Thanks so much to Rs223 and Sunlight for reviewing!
Anyway, good news. I've planned out the rest of the story (before this I've just been winging it) so that should both up my motivation and make writing easier, so chapters should come faster afters this. I'm really excited to finish this story.
Here's chapter 15! Enjoy :)
Disclaimer-I don't own Harry Potter, nor any affiliated characters
2022
Hermione turned the cane around in her hands as she walked, nervously dragging her fingers through the carvings in the wood. Ron's steady presence next to her kept her grounded, even though she could feel his hand shaking a little as he kept it wrapped around her other hand.
As if losing Rose wasn't bad enough, the only way she could fix this whole mess was to talk to Lucius Malfoy, who in retirement rarely left Malfoy Manor. He would not make an exception for a "blood traitor," a word that still made Hermione's blood boil.
So they stood outside of the wrought iron gate, carved in intricate patterns that Hermione couldn't make out because she was too focused on the cane in her hands and the memories of screams running through her mind at mile pace. It had been twenty four years since she'd been back here, and she'd avoided it for a reason.
Neither she nor Ron were surprised when it was Draco who greeted them instead of Lucius. "Granger," he said with a mechanical nod. "Weasley."
Hermione and Ron nodded in response, and then stepped through the gate, the iron becoming intangible as they entered the property.
The walk down the long, winding path to the large house in the distance was undeniably awkward. Draco-the decision to address him by his first name had been made when Rose had announced that her best friend was Scorpius Malfoy at the end of her first year-was silent, his shoulders hunched and his hands shoved into his pockets. Ron kept a tight grip on Hermione's hand, dragging his feet in the gravel as if he was being pulled unwillingly toward the manner.
The grand door that must have towered twenty feet above them opened without a single touch, like it was a muggle automatic door-a thought that made Hermione stifle a giggle and then berate herself for being ridiculous.
The main hall of the manor was large, and Hermione felt a little more at ease when she realized that she had never seen this part. A thick, rather dusty carpet covered the floor under a large, glimmering chandelier hanging from the ceiling. A large staircase led to rooms upstairs and hallways branched off of the main room.
"Dad!" A tall and lanky blond haired boy came bounding out of a hall to the left, dressed in all muggle clothing except for a faded Weird Sisters t-shirt.
"Scorpius, please-" Draco said, frowning at his son.
Scorpius cut him off. "Ms. Granger! Mr. Weasley! Is Rose okay?" He came to an abrupt halt about five feet away from the adults, his features twisted into an anxious frown.
"I-I don't know," Hermione stammered, alarmed. Her fingers tightened around the cane.
Draco sighed. "Scorpius, please go upstairs. You know your grandfather won't be happy; he's already meeting with blood traitors and if he sees you…"
"What?" the blond haired boy demanded. "Wearing khakis? Well, that's too bad, because I'm coming with you." He folded his arms and made a face almost identical to his father's.
There was a brief standoff between the two, with Hermione and Ron standing awkwardly to the side, watching it unfold. Finally, Draco seemed to realize that Scorpius was too determined to be shunted off to the side while the adults talked.
"Don't speak," Draco told him. Scorpius nodded in response, and then turned to follow his father up the grand staircase, Hermione and Ron in tow.
"That was a bit Gryffindor of him," Ron whispered in Hermione's ear as they reached the first landing.
"Everyone's a little of everything," Hermione replied. "Besides, you could think of it as ambition if you wanted."
Ron seemed to consider this, and they continued their trek up the stairs.
After two more flights Draco and Scorpius led them down a twisting set of hallways with walls and floors of the same dark wood, highlighted by the tinted windows that kept the brunt of the afternoon sun from reaching the inside of the house. With the addition of paintings of Malfoy ancestors that glared down at passerby from their perches on the wall, it felt dark and melancholy. It made Hermione glad to remember the bright windows and soft carpets of her childhood home. The tightening of Ron's fingers around hers reassured her that he was thinking the same.
Draco stopped in front of a large door and pushed it open without knocking. He beckoned them inside.
Lucius Malfoy sat at a desk as dark as the wood around him, in front of an untinted window that shed light into the room, though he was facing away from it so his face was cast into shadow. His fingers were laced in front of him, feet crossed under the desk at his ankle. He smiled as Hermione and Ron entered the room.
"Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. To what do I owe the pleasure? Come to remind me of my irrelevancy to my face?" His voice was cold but he kept smiling, as if he was taunting them.
"It's Granger," Hermione couldn't help but correct. In the corner of her eye she thought she saw Scorpius stifle a giggle. She didn't share the sentiment-this whole house had her on edge and the reminders of Lucius Malfoy with a dark mark on his arm swirling around in her head weren't helping.
Lucius raised his eyebrows, but didn't say anything.
"We have something we think may be yours," Ron said, filling the silence perpetrated by Hermione's zoned out state. He kept a reassuring hand gently touching her waist. "You seem to have misplaced it on my friend's mantle."
Now Malfoy looked confused. "I'm sorry?"
Remembering why she was here, Hermione held up the cane. "Isn't this yours?"
He beckoned for it, and she stepped forward and handed it to him. Lucius rolled the cane around in his hand, eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. He drew out his own cane, pulling his wand out and placing the case next to the one Hermione had provided. It was easy to see that the two were identical.
"This is a very good replica," Lucius said after a moment, fixing Hermione with a smile. "Fortunately, it seems I have my own with me. I'll take this and have it destroyed. I appreciate that you've taken it upon yourselves to bring it to me."
"Actually," Ron said. "I think I'll be taking it. If there's someone duplicating other people's property then it's a job for the Ministry and this can be used as evidence." Hermione had no doubt that Ron was lying through his teeth, but she mentally thanked him for it anyway.
Lucius pursed his lips with distaste, but he seemed to remember that he didn't have much sway with the government anymore. "Despite what the rest of the world seems to think, the Malfoy family is capable of taking care of our own problems." Still, with obvious reluctance he handed the cane over. A discreet cough came from the direction of Scorpius, and Lucius cast an irritated glance at his grandson before turning his attention back to Hermione. His face was a picture of disgust, as if he had no good choices in the room of who to look at.
Hermione took it from him, ignoring his statement and pretending to examine it. "It's a nice piece. Where did you get it?"
The blond haired man made a face, as if he was disgusted by the fact that she'd just asked him another question. "It was a wedding present," he said. "It would be appreciated If you'd leave me be. I'm very busy, of course."
She very much doubted this, and judging by Draco's miniscule eye roll and Scorpius's barely disguised scoff, Lucius's "busyness" was a bit of a family joke.
"I'm sorry about him," Draco said when they'd reached the door. "He's a little old fashioned."
"It's fine," Hermione replied, a little rushed. She wanted to get out of this miserable house. "Thank you for your help."
As they left, she heard Scorpius call behind her, "Bye Ms. Granger! Bye Mr. Weasley! Tell me when Rose is okay again!"
The Potter house was surprisingly empty when Hermione and Ron returned. All of its current occupants had promised to keep their mouths shut about the situation until they had a solution to keep things efficient-news tended to travel fast in the Weasley family and panic also set in quickly. However, it appeared no one had spoken about it.
There were people talking in the living room who stopped in an abrupt fashion when Hermione opened the door. She expected Lily to come bounding to the door to greet whoever had come to visit, but she remembered that Lily-her Lily, that was, was trapped somewhere between 1970 and 2000.
They made their way into the living room, where both Harry's, Ginny, Lily, and James were all seated, all looking very tense. Younger Harry had a look on his face that Hermione hadn't seen in years, the look of an irritatingly misunderstood teenager. He glanced up at the two visitors. Hermione smirked as she saw his gaze immediately shift in shock to Ron. She'd forgotten they hadn't met in person yet.
"Hello," Ron said, breaking the silence. He nodded to younger Harry and smiled at Ginny and older Harry before sitting down. Hermione settled next to him.
"Anything interesting happen here?" she asked. "Did you look over the book that I gave you?"
Ginny nodded. "We think Lily is in 1975 and Albus is in 1995-they'd be put in Lily and Harry's places, wouldn't they?"
Hermione considered this. "The book said it depended on where the sand was manufactured, so I have no idea."
"Wait," younger Harry said, surprising all four adults, as neither he nor Lily had seemed very talkative for the past several minutes. "Doesn't time try to keep itself from changing? Erm-" he corrected himself as he saw their disbelieving expressions, "I mean it tries to keep things flowing in the right direction, even if it changes a little. Right?"
