what he saw. It looked different than the one he knew; there was a bit that looked like a combination lock, with so many numbers it took up the majority of the mechanism and a small protruding shape that looked like it could connect with another piece. But the piece at the end was what he recognised. The twisting circles with an hourglass middle were unmistakable—it was a time-turner.