November 19th 1940

The cold Scottish air ripped through Hermione's hair as she staggered away from the death grip on her medical gown.

Peggy let Hermione go and braced her hands on her knees. She dry-heaved painfully a few times and then took a shuddering breath in. Watered eyes took in the grassy landscape and dull autumn sun. "Where- what did you do?"

Hermione couldn't help but notice that the glade she had landed them in was unfamiliar. She had meant to be near Hogsmeade, but had lost concentration when she'd felt Peggy grab her. She hoped because of that she hadn't pushed them too far off course.

Although, perhaps she should just feel lucky she hadn't been splinched or splinched Peggy on the way over.

"It's called apparation," Hermione said taking pity on the agent who slowly looked to start feeling better and standing up straight. "It's how wizards and witches can travel instantly over long distances."

Hermione transfigured her medical robe into a pair of jeans and a thick jumper as Peggy made her way back. It did well to limit the impact of the striking winds, but little to the cold that was just as forceful. Hermione added warming charms over her jumper and then indistinctly threw some to Peggy as well to curb her shudders.

Peggy eyed her seriously. "Is that what you call yourself? A witch?"

Hermione huffed a black humored laugh. "Yes. Broomsticks, potions, crystal balls and all."

"And there's others?"

Hermione wondered if she honestly should be telling the entirety of everything to a muggle. Especially one from the past. "There's nations worth."

Peggy frowned, leaning on the back on her black pumps. "We would have known about you."

Hermione tossed her curls away from the strong Scottish wind again. "Intelligence agencies can find other muggles yes, but unless a witch or wizard wants to be found, you won't find them." Hermione shrugged, "At least not with your current technology." In the future it was a little different with satellite pictures, cellphones, and CTV cameras.

"Muggle?"

"Ah, non-magical," Hermione explained. "And that's why I'm here. Why I had to go. I need to find my people to help me get back."

Peggy nodded. "Hence the-" she waved her hand shallowly in a circle which Hermione took as her least favorite way to travel.

"Hence the apparation yes. I couldn't have stayed and talked to Colonel Philips and waste more time. The longer I'm here the more ways the future could change."

Sharp eyes caught her. "Changing it would be bad?"

Hermione nodded. "For you right now yes." Lessons pounded into her head from the first day of Unspeakables training demanded her silence. Revealing the future was dangerous. But- "It'll be horrible, this war. However ...we will win eventually."

Peggy's frown got deeper.

"But if I change things now, it could change my time and me. This war will start a chain of reactions throughout the rest of the world and create the next generations of culture and laws. I can't risk tipping the scales and letting it affect the entirety of the timeline. Terrible things could happen."

Hermione had already revealed so much.

Peggy took a deep breath and let the winds take it away. "So then what do we do for you?"

"Well we can't go back now," Hermione grimaced. "They'll have people everywhere and I can't take us outside of the building because I can't apparate to a place I've never been."

"Are we still in Europe at least?" Peggy asked.

Hermione nodded. "Scotland."

Peggy's lips parted in disbelief. "We traveled over 615 kilometers?"

"I've gone longer before, but I wouldn't. There's a risk of hurting one of us."

Peggy blinked the amazement away. "Well there should be an SOE underground station somewhere here where I can find some old contacts. You can take me there when you're sure you've found a way home."

Hermione was silently amazed that the woman before her was willing to wait and see where this was going to take her. She wasn't even sure how this was going to go.

"We should start walking if we're going to find the people I'm looking for," Hermione said instead and started moving up the glade they were on. If she could find a vantage point she could figure out how far away she was from Hogwarts.

As they started to trudge their way up against the Scotland wind and her newest injuries on her side started to twinge from the excessive movements, a part of their prior conversation began to ring in her ears. "What's SOE? You spoke of it like it's an organization you know."

Peggy furrowed her eyebrows. "It's the Special Operations Executive. A new war division spearheaded by Winston Churchill himself. It's not a classified agency. The public has been made fully aware of its existence since the start." She tipped her head. "You say you've studied this war in your education from your time?"