The room was silent, so he continued to speak. "'Cause, when we used the time turner during third year-" At this, Lily, who was sitting next to Harry, looked very surprised, "I mean we ended up in the exact right place so I could save myself from the Dementors, even though we didn't know it was me who cast the spell."
"What were you doing with Dementors when you were thirteen?" Lily demanded, sounding concerned.
"It's not important," Harry said, and she sighed.
Ron broke into the conversation. "Wait, let's go back to Harry's point. So you're saying that it makes sense for Lily to be in 1975 and Albus to be in 1995 because time is trying to keep things from screwing up too much?"
Harry looked rather uncomfortable. "Well, I mean, if I'm here and Lily and not Albus is in 1995, then there's a person who is both the wrong gender and doesn't look very much like me-she does take after Ginny, doesn't she?" He directed his question at Ginny, but older Harry answered instead with a nod. "Yeah. But if Albus is there, then at least there's someone to pretend to be me, right? And I mean, the Dursleys wouldn't ask if I was missing a scar or had the wrong nose or something, so it would be okay."
"But what about Lily?" James asked, and Harry jumped, as if he'd forgotten the taller boy was here. "Lily my sister, I mean."
"Well," Lily who was sitting on the couch next to Harry began, "The only thing that's left is for her to go to 1975, yeah? Because it's an exchange."
Across the room, Hermione frowned. "So we're basing this almost completely on common sense?"
"We haven't exactly got anything else, as helpful as that passage in the book was, Hermione," Ginny said softly. "If we go by that train of thought, then Rose would be whenever Lucius Malfoy first lost his cane."
"He doesn't remember losing his cane. At least, that's the impression I got," Ron said. Hermione nodded in agreement.
"Well, then we need to find out where and when the time sand was inserted into that broken time turner," she announced decisively. "Harry, where did you get it?"
"A research project, I think," older Harry replied, his eyebrows scrunching together as he thought. "I definitely got it from the Ministry, maybe even the Department of Mysteries. I can ask," he cut in, before Hermione could ask the same question.
"Good," she said. "Go ask now-I'm going to check on time turner manufacturers to see where the time turner might be from. Ron, Ginny, if you could help?"
Ron nodded. "Of course," Ginny agreed. With a sharp look at Harry and Lily, she said, "Don't do anything stupid. James, watch them, will you?"
Within a few minutes the house was devoid of all adults except for James, who was an exception to the adult rule in even his own opinion.
James flopped onto the couch where Hermione and Ron had been sitting, across from Harry and Lily. He spread his legs out so his feet draped over one arm and his head rested on the other. "So," he said.
"So what?" Lily asked.
"So if your theory's right, Harry, do you think if you and Lily touched the time sand it would do the exchange thing again?" James finished, raising his eyebrows at the two teenagers on the couch.
"I don't know," Harry replied honestly. "Could be. Are we going to try?"
James shrugged. "Dunno. You're the ones messing with time, right?"
"Wait, wait, wait," Lily cut in. "We aren't screwing around with time travel until we actually know what we're doing. Besides, what about Rose? She won't come back unless we put the cane in too."
"Then let's take the cane with us," Harry suggested, a little angry. He liked the future, he really did, but he didn't want to leave anyone with the Dursley's for long periods of time; that would be cruel. He needed to get back to his time if just to fix that, and Lily just didn't understand. Worse than that, he couldn't tell her anything about it because she'd get that look of pity in her eyes and Harry couldn't stand that, especially not from his own mother.
"No, she's right," James said with a sigh, staring at the ceiling. "We should wait for the rest of the adults to come back with their information. What if the cane goes with whoever's holding it? The exchange might only work one way this time. A thousand things could go wrong."
"If the exchange is only supposed to work when two people touch the sand, then how did Rose get stuck? If we put the cane in first, it'll work." Harry said, impatient.
"But the book said that exchanges usually only happen when more than one thing falls in the sand; that doesn't exclude it happening when only one thing falls," Lily reminded him. "We need more information."
Harry stood up angrily, tugging his hand through his hair. "Then what do we do?"
"We wait," James said, sounding miserable as he settled himself more comfortably on the couch.