Thanks for the lovely response so far. Hope you enjoy this next instalment!
CHAPTER V
It was with an odd sense of relief and vindication that Hermione stepped alone into Ndidi's store. She wasn't going mad, and neither was she in this alone anymore. Ndidi knew what was happening. Ndidi could help.
And she might even be able to save the woman's life in the process.
"Hello?" she called, pulling the door closed behind her.
At breakfast this morning, she'd complained of a bad headache and retired to her room. Of course, it had been just a cover and she'd Apparated away soon after, startling a grubby-looking drunk sleeping on the pavement as she slipped out of the phone booth and hopped over him. Fortunately, she'd encountered no one else; at this early hour, the streets were mostly empty, the only sound the lash of rain on her hood as she hurried the short distance to Ndidi's store.
Inside, she lit her wand, holding it up to reveal the jumble of artefacts and antiques that, even now, the fourth time she'd entered this room, still filled her with a curious feeling of unease.
Godric knew the power between these four walls if just one of these objects could transcend the laws of magic and time.
She should have expected it—she had, after all, experienced the exact same welcome three times before—but her heart nearly stopped when a dazzling purple explosion sent her diving behind a sturdy wooden cabinet.
That was at least until the cabinet got up and, squealing in alarm, scurried off into the darkness.
"Ndidi!" she yelled, crawling behind a wardrobe that was groaning quite alarmingly but appeared not to be running away. "Ndidi, my name is Hermione Granger. I'm a friend of Arthur Weasley's!"
She peeked out but jerked back when another curse nearly singed off the ends of her hair. Merlin, how could she explain the situation without getting herself blasted to bits before she finished?
"There's—there's something in your shop that keeps sending me back in time!" Her mind raced frantically. Ndidi had said something in her last loop… a name… something clock… "Enekpe's clock," she shouted in a flash of inspiration. "Enekpe's clock!"
The blasts stopped, and Hermione dropped her head back against the wood panelling in relief.
But then she realised it had gone ominously quiet. She peered around the side of the wardrobe and found herself face to face with the sharp end of Ndidi's wand.
"How did you hear about Enekpe's clock?" she demanded. Hermione held up her hands, fingers splayed.
"You told me," she said carefully. "Last time I was here. You told me that I should find you when my day started again."
A beat, long and tense as the older woman stared her down, but then she lowered her wand and Hermione heaved a sigh of relief.
The witch had believed her. The first hurdle was behind her.
Whether Ndidi would be able to help as much as Hermione hoped, however, was still to be determined. The woman looked a little dazed.
"Dear lord," she said, shaking her head. "Dear lord, it's real."
It was what she'd said before. Thoroughly intrigued, Hermione was just about to ask her what was real, when Ndidi stilled and looked guardedly about.
"Come," she said, reaching out a hand to help the younger witch to her feet. "We cannot talk out here."
...
"And then when we Apparate away, I wake up where I woke up this morning," Hermione said. "And the whole day starts again."
She had given Ndidi an abridged account of the attack on the store on their way down the spiral staircase: the assault from the steps, the explosion, Draco… Everything except the woman's own fate. She had tried, wanting to warn her, but the words had stuck in her throat.
"I can think of only one explanation," Ndidi said, lighting her wand and gesturing for Hermione to follow. "Come. It is this way."
They didn't have to walk far. Even by the dim light of Ndidi's wand, Hermione knew exactly where they were. It was, she was sure, the very spot Lucius Malfoy had three times murdered his son.
A chill whispered across her skin, and she tugged her coat more tightly around herself.
Ndidi's keen brown eyes followed the movement.
"Are you cold?"
"No, I just—" She swallowed. "This is where…"
"Ah." Comprehension dawned on the older woman's face. "Your friend."
"Yes. But that's a good thing, right? That means we know what caused it."
"Indeed." Ndidi held up her wand, illuminating the shelf before them. "And it was this," she said, her voice soft, almost reverent. "Enekpe's clock."
It didn't particularly look like a clock. A woman, carved from dark wood, stood above a half-filled water pool. Her arms were stretched high, a clay pot studded with tiles of turquoise and gold balanced on her head. From the pot flowed a continuous stream of water, not gushing straight down as one might expect, but twisting around the woman in a shimmering spiral. At her feet sat several children, frozen in play, and the water swirled around them too, spilling finally into the pool below.
