Hermione's P.O.V.

Even to Hermione, who had known Harry since she was a scrawny, scuffed kneed, waif of a child, Harry looked as strikingly devilishly imposing as Lucifer himself right then. Having commandeered a shaded corner table in the very depths of Aberforth's bar, the Hogs Head, even the regulars seemed to subconsciously skirt around her little plot. It wasn't hard to see why.

Leaning back in the booth, one arm draped across the back of the red leather seat, a lit cigarette balanced between her lips with a glass of fire whiskey in her free hand, the tendrils of smoke coiling from her mouth and the deep shadow from lack of candlelight only made her unnatural eyes, so green, so intensely vivid and keen, spark like floo fire. Harry had grown into her sharp features now, looking less malnourished scoundrel and more Grecian marble effigy. All Dionysus madness. Her hair no longer, still as wild as ever, swamped her, ate her small frame whole in one guzzling bite, but made her seem larger, bigger, uncontrollable and beyond snare and restraint.

Yes, Harry was an imposing figure indeed, able to make many men and women's flight instincts burst to life with one sardonic look of hers, but Hermione had seen her dimpled smile, so lovely and wide and honest, that this little devil at the crossroads picture she was painting seemed less imposing than it did heart-breaking. Her friend, her dear, lovable friend was hurting. Deeply.

"How did I know you were going to be here?"

Hermione said as she pulled up to the table, dragging a chair along the way to sit opposite Harry. Between them, on the round table, were two bottles of Rosmerta's Royal whiskey, one already empty and Harry deep into the second. Hermione winced. After the war, all of them, every single one, had found ways to cope with the memories. Ron slept around, living purely in the moment, snap decisions his only method of choice. Harry drank like a sailor, smoked like a dragon and would disappear for weeks on end, Sirius's bike her only company. Herself? Well, if Hermione smoked or huffed a bump of pixie dust once in a while, who was to say? It was either that or wake up in the middle of the night, screaming her lungs out, sure she was back in that godforsaken Malfoy mansion. They all had their demons now, and they all had their vices to quieten the demons with.

Harry didn't bother to face Hermione until the last second, downing her, what? Fifth, sixth, seventh drink of the evening? Before she slammed the glass back down onto the mahogany table, taking one long drag from her cig so when she spoke, it was like the smoke was coiling around the words, constricting like a viper.

"Have you ever tried going into divination? Oh, wait…"

Hermione didn't blame Harry for her drinking, nor her smoking, or her long solitary trips or often sarcastic and biting tone. The things Harry had seen, done, witnessed, having Voldemort's soul within her… Well, Hermione understood Harry's often cynical and derisive view of the world, and now, well, if anyone deserved to be pissed, it was her. From what Hermione had found since a week ago, after Harry had spotted the time-turner and stormed out of the house without a backward glance, she would have been angry, hurt and antagonistic too.

It wasn't every day you discovered that a group of wizards and witches, who had stolen a time-turner from the ministry, had abducted you from the bloody past. From what Hermione could piece together, when the infertility crisis of the wizarding world began to show face, adoption had hit an increase. No good little pureblood wanted their name dying out. Of course, where there's opportunity for it, a select few people would try and cash in on a dilemma. Muggleborns had turned out to be an attractive piggybank.

With the shockingly poor records of the past, mixed with the ease of a wizard manipulating a muggle, Mrs Bloomers orphanage for gifted children had been born. The plan, despite it all, was ingenious. Go back into the past, scope out a few muggleborn children from poorer families, families that wouldn't be missed or taken seriously by wizards or muggles alike, disguise themselves as muggle authority members, such as social workers, bully and scare the parents into handing over the child, hop back, and make a pretty little coin for your effort. From the ministry and news articles Hermione had read, the whole thing turned out lucrative if the three million golden Galleons confiscated from Mrs Bloomers vaults were accounted for.

The ministry had tried to right the wrong, by collecting what little documentation the orphanage kept and retrieving the children, sending them back to their rightful times and families, but not all children could be found due to Mrs Bloomers own flight from the long arm of the law and taking half the records with her. Harry, of course, was one of the poor kids forgotten and left behind. From there, things became only guess work on Hermione's part.