"Self taught," Hermione agreed, and slightly offended at the thought of a lessened education. "But I'm very thorough when it comes to an interesting subject and-" Hermione shook her head, running through hundreds of snippets of information in her head, "- I'm sure I've never heard of it. Or Hydra for that matter."

Peggy looked astonished. "You've never heard of Hydra?" she echoed. "Well- Well what about Nazis? Have you heard of them, or what they preach, or the invasion of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and then Poland after appeasement failed?"

They were nearly to the top and Hermione turned around to Peggy indignantly. She had a mastery in the History of Magic and it included all of the muggle world's major world events. "Of course I have! I know both the muggle and wizarding events of World War Two including the invasion of Poland, the method of blitzkrieg, the attack on Pearl Harbor, Midway, the Invasion of Ital-" Hermione threw a hand over her lips.

Peggy's porcelain skin seemed without color. She recoiled, aghast with uneasy astonishment. "They make it to Italy?"

Hermione wished she could say that she couldn't commiserate with the horror on her face, but she knew the future and what it would bring. She knew the weapons of war the muggle world would create and the agonizing deaths that would come to be known. This war was going to last years and over 85 million people would end up dying by the end of it.

"You will win," was all Hermione could say uselessly. But the cost would be enormous.

Anxious concern was plain on Peggy's face. "How much farther?"

Hermione let the conversation go and led them over the crest of the hill. From her vantage point she was able to see over the majority of the countryside below.

Hermione's heart stopped.

Below her was a small village where she was certain Hogsmeade should have been, but it looked nothing like the wizarding town she knew and loved. It was clearly muggle with stone walls and wooden fences, typical for the muggle housing of this period, and she was certain that if she stepped foot in one of those homes she would find a phonograph and telephones rather than a set of self knitting needles and charmed mops.

Looking to the east and past the Black Lake, where Hermione should have been able to see the spiral belfry of the Astronomy Tower in Hogwarts and the great stone corridors from her memories, she instead saw concave and forgotten ceilings with moss and ivy ridden crumbling foundations from a once magnificent castle.

Her heart nearly broke at the sight.

"No!" was all she could croak out before she grabbed Peggy's hand and they spun on the spot.

Hermione exited the apparation on shaky knees looking up from the base of the once mighty castle. It was clear no one had lived in the acropolis of her childhood for decades, if not hundreds of years.

Peggy dry-heaved on her knees again but Hermione could focus on nothing but the decaying monument.

If she pressed into herself and dug down to her magical core, she could feel no other magical vibrations around her. Not the ground, nor the walls, or the plants, or even in the air. Nothing about the castle she stood in front of was magical.

A trickle of suspicion in the back of her mind turned into a cascade of doubt, fear, and unmistakable regret that drowned out her other senses. She fell to her knees.

Pieces of information Hermione had blatantly ignored started to piece themselves together. Dr. Erskine and Peggy shocked faces when she told them she hadn't heard of Hydra. Peggy speaking of a publicly well known government that she had never heard of or read about before in all of her research, Hogsmeade not being a village for wizards and witches, and the fact that there was not an ounce of magic to be found on the grounds where Hogwarts should be. Where Hogwarts had always stood.

Hermione slowly came to realize that she wasn't just nearly 70 years back in time, she was in a different universe.

She had no training, knowledge, or methods to apply that could help her as she had never thought to study the theories of such an inscrutable line of magic, such a line of theory. And she now knew that if Hogwarts didn't exist, there was a very very high probability that magic did not exist in this world at all as it did in hers.

She was never going to be able to go home. She was utterly alone.

"Hermione?" a cold hand pressed lightly against her shoulder and she found herself looking into the concerned eyes of Peggy. "Are you alright?"

"I'm-" Hermione was nearly at the point of tears. She could not hypothesize, or formulate a plan of action on this. She had no information, no research she could study or compare from. "I'm think I'm lost," she whispered.

Peggy looked to the crumbling castle. "Do you know this place?"

Hermione choked. "It's- was home."

