Darkness had fallen in a slow curtain through the windows of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, a thumping silence broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway. As if from a great distance, it chimed the hour, and the chimes took on the tolling resonance of bells in a Muggle church tower.
Five...six...seven...
Hermione Granger realized she had counted the chimes out of habit, or possibly to mark off the long ticking moments of the rest of her life.
Draco's hands would have been cooling by now, had she relinquished her death grip on them.
There might have been a time for tears. Might have been time for screaming, for rage at a world that could so coldly dispose of Draco Malfoy. But there was nothing in her left; no will to rage, no strength to cry, no courage to carry on down the long avenue of years. For now, and for the foreseeable future, Draco had taken those things with him.
Hermione Granger, of course, was not thinking of these things in any such coherent terms.
That little voice in the back of her mind, however, was tickling fairly persistently.
Odd, how the mind ranges, when the present it too horrible to contemplate. She remembered a story her mother told her, when Hermione was a child–the story of a woman who watched her love sail away, never to return. How she waited, day and night, on the cliffs where she had last seen his ship, facing ever west in the hope that one day the white sails would sweep the horizon, and the tides would carry him home. Years passed, until one of the men of her village came searching for her, and found a statue in her place, arms extended toward the sunset, and tears still on its stony cheek.
The child Hermione had thought that foolish, and said so.
Draco Malfoy's lover brushed the silken hair back from his temple and knew that she would wait every moment for the rest of her life for him to appear, weary and worn, but always with a kiss for his Hermione.
The grandfather clock ticked unceasingly, and the small voice in the back of her mind gathered enough strength to shout.
There was injustice in this.
Sirius Black, she had accepted. Professor McGonagall. Neville Longbottom. Bill Weasley. Seamus Finnegan, and the other five Aurors who had perished in the battle for the ill-omened Eye. Of these deaths, she bore her portion of the blame with humility, with new knowledge of her own failings. That, too, Draco had given to her. Hermione Granger was human. And humans do fall, and fail.
But this...no. No. This, she could not accept.
"It might already be too late; I cannot say. But what Draco has given you, I hope you return in full measure."
"Given–?"
"Time, Miss Granger. It is like a river...flowing onward, unstoppable, immoveable, but for a Herculean force...You were given time with Mr. Malfoy. It is my hope...that you used it well."
Hermione closed her eyes, remembering, long ago, another day when she had stood on the brink of loss, another time when it had already been too late.
"What we need...is more time."
Whether the words were spoken or merely remembered, she didn't know, but she felt a presence at her back, the whisper-slither of robes as Albus Dumbledore settled on the steps behind her.
"Love is the lever that moves the world, Hermione," he whispered. "No great sacrifice, no great victory was ever won...no great loss was ever mourned, no great hope borne with more courage. Love is the key to move the immoveable, to turn the world the other way."
Unstoppable, immoveable, but for a Herculean force.
If there had ever been any doubt that Dumbledore read minds, it was vanquished now as he laughed softly.
"You are one of the most literal young women I know," he said fondly. "But even myths can be wrong, for when Hercules turned the river, he turned it for love, even if he himself did not know it."
Time.
"There is a legend," Dumbledore repeated softly, "of a man so strong that he turned a river back on itself, forced it to flow backwards. The Nile runs against its course to this day."
Where is your strength, Hermione Granger?
Unbidden tears welled, fell, as she looked at the hands clasped in hers. There. He was my strength.
Then by Merlin, girl, take it!
Time.
"The Time Turner," she said aloud. "Professor McGonagall's Time Turner."
Hermione turned back to the stairs, finding them empty, save for a small hourglass on a long, fine chain of gold.
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There were few laws so stringent in the Wizarding world as those regarding altering time.
She didn't care.
She would be go back to the time when the Death Eaters were at their worst, running straight into their arms, if she were lucky. If she were unlucky, she'd run straight into a Killing curse.
So be it.
She might survive only to die when Draco did.
Better than the alternative.
