Chapter Twenty Three

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There were voices, raised high with panic, jabbering above Hermione's head.

"She's bleeding out -"

"Then make it stop!"

"We ran out of the blood replenisher five minutes ago."

"Fucking hell, are you a wizard or not? Cauterize it!"

Hermione shifted, her head thrashing backwards and forwards restlessly. Why wouldn't they leave her alone? Where was she? Everything hurt.

"Hold her still Alex!" a voice snapped, and something heavy pressed on Hermione's midsection. Then came a searing pain against her thigh that wrenched an unexpected cry from her lips.

"She's awake," said a familiar voice close at hand, and then a hand cradled her head. "Hermione? Can you hear me?"

"Severus?" Hermione croaked, fighting to open her eyes.

"Hermione," he said gently. "It's alright. You're safe now."

Urgently Hermione forced her eyes open, her vision swimming. "The mark. Is it gone?"

"We can handle that later," Severus said. "You've been badly injured."

"No! You have to get it off!"

There was a muttering from around her, the sound of several voices raised in confusion. Hermione ignored them all and focused on Severus, the only person close enough for her to see. Her sight was becoming more blurry and she was slipping from consciousness, but she had to tell him. Her hand clawed at him, and he grabbed it and held it.

"We'll talk about the mark when you wake -"

"No! You have to do it now."

"But -"

"My book," Hermione gasped. "In my bag. Hidden compartment. Password is dentist. It's on the last page."

"Severus," a voice warned. "I need to reset the broken ribs now, before they puncture a lung."

Severus gave a tight nod over his shoulder. And then pain struck Hermione in vicious spikes across her torso, and her vision went began to go black.

"Get the mark off!" she hissed. "Get it off, get it off, get it off…"

\\/

The next time Hermione awoke there was no pain. She was lying in the softest, warmest bed she had ever felt. Her head was propped comfortably at just the right height, and the smell of the duvet tucked up to her chin was both familiar and safe. Everything was so relaxing she could have slipped back into sleep again.

A small alarm beeped.

"She's awake," a voice said.

There was a rustle, and another voice close by. "Hermione? Are you alright?"

Hermione opened her eyes. Severus bent over her, his face creased with worry. Behind him she could see a low ceiling cut with dark wooden beams, and beyond, a square window overlooking an alley she recognised. She was in her room at the Leaky Cauldron.

"I'm...fine," she said, struggling to sit up.

"Not yet," Severus said, trying to push her back down. "You need to rest."

Hermione ignored him, pushing herself into an upright position. Her eyes widened. Sitting across from the bed on four wooden chairs were Rabastan, Regulus, Arabel and Alecto, all of them staring at her in silence. Alecto was chewing her fingernails, and Rabastan had a smear of blood on his cheek.

Hermione turned to Severus.

"You brought them here?"

Hermione scanned the room until she found her wand on the bedside table. She summoned it, and relaxed imperceptibly as it slid into her hand.

"Not exactly," Severus hesitated. He rubbed at a patch of stubble on his chin. Now Hermione looked closer, he looked terrible. His eyes were bloodshot and he had deep bags beneath them. What had happened?

"We brought ourselves last night," Arabel said calmly. "To congratulate you on your marking. We were going to take you out for drinks when you returned. Imagine our surprise, when we arrived at the Leaky Cauldron to wait for you, that instead we found Severus ransacking the place looking for more potions, sobbing about how you were going to die."

"I was not sobbing" Severus muttered.

Rabastan leaned forwards. "Obviously we didn't let Severus go back by himself, but a fucking cave Hermione? You sure know how to pick your hospital environments."

"Not very sterile," Regulus agreed.

Hermione stared from face to face. They were impassive, not giving away whatever it was they knew. She wanted to check her arm for the mark, but couldn't remember what she might have said in her delirium.

"Thank you," she said finally. "I appreciate what you've done. I think what I really need now is to rest up and heal, so if there isn't anything else…"

This time it was Rabastan who spoke, fixing Hermione with an intense expression. "Actually yeah, there was one more thing."

