Awful things happen to Wizards who meddle with time, Harry.


"This is excellent, Hermione," Dumbledore said approvingly. "I hadn't expected such a jump in power from conquering your wand. Really very good."

She'd been holding her shield charm in place for almost an hour as he threw everything but the kitchen sink at it. She was getting tired now, but it was only a vague sense. She could hold it longer if she needed to.

"You may drop it now."

She paused, suspicious. He'd caught her out more than once in her private lessons with some quite devious tactics.

She dropped the shield and then immediately recast, sending what looked like a body bind bouncing off.

Hah!

"You really are learning." He put his wand down. "The lesson is over: I concede."

She dropped it this time and sagged slightly.

"Come, let's have some cocoa."

She settled into an armchair by the fire and gazed into it. Her lessons with Dumbledore had been focused on protective magic for the past three weeks. It was one of her favourite areas, and she'd thought she'd learnt a lot looking after Harry and Ron for a year but the small tweaks Albus suggested to quite basic techniques had amazing results, as well as discussing the theory behind some much more advanced magics she'd never come across before. It was brilliant.

"I do feel… stronger," she admitted. "It doesn't make sense. It's as though I have more magic than I did. I can – I can feel it. It was gradual, I didn't notice, but for a week after, um, after Samhain I was exhausted. I just slept and slept and now I feel... I don't know. Different."

He frowned as he stirred chocolate into a small pan of milk hovering above the flames.

"We have not discussed Hallowe'en, Hermione, but perhaps more happened that night than either of us has been aware of."

The last vestiges of her jubilant mood dissolved. What had she missed? She'd tried not to think about it at all, locking the memory away and carrying on with life because she couldn't do anything about it, couldn't expose Riddle, couldn't change her own behaviour in the moment. She was trapped in a role in which she had no power to act for fear of exposure, for fear of damning her and her mentor's lives to the hell of Azkaban. Every time she thought about just waiting around till she could be Hermione Granger again she wanted to blow up the entire castle.

So she tried not to think about it at all.

He handed her a bright pink mug, filled cocoa, and she sipped it as he sat with the look of deep concentration she knew was best left undisturbed.

"May I view your memory of that evening?"

As he spoke, Albus stood and opened a cabinet behind his desk, and lifted out a shallow metal bowl. She watched, curiously. It was a Pensieve. She'd never actually seen one before.

Hermione didn't want to focus on that night, didn't want to even think, but she ought to know what had happened. And after all, she had seen worse things in her time. Nothing so unexpected or personal, perhaps, but still. Worse. Probably.

"Alright. I've never taken a memory for a Pensieve before though so you'll have to show me."

He placed the shallow metal bowl on his desk, pushing the first of what would be many spindly silver instruments aside in one direction and a pile of student essays in another to clear a space, and gestured to her. Hermione walked over, strangely nervous.

"Focus in on when we were on the mountain, when you made the fire… and then when you left the Hall. Hold those two points in your mind with your will."

She closed her eyes and went inwards, into the library of her mind to find the right book. She knew, somehow, where to go, taking it off the shelf – it fell open at her touch, the pages fluttering with swiftly moving images and words. It was easier than she had imagined. Acting on instinct she pulled the relevant pages from the book, and willed them into her wand.

When she opened her eyes Dumbledore was smiling delightedly. A silvery thread hung from her wand, blowing in the draught. It was like spider's silk, fragile and mysterious.

"I've read about it," she explained. "I didn't expect it to be so easy though."

"To the well-organised mind..." he said smiling vaguely.

"How do I - ?"

"The Pensieve will pull it from your wand; just hold it over the basin."

It slid off her wand, and expanded into shimmering liquid in the basin.

When she thought of that night the memory of it was still there but it was fainter, more imprint than technicolour recall. The deeply tangled emotions that had been attached to it had eased away. She felt lighter.

"The magic of the Pensieve is deeply complex. It allows you to see what you could not in your mind – details you wouldn't have noticed or indeed been able to see even in the experience."

She remembered Harry's descriptions of viewing memories and this made sense – it was a three dimensional experience after all: you could turn around and the room or whatever you in would be there in full detail. You were not controlled by the viewpoint of the person who had experienced the memory because you were in it not just viewing what the person had seen.

She'd never thought about it before, but that was extraordinary. She wondered if your magic stored every detail of a place in a way ordinary human memory could not?

"Now, just touch your face to the bowl. I will follow you."

It was truly disconcerting as she fell onto the mountain and saw herself from the outside, fire streaming from her wand and magic roiling off her in waves.

In the memory, she couldn't feel the bitter wind but even the faint memory of it lashing her skin made her shiver.

A second later Dumbledore appeared beside her and they watched in silence as she poured her soul out into what Hermione could now see was a truly amazing creation.

