I'll tell you about it if I ever get it straight in my head. – Ernest Hemingway

CHAPTER ONE: THE CURSE STRIKES AGAIN

18 JUNE

In one reality, Hermione Granger sat in the dry frigid air of a cheap motel room and watched sunlight filter in through the thin curtains. Her fingers carefully tightened around the old journal and spellbook in her lap as she thought over the task ahead of her, and the thought of everyone she had lost strengthened her resolve.

In this reality, Krista Morgan felt a creeping sense of unease as she stood in the humid air of her bathroom. Her morning was already going horribly, everything that could go wrong was going wrong, and she considered returning to the comfort and safety of her bed but ultimately decided against it.

In both realities, decisions were made that would change everything and there was no going back. In a manner of speaking.

18 JUNE 2020

KRISTA

To The Morgan Family

Narrowed eyes, squinted against the bright sunlight, stared upwards as colorful bulbs bobbed in the wind.

You are cordially invited to attend

The white cords had been carefully affixed to the perimeter of the roof, with nails in the thick logs, and the long braided strings had held fast throughout the seasons.

Looking forward to your response

The cheery looking lights were mocking her, as they swayed merrily in the summer sun, and her teeth ground together as she came to a decision.

The Green Acre Community

Grass was flattened under her feet as she moved away from the front of the log cabin that had been her home for her entire life, and she was muttering quietly under her breath as she headed for the small shed behind her home. If most of her mutterings were curse words that would have made her grandmother laugh and strangers blush, well, there wasn't anyone around to hear her. Because today was not her day. She'd been woken up at the crack of dawn by a bird, who had clearly mistaken her open bedroom window as an invitation and her as a Disney princess going by the happy chirping that had pulled her from sleep. Then she'd dozed off while leaning against the kitchen counter and had burned her toast, and there hadn't been any sugar left for her coffee. She had forgotten to get the laundry out of the dryer and had been left without a towel after her morning shower, and then she had dropped her hair dryer and stared at the broken pieces on the floor while her hair hung wetly against her cheeks. Now there were lights mocking her, with their steadfast bright colors and happy bobbing in the breeze, but not for long.

The shed door was stuck, so she twisted to the side and slammed her shoulder against the door. She stumbled forward into the dark shed, felt her hand sting, and cursed under her breath as she stepped back out into the sunlight to pull the massive splinter out of her palm. As she marched into the shed to get a ladder, she thought about the final nail in the coffin of her morning. The only thing in the mailbox, other than the actual paper newspaper that still showed up despite her canceling the subscription, had been a simple letter. Because while she did live in slight isolation, in a small log cabin in the woods, she was technically part of a community. At least, the other homes in the surrounding area considered themselves to be a community. She'd grown up attending all kinds of things, community events, and they were all nosy. Gossips and charlatans, her grandmother had said before they left for each event. Which meant that whichever family was leading the Green Acre Community Committee this year, her money was on the Robertsons, knew that there wasn't a Morgan family left to invite to whatever bullshit cookout was being hosted to kick off the summer.

It took her three tries to get the ladder out of the shed, she kept getting it hung on the narrow doorway, but she finally got it free. All the while, she cursed whoever had sent out that ridiculous invitation. Both for being an insensitive dick and for using comic sans. Because the only occupant at this address was her, Krista Morgan. The last living heir of the Morgan family, whose great-grandfather had built a cabin for his family to live in so that they wouldn't have to live in the sin-filled cities. After her grandfather's death, under mysterious circumstances that she had never wanted to question, her grandmother had reclaimed her father's name and had even changed her daughter's surname as well. Morgan. Her grandmother had only had one child with her first husband, who drowned in a nearby lake despite knowing how to swim and the weather being perfect, and she had never remarried. Krista's mother, out of respect, had decided to hyphenate when she got married. Evelyn Morgan-Taylor. So even back then, the Morgan family was only Krista's grandmother and mother. Then her parents were in a car accident, when her mother was only about a month away from carrying Krista to full-term, and Krista was born after her parents were dead. Her grandmother had honored Evelyn's wishes and named her Krista, but her last name was Morgan. So the Morgan family was changed to Isabella Morgan and Krista Morgan, until three weeks ago.