Arabel removed a small blue book from inside her robes, and tossed it to Hermione. She reached out and caught it automatically, and found a page bookmarked. Her heart sank as she opened it and found the heading.

Rabastan Lestrange

Marked Death Eater, fought in the First Wizarding War. The Lestranges were among Lord Voldemort's most loyal servants, the only ones who searched for him after his first downfall. After Voldemort's first downfall, Rabastan, Rodolphus, his wife Bellatrix and Barty Crouch Jr participated in the torture and permanent incapacitation of Alice and Frank Longbottom and were sentenced to life imprisonment in Azkaban. Rabastan escaped in 1996 with a group of Death Eaters and fought in multiple battles of the Second Wizarding War.

He was responsible for the murder of OOTP members Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minerva Mcgonagall, Emmeline Vance, and Hestia Jones, alongside numerous non-order members and muggles.

Never married, no children. Died in 2001 after failing to breach an Order safe house, resulting in the death of several Death Eaters. Rabastan was tortured to death by Lord Voldemort, his body was never found.

Hermione looked up. Every gaze in the room was on her. She dropped her eyes back to the book, and saw the next entry that had been marked was headed Regulus Black. She had no need to review that entry. Hermione flicked through the pages, buying time, thinking desperately.

Severus Snape, Barty Crouch, Alecto Carrow... Sweet Merlin, was there anyone she hadn't written about?

Plan for meeting the Dark Lord...Plan for constructing false memories...Plan for Amycus Carrow death...

It was all in here. They'd seen it all.

Hermione struck. Her wrist cracked like a whip, aiming for Rabastan first.

"Obliviate!"

A shield shimmered into existence between them, spanning the length of the room. When the obliviate hit, the shield flickered and purple sparks jumped, but it held.

"Obliviate! Obliviate! Obliviate!"

The shield held, and only then Hermione saw that it wasn't just the work of one person. All five of her friends were gripping wands, sustaining the barrier between them. She could probably overpower it, but then she'd be fighting five in close quarters. Hermione closed her eyes and focused. She tried to apparate, but slammed straight into anti-apparation wards.

"Fuck!" she hissed.

Trying to apparate through those wards was always a bit like running headfirst into a brick wall.

"Hermione stop! Wait," Severus said.

Hermione ignored him and fumbled at her neck for her emergency portkey, but it was gone. She'd had to take it off before going to the Marking ceremony. Throwing back the covers, realising she was dressed in just a long nightgown, Hermione grasped her wand tightly and stared down her five best friends.

"Listen," she said dangerously. "You need to get out of my way, because if I have to get through each and every one of you to get out of this room I will."

She took up a duellers stance, and raised her wand in readiness.

Rabastan and Severus exchanged glances, and then Severus spoke.

"Hermione we don't want to fight you. We just want to talk. We need to understand what the hell is going on here. Are you some kind of seer? Are you working for the Order? And why the fuck did you come back beaten within an inch of your life last night?"

Hermione glanced at the window, but that was enough to signal her intentions, because Arabel stood, and quickly moved to block that exit.

"Don't you dare," she said. "Don't you dare leave without giving us answers."

Hermione glanced over her shoulder at the wall. She wondered if she could blast her way out into the street beyond.

Arabel ignored Hermione's movement, and kept speaking rapidly.

"I've been planning to disappear before the end of seventh year. I don't want to be a Death Eater. I knew my choices were join or be killed, so I was going to run. Head overseas somewhere under a new name, and wait until it was all over. But now I have to know where you got your information from. Who are you, Hermione? Is there another way out of this?"

Rabastan lifted a hand that was shaking slightly, and brushed back his hair.

"That stuff, in that book. That wasn't me," he mumbled. "I would never. Did you just make it all up?"

Hermione met his eyes.

"No," she said softly, and watched his face pale.

She looked at Regulus next, but he shook his head. Alecto too, wouldn't meet her eyes.

"Just tell us Hermione," Severus said, his voice cracking painfully. "We trust you. We - we - love you. What the hell is going on here?"