"Was it restored in your time? Or-"

"No. It has never looked like this before. Not after the war, not after a thousand years has it ever stood in this decay."

Peggy looked more confused. "The war?" she asked, "A thousand years?" Her gaze covered the crumbling stone before them. "What do you mean?"

Hermione got to her feet. Her mind was still reeling from the shock of her discovery and it was like she didn't know how to take the next step.

"Where I'm from, I touched something I shouldn't have. It was pure energy what I touched by accident and quite frankly, by all rights, it should have killed me. Instead I thought that it had just taken me back in time. An impossibility in itself, but manageable."

Peggy looked even more confused. "But it didn't?"

"No, because I've traveled to an entirely different dimension."

It was like the puzzle pieces were starting to fall into place for Peggy as well. "That's - Your missing knowledge."

Hermione nodded her head sadly. "This whole time I've been trying to not say too much, or do anything that could disrupt the timeline because I didn't want it to affect my present."

"Does that mean everything you've done here won't affect anything in the future?" Peggy asked unsure.

"No... I mean I could definitely affect things in this future, our worlds seem to be very similar so far. We have the same countries, the same languages- the same wars. I know things in this future that could still affect this timeline, but not mine because it isn't mine. It won't affect me, because I might not even exist in the future."

Peggy blinked. "Well alright I guess that does make a sort of sense if you squint at it."

"I have no idea how to get back, or if that's even a possibility now. Everything that I thought I had, I don't. I have nothing here," Hermione confessed quietly. The winds across the grass calmed considerably and both Hermione and Peggy shivered from the absence of the beating wind.

Peggy studied the sad reflection of Hogwarts before coming back to her. "Well that's not entirely true. You do have a very worried German Doctor waiting for you back at base, and a Colonel who is probably dying to meet you by now." She put her hand on Hermione's shoulder. "And me. I know what it's like to be in a world that seems unmade for you. If you want, you would also have me."

It was an invitation, and she found herself looking into round hazel eyes.

Doubts flicked through her mind. "You want knowledge of the future."

Peggy didn't flinch or look away. "Whatever helps us win before it gets as bad as you say it's going to, I will take advantage of."

Hermione smiled sadly. "Time is tricky. What you hope to accomplish could be destroyed by your motivation to change what has to happen."

Peggy blinked. "I thought you said you hadn't time traveled before?"

"Oh no, I most certainly have. I just have never been in this sort of time situation before. I studied time travel as part of a course to earn my mastery."

Peggy raised an intrigued eyebrow. "You have a mastery in a subject?"

Hermione suddenly had a very rude awakening as to what year it was. "I have several actually. Not that many of them would help me here in this world."

She huffed. "Well," Peggy released her shoulder and they stood to their feet together. She smiled coyly, "I don't know about that."

May 25th 1941

Hermione's heels clicked against the sidewalk as she made her way inside Ebbets Field, a massive major league baseball stadium in Brooklyn, and turned up her collar against the chilled New York wind. She settled her navy blue tam-o-shanters hat further down her head and tighter through the pins around her heated curls so it wouldn't blow away, and then tucked her gloved hands into her matching blue overcoat that reached to the bottom of her knees.

She passed a vendor yelling his wares of salted peanuts and Coca Cola for the extravagant price of 10 cents for the pair, and Hermione slipped a pleasant red lipped smile at him but shook her head.

Today was the first day that Hermione was allowed out of the lab that she and Abraham shared in downtown New York in the last four months. Named as Dr. Erskine's senior secretary in the SSR, Hermione worked everything that the Doctor did, nearly a shadow behind the brilliant man, and as his work load grew with the demands of the war, so did the days that passed Hermione by like a flash.

It had been six months since the discovery of Hermione's circumstances in Scotland, and while she still mourned for the loss of her old life and friends, she was fitting nicely into the one she had stumbled into.

Immediately after the return to the SSR base in London from Scotland, Hermione had met with Colonel Philips, an older American man with intense brown eyes and a no nonsense attitude. She had explained her story and showed him her magic, and after he had assessed her, she was listed as an 'asset' to the SSR.