From seeing the box herself, seeing what was inside of that tin, to the wards placed on it, Hermione would guess that somehow, someway, Lily and James had found Harry's real birth certificate, most of the ones given to the adopted families by Mrs Bloomer being forgeries. Having done that, they saw everything for what it was. With the inclusion of the time-turner in the box, Hermione thought that, after and if, they survived their brush with Tom Riddle, they would have taken Harry back to her own family. If they didn't survive, they had planned on Harry, or Remus and Sirius, finding that box, discovering the truth themselves, and with that damned time-turner, taking Harry home. They wanted her to have a family, with or without them.

"Very funny Harry. Tell me, when are you going?"

And that was why she was here. Hermione knew Harry. Perhaps too well. Harry was emotionally cold. Arctic. Stubborn. Inflexible. Hot-tempered. Unapologetically blunt. More likely to set you on fire than to rub your back and tell you everything was going to be okay. A complete nihilist. But underneath all that, buried deep was a big heart, a heart that felt too much. And like Lily and James, Hermione thought Harry deserved a family, or, at least, a shot at having one.

Harry, with that big pessimistic brain of hers, would not see this for what it was, a chance at what she always wanted. A family. So, Hermione would have to make her see it for what it really is, not an easy feat given the person she was dealing with. Then, as Harry reached for the bottle of whiskey, flicked the lid clean off and poured her tumbler to near the brim, Hermione got a glimpse of exactly just how arduous this task was going to be. No one did tenacious like Harry.

"I don't know what you mean. I went for the names, I got the names. Finished. Done."

Hermione gave an incredulous huff of exasperation. Harry's voice was taciturn, aloof, her face cut and remote, but that was like everything with Harry. With her, you had to read between the lines. With her, what was left unsaid was what needed to be heard. Right now? She was hiding her pain behind a veil of thick apathy and indifference. To be fair, Hermione would have bought the act too, if she couldn't see the whitening of Harry's knuckles tightening around her glass.

"What? Harry, they're your family! Real family. Blood. Surely that means something to you?"

Harry lifted her glass to her lips, hooded eyes glaring at Hermione as the glass froze halfway. In full honesty, Hermione did shirk back just an inch from the withering frigidity of those unsettling eyes.

"Lily and James were family. They are dead. Remus and Sirius were family, and look at that, they're dead too. Me and family only seem to equal in death, Hermione. I've come to understand and accept that. What I don't understand is why it's so important to you. Why did you push me to look? Oh, Harry, aren't you curious? Surely you want to know? Just have a look, what trouble could it cause? Every Merlin damned day, it was the same fucking questions. Why don't you invest that energy into your own family and mind mine?"

Hermione's heart faltered in a beat, a twitch, just one, spasmed under her eye and momentarily, her bottom lip quivered. It was quick, a flash, but Harry, that observant bastard that she was, caught most if not all of Hermione's brisk display. Frowning, Harry gently lowered her glass to the table, cocking her head at Hermione.

"Hermione?"

Hermione's eyes closed as she sucked in a breath before blinking back open. She knew Harry didn't mean it, not really, she didn't know, Hermione hadn't told her, lied to her in fact, and her biting remarks were what they always were, a shield used to bat back against her own discomfort, a reaction from a socially stunted individual who, to no fault of their own, had spent most of their social informative childhood years locked up in a bloody cupboard, starving. It wasn't her fault, but of course, even when Harry didn't mean to, she hit the ball too close to home. Finally, somehow, Hermione found the strength to answer, though her words felt like shards of glass slicing her throat to shreds.

"They're gone Harry. I lied. I-… I was too late."

The chuckle that bubbled up from Hermione was something broken, pitiful, half mad.

"They didn't even make it to Australia. There was a plane crash… A fucking plane crash. I was so worried about the Deatheaters and magic, I never saw it coming."

Her parents were dead. Gone. Just like that. After everything Hermione had done, obliviating them, sending them away, just so they could live, and they had died in a fucking plane crash! Some days, she sobbed and wept for them. Other days, she howled at the bloody irony of it all. After the war, Hermione had gone looking for her family. She had come back all smiles and laughter, saying they, her mother and father, were staying down in Somerset and she was visiting them every now and again. That was six months ago. She had lived with this for six months.