"My great-great-grandmother brought it with her from Nigeria many centuries ago," Ndidi said. She smiled suddenly, evidently sensing Hermione's dubiousness. "It is not a clock as you or I would imagine. It is a water clock—an ancient invention. The level of water in the pool tells you the time."
"It's beautiful," Hermione said, leaning in for a closer look. Ndidi's fingers brushed her arm in warning.
"Careful," she said. "Touch the water and you'll disrupt its timekeeping."
"Or Time itself?" Hermione asked, a touch wryly, as she straightened. Ndidi chuckled.
"Perhaps." She peered at Hermione curiously. "How much do you know about Nigerian folklore?"
"Not a lot," Hermione admitted. She looked at the wooden figure, graceful and tall, the water twining all about her. "Is this Enekpe?"
"Yes," Ndidi replied. "She is the goddess of family and guardian of destiny. But her story… her story is not a happy one."
Hermione could tell that from the woman's carefully sculpted face. Her eyes were closed, her expression almost melancholy. Yet she seemed at peace, whatever it was fate had sent her way.
"What happened?" she asked. Ndidi ran her finger along the edge of the pool.
"It is said that long ago, her people were threatened with destruction," she said softly "She proposed a deal with the other gods. Her life in exchange for the protection of her people."
"Did they accept?"
Ndidi nodded slowly, her colourful earrings flashing in the light.
"They did. She died but her people were saved." She gestured to the little children sat at the woman's feet. "She sacrificed herself to protect their future."
Hermione stared silently at the goddess poised elegantly on the clock. She was beautiful, certainly, but there was a strength to her beauty; she could see it in the way her rounded hip jutted to the side, the way her long, lean arms extended high above her head.
Her story, sad though it was, was a familiar one so deep into this war. Hermione had seen many die over the years in the place of people they cared for.
Her mind flashed, unbidden, to Draco. He had pushed her aside and taken a curse meant for her. He had sacrificed himself without a moment's hesitation.
And he'd done it for her.
She wondered what it meant. If it meant anything at all.
"It may look like nothing more than a pretty ornament," Ndidi said, reaching for Hermione's hand, "but there is powerful magic in this clock. If it was destroyed and all its power released, I believe it would be enough to trap you in this loop."
That's what she was, wasn't it? Trapped.
"But why me?" she asked, a little helplessly. "Why not Malfoy? Why not his father, for heaven's sake? He's the one who destroyed it."
"Perhaps you are the only one who can save it," Ndidi said thoughtfully.
"So all of this, bending the laws of time, trapping me in this loop with no help, no clue as to what to do to get out of it… it's all just the clock's way of protecting itself?" Hermione gave said clock a malevolent look.
"Perhaps it is protecting you," Ndidi offered. "Or your friend. Or even me." When Hermione blinked at her, she smiled a little mischievously. "Don't think I didn't notice you glossing over my fate."
Hermione felt her shoulders slump. She should have known the woman's bright-eyed gaze wouldn't miss a thing.
"It happens straight away," she said. "I'm sorry. I've never been quick enough."
To her surprise, Ndidi let out an amused huff.
"Do not apologise. I am an old witch. I can take care of myself. It is you, young Mister Malfoy and the clock we need to get safely away from here. Along with the rest of my books, of course."
It sounded simple enough, but Hermione remembered the chaos of the attack, how quickly everything seemed to deteriorate, how powerless she'd felt as Draco hit the ground, and desperation pricked the edges of her mind.
"I'm not sure I can do it alone," she said, and Ndidi's eyes softened.
"You won't have to," she declared. "You have me, and together, we will come up with a plan to save us all."
...
"It's no use," Hermione said many loops later. "Malfoy is dead set on saving my life."
She was sat on a stool in Ndidi's workshop, chomping on something the older witch had called 'puff puff'—a name that turned out to be more than valid, since the delicious little balls of dough were sugary, deep-fried and as fluffy as the clouds.
"Quite literally," she added darkly as she licked the sugar off her fingers.
She had, she felt, tried everything to affect the outcome of this disaster of a day.
