Chapter 24: Time for Change
"One More Light" by Linkin Park.
Time is a funny thing. It is measured, consistent, constant, but when speaking of the passage of time, you will rarely hear anyone describing it as such. Time flies. Time stands still. Time drags on and then passes quickly. Hermione felt as though she'd been stuck in the past for years, not months. Harry and Ron insisted she'd been gone forever, time seeming unbearably slow in her absence. Their past memories of Hermione restored, Remus, Molly, and Severus struggled the most. There Hermione was, looking exactly as she had back then, making them feel young and hopeful again, but their older bodies ached and their reflections mocked them. Time was cruel, and time was fleeting.
"PROTEGO!" Remus bellowed, shielding Hermione from a curse aimed at her back. Hermione was still weak. Death Eaters had descended on Hogwarts just a few hours after her return. She hadn't fully recovered from her ordeal in the cave; some of her old wounds had already reopened. The cavalry arrived just in time.
"Stupefy!" Neville Longbottom led several other DA members into the Entrance Hall. His stunner struck the Death Eater attacking Ron, and the two of them turned to help Ginny.
"Avada Kedavra!" Even old Augusta Longbottom had come to fight, and she pulled no punches. The Death Eater Hermione had been dueling dropped dead. "I remember you, girl," she told Hermione as she hobbled over. "My son told me about you, years ago. Plucky little thing, you look half-dead and here you are still fighting. Go help your friends. No one will follow you."
Harry was crouched behind a pile of debris. His scar wasn't hurting at all. Voldemort hadn't come. Voldemort was mortal again, and he wasn't coming to them. Harry looked at his best friends. Ron was sweating and out of breath. Hermione was still ill and injured. Their odds of defeating Voldemort alone were slim to none, but it was the only way to bring the madness around them to an end.
"Let me guess," Draco Malfoy said, making his way over to them, his lip bleeding, "the Gryffindors are about to do something really stupid." Ignoring the insult, Harry looked the newly orphaned pureblood dead in the eye.
"Are you coming or staying?"
Draco brought the three Gryffindors to the remaining hideout via sidelong apparation. He died the moment his feet touched the ground. Harry, Ron, and Hermione had no tome to react. They dove in different directions, ducking and rolling, scrambling for cover. The flash of green light had faded, and they could see little in the pitch dark, a couple hours before dawn. The three friends were of one mind, all three wondering why they came alone. The answer came to them just as quickly: The main attack force was at Hogwarts. Back there, their friends and allies needed all the help they could get. The three of them were up against one mortal man. Voldemort was immensely powerful, but he was one mortal man, and there were three of them... three of them left.
"So, how do you want to do this?" Ron called out. Harry and Hermione gaped at him, Hermione frantically gesturing for him to stay quiet. "You killed Malfoy first because he betrayed you," Ron continued. "That makes sense, but what now?" Ron waved Harry and Hermione away, encouraging them to move while he attempted to distract Voldemort. His voice would mask the sound of their movements. "Want to go for Harry next? The chosen one has always been your first target, but what about Hermione? Technically, she betrayed you too. A muggleborn girl tricked you, humiliated you in front of your Death Eaters. Of course, Harry's done that too. Still, I wouldn't blame you for coming after me next. A talent for annoying people runs in the Weasley family." While Ron talked, Harry and Hermione crept through the darkness, moving in opposite directions, hoping to target Voldemort from opposite sides. Voldemort ran out of patience first.
The moment fire erupted from Voldemort's wand, rushing toward Ron, Hermione and Harry stood and aimed their wands at him. Voldemort simply deflected Harry's stunner. He dropped to the ground to avoid Hermione's killing curse. Surging upward again, Voldemort chose his next target. "Avada Kedavra!" Hermione had expected him to target her next, so she narrowly avoided the curse, diving behind rocks that exploded around her when the curse made impact. Easily deflecting the next spells Harry and Ron threw at him, Voldemort stalked toward Hermione.
"Hermione, move!" Harry shouted, running toward Voldemort.
Unknown to Harry, Hermione was immediately lost to a vivid flashback. She could see the troll again, the bathroom, the levitating club. As she became aware of her surroundings again, she tried to crawl away, but she couldn't move. Some of the rock shards had imbedded themselves in the healing flesh still raw from the cave, from the past. Pain overwhelmed her and she was too exhausted to push through it. With a flick of his wand, Voldemort lifted her off the ground and threw her into a rose bush forty yards away. She screamed as the thorns tore at her skin.
"Avada Kedavra!" Ron took his shot, but he tripped as he took aim and his curse went over Voldemort's head.
"Avada—" Harry took aim, but Voldemort had lifted Hermione's body from the rose bush and he swung her around, suspending her body in the air between him and the two younger wizards.