Perhaps Harry wasn't the only one hiding from the pain. Perhaps, in some vicarious way, she was trying to give Harry the chance she would never get again, a chance to see her mother and father. Perhaps it was selfish of her, her using Harry as some conduit to live through, but having lost her own parents, knowing she would give anything, anything, to see them again, hug them just one more time, Hermione thought she knew what Harry would feel if she never took this chance, when she was older and looked back, when the regret would sink in.

"Maybe that's why I've been pushing. I just thought-, I mean, if I could get you to meet yours, perhaps that would ease the pain of knowing I won't be able to see or go to my own mother or father. I know, it's selfish and egocentric but-"

In a rare, very rare for Harry, display of public affection, she reached over the table and held onto Hermione's forearm, squeezing firmly.

"Hermione, it's everything but that. You wanted me to have the one thing you didn't. I couldn't ask for a better friend then you."

And then it was over, her hand was slithering back to her own side of the table and Hermione could visually see Harry's guards slam back up. Even with Hermione, possibly Harry's closest friend, Harry could never fully relax, relinquish control, and really, that was so poignantly tragic. Was it her abusive upbringing? Was it the continual beatings life threw at her? Was it the years of having Tom Riddle in her head? Hermione didn't know but even in a crowd of people, Harry always seemed so… Alone. A family could change that. Hermione knew it could. She hoped it would.

Harry finally relinquished her grasp on her glass and stubbed out her cig in an ashtray as she delved a hand into the inner pocket of her leather jacket. She pulled out a slip of paper, aged, portrait style, and Hermione knew, though she could not see the front, that it was the photo of the couple and the baby. Almost tenderly, Harry ran a thumb back and forth of the front, eyes hooded and unblinking.

"Time-turners are one-way trips. I go, there's no coming back."

Hermione smiled. At least Harry wasn't telling her to fuck off, which, with her, was and always would be a possibility. Now, here came the tricky bit. She had managed to get Harry to think of the possibility of going back, to use the time-turner left to her by Lily and James, enough to at least begin to argue against what costs there could be, all Hermione had to do now was convince Harry that yes, she should go back, for once to put herself and her own wants forward, to damn the consequences.

"We're wizards Harry. We have long life-spans. A hundred years is middle age to people like us. Maybe, just maybe, there's an older, wiser Hermione and Harrietta waiting in the side-lines for us to go back. Waiting to come out to play."

Harry raised her eyes and locked them with her own, cocking one imperial brow high.

"We and us, Hermione?"

Time travel was, quite possibly, the most multifaceted, interconnected action anybody could ever endeavour to do. Loops. Cycles. Paradoxes. Locked time-lines. Parallel universes. All theoretical potentials. Whose to say they hadn't already gone back, there really was another, older, Hermione and Harry around here somewhere, waiting for their younger counterparts to take the jump, and, by not doing so, they were in fact the ones messing up the time-line? Whose to say anything when time travel was involved?

And yet, Harry wasn't bothered at all about that complexity. No, she was focused on Hermione's use of plurals. For once, just once, Hermione wished her friend would just overlook one thing, one damned thing. The truth was, as sad and pathetic as it was, without Harry, Hermione would have nothing left here. Nothing. Ron had gone his own way. Her parents were dead. The ambition her younger self had housed to become a professor or ministry employee had died a slow and painful death when Hermione had gone through the war, seeing things, for the first time, without her rose tinted glasses. There was nothing left here but phantoms and ashes. So, yes, perhaps she was being selfish again, but if Harry went back, so was she. She wasn't about to lose one of the only important persons left in her life. They were both broken, in their own way, but together, it didn't feel so crushing. Hermione's grin turned cheeky.

"You really think I would let you go back all by yourself? Merlin Forbid! I'd open a history book one day and find your face emblazoned on it. You'd be the English Che Guevara. Can you imagine? Muggles running around with your face on their shirts, shouting Vivi La Harrietta!"

Harry let out a dulcet laugh, all steel wrapped in the softest of velvets as she fell back into her chair, laughter dying off to a rasping chuckle as she scanned Hermione up and down shrewdly.

"Breaking the temporal laws, messing with history… When did you become the bad influence? I thought that was my job?"

Hermione winked at her.

"Furthermore, I'm sure if anyone can break the law of time, it would be you. You'd find a way back if you really wanted to, Harry. You've defeated death, took on the most powerful dark wizard of our time, led an army, a little time travel is nothing compared to that."