She'd started with an attempt to keep the men away from the store altogether, but that had been underestimating Draco's stubbornness. Another time, she'd offered to stay up in the shop, hoping to cut off the Death Eaters before they reached the staircase, but Draco had insisted on staying with her. She and Ndidi had even packed up her books and readied the clock to Apparate away the moment the others arrived, but the few minutes it took to persuade them to do so were just a few too many.
It happened differently every time, but happen it did. The clock was destroyed, Draco did something stupidly heroic—jump in front of her, shove her aside, once he even threw himself on top of her (Remus had dragged her out from underneath him, and she'd dry-heaved between sobs in the bathroom for an hour in her next loop)—and her day began again.
Five times. Ten times. Fifteen. Twenty.
It was frustrating and gut-wrenching and exhausting beyond measure, and Hermione wasn't sure how much longer she could keep it up.
"Perhaps you should be flattered," Ndidi said absently, quill scratching as she annotated the book she was reading. "It's not every day a Slytherin sacrifices himself for someone else. Or maybe it is," she added with a smile, glancing up over the colourful feather, "as the case may be."
It was true, Hermione supposed—and something that in equal parts melted and broke her heart every time she thought about it.
Because although she had come to hate that sickening jolt as the clock dragged her back in time and she opened her eyes on the library floor, it had become her worst fear that it wouldn't happen. That Malfoy would die and for some reason, the clock wouldn't be destroyed, and she wouldn't get another chance to save him.
She wanted to save him. She needed to save him. And it wasn't simply Gryffindor chivalry. Sequestered away in that windy house by the sea, they had spent almost every day for the past three months together. Other Order members came and went, but he had been her constant; she hadn't realised how much so until he suddenly wasn't and she discovered she missed him.
Merlin, she missed Malfoy. Harry and Ron would die laughing if they knew.
"I'm not sure how much longer I can do this," she said, covering her face with her hands. She thought about the flash of green light, the crack of the curse whipping into his chest, the thump as his body and her heart hit the floor. "I'm not sure I can watch him die again."
"It is difficult," Ndidi agreed mildly, "to watch the ones we love suffer for us."
Hermione parted her fingers to frown at her. They'd had this conversation before, although of course Ndidi didn't know that.
Though by the sly look in those warm brown eyes, Hermione was sure the witch suspected as much.
"I'm not even going to dignify that with a response," she said, knowing after playing it through several times she could never find one to satisfy the older woman's romantic envisionings, and closed her fingers again.
She just wanted this to be over. She just wanted this bloody day to run its bloody course—preferably without Malfoy getting himself killed along the way—so the two of them could go back to saving the world and she didn't have to spend every waking moment bloody moping over him.
Because that was what she was doing, wasn't it? Moping. It was bloody pathetic, that's what it was.
She just wished she could tell him about all of this. She just wished he'd believe her if she did.
"Why don't you?" Ndidi asked softly, and she realised she'd lamented that last bit aloud. She dropped her hands.
"He won't believe me."
"Have you tried?"
"Not really." She rested her chin on her palm. "But he caught me reading up on the theory behind it. He thinks it's nonsense. He told me so himself."
Ndidi eyed her thoughtfully.
"So he doesn't trust the theory," she said. "He trusts you though, does he not?"
Did he? Without Hermione consciously calling up the memory, her mind flashed back to that first morning, before all of this began, to the library, where she and Draco had sat together on that sun-soaked seat by the window.
She's brilliant, he had said matter-of-factly, and so are you.
"He trusts me," she admitted with a sigh.
Ndidi smiled, satisfied, and picked up her quill again.
"There you go," she said. "Just tell him the truth."
Would it be enough? For all the propaganda he'd blindly absorbed as a child, Draco had grown into a fairly rational and scientifically-minded individual. Over the months they had spent together, she had earnt his trust, but his complete rejection of his former world-view, of his family, his father, made her wonder how far he was willing to put his faith in anyone.
Even her.
"He gave his life for you," Ndidi advised, seeing the hesitation on her face. "The least you can do is give him a chance."
a/n: In case you're interested, the goddess Enekpe is part of real Nigerian mythology. There's not a lot of information out there about her, but her story is essentially what is told here. I wish I knew more, so if anyone does, please do let me know!