The ladder thunked dully against the wooden top of the cabin, and she shook the dull silver sides to make sure that the old thing was secure before she started climbing up the rungs. Isabella Morgan had been a strong woman, blunt and fearless, and she'd died after slipping in the shower. Her head had clipped the edge of the bathtub, and she never woke up. So the Morgan family was down by one, and now Krista was the only one left. Which that stupid community knew because every single one of them had attended her grandmother's funeral! The whole time, Krista had only thought about how much her grandmother would have laughed at everyone crying over her closed casket. Because everyone knew that Isabella Morgan was a mean old bitch, just like everyone knew that Krista Morgan was a lazy trust fund baby. (She wasn't lazy, as evidenced by her balancing on a hot ladder in the middle of summer, but rumors were rarely accurate.) She had burned the invitation over the kitchen sink and grinned as she watched the ashes get washed down the drain.

Her hand shook as she reached for the string of lights, out of sheer anger. People had barely just stopped randomly dropping by to give her grief casseroles, she was sure that even the woodland creatures were tired of eating the casseroles by now, and then someone had the nerve to send that stupid invitation addressed to the Morgan family. One person wasn't a family! She was also still in mourning, so there was no way that she was going to attend a friendly summer cookout. Just the thought of being surrounded by all of those false smiles and quiet words that assured her she wasn't all alone since she still had the community made her want to scream. Then again, dropping her hair dryer and having to force her naturally wavy hair up into the sloppiest of buns had also made her feel like screaming. (If she did scream, there had been no one around to hear her.) Honestly, she should have taken summer classes and just stayed away from the cabin altogether.

She wasn't just some trust fund kid living off of her inheritance; she had started at a state university in Denver right out of high school, she was technically in the history program, and she'd be starting her third year of college in the fall. It should be her next to last year, but she had spent her first two years trying out a few different things and was now at least a semester behind schedule. (She still wasn't completely sold on being a history major, but she'd had to declare as something.) She had thought that taking classes right after her grandmother's death would be too difficult, too much of a strain, but now she was worried that having too much free time was going to drive her insane. It was a fair worry, since she was taking down Christmas lights in the middle of summer that had been up for going on four Christmases. The damn lights hadn't even worked the previous Christmas but had remained up anyways, and she was starting to think that they were magically affixed to the cabin since they refused to move.

"If you don't come loose in the next thirty seconds, I will burn this place to the ground and you along-Shit!"

As the ladder shifted under her, she reached out and clawed uselessly at the side of the cabin. Her fingers found no purchase as the ladder creaked, and then she was falling sideways through the air. Another Morgan, dying a cursed death, and her eyes were open as she fell. Looking at the blurred sight of her forever home while waiting for the end of the fall, but she never felt the pain of her landing. Just a kind of enveloping warmth followed by darkness, which was a comfort. Death wasn't painful at all.

DATE UNKNOWN

KRISTA

A sharp pain cracking across the base of her skull caused her eyes to fly open, and Krista shot upright into a sitting position with a pained gasp. Her left hand reached back to rub at her aching head while her right hand pressed hard against the ground to keep her balanced, that was definitely dirt under her hand, and she looked around with wide eyes. She couldn't really see anything, it was too dark, and she remembered falling before everything went dark. Because she fell off of a ladder. She must have knocked herself unconscious for over half a day, judging by the depth of darkness. This wasn't recently-sunset dark. Despite that, her eyes slowly adjusted to see a little more. She was definitely sitting outside, but she seemed to be surrounded by trees. The cabin was in a clearing, a very large clearing, so there was nowhere that she could have fallen to put her very close to a tree. There was a quiet sound next to her, like someone crawling across the ground, and she looked over just as the area was bathed in a soft light.

"Hermione?" she asked in obvious confusion. Because that just didn't make any kind of sense. The person now kneeling next to her certainly looked like Hermione Granger, but there was one small problem. Hermione Granger was a fictional character. So, why was Emma Watson kneeling next to her?

