Chapter 5: The Only One They Need
Wednesday, June 2, 1998
12:54 P.M.
At his words, what felt like an electric shock jolted through Hermione's nerves, and all thoughts of taking on the alias of Dumbledore's ancient Egyptian niece swiftly flew out of her mind. It's time. We are actually going over fifty years back in time. With the help of an illegal spell that is almost impossible to perform. -
Dumbledore's eyes landed on the closest person to his right. "Why don't you go first, Mr Malfoy?" he suggested heavily. Draco blinked, nervously sweeping a wave of platinum hair out of his eyes. "Right". With his right hand, his shoved his wand deep into his pocket and straightened up with resolution. "Let's get this over with, then". Hermione saw a steely, hard edge cut across his face, heard it sweep into his voice, saw him set his jaw stubbornly and steel himself for whatever was to come. Draco Malfoy was determined.
"Good luck", Hermione muttered to him as he moved to the centre of the Room of Requirement. The special room was free of any furniture due to the repercussions the spell was rumoured to cause. Its walls and floors consisted of rather large stones, eerily reminding Hermione of some sort of prison cell. Feeling a bout of panic suspiciously resembling claustrophobia began to grip her nerves, she shoved it from her mind and instead quickly reached out to catch Draco's hand, squeezing it lightly before he moved out of range.
"Don't need any luck, you know. I'm born with it", he smugly informed her. She rolled her eyes as she gave her that infamous Draco wink and a grin, doing a fabulous job of swallowing his fear. "See you on the other side, Granger."
"Yes, I suppose you just won't be able to be rid of me in that world, either," Hermione airily said with a grin, dropping her hand to her side. The joking smile faded from her face when Dumbledore turned to Draco, his wand raised slightly but still hanging, relaxed, from his hand. Her pounding heart jumped to her throat, and she fought to swallow. This is it.
Dumbledore, however, wasn't quite ready yet. He wasn't ready to let them go. Hermione could see the affliction sprawled over his face, and it was obvious that it was killing him to do this. Then again, it might very well kill her to do this... Literally. "Don't forget that I taught Transfiguration at the time. The Transfiguration classroom," he repeated as if to drive in the point. "You must get to the Transfiguration classroom before anyone else sees you."
"Headmaster, we've gone over the people, places, and things of 1944 Hogwarts at least thirty times since we found out about this whole bloody plan five days ago," Draco drawled, his fingers drumming impatiently on the side of his robe. "We've learned so much about it, it's almost sickening. Don't worry."
"Yeah, we know more about them than they do," Ron added. Ginny snorted and shook her head disapprovingly at him, and he crossed his arms defiantly. "Well, we do!" he protested defensively.
"Best do it, Headmaster," Harry advised quietly his old mentor from his place at Ginny's side along the far wall, his hands tightly interlaced with hers. They, along with Hermione, Lavender, and Ron, were standing as far away from Draco and Dumbledore as the room allowed.
For the briefest of moments, Hermione wished that someone was standing beside her like Harry was Ginny, each a rock for the other, and holding her hand like that, but she quickly shook her head. The random things one thinks about at one of the most crucial moments in their life!
In the foreground, Dumbledore sighed heavily, the tired breath of an old, defeated man. Even his pointy blue-mooned wizard's hat drooped a bit in regret, but he trained his eyes on Draco, his words suddenly clipped and professional. "Very well. Malfoy, are you prepared for any effects that this spell may cause?"
Hermione's stomach flipped again, and she wondered what she had eaten for breakfast that could have done this to her. Dumbledore's concern was touching, this was true, but he didn't have to phrase the inquiry with an 'Are you prepared to die?' air about it!
The Headmaster's question apparently had not reassured Draco in the least, either. "While your thoughtfulness is appreciated, now is not a time to ask", he muttered, sounding irritated. "Look, just do it already, will you?"
His words seemed to be enough to shove Dumbledore the rest of the way through the door, so to speak. His arm stiffened, and he raised his wand. Hermione shivered as a strong gust of wind whipped through the Room, whisking her curls around her face. She hastily swept the tresses back out of her eyes, enraptured, as Albus Dumbledore tapped into his famous magic, his initially soft voice rapidly gaining momentum and power, his face almost transfigured in the glow the extensively difficult spell caused...