Abraham had taken control of her integration into the decade as his senior assistant when they relocated to New York, letting her use her past experience with arithmancy and science to help his work while Peggy had taken Hermione under her wing with the culture, the dress, and the presence of a working woman in the 1940's. Both had helped her adapt to the new era she was in, but Peggy's lessons had been the many that she'd struggled with.

Women in the 1940s dressed modestly, but well. Hermione had learned that it was important for a woman to look her best even at her worst through Peggy as it was a defense against negative sexist behavior and a cultural understanding between women. She had learned through Peggy what Padma and Lavender had failed to in Hogwarts with their snide comments of makeup, clothes, and hair products. How to look like a lady.

She wasn't a master by any stretch of the imagination, but she could pass as a very well put together dame as the men here said. She collected the right shades of lipstick for her skin, the correct cuts and color of clothes for her height and frame, the right shoes for comfortability but style, and the right hair products to master her curls Peggy had called, 'a pin up's dream'.

And while Peggy had been teaching her the ways of beauty that had never interested Hermione before now, Peggy also helped teach her how to physically defend herself. "You won't always have time to grab your wand," Peggy had said when teaching her a combo for flipping a man twice her size over her shoulder. "Sometimes you won't want to draw your wand," she said when she taught her how to properly kick someone without losing her balance.

Between working formally for Abraham, informally with Peggy, and reading everything she could find related to time and dimensional travel, Hermione had very little time for personal things, like wondering how her old friends were doing and if she'd ever see them again.

Hermione was also asked to debrief monthly on the status of the 'serum' she had been roped into helping work on with Philips and was occasionally asked a deliberately vague question to the future. According to Peggy, Philips kept Hermione's secret of time traveling between just Abraham, Hermione, Peggy and himself as he didn't trust the 'bureaucrats' above his station with the responsibility of the future.

Hermione knew he was cautious of using anything she said, for if he moved on any of her information, it could change the outcome of the war, and Hermione couldn't agree more.

Hermione look hold of the paper ticket from the plain leather purse slung over her shoulder and gave it to the admissions office at the entrance of the baseball stadium. Hermione had never been to a baseball game in her life, even in her old world, and she was lost as how to navigate the stands and crowds.

Peggy was supposed to meet Hermione before the game started, but that depended entirely on whether or not she could leave the office without someone needing her help. Based on the past six months of knowing her friend, she very much doubted Peggy would be able to show up, and Hermione already knew she would have to see the game by herself.

The idea would have been a laughable one to Hermione six months earlier as the only professional game she'd ever been to was Quidditch before her fourth year and she didn't even like sports. But Peggy had suggested that she try to do something out of her normal comfort zone and Hermione felt that this was as far as she could go. There wasn't a book or library in sight. On the other hand, at least she was out of the lab like Abraham wanted and outside doing something other than working theorems for the serum.

Hermione looked at the paper ticket closely. "House Two, Stand Two," Hermione read aloud. She looked up and squinted at the signs around her. Maybe she could ask someone?

Families and couples passed by Hermione without help, no one looked as if they worked for the stadium and Hermione looked down at her ticket with growing frustration. What was the point of a ticket with seats printed if you couldn't even find where your seat's meant to be?

"Excuse me ma'am, do you need help?" someone asked from behind her.

Hermione turned and found herself nearly eyesight with a blonde, thin, man about her age. He was slightly shorter than her to Hermione's surprise, two inches from Hermione's 168 centimeters or 5'6 frame in American standards, but looked painfully thin, as if one good push of the wind would knock him over.

Hermione got caught for a moment in his bright blue eyes and couldn't seem to find the words to answer. She flushed. "Sorry, yes, yes I'd like someone to help. I've never been to this before and I don't know where I'm supposed to be."

The man nodded kindly and offered his hand. "Sounds like it from your uh, well, I mean your accent. I can take a look for you if you'd like? Your ticket I mean."

Hermione handed her ticket over to the man without thought.