"You know me. Good, that means it worked," the woman said in a rush. Krista's eyes were starting to dry out, because she couldn't seem to get herself to blink as she stared wide-eyed at the familiar stranger kneeling next to her in the dirt. The longer she looked though, the more details about the person became obvious. Like how Hermione, Emma-whatever, was looking rough. Her hair hung down in long tangles and looked unwashed, with actual dirt mixed into the greasy strands, and she looked overall unhealthy. Her skin was red and blistered, like she'd spent too much time in direct sunlight, and there was something off about the way she was holding herself.

"Something isn't right," Krista thought as the woman scooted closer on her knees. She was gaunt, cheeks sunken in so that it looked like her skin was stretched tight over her bones, and Krista actually flinched back when their eyes met. The woman's eyes were dark, wide and glassy, like she was feverish. Krista felt her stomach roll as her head continued to pound, radiating outwards from the base of her skull, and bile burned the bottom of her throat as the woman reached out and took her left hand in both of hers.

"How do you know me?" the woman asked. It was a simple question, on the surface, but Krista realized that she didn't know how to answer.

"I guess that depends. Are you Hermione Granger or Emma Watson?" Krista watched as the woman's expression blanked, all emotion was just completely wiped away, and the hands holding onto hers tightened. Krista's other hand, the one still pressed flat against the ground, curled so that she could feel dirt lodging under her nails.

"Hermione Granger. Now how do you know me?" the woman repeated. Her voice was nearly flat, but Krista could read the desperation in her tone as her fingers tightened rhythmically. If this was Hermione, which was one really big if, then what in the hell had happened to her? She looked more like a ghost of herself, like some kind of dark specter that only resembled a character from one of Krista's favorite series.

"From popular books with a successful movie franchise," was her answer. How hard did she hit her head when she fell? Was she in a coma? Slowly bleeding out on the ground outside of her home while dreaming of delusions? If she was only imagining all of this, why was she dreaming up a Hermione that looked like she was slowly slipping into madness as her lips pinched into a thin line? If her coma dream was going to take place in the Harry Potter universe, then she wanted to go hang out with Luna or maybe even Hagrid. Tracking down nargles or raising adorably dangerous creatures.

"Books and movies?" The woman looked confused, and Krista was going to continue to think of her as the woman because she couldn't seem to make herself believe that she was sitting next to Hermione Granger.

"Seven books and eight movies, all about Harry Potter. His name was actually at the start of all the titles. You know, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Harry Potter and-"

"You mean the Philosopher's Stone?" the woman interrupted. The woman's confusion was even more pronounced now, with her thin brows furrowed together and teeth pulling at the already cracked skin of her bottom lip, and Krista felt her stomach clench as a wave of nausea washed over her. Because this woman looked so much like Hermione, if the young witch had ever been beaten down and left to fall apart. This looked like a Hermione who had lost.

"Right, yes, sorry. The title was changed in America because Americans are idiots. Still the same story though," Krista attempted to explain. She wanted to rub at her aching temples, to try to soothe away the pain even a fraction, but the woman still hadn't released her hand. Krista's left hand was pretty much trapped in the woman's tight grip, and she was afraid that she'd fall over if she stopped supporting herself on her right hand.

"Books and movies, created for entertainment." The final word was spat out, like the woman was disgusted by what she was saying, and Krista could see the jump of muscle in the woman's jaw as she took in a deep breath. When the woman met her eyes again, her expression was blank. "Do you know the full story then? Of what happened to Harry Potter?"

When the woman said Harry's name, there was a flash of emotion across her face that Krista recognized immediately. She'd seen the same look on different faces over the years, including her own, ranging from ridiculously over-exaggerated to quickly suppressed. Grief. This woman was in mourning and trying desperately to function, to push through it, and Krista suddenly felt cold. A kind of cold that speared her stomach and seeped into her bones, and she wanted to wake up. She felt like a kid trapped in a nightmare, like she needed to wake up right now or else she'd be trapped with the monsters forever. Except, there weren't any monsters here. Just a grieving young woman who was claiming to be a fictional character.

"His parents died when he was one, killed by Voldemort, who died after trying to kill Harry because of a prophecy. Harry was then raised by his muggle aunt and uncle, awful people really, until he was eleven. Then he went to Hogwarts, made real friends, and fought in a war. How much detail do you want?" Krista rambled out. Now she felt like the desperate one, because the woman was looking at her with lifeless eyes. Dead eyes. Next to the roiling nausea cramping her stomach, she could feel fear starting to curl and spread outwards until both of her hands were shaking.

