Knowledge is A Dangerous Thing
Hermione Can Be Scary Too
Author's Note
And the adventure begins! Sorry its late, the login thing on here was screwy, but here is the first actual chapter. It is shorter than I wanted it to be, but its still pretty long. I hope you like the chapter. You'll see more Pansy/Hermione development over time. It will take awhile. But anyways, enjoy!
Hermione left Professor Dumbledore's office and walked back to the Gryffindor common room, thinking about what she was going to do. She was already going to do it, but she decided to take the Professor's advice and think it over again. She wanted the chance to spend a fun night with her friends before she changed the world so that they, most likely, weren't even going to be her friends anymore.
It would be selfish of me if that is the only reason I wouldn't do it. Hermione thought as she approached the painting of the Fat Lady.
"Venomous tentacula." She spoke and the portrait smiled at her before swinging open.
"At last, she returns from the library." Ron spoke sarcastically from the chess set as he saw Hermione enter. "Thought one of those books ate you."
Hermione laughed. "No, Ron, I'm all in one piece."
For today. Hermione's mind added.
Ron was playing Harry in chess, so she took a seat next to them in the armchair. She set her feet on the ottoman and sighed heavily. Neither of the boys noticed her obvious frustration.
"Find anything interesting, Hermione?" Harry asked, taking one of Ron's rooks in the process.
A lot actually, I might save the Wizarding World, I think that's pretty interesting.
"Not really, I didn't browse the 'interesting' section today."
"The library has an interesting section?" Ron asked with fake hope, before he started laughing.
Hermione laughed as well, and she enjoyed her last night with her friends. She hoped that if and when she came back, that at least they would all still be friends. Even if they weren't, she figured that it was worth it if everyone was safe and happy. Her needs were less than that of the collective.
That night, before going to sleep, she owled Professor Dumbledore her answer.
The next morning, Hermione Granger awoke early, around four thirty in the morning. She quietly packed her trunk and put a featherweight charm on it. She made her bed by herself, because even though she was leaving, she did not want the house elves to do it for her. She looked around the sleeping figures of the girls she'd known her entire time at Hogwarts, and smiled before ducking out the dormitory door, and walked out of the common room on her way to Professor Dumbledore's office.
The Headmaster was not the only person in the study as she entered. Pansy Parkinson was seated, like yesterday, in one of the chairs in front of the desk. This time she wasn't crying. No, she had her trunk sitting beside her. Hermione gave her a quizzical look, that was answered by the Headmaster before she could ask.
"Miss Parkinson would like to know if you would have her as company, as help, on your journey, Miss Granger." The Professor did not have the usual twinkle in his eyes, but he had a small smile. "I believe you'll need help on your journey, and Miss Parkinson could provide the help you need."
Hermione considered this. Pansy Parkinson had been right nasty to her throughout their years at Hogwarts. She had called her a mudblood, made fun of her appearance, and just been one of the banes of her existence. However, this girl had motivation to do the right thing now. Her parents had been murdered. She realized that Pansy wanted her family back, and if she wanted to help then so be it.
"Pansy, this is going to be dangerous. When we come back, if we come back, things won't be the same. Everyone and everything will be different, you're friends might not be your friends, you might have family that you didn't before, and you won't recognize them. This might seriously mess with your head. You could go insane."
But its better than this.
Pansy seemed to know what she was doing because she responded quickly. "I understand the risks, and I am willing to accept them. So Granger, are you going to take me with you?"
Hermione nodded, "Yes, I'll take you with me."
Now, I've doomed someone else.
"Very well, Miss Granger, Miss Parkinson, we'll begin preparing you. The first thing we have to do is give you false identities, you obviously cannot have the same name as you do in this time, it could seriously injure the timeline. I want you two to come up with names you find fit. We will also have to doctor up some school records for you, which will say that you were home schooled together as your parents did not want you to leave for school."