When this was over, Hermione was going to sleep, whatever happened. Having run the gamut of emotions in the past twenty-four hours, she was uncertain how much more she could stand; how much longer she could endure. The grim core of her responded with a voice that was very like Draco's: uncompromising, blunt, and occasionally cold with it. As long as I have to.
Where a younger Hermione had, at times, fallen apart when greatly stressed, the elder bore down with a will tempered by years of uncertainty and harsh experience. Life was a taxing headmistress, and the final grades were never known until the end.
She left Draco with alacrity, not daring to linger any longer. Made her calculations, based on her mechanical, half-headed counting of the grandfather clock's chimings. So far as she knew, no one in over a century had dared to go more than a few hours back in time. She was going back over two days.
The Aurors' library had been destroyed.
As helpful as that little voice had been earlier, Hermione wished it would shut up now. She knew the dangers, knew the risks, and she was going. End of discussion.
She held the Time Turner in hands that trembled, remembering long-ago instruction with Professor McGonagall.
"Over, vertically, Miss Granger. One turn per hour."
"What happens if I turn it horizontally, Professor?"
The older woman's lips twitched. "I should say you would go further back than you intend. And," she added, a touch of asperity in her voice, "I would remind you that I did not write letters to the Ministry so that you could experiment."
A day? Hermione knew little of the few Wizard devices that worked with time, but this was the least of them. There had, to her knowledge, never been any such device that went back much further than a week.
And the worst that could happen to her already had, she thought, steeling herself. Two turns horizontally, several vertically...
As often as she had done this her third year in Hogwarts, Hermione had never become accustomed to it. The sensation of rushing very fast, backwards, the blur of colour and shape around her, only this stretched on so long that she was afraid she had vastly underestimated McGonagall's Time Turner.
The world lurched to a stop with a suddenness that nearly knocked her over, and Hermione staggered. Gazed around the darkened entryway of Headquarters and thought for one wild second that she had not left at all.
But no–there was Moody, padding toward the steps, a glass of milk in his hand and his grey hair sticking up wildly in all directions.
"Can't sleep?" He grunted. "Don't blame you." Without waiting for reply, he heaved himself up the steps, his wooden leg clunking dully.
Vaguely, she remembered waking up–three?–nights ago, to that very sound, the clunk-step of Moody's gait on the hardwood floors.
There was time, then.
Hermione Apparated.
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The battle in the Aurors' Library had occurred that afternoon, and the fires were still smoldering, books still burning, as Hermione arrived that night. Coughing, she cast a Bubble-Head charm and slipped down the aisles warily. Distinguishing Marks, Distinguished Wizards, by Thelonius Bagby. Had the library not been a wreckage, books scattered everywhere, she would have known where exactly where it was.
There was something deeply personal about the destruction of this library. It had, for all intents and purposes, been Hermione's second home. It was the seat of knowledge, not just for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, but for the Ministry as a whole. Many of the books were irreplaceable.
Clambering across overturned shelves, Hermione found the approximate place where the bookshelf had been and started neatly stacking the books behind her as she sifted through them. There were, no doubt, other books that detailed the requirements of the Mark, but she did not have time to look for them. By dawn, she must complete the potion.
Three years ago, there had been no time for Hermione or Harry to ponder deeply the possibilities of time travel. How many little things could be altered–so easily!–and how unpredictable the changes could be.
At Headquarters, she had been desperate and grief stricken, and willing to seize with both hands any chance to save Draco.
Now, Hermione closed her eyes briefly and forced a slow breath, and another, to slow her galloping heart. If she could avoid being seen, if she could avoid the madness spilling into every wizard household and village... because changing anything could be very, very bad.
She would save him. But it would be a great deal more difficult than she had thought it would be.
By the whimsy of whatever Deity ordered events on earth, the book she searched for was predictably the last one she picked up, and the cover had scorched black, some of the pages burned. Only by rubbing off the ash with her robes could she faintly make out the gilt lettering on the spine, and then she clutched the precious book to her.