"Impartus Infinitivum!"
An ear-splitting roar filled the entire room, and a fireball of energy erupted forth from Dumbledore's wand, rocketing toward a quite wide-eyed Draco. In the blink of an eye, brilliant sparks enveloped him like gold and silver diamonds. In the next heartbeat, the magic—and Draco—imploded to a single, tiny, floating, shimmering speck... and disappeared.
The silence that followed Draco's departure was almost as deafening as the spell's explosion had been. Hermione warily lowered her hands from their place above her eyes, shading them from the now-vanished blinding light. Abruptly, she felt light-headed, and she realised she had been holding her breath the entire time. Automatically, she gasped, her pent-up breath passing her lips with a soft whoooosh.
Lavender, meanwhile, pointed a quivering finger at the empty patch of stone where Draco had stood moments before, voicing the thought Hermione was certain was racing through everyone's mind: "Bloody hell!" she managed to choke out. "There is no way that you are getting me even... even near that! I won't!" She stomped her foot. "I won't do it!"
"Then I can perform the spell with you standing as you are", Dumbledore said resignedly, chanting the two now-terrifying words of the time travelling spell before Lavender could even make a run for it. Hermione instinctively shaded her eyes again, letting out a muffled yelp as the powerful gust of wind actually slammed her up against the wall.
Lavender uttered a tiny shriek of surprise before disappearing in a radiant flash of light, and Dumbledore wearily trained his wand on Ron. "Next."
"Yes, I suppose Lav would murder me if I left her there with only Malfoy," Ron muttered to himself and anyone in the general listening vicinity. With a heavy sigh, he stepped forward and threw his arms out wide, as if offering himself up to Dumbledore as a sacrifice. "Er... Hit me," he joked weakly.
Hermione smiled feebly at Ron's upbeat attempt, but the smile vanished quickly, as Ron himself disappeared with a clap of thunder and a pulse of energy. She began to feel nauseous as Harry and Ginny faded into oblivion in the same intimidating way. Of course, Dumbledore had to save her for last. There were so many ways this spell could go wrong. She could end up back in the Stone Age, with Harry in World War I and Ron stuck hanging out with Godric Gryffindor...
No wonder no one was ever stupid enough to use this spell -
"Miss Granger?"
Somewhere, a voice called her name, but Hermione hardly noticed. If Albus Dumbledore hadn't been the man at the end of the wand from which the Impartus Infinitivum came, she would most definitely have flat-out refused to have anything to do with this cockamamie plan. Going back over half a century just to take down someone who was probably as smart, if not smarter than she was? Had she gone completely mad?
"Miss Granger!"
Hermione's lashes blinked rapidly, and she jerked back to reality to see Dumbledore standing expectantly before her. Trying not to let off how utterly terrified she was, she gathered every ounce of bravery within her and strolled into place in the centre of the now-charred Room of Requirement. "No turning back now, I suppose. Right, Uncle Al?"
Hermione swore Dumbledore's eyes twinkled then, the same old, familiar spark returned for the briefest of moments. How the man did it, she didn't know, but somehow, those mischievous blue eyes always reminded Hermione that stability still existed in the world. Balance. That, come what may, for every Evil to ever exist... there would also always be a Good. "A parting word, if I may, Miss Granger?" he asked.
I can't believe I'm doing this. Breathe. Exhale. Plan. Plan, do I even have a plan? Are we going to arrive and just finish off the seventeen-year-old Voldemort immediately? What kind of hare-brained plan is that? What am I doing?
Maybe she did need a little bit of Dumbledore's oftentimes cliché wisdom. "Sorry, Headmaster, go ahead, please", she said, offering the man a weak attempt at a smile. "It just might keep me from running off long enough to get sent back fifty years in time."
Dumbledore effortlessly conjured up a chair and slowly sank into it, very much in the way a very old person would customarily do. Except Albus Dumbledore had never before acted like a very old person. The effects of performing the same intense spell in rapid succession were clearly taking their toll on the aged, grandfather-like man.
"Miss Granger—Or, should I say, Miss Dumbledore Nefertari", he began in an inconceivably conversational voice, "I feel that you should know: Over the past few days, I've given you more information on the young Lord Voldemort than I have anyone else."