He went on with the other things that they would need. They would have to transfigure all of their clothing to fit the time period. Hermione would leave her muggle clothing in a small bag in Dumbledore's office, seeing as she was going to be a pureblood witch, muggle clothes would raise suspicions. Pansy's name would be changed to Amira Michaels, and Hermione would now be Ophelia Lornson. Their parents had basically raised them together, you see, so they were as close as sisters, but no blood was shared. They were both merely home schooled pureblood witches, who's parents had died when experimenting with potions and now they had no where to go.
After all the preparations were made, Hermione Granger and Pansy Parkinson stood with papers in one hand and trunks in the other, ready to go and hopefully save the Wizarding world. They were as prepared as they could get.
"Are you two ready?" Professor Dumbledore asked, looking at them both gravely. They nodded. He then walked over to a drawer and opened it. He pulled out a beautiful necklace, or at least it looked like one. However, the chain was long and the pendant was that of an hourglass.
A time-turner. Hermione thought, I didn't know they could take you back that far.
"This is a time-turner, but not just any one that the ministry would have given you before they mysteriously got destroyed." He gave a smile and a pointed look at Hermione. "This is a special one, you see that the chain is made of white gold, instead of yellow, and that the hourglass is made of diamond instead of regular glass, and that it holds no sand. That is because you place the sand inside with a spell."
Oh, that explains it.
Dumbledore walked over the pair of girls and slipped it over their heads. He touched their shoulders reassuringly, "Good luck, I hope you achieve what you are going to do. Be careful."
After passing Hermione a slip of parchment, he didn't leave them room to say anything before his aged and blackened hand pointed his wand at the hourglass and said "Transporto lemma tergum sexaginta annus."
And with a strange sound that sounded like siphoning, they were gone.
And the Professor suddenly had a memory of meeting two strange girls on the Hogwarts Grounds, named Ophelia and Amira one autumn day, fifty years ago.
The fact that two girls were standing on the Hogwarts grounds, paperwork and trunks in hand, was not that strange. The strange thing was that they appeared out of nowhere, while students were changing classes, and you weren't supposed to be able to apparate on Hogwarts' property.
Hermione was the first to get her bearings and noticed that everyone was staring at the pair of them . She slowly slipped the time turner off of Pansy and slid it under her robes. No one noticed this, they were too busy gawking and wondering what was happening.
Luckily, or unlucky if you think about it, a prefect came up to them. He was taller than the girls, of course, with black hair, and Slytherin adorned robes. This boy had an air of mystery and danger about him. Hermione gave him a once over, and noticed that his shoes were shiny and new, and this boy had a ring on, a ring that she had seen in an office of a school, so far away.
"Good afternoon ladies, my name is Tom Riddle, could I assist you with finding Headmaster Dippet's office? I assume he knows that you are coming today?"
He spoke with perfect enunciation and did not stumble over his words. Tom did not seem bothered at all that two girls appeared out of thin air. Apparently, things that were different did not scare this boy, which was probably a bad thing.
The perfect gentleman, isn't he?
"Good afternoon, Tom, my name is Ophelia Lornson and this is my friend Amira Michaels." Hermione replied as if she had been saying the same thing for years. "It would be lovely of you to escort us to the Headmaster's office.
Mum, I want you to meet my friends, this is Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.
Tom smiled and levitated the girls' trunks, because he was a gentleman and a gentleman never let ladies carry their own luggage. A charmer, as well, Hermione derived from the smile and the way he looked at the girls. Lord Voldemort used to be a teenager as well, of course he had hormones like the rest of us.
However, she knew how ugly this boy could be - would be-, in the future and was impervious to his wiles.
He led them to Headmaster Armando Dippet's office, which Hermione thought was incredibly bare in comparison with Dumbledore's office in her time. The paintings were all there, of course, but the strange widgets that littered Professor Dumbledore's office were missing. There was an odd emptiness in the room.
Tom had left them in the office alone with the Professor, and was apparently waiting outside to escort them to their next destination. Either the front entrance of the grounds or their dormitories, Hermione surmised.
Ophelia and Amira handed over their paperwork, and explained that they had gotten on the grounds by port key from Australia, because that's where they were raised. After explaining their situation, and the tragic death of their parents, Dippet was compliant and sorted them in the office there.