Up one floor and down the hall a bit was the storeroom for Potions ingredients, but it was not easy to Apparate within the Ministry. Hermione wracked her memory. Had there been another battle in the Ministry tonight? The last five days were a blur of crisis after crisis, skipping from place to place, always too late, always too few.
Tears prickled, again, behind her eyelids, and she blinked them back, pinching herself painfully. No, now was not the time. Later, if she lived, she would fall apart completely; have a nervous breakdown if that's what she needed. And if she didn't live, then it wouldn't be an issue, would it?
Breathe.
Hermione edged out into the hallway outside the library and wished desperately for Harry's invisibility cloak.
Slipping through the shadows, she fumbled for the button for the lift in the darkness, holding her breath as it jangled and clattered on its way down to her.
"Level Two, Department of Magical Law Enforcement, including the Improper Use of Magic Office, Auror Headquarters, and Wizengamot Administration Services," said a cool female voice, and Hermione ground her teeth as she entered the lift. Aesthetics were all very nice, but not when they might as well have painted a glowing sign over her head: here! Another Auror!
"Level Three, Department of..."
Hermione slid out of the lift and into the doorway to her left, holding her breath as she strained to listen–there, again, a second thud. Dimly, she heard shouting.
Damn.
The storeroom was at the end of the corridor, and the fighting was coming near. Round the corner ahead, she saw flashes of violet and sickly green light.
It was one o'clock in the morning, and she did not have time for this.
Edging down the hallway, she held her wand out ahead of her, more from habit than intent to use it. Whether she killed a Death Eater or stunned one, it could change things.
Three shadows abruptly flew around the corner. Or rather, two shadows ran, dragging a third along as a woman's voice shrieked curses, jets of light flying from her wand.
They collided with Hermione and went down in a tangle of limbs and robes, the green lights of Killing Curses crackling where their heads had been. The woman surged to her feet and raced back to the Death Eaters, blond hair flashing in the dimly lit corridor. Hannah?
"Hermione?"
Dean Thomas yanked her to her feet and tugged her along, and Hermione wrenched back, realizing what she had just done.
Saved the life of Ginny's husband.
What would change because of it?
"No, you go ahead," she said, gathering herself. "Something I have to do, Dean. I'll send Hannah after you. Be careful."
Accustomed to that level of information–or less–Dean nodded curtly. "Be careful yourself," he said, and ran on, his shadow merging with those at the end of the hallway.
"–killed Neville, and you'll pay for it..." Hannah's voice rang down the hallway, boiling with such rage, Hermione winced. The witch turned the corner and was illumined with the sickly green light of three, perhaps four Killing Curses. There was a moment when her profile was stark, shocked, and then she crumpled to the ground.
And round the same corner came the Death Eaters.
Damn, damn, damn.
"Lumos!" Light exploded from her wand, blinding to eyes accustomed to the darkness, and blinking furiously, Hermione bowled her way through them, clouting one in the head with the heavy book in passing. One snatched at her robes, managing to grab her trailing hair instead, and Hermione whirled, feeling a clump of her hair separate painfully from her scalp. "Impedimenta!"
The Death Eater flew backward, neatly intercepting another Killing Curse, and Hermione turned and ran, hoping callously that the Death Eaters would continue after Dean and the other Aurors rather than chasing her. Blocking, deliberately, the crumpled image of Hannah from her mind. Three would be dead, instead of one, if Hermione hadn't been there to trip them. And one more Death Eater would be alive.
Wildly, she remembered the words of a Muggle cartoon character in a show she'd been fond of watching on holiday. "Oh, I wish, I wish I hadn't killed that fish." She never thought she would see the day that she would be very, very sorry to have inadvertently killed a Death Eater.
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Author's Note:
Okay, given the reactions to my killing Draco off in the last chapter, hopefully the Time-turner thing doesn't seem too contrived. This was a question I asked in the original version, and what I tried to plant a hint about ahead of time. Let me know if I was successful, or if it was totally out of the blue.
Points to whoever names the quote from the muggle cartoon character. :)