"House Two, Stand Two. You've got really good seats," he handed the ticket back to her. "You'll be so close you'll probably feel Pistol Pete hit the bat when he slams a runner." He paused and a red flush swept over his face as he palmed the back of his neck in embarrassment. "I mean that's probably- sorry."

Hermione smiled and a small feeling of relief swept through her. "I honestly have no idea what you just said." He looked even more embarrassed than before and Hermione held out her hands awkwardly. "And not to say that it's your fault, because I know it's mine in this. I've never been to a baseball game before so I'm not sure what anything is, and surely not a 'runner'."

A shy grin made up his face instead of the embarrassment. "I meant a home run. A 'runner' if you listen and watch enough baseball."

"And do you?"

He shrugged. "Every chance that I get. The Dodgers are my favorite."

The smell of popcorn, hot dogs and peanuts seemed far away as Hermione smiled at the kind stranger. He was unlike any man she had met yet in this time, and his genuine honesty not only from his words, but from his open body language lit something close to wild Gryffindor bravery in her heart, something she hadn't felt since she'd left Hogwarts. Hermione stuck out her hand. "I didn't get a chance to introduce myself, but my name is Hermione Granger."

The man looked surprised for a moment by her hand, before he shook back lightly with a solid grip. "Steven Rogers, but my friends call me Steve."

They released each others hands and Hermione smiled again. "Well Steve, I have an extra ticket today, and I need a translator to tell me what's going on during the game." Nerves shot through her, and doubts filled her mind. "Um, obviously I know you've already got a seat as you're in here-" Embarrassment washed over Hermione and she thought frantically. "-and, honestly, you're probably already sitting with others-"

"No! I uh, actually come here by myself all the time," Steve shrugged, saving her from her bumbling words.

"Oh, well then in that case, would you like to join me?" she asked, trying to stomp down her anxiety and nervousness. Merlin was she a teenager? "Fair warning, I can't promise that I won't ask too many questions, I've heard it's one of my greatest faults."

Steve rubbed the back of his head and laughed like he thought she was joking. "Well, I guess I don't know why you'd ask help from a guy like me if you were a beautiful dame." His eyes widened. "Or a bea- a woman. A lady." He emphasized, "Not a dame." He stepped closer. "I mean you are beautiful- bu-"

Hermione's laugh came without permission. "You-" she smiled at him, "-you've no idea how to talk to a woman do you?" Not that I'm doing much better.

He tipped his head and smiled self-deprecatingly. "I think this is the longest conversation I've had with one."

She smiled gently, and all of the turbulent feelings fell away. "Well I guess today will be a day of firsts for us." She blinked at her own boldness. "If- if that is something you'd be okay with?"

Steve flushed again. "Bucky would bust my chops if I ever told him a dame asked me for help and I said no, not- not that I'd not want to. I'll go."

Hermione sighed in relief. "Oh good."

Steve smiled lightly and put his hands in his too big trousers.

Hermione dug in her purse and gave Steve the other ticket. "Well here. Not that it matters much since we're already in, but it's yours. For memories sake."

Steve accepted the ticket with a soft smile and pocketed in easily. "We better go find our seats before the national anthem."

Hermione nodded. "I'll follow after you."

Later in the Day, May 25th 1941

"There's a pitch, it's a ball high outside."

Hermione grinned as Steve slightly fist pumped the air at the announcers play-by-play.

"All Reiser's gotta do is send em' home," he said to her shaking his blonde hair and leaning his elbows forwards on his knees anxiously.

"Just an absolutely gorgeous day here at Ebbets Field."

Hermione scanned the field of men just beyond the fence in front of them that separated her and Steve from the players. It was at the bottom of the sixth of nine innings and Pistol Pete was up at bat with what Steve had called a '2-2-2'. Which meant the Dodgers batter was at two balls, two strikes, and two outs.

Pete's next play would either lead the Dodgers into a lead, or let the Philadelphia Phillies keep their tie score into the next inning.