His eyes were red and puffy, and Hermione wondered if he had read his entry. She closed her eyes, and opened them again. All five expectant faces still stared back at her. Without a word Hermione extended her arm and looked down. Once more the skin was unmarked. The Dark Mark was gone.

"Where is it?" she asked.

Severus understood immediately, and pulled a small leather bag from his pocket, tossing it over to her. Hermione opened the drawstring at the top and tipped the contents out. An item fell into her hand, like a small figurine or pendent. A small silver skull, with a snake emerging through its open mouth. The little object would have looked innocuous, except for the surge of dark magic that buzzed against Hermione's fingertips when she touched it.

"You did it," she said, staring. "I didn't think anyone could have done that spell except me."

"Might want to not be so arrogant then," Regulus snapped. "I did it."

"You?"

"Me."

"You know how to cast the spell to seal an independent -"

"An independent piece of magic into an inanimate object? Yeah, I do. And frankly Hermione, I don't think using silver was the best idea. It can be slightly unstable if you put too much magic into it. I would have gone with gold, if you'd asked me first."

Regulus's eyes were glittering, and Hermione felt herself speechless for the first time in as long as she could remember.

"Now," Arabel said. "Start talking, before we have to get out the veritaserum. You know we could have dosed you while you were asleep. This is just a courtesy."

Hermione swallowed, and for the first time, truly appreciated that she was dealing with Slytherins, and not Gryffindors.

"Not here," she said. "It isn't safe here. Come with me."

\\/

The sun lay mild upon Hogsmeade village, an early summer morning, yet the slaty zinc-grey clouds chilled Hermione's spirits, so that the shops and houses shimmered like a mirage as tremors passed through her.

"Are you cold?" Severus asked, shooting her a look of concern as they trudged out of the village.

"No, I'm fine."

What chilled her could not be altered by any rise or fall in the air temperature.

"Are we nearly there?" he asked.

"Not far enough."

"Are you sure you're alright?"

"Mostly."

"But not entirely?"

"Oh shut up Severus, she's fine," Arabel snapped.

That didn't seem to warrant an answer, so Hermione continued to follow the road.

After making a longer journey, they approached the shack from the far side of the village. Hermione appeared to have no interest in it, while surveying the scene to assess whether or not they might have been followed.

Not for the first time, she told herself that this was how paranoids jittered their way through life, but she still believed in her sanity.

When she was satisfied they were not being observed by humans, Hermione cast a few silent spells to check for non-human eavesdroppers. There was little that she would put past Lord Voldemort, and she was unsurprised to discover a little charm on the hem of her cloak, spelled to activate upon certain trigger words. Casually, Hermione draped her cloak over the fence of the shack, before clambering over.

"The Shrieking Shack?" Rabastan grimaced. "This is safer than the Leaky?"

"It's easier to ward against eavesdropper," Hermione snapped. "Come on."

They broke in through a side door and made their way upstairs to a room, empty except for some battered chairs and a thick layer of dust. Hermione ignored the dust, and set about warding the place. After a moment Severus joined her, recognising the wards she used when they duelled together.

When the place was warded tighter than anything except perhaps Hogwarts or Azkaban, Hermione had no way of putting it off any longer. She found herself at the centre of a semi-circle of pale, determined faces, but she looked at them all individually.

Rabastan. Regulus. Arabel. Alecto. And Severus.

"I'm a time traveller," Hermione said abruptly, in no mood to waste words. "I come from twenty years in the future. In my time, you're all dead."

Alecto gasped out loud. Rabastan stared at Hermione as though she had grown an extra head, and Arabel nodded slowly. But nobody spoke.

Hermione shuffled her feet, scudding marks in the dust in the floor. She was more nervous than she could ever remember being, and adrenaline coursed through her veins. The fight or flight urge was strong, but she forced herself to stay. These people were her friends. Somewhere along the way, she realised with surprise, she had grown to love them.

"Someone say something," Hermione said. "This might be your only chance with all the wards up."