Glancing down to the photo she was holding for one last time, Harry slid it back home into the sanctity of her leather jacket.

"But it's not just time travel, is it? I'd-… We would be leaving everything we knew. Hogwarts, the Weasleys, I know you and Ron have hit a rough patch, but that doesn't mean I never want to see him again."

Hermione shrugged.

"What is left? Ron is going into his Auror training. You were beginning your studies to be a Medi-witch. I was applying for a ministry apprenticeship. When was the last time either of us, all of us, actually sat down and talked, had a meal, a drink? Months. We've been drifting for a while now Harry. Did you know Ron's engaged? Yeah, has been for a few weeks now, to Pansy Parkinson. Though, I doubt it will last. This is his third engagement this year. I read it in the paper. That's how far we've fell. We're growing up, growing apart with people comes along with that. But that's okay. That's a part of life."

Hermione could see a quick gleam of surprise dart across Harry's eyes before it was wrangled back under control. Yeah. She understood that too. She had been hurt by Ron's lack of communication, especially over something as important as marriage, but, well, the golden trio really had splintered. Still, as always, Harry was never finished fighting. Shaking her head, Harry spiked the verbal ball back into Hermione's court.

"That doesn't mean we should go spiralling nearly a hundred years into the past. I'm pretty sure, for most, that is not how life goes."

Fine, if she wanted to play rough, they'd play rough and cut through all the bullshit. Squaring her shoulders, Hermione crossed her arms and took on, what Harry used to call, her disappointed professor persona.

"I know you Harry, better than you would like me to, and I know what you are doing. Why all the excuses? Why are you trying to talk yourself out if this? I know you. Family has been the cornerstone of your life. It's been all you've ever wanted. Anybody can see that when you spot families walking passed in the street, when you go to the Weasley dinners, when you see kids playing in the park near Grimmauld place. Why are you denying yourself a chance at having that, the real thing, for yourself?"

Why was Harry fighting this so hard? Here was a chance to leave, to get away from the war and blood and haunting voices of the dead, and she wanted to stay? Was she so used to life snatching her wants from her that she wasn't even going to try and grasp her desires anymore? No. Hermione couldn't believe that. She just couldn't. If someone like Harry, with her burning soul and persevering ambitions, had been so beaten down by all this that she was giving up, the rest of them didn't stand a chance. Hermione wasn't willing to accept that. Not yet. Harry was back at her drink, downing the scorching liquid in one swoop before thumping the glass back down, just a fraction too hard, against the table. Angry. Harry was getting angry. Good. Hermione knew how to deal with an angry Harry, not a broken and defeated one.

"Have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, I don't deserve a happy ending? I've killed people, Hermione. I've killed. I have blood on my hands and that shit doesn't just wash away. It stains everything I touch. And you know what? I'm not sorry. I don't regret anything. I'm happy they are dead. I'm happy it was by my hands. I dream about it and, no, they're not nightmares. Not really. I dream and I awaken with a smile on my face and my first thought is to beg myself to go back to sleep, to dream all over again. I feel fucking victorious. What's that say about me?"

Hermione grimaced. So, it was true. There had been a space, a few months right after the final battle, that Harry had seemingly gone missing. The ministry was hushed about the whole thing, saying Harry was healing in private, but when the bodies started coming back, when the missing Deatheaters began to be crossed off the undesirable list, Hermione had her suspicions. However, when Alecto Carrow, the last Deatheater on the run, was carted back into Saint Mungo's mortuary, nothing but a dismembered lump of stumps and fractured bone, Harry had reappeared the very same day, jovial and lively. At the time, just happy to see her friend again, all doubts and fears had been pushed to the back of her mind. Hermione didn't want to see what was right in front of her.

Now, Hermione was only livid. Not at Harry. No. At them. The ministry. No doubt, that fucking ministry had come to Harry with the proposition before the rubble could even settle. When she had died, saw war, banished Voldemort's Horcrux, barely still coherent, having just lost Remus and Tonks and so many others, they had come to her in her most vulnerable time to, once again, use her as a weapon. Perhaps Harry wanted vengeance. Perhaps she was simply too used to war to give it up so soon. Perhaps Harry wanted the last laugh. Yet, who was she to judge? Merlin knew her hands weren't clean either.