"We don't have a lot of time, but I need to know what you know. Answer quickly and simply. Understand?" The question gave Krista flashbacks to high school, where students would have to stand up and quickly answer quiz questions. It was for a game, used as a study tool, and Krista had always done well with the quick quizzes. She usually did better when she didn't have time to overthink things.

"Understood. Ask away," she said and then nodded to back up the claim.

"Biggest thing to happen in first year?" Oh, so it was going to be a rapid-fire quiz about Harry's years at Hogwarts. In some ways, this quiz was going to be too easy. In other ways, as she looked at Hermione's shadow self, this was going to be the most bizarre quiz of her life.

"Professor Quirrell had Voldemort on the back of his head, and Voldemort was looking for the stone so that he could return. He failed, because Harry and friends stopped him."

"Second year?"

"Basilisk and Tom Riddle down in the Chamber of Secrets."

"Third year?"

"Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban, Professor Remus Lupin turned out to be a werewolf, and Peter Pettigrew was the traitor all along."

"Fourth year?"

"Mad-Eye was actually Barty Crouch Jr., the Triwizard Tournament was a disaster, and Cedric Diggory was killed the same night that Voldemort returned."

"Fifth year?"

"Umbridge, the battle in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry, and Sirius Black was killed by his cousin Bellatrix Lestrange."

"Sixth year?"

"Draco Malfoy let fellow Death Eaters into Hogwarts, Severus Snape killed Albus Dumbledore, and Harry got his first Horcrux. Not counting himself, I guess."

"Seventh year?"

"Trick question, because Harry didn't attend his seventh year. The year was spent searching for Horcruxes while also trying to find ways to destroy them. Snuck into the Ministry, broke into Gringotts, and the final battle against Voldemort was at Hogwarts. Harry was killed but not really, Voldemort was defeated, and everyone lived happily ever after."

"No, we didn't."

Krista had been answering so quickly, like she was participating in some kind of paid quiz, and she had completely missed the woman's shift in expression. She had looked blank at the start, with an even expression and flat eyes, but Krista could clearly see the strain now. The woman had bitten at her bottom lip until it bled, and the dark stain was the only bit of color against her pale lips and face. Her entire body was so tense that she was shaking a little, and the grip around Krista's left hand was bruising in its strength. As she watched the woman force herself to breathe evenly, she started to add up all of the little behavioral tics. Because while Krista had never been particularly good at paying attention to other people, she had always been able to understand how others were feeling after finally focusing. She was focusing now, and she belatedly realized that the woman kneeling next to her was in full mourning and trying not to lose herself to it.

"I said that everyone lived happily ever after, and she said that they didn't. What happened to her?" Krista thought. She remembered her earlier thought, of this looking like a Hermione who had lost, and she closed her eyes against the sharp pain at the base of her skull.

"Your books and movies must have reflected a nearly identical timeline, up until the end," the woman said as her hands started to shake. Krista thought that she could feel the bruises forming under the woman's fingers, but she didn't say anything about the tight grip as she forced her eyes to open again.

"I'm going to ignore that timeline comment for the moment and just ask what the difference is," Krista decided. She was really starting to put the pieces together now, the tense posture coupled with the woman's haggard appearance, and she was sure that she would have realized sooner if her head wasn't pounding so much. Then again, without the constant headache, she might have had enough presence of mind to completely freak out. Her voice somehow remained calm as she asked, "Harry didn't win the final battle, did he?"

"He went into the Forbidden Forest, to die at the right time and to destroy the Horcrux inside himself, and he stayed dead. We kept fighting, but we lost," Hermione confirmed. Hermione Granger was kneeling next to her, bruising her hand and looking at her with dead eyes, because her gut instinct had been right. This Hermione didn't win the war. She had lost.

"How long? What happened?" Krista wasn't sure if she wanted to run away or just run with this, let whatever was happening play out or tear her hand out of the woman's grasp so that she could start running, but the pain in her head decided for her. She wouldn't be able to run, not when every new pulse of pain caused her stomach to roll, so she was going to go with it. Ask questions and find out what had happened.