She watched the memory-Dumbledore apparate with the branch of Gubraithan fire, taking it to be hidden away in Devon, and then they followed her as she ran down the mountain and up to the Tower.

"Um, I'm going to – er change in a moment. Can you -?" she said suddenly.

She felt mortified. She'd forgotten this part! How utterly embarrassing.

"Ah, of course. Tell me when to open my eyes." He turned around and faced the wall, eyes shut.

She watched herself undress, torn between fascination and embarrassment. It was less horrid than she expected. But the pressure of what was to come couldn't be ignored and she felt nauseous, nervous. She wanted to scream at herself to stop, go to bed, to slam the door shut and keep her memory self here, safe in her tower.

Hermione waited until they'd left her room before she said Dumbledore could look, and he politely pretended not to notice her burning cheeks as they followed memory Hermione into the Great Hall.

She sensed rather than saw Albus stiffen at the conversation over dinner, the anger at the wearing away of Wizarding traditions and glanced up to see him frowning.

Watching herself interact with her friends was bizarre: watching herself do anything was bizarre. It just wasn't how she saw herself. The Hermione in the memory looked as though she belonged in that elegant cluster, all internal turmoil hidden beneath a poised surface. And, then just as mortifying as watching herself change, was the flick of her eyes towards the Slytherin table.

But wasn't the point of a Pensieve memory that she didn't have to watch herself? She turned her back, and walked a little way away from the table to watch Tom Riddle. And it was no wonder she caught his eyes so often, Hermione realised, because his were drawn to hers even more frequently.

That was disturbing.

He was so beautiful in the candlelight. She'd never had an opportunity to freely observe him, always on her guard, or too busy trying not to but now from her safe vantage point outside the events she couldn't tear her eyes away. Hermione watched him watch her other self, his face almost unguarded, a frown flickering over it. Even when the girl – Mabel Jefferies Mabel Mabel Mabel, say her name – stood up and started shouting he was still watching Hermione.

She shut out the girl's words as best she could, focusing all her attention onto Tom Riddle, who was watching her memory self with an expression of concern and what seemed like faint glee at the same time, which was a singularly unsettling combination – he was truly mad, he must be – and then she closed her eyes because she didn't want to see the girl kill herself again and it was coming.

"Hermione, I know this is hard but you must watch," Dumbledore admonished quietly.

Wasn't this cruel of him? she thought suddenly. It had been traumatic and he was forcing her to relive the experience second-for-second in full colour, the volume high.

Tom was easier to watch so she rebelliously kept her gaze on him and was surprised to find horror flick across his face when Mabel pulled the knife across her throat and then he was on his feet, coming round the table to stand beside the girl, checking her. He even cast a healing spell, she saw, before giving up and standing to let the teachers in.

Probably part of his act, she thought, turning to observe the faces of those around her. The other students looked reassuringly horrified, even the Slytherins.

She didn't know she'd remembered this bit. She'd actually wondered if she'd fainted, but now she watched herself sit numbly, covered in innocent blood, as the future Lord Voldemort put himself between her and the sight of the body, almost as though he cared. But he'd told her he'd done this. So why was he so worried - or was it all pretence? Yet Hermione thought she could read him fairly well now: she knew the subtle tells of his face when he lied, absent here – and she, memory Hermione, was letting him comfort her now, his arm around her shoulders and she was leaning into him, god she must have really been in shock, and somehow that was so much more terrifying that the blood soaked girl lying dead on the floor.

She watched Marcus help Claire away, and realised – how had she been so stupid – that the girl loved Marcus, and she'd probably ruined that, in ignorance but painful nonetheless –

- but she'd think about that later.

And then she was hissing did you do this at Tom Riddle and he finally looked happier, as though he'd got something he wanted, which was even weirder. He cast after her as she left the room and Hermione was shocked to see the blood disappear from her clothes and skin and then she and Dumbledore were falling upwards and out of the nightmare of it.

She lurched against the desk, stumbling into Albus, nauseous and even more confused than she had been before.

They stared at each other for a moment, the horror she felt mirrored on his face.

"I think we had better sit down," he said quietly.

Neither of them spoke for a long while, but when he finally did she realised they weren't quite on the same page after all.

While she'd been watching Tom Riddle (and it hadn't been creepy, she told herself), he'd been intently focused on the gi – on Mabel Jefferies.

"She sacrificed herself in the name of Samhain and dedicated it to you, Hermione. She may not have intended to do that but I believe the words themselves were close enough. And after the fire magic from before – she unknowingly completed an ancient, terrible ritual."

He was silent again, staring into the fire thoughtfully. Hermione wasn't sure she wanted to hear the rest, but she stayed quiet.

"I believe she has… passed some of her magic to you," he said after a long pause.

Oh. Oh. She'd never read about such a thing! Well, that wasn't so bad. Actually, that seemed quite positive, really, compared to the hideous possibilities that had been running through her head.