"And you don't think the rest of us have blood on our hands? It was survival Harry. War. None of us came away clean. You killed Voldemort and Deatheaters who ran, but you weren't the only person in the war or the clean-up effort. Look at what I did to Umbridge? Centaurs don't take kindly to humans or witches on their land, I knew that. I knew very well what they would do to her, and when they recovered her body last year, the mangled mess it was, I didn't even blink. Do I not deserve happiness?"

Harry scoffed.

"Of course you do-"

"So do you! It was us or them, and we won. It was war. Horrible, terrible war, but we survived. I don't know about you, but I didn't survive the things I have to live on stuck in the shadow of a war we didn't start… Harry, Lily and James put that time-turner in the box for a reason. I think we both know they wanted you to at least think about going back."

Now, more than ever, Harry needed to get out of this, get away. She needed family. She needed normality. She needed peace and the wizarding world would never let her have that, would never stop reminding her of her sins and losses. They would never stop demanding pieces of Harry's soul.

"What if they're dead? 1920s Britain wasn't exactly the safest of places. What if they don't want to see me? What if they've moved on, had more kids, separated, moved across country? What do I do then? Set up a fucking bakery?"

The thing was, because Harry had aged sixteen years, they would need to go back sixteen years after her birth. 1922 England was not precisely welcoming or benign. Additionally, a fully-grown teenager saying they were a baby who had been taken away only months ago would be chucked out, or worse, institutionalised. So, if they did go back, they would need to hit the right year. Sixteen years, well, Hermione knew that was a lot of time for a lot of things to happen. Given the time, war, disease, poverty, crime could all lead to a demise. Wouldn't that be a punch in the gut? Convincing Harry, going back, only to find her parents already buried six feet under? However, there was hope and where there was hope there was a way. Harry had taught Hermione that.

"What if they're still waiting? What if they do have more kids? You could have a brother, a sister."

Hermione could see the idea physically hit Harry. She blinked, her nose scrunched, and her eyes darted to the side as she soaked in the possibility.

"A brother… I could have a brother? I never-… Siblings. I could have siblings."

Harry had been so busy debating the cost, she had forgotten to truly ponder what it would be she would be gaining. Perhaps a little conceitedly, Hermione rejoiced momentarily. It wasn't often she got to get one over Harry, and when she did, well, they were close enough to allow Hermione the fleeting enjoyment without causing serious tensions between them. Still, now that she had Harry on the metaphorical ropes, it was best to keep her there before she could swing back and K.O Hermione.

"Aunts and uncles, cousins, so much. The only way to find out is to go back. If things aren't what they seem, or they're dead or gone, we'll find a way back here. I know we will. When you have magic, not much is out of the realm of possibility."

Silence decisively fell around them. Suffocating. Harry stared into her amber drink for a long while. Finally, she finished the drink off, pulled out some money, placed it on the bar and stood. Hermione mimicked her movements as Harry began to stalk across the bar, towards the exit.

"Where are you going?"

Harry shot her a smile that would have put the sun to shame.

"We are going to go and pack. If we're doing this, I'm not going to go empty handed."

So, here we are! What do you think so far? In the next chapter, we're going to be hitting Peaky Blinders time. This fic will be set in, for the Peaky Blinders universe, at the end of season two but before season three starts. So, after the whole Epson races fiasco, but before Tommy's marriage. If you don't watch Peaky Blinders, fear not, most will be explained throughout the fic as Harry discovers her roots, so, really, it'll be like you're taking the trip with her.

So, I have a question for you: Who do you want Harry to meet first? Everyone is open, Polly, Lizzie, Grace, Tommy, Arthur, John, Isiah, Michael, anyone, (as long as they're from the Peaky's time-line) so please, if you have a preference (because I'll be honest, I'm having real trouble picking myself lol), let me know! Who ever wins will be the P.O.V taken for next chapter.

As for updates, I know I managed to pump this one out pretty quickly, but I'm currently on break from Uni and will be heading back in a weeks' time, so I'm trying to write as much as possible, when I have the time to do so. After next week, I'll try to keep updating to at least once a week, but things may crop up. I will try my hardest to post at least one chapter a week, though.

Thank you to everyone who followed, favourited and reviewed. Did you enjoy this chapter? Any thoughts? Questions? Theories? Please, if you have a moment, drop a review, they keep the inspiration flowing.