"It's been two years since the Battle of Hogwarts. Those of us that survived kept fighting, but they're all gone now. I'm the only one left," the woman admitted in a whisper. Two years? If it had been two years since that final battle, then that meant Hermione was the same age as her. Twenty. She looked older than that, with her dead eyes.

"So why am I here?" Krista asked her. She'd been taking off the Christmas lights that had hung around the house for years when she had fallen off of a ladder, so did she fall through some kind of weird reality portal? Possibly a time portal? Because the Harry Potter series took place in the nineties, and that was over two decades ago.

"I need you for a spell," Hermione answered without explaining.

"Why me? Did you ask for me specifically or was I some random pick?" She needed some clarification, because her aching head was trying to make sense of this. If there was any sense to be made of this situation.

"Random pick. The spell is quite complicated, but it calls for someone completely untainted by magic. Muggles have traces of magic just from living in a magical world, so the person needed to be from a reality without magic. I also tried to get someone that would recognize me, so that whoever it was would care and want to help," the woman rushed out. Everything that she said just raised more questions, and Krista closed her eyes as she took in a slow breath. Okay, she fell and regained consciousness next to a fictional character. That meant she couldn't think using real-world logic. She was going to have to think things through using fanfiction logic, which meant that she was going to have to accept that she was sitting next to Hermione Granger.

"So you got me, a fan of a series that's based on one of your friend's life. Makes sense," Krista said slowly. Time travel was always confusing so she usually avoided those kinds of stories, but she had enjoyed reading a few self-insert stories. They were always fun and interesting, and she loved reading about how one person could shake things up so thoroughly. She hadn't read anything quite like this before, but it seemed like a self-insert type thing. A person dies and wakes up in a fictional world, where they know future events and can change things. Was that what was happening?

"None of this makes sense," Hermione sighed. Krista agreed with her, despite what she'd said, but she kept that to herself.

"What's the plan moving forward? What do you want to do?" Krista rushed out. Because Hermione had said that she needed her for a spell, which meant that she had some kind of plan. If she was using fanfiction logic, then she was putting her money on time travel.

"I want to go back, to fix things, but all of the Time-Turners have been destroyed," Hermione said and threw off her current theory.

"That ruins a perfectly good trope," Krista thought while Hermione struggled with something. Maybe this situation was just as odd for her.

"Time-Turners were limited anyway, and I need to go back farther than they would have allowed. There aren't any time spells that will allow me to go back to the beginning, but I did find a spell that will allow me to travel to the point in the timeline that I need but will then create a different timeline altogether."

"Multiverse theory, got it," Krista said before Hermione could keep explaining. She had read enough fanfiction to fill in the missing blanks, and she didn't need to understand the science behind the magic. Time travel and creating a new reality because of the sudden appearance of someone from the future. That was a common enough trope for her to have some understanding, and who said that fanfiction couldn't be educational?

"The spell that I found, the very complicated spell, can send me to a separate timeline. The spell calls for a being untainted by magic, from another timeline, to act as the magical core of the spell. The core, the person, is a link between the realities. That's why you were summoned. Because I needed someone from a different reality with knowledge of my reality and of the reality that I want to travel to. I need you to be the core of the spell that will send us back to the beginning."

"Back to the beginning? Are we going to go back to when Voldemort was still just Tom Riddle? Or stop Merope from conceiving him in the first place?" Krista could admit that she had a read a story or two about someone going back to when Voldemort was still Tom Riddle and actually saving him before he could turn completely dark, and she was sure that would be fun.

"No, if we go back that far then there's a chance that my friends will never exist at all," Hermione told her and then looked down. Krista had still been able to catch the quick look on her face, and she had looked almost guilty. Possibly embarrassed. Because she was admitting that she wanted to do something selfish. She didn't want to save the world. She wanted to save her friends. Which, strangely enough, made Krista want to help her.

"Then you want to go back to save Lily and James," Krista realized. Well, she shouldn't be surprised. Traveling back to the Marauders Era was a popular trope too, and she had definitely read her fair share of those stories. So she had knowledge of that reality, especially if that time period followed fanfiction rules.

