A/N: And I'm back with another chapter without too much of a wait. I've got my routine settled now, so I have more time to write my stories. Theoretically, this means updates will be more frequent. We'll see how it actually goes. Anyway, I thank you all for your support and wish you well.
Enjoy!
Hermione held her cigarette to her lips, letting the smoke pour from her mouth as she exhaled. She had fought with herself a lot over the past week, doing her best to ignore the encouragement from Bellatrix to return. She had already made up her mind, it was just a matter of when. When would she go back to the world she'd almost rather ignore? She turned her head to the side, eyeing Bellatrix leaning against the wall next to her.
"Those are bad for you," she stated plainly, causing Hermione to huff in annoyance, "You should go now."
Hermione didn't respond, choosing to angrily flick her cigarette to the ground. She pushed off from the wall and walked into Ty's bar. He had promised her a drink when she finished her job and she intended to take him up on that before she left. She knew once she did that she'd never come back. She had come for the drink, but also to erase the last traces of her from the Muggle world. Ty flashed her a grin as she walked in, not returning it as she made her way to her table.
"I'm guessing you found what you were looking for?" Ty asked as he set a drink in front of her.
"I did," Hermione responded curtly, sniffing the drink. It smelled like pineapple.
"What do you think?" Ty asked as she took her first sip.
Hermione hummed in appreciation as the flavor spread over her tongue, "One of your best."
"Glad you like it, M. Always nice to have your approval," he said, flashing her another smile.
"I'm leaving," Hermione said bluntly, watching as Ty's smile faltered.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I'm going away. For good," she explained. She didn't know why she was bothering with telling him, he wouldn't remember her in a few minutes.
Confusion colored Ty's face as he struggled to find a response. Hermione could see he wasn't going to find one and left without a sound, forgotten memories in her wake. She would always have them, but she didn't want anyone to have an attachment to her. She wasn't stupid, she knew Ty liked her. She couldn't afford for anyone to remember her.
Hermione didn't let her eyes meet Bellatrix's as she turned on her heel, her stomach twisting itself in knots. She had only Apparated without a wand once before, but she hadn't used one in years, so she didn't think she had any need of one, even to Apparate. Her logic was as sound as always, as she appeared without a problem in front of the grounds to Hogwarts. Bellatrix stood next to her, a small frown on her face as she imitated a gagging noise.
"Shut it," Hermione growled, pushing through the wards of the school as she took a step forward. They tried to keep her out, but Hermione had a penchant for making herself unnoticed, and she knew it would also apply to ward magic so long as she could overpower it. She had been out of the magical world for years now, but she had still developed her skills and power. She had the determination and discipline to master whatever she put her mind to, and unlike when she was younger, she had nothing to lose.
She made her way unnoticed to McGonagall's office, which used to be Dumbledore's office. It was way past curfew, but she wasn't afraid of being caught, even by Mrs. Norris. Hermione wasn't sure if McGonagall would be in her office, but that was the most logical place to check first. She had gotten to know the Professor well during her time here and knew the woman was often up during the later hours. Hermione knew that had been some time ago, but she also knew that most wizards and witches didn't change easily.
Coming to the entrance of the Headmistress's office, Hermione realized she had no idea what the password would be. With further thought, she realized it wouldn't be necessary. There was no way to sneak past the gargoyle because there wouldn't be any stairs, but she knew how badly Minerva wanted to see her, all she would have to do is show her face. Probably. She came to a stop and pulled down her hood, revealing her face to the seemingly inanimate statue. Almost begrudgingly, it began to reveal the stairs to her.
"Thank you," Hermione whispered as she passed, earning what sounded like a pleased puff from the statue. Hermione emerged in Minerva's office, glancing around. It was a lot different than she remembered, though she supposed years away would do that. As she suspected, Minerva was in her office, glancing up as she heard the scratch of stone on stone.
"Hermione," she whispered in disbelief, rubbing her eyes as if to make sure they weren't playing tricks on her.
"I got your letter," was all she responded with, suddenly feeling unsure.
"I'm so happy to see you," Minerva whispered, tears in her eyes as she rushed forward to embrace her favorite once-student.
"It's...it's good to see you," Hermione managed, surprised at the feeling of insecurity filling her stomach.
"How did you get in, if I may?" Minerva questioned. Her tone was filled with curiosity, not malice.
"I Apparated to just outside the grounds and I may have managed to magically mask my intrusion from the wards," Hermione responded, a small smirk forming in the corner of her mouth.
"I see," the older witch said, pride glimmering in her eyes with a hint of disapproval at breaking the rules.
"It felt like it was time to come home," Hermione whispered shyly.
"You are always welcome here, Hermione. For as long as you wish to stay," Minerva said, guiding them to chairs and calling for a pot of tea.
"Thank you. And if it's not too much trouble, could you not tell anyone I'm here?" Hermione asked, taking a sip of tea once it was poured.