Ah-ha! Finally, a smile stubbornly pushed its way to Hermione's face through her poorly-weaved composure. "I wondered why they had all finished reading so early!" she exclaimed, smoothing her forties-style, hour-glass cut robes and carefully lowering herself to the floor. She rested her chin on top of her hands, elbows on her knees, and stared at the Headmaster in interest. "And why was I the only one privy to that, may I ask?"
The Headmaster studied her closely. "I trust your mind, Miss Nefertari," he began carefully, mulling over his words, "But, most of all, I trust your heart. Lord Voldemort has, directly or indirectly, brought much pain to each one of your lives - you and Harry in particular. You've seen the destruction he has caused, the people he has murdered, the lives he has ruined and is ruining... You've seen all the things he has done as the man Tom Riddle chose to become. You've read as full a biography on Tom Riddle's first seventeen years as I could have prepared for you. You may have already drawn whatever conclusions you have drawn on the cold, solid facts."
Dumbledore's voice hitched and hardened suddenly, as it typically did when he was about to make a point. "But you should know, Miss Nefertari, that at no moment in Tom Riddle's years before and during Hogwarts, none at all, did that boy have a happy childhood". He lowered his intense gaze on Hermione. "No one is born evil, Hermione. It is their lives that make them so."
His words briefly passed through Hermione's ears, but she wasn't sure what, exactly, he meant to imply by them. Was he saying that Lord Voldemort wasn't evil? She doubted that. And anyway, why would he bother telling her this?
In any case, she had more pressing problems to concern herself with. The shrunken trunk in her right robe pocket had begun to dig sharply into her leg, and she speculated, with a minor amount of distress, whether her friends had already gotten tired of waiting for her in the Room of Requirement fifty years ago and had left without her.
Fifty years ago. A random but rather ingenious idea, or so she thought, popped into her head. "Headmaster", she began excitedly, "if Harry, Ron, Draco, Ginny, and Lavender have technically been in the past for fifty years, now, wouldn't things in this time be different already? Wouldn't Voldemort and all the Dark Forces have been erased? Turned to dust?"
Dumbledore nudged his head toward the small corner window. "Nothing looks different, does it, Miss Nefertari?"
Quickly, Hermione straightened up and lifted her chin slightly to peer out the glass... and her heart fell, her tongue scratching the top of her mouth like sandpaper. The ominous black and unnaturally green thunderclouds, thunderclouds that could have only been spawned from an intense, powerful magical battle, were still generating themselves in the distance.
"You mean..." Her voice caught, and she sent a mystified glance back at the elderly man. "You mean, it didn't work?" Sweet Merlin. All this insanity, this extreme preparation, and it didn't work? That's it. Hope had died.
"Perhaps", Dumbledore simply answered cryptically. He smiled tiredly and slowly rose to his feet.
What is wrong with you? Hermione wanted to scream. Following his lead, she stiffly climbed off the ground and brushed off her dark robes. Maybe I'm just a little tense right now, but should you not be as concerned about this as I am? Oh, this is such a bad situation —
"Perhaps all is lost", he continued thoughtfully. Slowly, his lowered intrigued eyes on her and stepped back, raising his wand slightly in preparation for one last time travel spell. "Or... perhaps they just need you, Miss Nefertari."
Hermione actually felt her blood chill at whatever connotations that statement held. A short, dry laugh quickly escaped her lips. "Well, that's just lovely, Headmaster, no pressure at all then," she said, her voice wavering against her will. Yes, oh yes, now, without a doubt, she felt that morning's breakfast in her throat. French toast and bananas, that's what it had been. And with a touch of maple syrup, just enough to give it that slightly sugary taste—
It suddenly occurred to her how truly frightening it could be for one to see Albus Dumbledore's wand pointed directly at him. Or her. Dumbledore's gaze was tremendously solemn, his wand by now fully at the ready. "I have no idea what you have planned, Hermione—"
That makes two of us.
"—nor do I want to know. But... Remember this, Hermione, remember this despite whatever you may be considering: Sometimes the most difficult battles are not won by fighting."
Hermione's eyes narrowed in confusion, but before she could even begin to contemplate whatever that was supposed to be telling her, a brilliant flash of white light blinded her, rained down around her, her feet yanked off the ground, and the world as she knew it went completely black.