"No." The pure anger in Hermione's tone surprised her, and Krista looked up to see Hermione looking directly at her. The look in her eyes was dark, so dark that something inside of Krista wanted to pull away, and that feeling only intensified when Hermione's entire body started to shake. "I want to kill those responsible for killing everyone I know and save my friends."

"Then what's stopping you? I'm right here," Krista said and glanced down at herself.

"The spell takes a full year to prepare, and you have to agree. The spell only works if you accept of your own free will," Hermione said while moving her hand. The fingers of Hermione's left hand locked around Krista's left wrist while her right hand pulled away, and Krista looked down to see her own fingers move to loosely wrap around Hermione's very thin wrist. The grip reminded her of the hold used to make an Unbreakable Vow, and that couldn't be a good omen.

"Before I answer, I just want to ask one thing," she said and looked back up. Hermione's eyes met hers, and she felt her mouth drying out as her skin started to prickle. Cold sweat was starting to bead along her upper lip and on the back of her neck, and she watched as Hermione slowly nodded to tell her to go ahead and ask. "You kept saying us earlier, that we'll both be sent back. If that's true, I want to know what our ultimate goal is. Do we kill Voldemort? Or do we save people?"

Coma dream, dying delusion…it didn't really matter anymore. Whatever was happening to her, she was going to go with it. Might as well, right? She even already knew her answer, no matter what Hermione's answer was. Still, before diving into the deep end, she wanted to know what to expect from a Hermione who had lost everything. Was killing Voldemort and getting revenge the most important thing? Because Krista could understand that. One man had seen to the downfall of everyone that Hermione loved and cared for, so revenge seemed reasonable. The alternative was saving people, saving everyone that could have lived a full life if Voldemort hadn't ruined everything. She thought of the Potters, barely in their twenties when they died, and then of their friends. Remembered the first time she'd seen Sirius Black standing in the Shrieking Shack and the way her eyes had burned as it was revealed that he'd been falsely imprisoned for over a decade. Their focus had to be on either killing Voldemort or saving everyone, and she wanted to know which before she agreed.

"We save people," Hermione whispered after a long moment. She had clearly struggled with the answer, Krista had been able to read the rage across her features, and her shoulders had slumped and curled forwards when she finally answered. She wanted Voldemort dead, but she wanted to save people more. Which meant that she was still the Hermione that Krista knew from the books and movies.

"I accept," she heard herself say.

As Hermione lifted her wand up with her right hand, Krista started to feel sort of detached from the entire situation. Because the tip of the wand was glowing and then a kind of magical cord started to wind around their joined hands, and everything suddenly started to feel very real. Not like a dream or a delusion, but real. The pain in her head increased into sharp jabs as Hermione started to speak quietly, sounded like hearing Latin underwater so it had to be the words of the spell, and she hissed as the back of her left hand started to burn. Still, she felt like she couldn't even move as she watched blood drip down her hand. As her ears started to ring, the pain seemed to reach its pinnacle and her throat caught fire as a scream was pulled out of her. Because the pain was everywhere now. Pounding against her skull and cutting into her hand and snapping in her spine and she'd been so wrong. Death was the most painful thing of all.

18 JUNE 2000

HERMIONE

Hermione looked down at the unconscious muggle woman as she carefully flexed her left hand, but the pain there was easy to ignore. It was far from the most painful thing that she had ever experienced, but she worried about the unconscious woman. While Hermione only had the rune carved into the back of her hand, the woman had a rune carved into her skin while powerful magic moved through her. It would take an entire year for that magic to reach its full power, and she did hope that the entire process wouldn't be painful. She didn't know the woman, the woman apparently only knew her as a fictional character, but the complete stranger had offered to help. Had basically given her life up to help Hermione with her task. Then again, it was quite possible that the young woman had been in shock and not processing everything. That would mean that Hermione had taken advantage of her, taken advantage of a woman who had clearly been in pain and disoriented, and there was an old sense of shame deep in her belly buried under all of the rage and grief that she had been carrying around for years now. She had taken advantage, was using this young woman who was now bound to a spell, but she didn't feel guilt or regret.