Hermione, or Ophelia for all intents and purposes, was actually sorted into Slytherin. She was up to some pretty Slytherin-esque activities now, so she was amused rather than insulted by this. Pansy was also sorted into Slytherin, it was nice that some things weren't going to change.
After the rules were given, for the second time of the girls' lives, they were to be escorted to the Slytherin common room by Tom. He smiled again when they walked out.
"Ophelia, Amira, what is the verdict?" He was referring to their sorting.
"Slytherin." Hermione spoke, "Both of us are in Slytherin."
Tom's smile broadened. "Excellent, you'll be in with me then. Well not sleeping wise, but you'll both be in my house. I'm the Slytherin prefect. I can give detentions, take points, and have quite a bit of responsibility for the students in my house."
He explained all the houses to the girls as they walked down to the dungeons. Hermione was groaning inwardly. She was a Gryffindor prefect and already knew everything that he was telling her.
Repetition is annoying, unless you're memorizing potion ingredients for an exam.
Her façade on the outside, though was one of an a completely interested person, as they had their completely interesting conversation. She wondered if she should just do it here, those two magical words to fix the worlds' problem. She didn't want to go to Azkaban, and she did want to find out if he had followers now, and obliviate them so they couldn't become the next dark lord.
Not yet, but soon.
The Slytherin dorms were warm, contrary to popular belief in her time. Pansy tried to look surprised at the pretty green light that entered the common room through the windows that were under the black lake. Tom had showed them the stairs to the girls' dormitory.
"I would escort you to your door personally, but the stairs turn to a slide when a man is on them."
Man? You are a boy.
The went to their dorm and there were only two other girls things in the room, what their names were or where they were didn't really matter. Pansy and Hermione were alone, so Hermione cast a muffliato charm.
"That was by far the weirdest and most stressful thing I have ever done in my entire life." Pansy commented, throwing herself back onto the bed with a large sigh. "I'm glad you did most of the talking, I'd have given us up in the first minute."
Hermione smiled and sat on her own bed. This was a very precarious position they had themselves in, for all they knew the time line could have changed already, and everything was normal without having to kill the boy. However, just to be sure, Hermione was still going to finish the job.
"You know what's going to be horrible right?" Pansy asked with a slightly horrified face.
Killing a person with a whole soul?
"No idea." Hermione said softly, trying to ignore her thoughts.
"The clothes. This is the forties, you know. The clothes were atrocious." She realized that this was Pansy's way of trying to be funny and lighten the situation.
So Hermione laughed. They talked for awhile longer about nothing in particular, before a first year girl who looked frightened out of her mind came to retrieve them for dinner, on Tom's orders.
They freshened up before walking down the staircase, to see Tom talking to a few other boys in the corner. Obviously, they were being talked about because the voices quieted when they were noticed. Hermione raised an eyebrow.
"Ladies, I was just telling our housemates about you." Tom said, turning his back on the boys and walking towards Hermione and Pansy. "Shall we go to dinner. I assure you Hogwarts has some of the best food I've ever eaten."
Yes, I'm sure the muggle orphanage you were raised in had some horrible porridge.
"We are famished," Pansy answered for them. She might as well get used to talking, sometime. At least a reply for dinner wouldn't get them slaughtered.
Hopefully.
The dinner at Hogwarts was quiet, sort of. There was a quiet announcement that they had received some new students, who were placed in Slytherin. Now everyone was talking about them. Hermione ate quietly, as did Pansy, both answering questions posed by their housemates.
Strangely enough, Hermione noticed that everything was relatively normal. On the surface, anyways. However, things at Hogwarts were never really normal.
Hermione realized this when she had to going over goblin history in her head to keep the probing in her mind away. She looked Tom in the eyes.
"Tom, it is impolite to snoop." She said quietly from across the table. "The goblin wars were particularly tragic, you know. Horrible things happened."
His eyes fell back to his plate in silence. Hermione could be scary when she looked at you that way.
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