Hermione woke to the sound of water dripping on the walls and a hard cold stone floor under her. At least there aren't any rats…Hermione thought, just before one scurried across the room. I spoke too soon. Stretching out her sore muscles, Hermione groaned. She must have been lying on the floor for hours. It also felt like she had been kicked in the ribs several hundred times.

Sitting up, memories came flooding back to her. She remembered being dragged away by dementors, forcefully being interrogated (some of the tactics including punches, kicks being gagged, and worse…) then thrown into this tiny cell. Forever.

Hermione however had a little secret. No one but Dumbledore had been able to perform wandless magic for centuries. Keeping it a secret, Dumbledore had taught her, Harry, and Ron all how to use it. They were the only three people in the world who knew how to use it.

Focusing her power, she preformed a small spell to test herself. Levitating the small rat wasn't all that hard, but wandless magic drained her. A memory floated to the surface, one of her last lesson with Dumbledore, Harry and Ron on wandless magic.

flashback

"Now remember, wandless magic draws power from you, not the magical core of you wand. It will drain your powers much more quickly than using a wand. Wandless magic might come in handy of one of you are captured and must protect yourselves. I don't think that any of you will escape that fate. Every one of you is too close to Harry, or you are him." Dumbledore paused and looked at the three young faces; Harry's especially, gazing up at him. All of them had seen hardships much before their time.

The faces of the youths still looked young, but if you were to look deep into the eyes of any of them you would see steel. Steel that shouldn't be there. It came from the death of parents, (Hermione), growing up without them, (Harry), or the loss of siblings, (Ron).

Dumbledore smiled at the young persons looking up at him. A tear slid down his cheek. So many lives lost and disrupted by one evil man. I swear on my soul that I will do all that I can to stop this.

end

I'm gonna have to work on this. I've go to escape, go to the past, and change everything. I seem to have to be doing a lot of changing lately. Hermione thought to herself, trying to keep her mind of her impending doom. What should she do, go back in time and stop herself from going further back, just escape and live in hiding, or sit in this cell and rot until she died.

"I choose to go back, again, but this time, save me…" Hermione said to herself, trying not to cry. Her whole world had been turned upside down and then shaken brutally. Her timeline had been changed so violently that she couldn't see what was the same anymore.

My trial is in a few days. If I can hold on that long I might be able to send myself back. In the mean time, I have to store some of my energy. Now what was that spell that holds stored power until I call on it? Hermione hadn't noticed that she had been pacing. Her mind was so set on finding that spell; she didn't notice that Remus had come up to her cell.

"Hermione." No answer from her, "Hermione, look at me…" Remus said a little louder. Hermione looked shaken from his sudden appearance, but that uneasiness hastily turned to anger, and from anger to rage and from rage to hatred. All of these feeling passed through her in a matter of seconds. Remus must have seen that because he didn't know what to do.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking when I called those dementors into our room. I felt as if some kind of shadow had come over me. I didn't have any control over my body or mind. I felt possessed." Remus looked miserable. Stubble covered his lower face, deep dark purple shadows lay under his eyes, and his eyes themselves were bloodshot.

Hermione had no sympathy. She was in Azkaban, had been beaten until she spat blood and she had been left on the cold hard stone for hours, if not days. "What do you want Remus. So your sorry, and you look like shit, but what do you want?" Hermione replied. She was in no mood for tears.

"Hermione, I came her to help you. If I know you enough, you are planning to escape. I haven't figured out where you are going to go, but it must have something to do with the past again. I heard you screaming in your sleep the night that I had you taken away. You were yelling my name and screaming at Peter to not kill me. I know of a spell to help me see your dreams, and I used it. The way I died, the horrific pain I saw etched into my face was echoed in yours. I didn't care about my pain, only yours. If that is what you are trying to stop, I' here to cast the spell for you." Remus whispered the last words. Tears slipped down his cheek.

Hermione looked at him. She felt a spark of what she had fallen in love with in him for a moment. Somehow, she had changed things in more ways than she had intended. She had made Remus a shadow of himself and almost got herself killed at the same time.

"I can do this myself. I can't risk you making things different than they were. This time, I'm not going all the way back. Not to the marauders time, not to the time of the battle, just too when I went back. I can't meddle in the past. I'm only going to fix what I messed up." Hermione said, tears washing down her cheeks. Both Remus and Hermione knew what this meant. She was to go back to living live as a widow and Remus would be dead. Forever.

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"Now, this spell is slightly different than the one we used before. I need you to concentrate on the moment you want to go back to. Even if you can't remember the exact specifics, the spell will work. Hold on, one… two… thr…" Remus said, moving his hand in an arching movement that started at the top of his head and whipped across his body and stopped at the waist. "Tempus teneo!" he screamed. Hermione looked at her husband with tears rolling down his cheeks. The look in his eyes told Hermione everything that she needed to. He did this for her, even if it meant that he must die.

She closed her eyes, but the tears still seeped out. Concentrate… I have to concentrate! Hermione thought back to the morning that she sent herself back from. The memory seemed to come from nowhere. She remembered the way her desk was placed in the room and the rather enormous stack of books off to the corner. She even remembered the order they were in. Papers had covered the front of the desk because the night before she had been grading them.

Opening her eyes gave her a startle. There she was, standing in her old office, looking at herself slumped over the desk and crying as Addam cried in the background. "Umm… Hermione… Wow, this is harder than I thought it would be. Hi, it's me, I mean you. Well, I'm me and you. I'm from the future. I came to stop you from going to the past. It causes so many horrible effects. Remus is tuned into a monster for one, and my baby, my poor Addam isn't there anymore. Please, you have to believe me." Hermione blurted that all out. Her counter part hadn't even looked up from her chair. Hermione walked over to her, looking down at her sobbing into her arms.

"Why? Why did he have to die? I miss him sooooooo much! I just want him back, that's all!" her younger self said.

Memories flooded back to her. Her real wedding and honeymoon, the battle, the way Harry reacted when he found Ginny dead and then Ron, she remembered that all. What hit her the hardest was Remus, the memory of him dead, speaking those last few words full of love and the weight of his limp form in her arms and crying over his face. Tears formed in her eyes and she pulled her younger self to her and they cried into each others shoulders.

"He had to. It is what was meant to happen, because everything happens for a reason. I miss him too, and I went to the past and saved him. But it cost me my son, and created a monster in his stead. I couldn't live with what had happened." Hermione said into her shoulder. She pulled back and looked at herself.

"For one shimmering moment, Remus had a sliver of his old self in him so he sent me back to save me. Or you… however you look at it. He killed himself to save us. I cannot let that kind of valor go away for nothing."

"I will stay. I love Remus with all of my heart and will always love his memory. He gave me several years of pure joy so I will cherish that with all that is me." Hermione younger looked at Hermione older and smiled. "Now, let's get you back to your time…"

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ten years after Hermione's real time

"Mom, why are you so sad? I heard you crying last night and I wanted to see if you were okay." Addam said with the sincerity that only a ten-year old could achieve. Hermione gave him a watery smile and pulled him up onto her bed.

"I was thinking about your dad. I miss him today." Hermione looked at the young boy sitting across from her. He looked so much like his father it was scary, and he acted like him too.

"What was he like mommy?" Addam asked Hermione for what felt to be the ten hundredth time. Hermione thought of Remus and with a smile she answered, "My hero."

A/N:

Another story done and gone in the hopefully long line of good ones I will write. I hope that this one gave you all the answers that you wanted. I could have gone on for a few more chapters, but I thought that this was a good place to stop. Remember, just because this is the last chapter in the story doesn't mean that you can't review!