"I promise. Now if you go wandering the castle someone will surely stumble across you and word will undoubtedly spread."
"I'm not worried about that. I was surprised you were ever able to find me, to be perfectly honest."
"It wasn't easy, but I knew I would regret it if I didn't exhaust all of my resources trying to find you," Minerva said with a sly smile.
"How did you find me?" Hermione asked, an eyebrow raised at the older witch.
"Well, after looking everywhere I could fathom in the Wizarding World, I realized the best way for you to hide would be plain sight. In Muggle London. At first, I thought you would look for your parents but then I realized it would give you away too easily. I had help from a friend who searched the nearly abandoned parts and stumbled across a rumor that led him to find you," Minerva explained, sipping her tea occasionally.
Hermione hummed, fidgeting with the delicate teacup in her hands. It would be so easy to break it.
"I'm a little disappointed in you, Hermione," Minerva said, eyeing the witch.
"I've done things that most people wouldn't think me capable," Hermione admitted, looking the witch in the eye, "Even when I was a student here."
"Sometimes it's scary," Minerva admitted.
"What is?" Hermione asked.
"How much like Bellatrix you are. How similar the two of you are, yet how remarkably different your choices were."
Hermione felt her blood rush through her, hearing someone other than herself say Bellatrix's name feeling...wrong. She stared at Minerva, gripping her teacup tighter as she felt the dark witch's presence suddenly appear at her side.
"You hear that? We're not so different, you and I," she whispered in Hermione's ear, followed by her trademark cackle.
Hermione inhaled slowly, doing her best not to react to the words she knew were true. She made no move to acknowledge Bellatrix's appearance, her fingers tightening around the teacup until it nearly broke. Minerva watched her reaction with some concern, not intending to upset Hermione. It had just surprised her, the sudden thought that if anything had been different in either of their lives how the outcome would not have been this way.
"I'm sorry, Hermione. I didn't mean to upset you," Minerva apologized, reaching for the brunette.
"It's okay. I've thought it myself. It's just...different when it comes from someone else."
Minerva nodded sympathetically, "Well, what's past is past, as much as I wish things had been different."
"What if they could be?" Hermione asked, looking sheepishly up at the witch.
"I don't think it's possible," Minerva said with some skepticism.
"Why shouldn't I try. I don't want to be this person. I never wanted this," Hermione's words were laced with anger, the sudden change startling Minerva.
"Hermione," Minerva began, seeing the telltale determination and stubbornness that had gotten her through the war, "You are free to use the entire Hogwarts library to research whatever it is you've already settled on. I'll inform Madame Pince in the morning."
"Actually, I was hoping to be a little more discrete. I've become a bit of a night owl, so could I research while the library is technically closed?"
"Very well. It's not as if I could stop you, anyway," Minerva sighed.
Hermione nodded, placing her now empty teacup on the table between them. The wheels in her mind were already turning as she tried to find her starting spot. She already knew the Restricted section would be her best option, but she would need to figure out how to go back. Go back...Hermione inhaled sharply as she realized the simplest answer to changing everything was to start by changing the events that led up to this. Her rational mind already knew she couldn't make one big change, but a series of well-placed changes ought to do the trick. Hermione didn't feel uneasy about deliberately altering the past- for herself, no less- as she had long discarded her conscience. She just needed to determine what and where the needed to be, and to figure out how to cause those changes.
Minerva watched Hermione with a hint of worry on her face. She knew the woman would work herself to exhaustion trying to find solutions. Observing Hermione's face, Minerva knew Hermione had determined where to start her search. Trying to hide her forlorn expression, she considered going back on her promise, for Hermione's sake, but could not bring herself to betray her trust. At least Hermione would be in the castle, where Minerva could keep an eye on her to make sure she didn't throw herself too hard into things that most likely couldn't be fixed.
Hermione scanned the shelves of the Restricted section, pulling out the ones she felt applied to her research. There were a few she had already read, but that was years ago before she had ever used a Time-Turner. She knew there were none left, but she also knew that there had to be another way. She wasn't optimistic about finding a definitive answer, but she had the feeling she could get started on the right track. She just needed to find the right books and piece together information. Bellatrix calmly watched as Hermione scoured the shelves, humming a tune Hermione didn't recognize.
"Are you going to stand there and be a bother or are you going to help?" Hermione snapped, closing a book and roughly placing it back on the shelf.
"Well, since I'm not actually real I'm not able to touch anything," Bellatrix responded haughtily.
"Well, you could at least tell me what you know about time travel," Hermione said irately.
"No more than you do. I'm nothing but your mind's creation, how could I possibly know something that you don't?"
"Recap it for me, then," Hermione growled.