"Children," Voldemort hissed. "Three children came closer than anyone else, but not close enough. It was all for nothing, because you are still too young, too weak, too innocent to the ways of the world to make sacrifices when necessary. Kill her. Kill her and take down your enemy! Do it!" Harry and Ron both raised their wands, but they hesitated. Voldemort smiled. "Avada—"
"Confundus!"
"Reducto!"
Harry's spell reached Voldemort, breaking his concentration for a second, releasing Hermione from his hold. Ron's spell struck Hermione. He flinched when she yelped in pain, but his spell knocked her backward so she fell behind Voldemort.
"Inficiunt Aerem!" Voldemort's spell had no visible effect, but when Harry and Ron drew breath to cast their next curses, they gasped and collapsed, choking. Voldemort smiled, watching the boys gasp for air, their skin paling, their lips turning blue. He would enjoy watching them die slowly.
Forgotten behind Voldemort, Hermione was holding her breath. Voldemort's invisible but deadly curse had clearly poisoned the air. She couldn't find her wand, but it wouldn't be of much use if she couldn't speak. She felt around for a shard of rock sharp enough to cut him. Instead of rock, her fingers found the cool steel of a sword. Out of air and out of time, Hermione stood and plunged the sword of Gryffindor into the heir of Slytherin, the blade entering his back and sliding all the way through, the bloody tip sticking out of his gut. Releasing the sword and rushing forward, she fell to her knees between Harry and Ron. She grabbed their wands and wordlessly summoned her own, then she took their hands and apparated. They landed outside St Mungos.
"Help!" Hermione screamed. "They've been poisoned! Please!" Hermione hadn't noticed, but they'd all three splinched. Ron was missing a finger, a chunk of flesh was missing from Harry's arm, and her own finger was lost with Ron's. The pain blended together. There was blood everywhere, and Harry and Ron seemed to be drawing their last breaths. Healers poured out of the magical hospital, but Hermione wouldn't remember a word they said. They reached her just in time to catch her as she fell, the world around her lost to darkness.
Time flies. Time stands still. Time is cruel. Time is fleeting.
"It's alright, sweetheart. It's over. You've been so brave." Harry saw his mother and father again, the way he'd seen them in the Mirror of Erised, but his mother's voice was particularly strong and clear, because with Hermione's help he had actually spoken to Lily Evans many times.
"Ron, you and your friends are bloody dragons! That was incredible!" Charlie reconnected with his little brother, beaming at the younger boy. "You've done it, Ron! You've done it!"
"Hermione, we were so worried," Hermione was sure she heard her parents, though they were still very much alive.
"Get up, Granger. Mother and I died for you and Potter. Don't you give up now." Draco Malfoy. That was a surprise.
"Hermione, listen to him. You stabbed the Dark Lord with a sword. You can get through this." Narcissa Black.
"Hermione, no! Please wake up! For me. For Harry." Lily Evans visited her as well.
"I'm sure my patronus will change again," Remus confessed. Past or present Remus, Hermione wasn't sure. When she tried to look at him, she saw both at once. "It will represent you, of course. You were a great friend to me, and now you are the only one left. You can't leave me, Hermione. Not now."
"Not yet, Hermione." That was all Regulus said. "Not yet."
Harry groaned as he awoke, searching for his glasses. Someone in a chair beside him handed his glasses to him. Dumbledore. "Well done, Harry. I always knew you would persevere. All the Death Eaters are dead or in Azkaban, awaiting trial. Hogwarts is safe. Voldemort is dead. It's over, my boy. Finally, you can rest."
"Malfoy..." Harry began, but but words failed him.
"Their story will live forever as well," Dumbledore assured him. "The widely respected pureblood blinded by hatred, the wife and mother who chose her son over her husband, and the boy who tragically fell so soon after seeing the light, after seeing what could have been. A cautionary tale, indeed."
"Harry!" Ginny ran to his side, followed closely by her father and most of her siblings. Harry looked over at Ron, still asleep in the next bed. His mother occupied the chair beside him. Molly Weasley smiled at him before returning her attention to her son. Beyond her, Hermione was in another bed, Remus seated at her side. It looked like he was whispering to her. He had new scars of his own, one long red line stretching from his right ear to the bridge of his nose. Snape was barely visible, standing just outside the door, his eyes on the girl and the werewolf.
"Please," Remus whispered, almost inaudibly. He spoke not to Hermione, but to any higher power or magical being listening. "Please, not her. Don't take her too. Not her... please..."