"It was not normal for this ritual to be dedicated to a person." He continued. "A god, usually. More commonly the land. Almost all records of such practice have been destroyed although there are suspicions the practice lingers on in some of the old families and certainly it does in other cultures. A willing sacrifice, usually burned, and the transferral of their power. It is a gruesome thing."

"Yes," she agreed, wholeheartedly. She would never, to the end of her days, forget seeing the girl die and even with the emotions dissociated it was a ghastly thing. "But… is there not a price for such a thing? It seems like dark magic and that, well, I've always been told that using dark magic takes something."

"If there is a price I do not know it. That concerns me, but – you didn't ask for the sacrifice. I don't know. It is unprecedented. I will have to think on it further. Are you alright?" he asked, almost as an afterthought.

Student welfare had never been his top priority, she reflected. Or perhaps it was simply that the Wizarding world had different expectations of a person's resolve than the Muggle world?

That seemed… actually that seemed like something she should consider more deeply because it was so obvious and of course she'd noticed it in a hundred hundred different ways but it had never quite clicked.

This world was a crueller one. The moral lines were drawn differently. Harry and she had been brought up away from it: perhaps that was why they'd been so resolute in fighting against what seemed like injustice, was injustice, but was also… a part of the world they'd entered.

"I think so. I mean, it's actually better with the memory in there. Away from me. So. You know. You keep it. I didn't know Penseives dulled emotions attached to memory without wholly removing it. I can… remember the facts of what happened without the horror of it."

"Sometimes, it is better to face the full impact of a thing, Hermione."

"Not this thing," she said firmly. She wanted no part of it. She couldn't act on it, she wanted it gone from herself.

And what potential this had! If only there were somewhere safe enough to store her most painful memories of home, how much easier the next fifty years would become.

She could dissociate the most poignant of her memories and so live here, without the ever-present pain of missing everyone, of missing Harry and Ron and the Weasleys and her parents.

But there was nowhere safe enough to risk that - and who would she be without them?

"It's almost time for supper. If you're sure you're alright… I was so eager to see, I didn't think on how it might be for you to see it again."

"No, really. I'm fine. Thank you. But like I said, I don't want it back in my head. I'll even sacrifice how happy I was before dinner to not have that back."

"Well. Perhaps just for now," he agreed. He was still frowning as she bid him good-night, and left the room.

.

.

After supper she sat quietly and pretended to read in the common room, as though nothing untoward had happened – as she had for weeks.

And when it was time for bed, Marcus followed her up the stairs and she let him take her in his arms and kiss her thoroughly, pressed against the door to her room because what did it matter, what did anything matter, when she was so helpless, so utterly removed from everything she could act on

At least his kisses helped her numb away her stagnant, powerless position.

Pureblooded Hermione Dearborn, sweet and smiling and good with a wand but oh, how naïve.

She changed for bed, the silver lettering of a strange invitation to Malfoy Manor for New Years Eve glittered in the dim light, reminding her of the terrible price she was paying every day for traveling in time.

She'd accept, of course. Sophia had made her promise to go.

Every unbearable acquaintance, every moment she had to turn her head and remember that it would be fifty years before she could change anything was part of her punishment for traveling so far back in time.

It's all research, she told herself. Think of it as research.

And as she drifted toward an uncomfortable sleep she thought she had a new empathy for Severus Snape.

.

.

The nightmares held their ground that night. Bellatrix staring out of the mirror as Harry and Ron attacked her, standing behind crying as she stared in awe at her face.

Why didn't you fight harder Hermione? They asked.

Didn't you love us enough? Didn't you love us enough?

A new figure, auburn haired and blue eyed and smiling, roved through her dreams, controlling and merciless.

Do this, he said and she obeyed, as they all did.

Do this and all will be well. Do this and you will be free. Do this and you will be the saviour. Harry is nothing, now. Harry is nothing here, he said. It is for the greater good.

And she woke, gasping, staring at the Dark Mark on her forearm, a mark that didn't exist, a blank clean, pure arm…

You're my best friend, Harry had said. Why have you abandoned me?

.

.

(But she didn't dream about Mabel Jefferies, and that was enough.)

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR REVIEWS I LOVE YOU ALL. One day I will reply to them. They mean so much though so please carry on.

I hope I'm showing that it's a casual and totally ingrained dismissal for the most part rather than a malicious active matter of every day hate. So, this is a society in which the conditions are there for someone to come along and whip them into a frenzy and exploit their fears, but those fears need to have some basis in reality that's a bit more convincing than four hundred years ago Muggles used to burn us.

Also... I have this theory that Wizards need to fear Muggles because otherwise they'd abuse them - so it's actually partly done as an attempt to keep the Muggles safe from people who would have, let's be honest, absolute power over them.