It was all very exciting, and with help from Steve's knowledge and sharp eyes, Hermione felt emotionally attached to the players and their outcomes as she had never before. The only close comparison would have been with Ron or Harry playing Quidditch in her school years when they'd almost die during the games.

"Philly's have managed to tie it up four to four, but the Dodgers have three men on."

Hermione looked to Steve and he smiled still a little shyly back at her.

"Come on Petey take em' all home! Lets go!" Someone from behind them bellowed into the field and the stands erupted into cheers.

"Pistol Pete!"

"Pistol Pete!"

"Pistol Pete!"

"He leans in, here's the pitch, swing on- Oh it's a line drive right down the right field!"

Hermione, Steve, and the crowds around them jumped to their feet. Whooping and cheering started to swell across the stands.

"It gets past Grissom-," the announcer said as Hermione tracked the movement of the game anxiously.

"And there- Rizzo's in, he scores! He's followed in on heels by Medwick and Reeses as Reiser heads to third!

Hermione watched the batter that had started on the first base of the play slide into home and she smiled wildly.

"Etten's brings the ball back up from the outfield and- Reiser's gonna try and make it!"

"Oh Merlin-" Hermione said, her heart in her throat.

"Run Pete RUN," came the echoing frantic shrieks of the crowds.

Etten from the Phillies threw the baseball like a missile as Pistol Pete dove for home.

Dust and dirt from Pete's home slide were like smoke in the air as the catchers mitt came down.

Hermione's eyes widened. It was too close to call!

"Oh my God-"

The umpire behind the catcher made a hand movement and people broke into ecstatic cheers and their applause thundered over the field.

"I can't believe it folks, it's safe! The Dodgers take the lead, it's eight to four. Oh ho, Dodgers!"

Hermione gasped and cheered as enthusiastically as everyone else around her and turned to Steve with her flushed cheeks and bright eyes.

Steve was laughing at the infectious euphoria in the air and smiled back at her. For the first time in the past hour and a half they'd known each other, Hermione thought that it was the first genuinely happy smile she'd seen on him, and it reminded her of sunshine. Like its' ribbons in the sky, it was warm, dazzling in it's own light, uncaged, and golden. It amazed her.

When the game had ended two innings later with the same score, Hermione and Steve walked together to the front of the stadium where Hermione would catch a cab.

"Well, I guess I'm officially a Dodgers fan," Hermione said waving down a driver before turning to him.

Steve put his hands in his pockets and smiled his distinctively shy smile that Hermione was getting used to. "I'm sure you'll be a pro in no time."

"Oh I don't know," Hermione dared, feeling brave after the wonderful time she'd had, "I feel as though I'm going to need to do this with my translator more often to become a pro."

Steve's jaw dropped.

Hermione fixed her hat to her head again. "Soon?"

"Well- the season ends in September."

"I expect we'll see each other before then." The cab stopped behind Hermione and she turned to open the door. She paused before she went to slide in and met his eyes. "I can't promise that I'll be around very often though. I live in lower Manhattan and I'm a full working women."

To Hermione's great pleasure, Steve didn't immediately ask if she was a secretary. "Could I write to you?"

Hermione dug in her purse for a scrap of paper and a pen. She wrote down the apartment number she was staying in with Peggy and Steve neared to retrieve it. When she handed it to him, Steve held it in wonder.

Hermione gave one last glance at Ebbets Field. "Thank you Steve," she said and his head snapped up. "For today. I was alone and in a place I had never been before and you were the only one who stopped to help."

Steve blushed. "Someone would have stopped for you Hermione, I think I was just the closest."

"But no one could have been a better friend than you were to a complete stranger, and it's made my whole day just- wonderful." She sighed, "So thank you. Promise to write?"

Steve nodded and held the door open for her as she sat in the back of the cab. She settled herself and then waved to him. "Good bye Steve," she smiled.

"Good bye Hermione," he smiled back and closed the door gently between them.

As the cab driver took her away from the baseball field, Hermione slid back in her chair and smiled happily to herself.

Did anyone recognize the Ebbets Field reference from Captain America: First Avenger?

Happy Holidays!