"Not her. Not our girl," Sirius said, pacing, thinking... "C'mon, Hermione, Moony needs you. You're the last two standing. We thought of you as a fellow Marauder, you know. We wanted to help you become an animagus and make it official. We all loved Lily, but she wasn't a fit for it. You, however—a little demon disguised as an angel, you came and raised hell. I wonder what animal you would have become. As the wand chooses the wizard, so does the animal. A wolf? Moony would be horrified and delighted. A fox? Cunning little thing. A cat? Independent and self-aware. No," Sirius laughed. "No, I've got it now: You're a dolphin. You wouldn't have been able to run with us, but you would go where none of us could. Your thirst for knowledge is the key. You'd want to explore the unknown. Moony, Marina, Padfoot, and Prongs. I like the sound of that. Wake up, Marina. You have oceans to discover."
"C'mon, Hermione, wake up," Ron said, seated by her bed. His fingers were intwined with hers. He'd lost the little finger on his left hand. She'd lost the little finger on her right hand. Even in injury, they were complementary. Out of all the voices in her head, his broke through. Hermione stirred and her eyes slowly opened. Ron sobbed softly and stood, bending over her bed to hug her awkwardly. "Thank you, thank you, thank you. You saved us, Hermione. We're okay, you're okay. It's over. Harry! Remus! Mum, she's awake!"
Time was precious. Harry, Ron, and Hermione would never get back all the time taken from them, the time lost to war, but it was finally their time. They could do whatever they wanted with their time. For the first time in a long time, the future was clear and the past made sense.
"Harry, your scar," Hermione breathed as Harry reached her. Harry smiled, brushing his hair to the side. The lighting bolt was still there, but it blended in with Harry's skin, barely visible.
"It never fully healed," he said. "It was like it was infected as long as he lived. It's really over this time." Hermione's eyes welled up with tears, and when the first tear fell, Ron and Harry teared up too, and then they laughed through their tears. It was really over.
The war was over.
The flashbacks that had overtaken Hermione in the battle against Voldemort proved to be symptoms of a larger problem. Garus had lost all concept of time after too many experiments, but Hermione was stable enough. For the rest of her days, she would experience random flashbacks, and she would wake confused each morning, unsure of her place in time until provided with a reminder. When diagnosed with Time Traveler's Divergence, Hermione smiled and said, "It could be much worse."
For several months after Hermione's return, Snape regularly checked in on her, providing potions that could help her though the confusing, stressful mornings. If only life were so simple. Though Snape felt a strong connection to Hermione immediately after her return, his memories of all the years that followed inevitably caught up with him. He and Hermione had saved each other, but they had never been friends, and forcing such a relationship in the future simply didn't work for them. Snape became distant and closed off again, and Hermione knew to let him be.
Remus struggled as well. He loved Tonks. He bought a ring. He planned to propose. He planned to marry her and maybe even start a family... but there were nights he dreamt of standing in the snow with Hermione. In those dreams, things went differently. He dreamt of her, then he woke up and looked at himself in the mirror. Tonks was young, but Hermione had not yet aged—she was the exact same girl she was in his dreams, in his memories. He tried to shake his lingering feelings for her. He was sure Tonks suspected, and she deserved better than that.
Molly kept a close eye on her youngest son and his girlfriend. Molly saw the looks Remus gave Hermione at times, and the way she would look back at him. She wanted to be angry with the girl, but she sympathized with her situation. It had to be confusing, getting mixed up in different timelines, feeling so connected to so many people. Molly knew Hermione loved her son, just as she knew Ron loved Hermione. She could only hope things would get easier for them in time.
Hermione ran into Neville one day at St Mungos. She was in for a follow-up and he was visiting his parents. He invited Hermione along and she felt she needed to join him. She knew Frank and Alice. She wanted to offer her support. She hadn't expected Alice to mutter her name, blinking at her in vague recognition. Hermione and Neville froze by her bedside. She couldn't remember her son, but she recognized Hermione. Neville forced a smile when Hermione caught his eye. Hermione felt ill. She knew that look well. Snape, Remus, Molly, Tonks, Harry, Ron... it was the look they all gave her when her presence reminded them of something they wanted to forget. Time did not discriminate. Everyone was hurt, somehow. She had gone a week without speaking to Harry after she accidentally called him, "James."
Ron saw how Hermione acted around Remus, and he around her, but he didn't see Remus as a threat. He wasn't the least bit jealous of their bond. He loved Hermione, and he knew Hermione loved him. In the light of day, their problems seemed insignificant. After all they'd survived, they were finally living in peace. He was happy... during the day... most days... but the nights... the nights... Hermione often had nightmares, like many other survivors, but hers revolved around the same person. Each night that he spent with her, he'd hear the same name, and he'd spend a few nights away from her to shake it off. Remus was no threat—they had a little crush, and in time they'd get over it—but there was another name on Hermione's heart, and there was no competing with a dead man.
Each night, Hermione wept for Regulus Black.
End