"Touchy. Time travel is extremely limited magic, with the most common conduit being Time-Turners, which were all destroyed at the end of the war. Even with the aid of a Time-Turner, a person could only go back a few hours and had to 'leave' and 'arrive' in the exact same spot. They also had to be careful not to disturb their timeline by going back and changing events. The theory behind Time-Turners is that the use of paradoxically charged sand enabled the user to manipulate the flow of time and move backward through it to an extent. In the few recorded cases of a true anomaly in the timeline, the person usually reverted to the age they would be, ultimately ending in their death if they were in a time they did not exist in. The main consensus is: traveling more than a few hours back is disastrous and ending up in a time you don't belong ends in death," Bellatrix explained, somehow managing to look bored.
"If only there was some way to amplify the effect," Hermione mused, settling with the books she had found so far.
"Amplification of magic is possible through the use of a conduit, such as a wand, or through significantly magically charged areas," Bellatrix provided, knowing Hermione already knew this. She also knew hearing it out loud helped Hermione. Herself.
"Ley lines. What if there was an area where a magical disaster happened that was also situated over a ley line?" Hermione asked herself.
They both frowned, unsure of the answer. Hermione wasn't even sure if ley lines were real, it was a concept Muggles had come up with to explain paranormal phenomenon. If she could find a place where something magically bad had happened, there would theoretically be enough latent energy to amplify the magic, that is, if she could even develop a way to go back. Hermione chewed her lip as she skimmed through the books, hours passing but she only felt like it had been mere minutes. The light began to change to a lighter color, but Hermione was too absorbed in going through the books for any information she could find. So far, nothing had been particularly helpful, just some background knowledge she didn't already possess. She hadn't made any significant progress when the sun came up, but she wasn't deterred just yet. In her time spent thinking, she had realized that she didn't want to be made into the person she was. She had never wanted to fight in the war, but what choice did she really have? At least she had survived. Still, if she could prevent the horrors that had happened to her, she would. For one of the few times in her life, Hermione had selfish motivations. It wasn't about saving anyone, it was about her. She knew Harry and Ron and just about everyone was suffering less. She was so haunted by it and she just wanted it to stop. Returning to Hogwarts hadn't exactly helped, but she could only run from it for so long before it caught up to her.
Hermione sighed, rubbing the sleepiness from her eyes as she scoured the shelves for more books. It was quite clearly daytime now, but still too early for anyone to have a reason to be here, not that she couldn't keep her presence hidden. She had decided to take a break from time magic. Most of what she read was the same, just said in a different way. She had shifted her focus to amplification, trying to solve the decidedly simpler problem first.
"This is stupid," Bellatrix sighed, leaning against the shelf in front of Hermione.
"Shut up," Hermione mumbled, doing her best to ignore her.
"Why are you even doing this? Why are you suddenly so disgusted with yourself? You should've always been disgusted, with your filthy blood," Bellatrix taunted.
"There's nothing wrong with my blood," Hermione stated blankly.
"No? If your blood was the way it should be, you wouldn't be here right now. You'd either be like Weasley," at this, she sneered, "Or you'd be like me."
"Well, you're dead, so I'm better off than you," Hermione said as she flipped through a book.
"If that were true you wouldn't be wasting time looking through these books," Bellatrix retorted.
Hermione looked up, staring at the figment. "I should experiment. Hogwarts is as good a place as any. Plenty of magical charge in a place like this. It's been subject to it for decades, it would be perfect. I should just try. It's not like I'm going to find my answer here, no one has ever attempted something like this and recorded it."
Hermione snapped out of her self-induced trance, ignoring the dirty looks from Bellatrix. Sometimes her presence was almost...loving, and other times she was taunting. Hermione knew she wasn't real, but the fact that she said those things meant Hermione felt that way about herself. Not that it really bothered her. She had accepted long ago that she would always be...tainted. Bellatrix had been the one to give her the permanent reminder, in more ways than one. Hermione set the book in her hand back on the shelf, making her way to the room Minerva had shown her earlier, unnoticed of course. She very well couldn't experiment without proper sleep- or, as close to proper has she ever go- and it would be much easier to do at night when most of the castle's occupants were asleep.
"Why aren't you harassing me as much as you used to?" Hermione mused toward Bellatrix.
"Perhaps your view of yourself has changed to where you don't feel the need. Right now my purpose is to help you talk things out, so that's what I do. Which begs the question as to why you still picture me instead of someone else," Bellatrix responded, inspecting her nails.
Hermione frowned, not responding. She wasn't in the mood for this conversation again, wasn't in the mood for it the first time they had it, either. Huffing, Hermione threw herself onto the bed, enjoying the sensation of a real mattress. It didn't feel quite right though, it was too soft and she didn't like the sinking sensation it gave her. Looking around, Hermione spotted a couch, deciding to try her luck with that. She had grown used to being uncomfortable while she slept, to the point where even before she left she preferred hard surfaces over a soft mattress. Within moments of getting settled, the witch was sound asleep.