"I am sorry, but this has to be done," Hermione thought and then reached out. The woman was still unconscious and didn't react at all as Hermione locked her fingers around the woman's left wrist, and the woman's skin felt overheated. "I have to make it right."

She concentrated on the place she had hiked from, it had taken her hours to reach this particular spot on foot, but all it took now was a (mostly) clear mind and a bit of magic to return to the place she had left early that morning. The young woman didn't stir at being apparated, which she hoped was a good sign, and she left the woman concealed in the high grass as she walked into the treeline. The car she had left behind was still hidden in the underbrush, and she worked quickly to clear off the limbs and other bits of camouflage. She had already used far too much magic today, first by summoning the woman and then again by apparating them here, and she was going to need to move like a muggle for a while. They needed a year for the magic inside of the woman to be ready, and they would need to keep themselves hidden in that time. So she used her hands to clear the car, tried not to think about George giving her lessons the summer after they watched Hogwarts fall, and ignored the tears that fell from her eyes as she was assaulted with memories anyway. She was good at ignoring her tears by now.

Once the car was cleared, she moved back to the unconscious woman. She was lying so still, pale against the dark grass in the moonlight, and her dark hair streamed to one side of her. The woman looked so ordinary, in simple jeans and a tee shirt, and how many women had Hermione stumbled on that looked just like her? Ordinary and still. The only difference was that this young woman was still alive, but Hermione's eyes narrowed in concentration as she knelt next to her. The woman's face was flushed, pink suffusing her cheeks and streaking down her neck, and sweat was starting to slick across her skin. When Hermione reached out to grip her wrists, she hissed at the heat as she felt her hands slipping against the woman's slick skin. She was beyond feverish. What if a muggle from a completely non-magical world couldn't handle a spell of this magnitude? Was she killing this woman with her attempt?

Dragging the woman across the grass and to the small car that Hermione had stolen a few days ago was a difficult task, the woman seemed to be of average height and weight, but Hermione still struggled to drag the woman's dead weight. Unconscious weight. The woman wasn't dead. Hermione could clearly feel a pulse in the woman's wrist, perhaps beating a little too quickly but definitely strong, and she locked her jaw as she continued to drag the woman across the ground. She wasn't sure if her quickly flagging strength was due to the powerful magic she had just used on the unconscious woman or from her admittedly absent diet the past several months, but it didn't matter. She had enough strength to get the woman to the car, fling open the door to the backseat, and then somehow lift the woman into the car. Hermione got the woman settled in the backseat, mostly stretched out, and then closed the door. All without the woman making a single noise or stirring at all.

The woman was taken care of, she checked the trunk for her supplies, and swept her hands through her hair after seeing everything right where she had left it. So far, things were going according to plan. She needed to move along before someone investigated the magic that she had used, she was sure that a spell that powerful would leave something behind, and she wanted to be far away before anyone started to investigate. She got her hair pulled back, ignored the thick feeling of grease and rough grains of dirt, and knotted it above her nape. She kept her wand clutched in one hand as she slid behind the wheel, and she remembered how fast Ron had driven when they were both still learning to drive amongst muggles. She had always driven slower, more carefully, and that was exactly how she pulled out from under the shelter of the trees and bumped along the ground before reaching the road. After starting to properly drive, she flicked her eyes up and looked into the rearview mirror to see the woman lying unconscious in the backseat. Thought about how feverish she was, her quick pulse, and how much magic she had used to bring the woman into this reality.

Her last concrete thought, for the next several miles at least, was how much she really hoped that the woman survived. Summoning another non-magical person would set her back several months.

This is a time travel fic mixed in with an OC from our reality "dies" and wakes up in a fictional reality story. With a few other (hopefully unique) twists mixed in. I'm hoping it got across that this isn't the Hermione from the books and movies. If it didn't, it'll be much more apparent in later chapters. Krista Morgan's face claim is Zoey Deutch, for anyone that's curious. Thank you for reading.

If you want to talk to me about the fic or anything else, you can find me on tumblr: butcherofblackwater

If you want things only specific to this fic, you can check out the tumblr blog: krista-and-hermione