"Give me a minute," Regulus muttered. "Bit of a shock over here."

"But you already guessed," Hermione said, searching for the truths in faces. "Some of you at least."

Arabel nodded slowly. "I guessed. But that isn't the same as hearing it."

"I guessed," Severus said quietly. "A while ago actually. But I didn't want to believe it."

"Well I had no fucking idea," Rabastan said. "So maybe you want to fill us in on the details a bit Hermione?"

Hermione hesitated, because besides Dumbledore when she had first arrived in this time, she had never discussed her experiences with anyone. At first she felt uneasy, talking of these matters out loud. But as she watched their faces change, and saw shock and awe but no condemnation, her doubts fell away and revelation seemed as natural as talk of the weather.

Slowly, so as not to overwhelm them, Hermione walked her friends step by step through the explanation of her arrival in this time.

"This is like science fiction," Severus said, shaking his head. Hermione agreed.

"Magic seems like that. You think it has rules, you think you can't travel back a certain distance, and then you get knocked off your feet by it. There's theory, but even in my time it was just wild speculation. One day I'm sure the unspeakables down in the department will finally tell us what they've been working on though, and then maybe zipping backwards and forwards through time will be completely normal. All human society will change almost beyond comprehension."

Hermione surveyed her companions, looking for disbelief or dismay.

"We're still with you," Rabastan said, his voice strained. "So far."

"Alright...well, I never expected it to happen to me. Just let me make it clear that simply because I'm interested in how physics and magic intersect, doesn't make me a magiphysicist. Even if I was, I couldn't explain what happened when I spun that time turner, except that perhaps the pull of the Veil towards the Other Side, was strong enough to interrupt the passive magic on the time turner, causing it to override it's limits. Somehow, it reshaped reality as well as time. I should never have arrived at Hogwarts no matter what time travel changed. But I did."

Hermione was simplifying and combining her many questions that she had little time to research, but she knew no other way to quickly give her friends a feel for the wonder, the enigma, the sheer bizarreness of how she had arrived in this time.

"And think of this," she continued. "Some magiphysicists claimed in my time that they believed it was possible that time and reality themselves are connected, and that on a deep structural level, every point in the universe is the same point. This interconnectedness, this sentience could explain why I turn a Time Turner in the Ministry of Magic, and wind up at Hogwarts."

Severus looked at Hermione intently.

"What were you doing in the Ministry of Magic?"

Hermione looked at her boots.

"It's a long story. We were right at the end of a war - this war, actually - and the wrong side won."

"The Dark Lord lost?" Arabel said.

Hermione closed her eyes for a moment.

"No. Voldemort won. I was fighting for the other side."

Dead silence reigned for a moment, and Severus stared at Hermione. His mouth was slightly open, and clearly nothing she had told him thus far had shocked him as much as this revelation. Alecto seemed to be on the verge of collapse.

"Go on," Severus said tightly.

"I was a prisoner," Hermione said.

Regulus coughed. "Could you also, possibly, please explain to us why Hermione Black was fighting against the Dark Lord?"

Hermione closed her eyes so that she couldn't see Severus's face. Make or break. There was no sense in a partial truth. She would tell them everything, and damn the consequences. If this went badly she would obliviate or kill them. The thought made her heart twinge painfully, but Hermione pushed that aside.

"I was born Hermione Jean Granger. When I was eleven I received my Hogwarts letter and was sorted into...into Gryffindor."

Severus gave a sharp intake of breath, but Hermione spoke over him, determined to get it all out.

"My parents were proud of me, but very surprised, because they were...because they were muggles."

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This story is speaking to me at the moment so the next update shouldn't be too far off. Sorry about the cliffhanger, I know I'm an asshole, but it really was getting a bit long for my preferred chapter length. Feel free to send me reviews telling me off, or to hurry up with the next chapter.

I've started working as a private tutor since graduating, and the only thing my tweenage students talk about is Harry Potter. It saddens me that I can't join in with their conversations, or confess my little writing hobby, but it also inspires me to go home and write this.

Thanks for reading,

Cas