Minerva McGonagall was not a witch used to feeling nervous, but the task before her was something she had never faced before. In fact, she felt so unqualified to administer the news she had to bear, that she had invited along Lily Potter, a middle-aged mother who always seemed to have the right words. Lily Potter, who was now staring at her expectantly, waiting for her to ring the doorbell.
Gathering all the courage that she supposedly possessed as head of Gryffindor, Minerva rang the doorbell, and waited patiently.
When Emily Granger answered the door, she was expecting the pizza delivery man, not two women who she knew from another life.
"Hello there, Professor Potter, and was it, er, Professor McGonall?" Emily did her best to seem polite, but she was rather obviously thrown off by their presence. They did not drudge up pleasant memories for her.
"It's McGonagall."
"Ah, of course. Well, um, come in, why don't you?"
She seemed unsure, and Lily couldn't blame her, she knew exactly what kind of pain and memories they were evoking by showing up here, unannounced.
Once all of the women were settled in the kitchen, and tea had been politely offered and politely declined, Minerva began to speak.
"Now, I'm just going to get right to the point. There has been an appearance at Hogwarts, of a girl who is the spitting image of your daughter, and at the same age she would be. We've run every test we could possibly think of, and everything points in one direction, that being that she is your daughter."
As the deputy headmistress had been talking, Emily's face had grown paler, and a look of abject horror had crossed her face, and which was now turning to anger.
"How dare you come to my house, and spout these lies! Do you think it's funny to toy with a mother's grief?" She hissed furiously.
"Emily, you know me, and you know that I wouldn't be here unless I was absolutely sure that it was your daughter." Everyone, even the mother of a muggleborn witch who hadn't made it through her first semester at Hogwarts, knew the story of how Lily Potter had lost her middle child. Emily supposed that if there was anyone who knew what she was going through it would be her.
She sat back in her chair, and her eyes got a far away look. Just as Lily feared that Emily would be too hurt to consider coming to Hogwarts, the middle aged women asked, "Can- Can I see her?"
When Hermione woke up, it was with hunger and extreme confusion. She'd been ready to start on her reports, and then she'd felt a sensation not unlike apparition, and now she was here, in the Hogwarts infirmary. She couldn't remember for the life of her how she'd gotten there, and she didn't like it one bit.
She sat up, and looked to each of her sides, glad to see that the rest of her friends were here with her.
"Oh good, Ms. Granger, you're up."
Hermione looked at Madam Pomphrey with confusion, she hadn't been 'Ms. Granger' since before the battle of Hogwarts.
"About that Poppy, could you tell me exactly how we got here?"
Madame Pomphrey looked just as startled at her use of first names as Hermione had been with last, she noted with confusion.
"Actually, we were quite hoping you could tell us that."
Standing in the door of the infirmary, was a wizard who looked quite like Albus Dumbledore, except that Hermione had been a Dumbledore's funeral, and so she knew that it couldn't been him and she couldn't think of any benign reason for someone to impersonate him.
She reached for her wand, only to find it missing. "Who are you?" she demanded, realizing quickly that something was very, very wrong.
"I'm the headmaster of this school, Albus Dumbledore, I'm sure you remember me from your first year."
"Don't be ridiculous, everyone knows that Albus Dumbledore is dead, are you a deatheater?" Hermione demanded.
"I've been called many things my dear girl, but a deatheater is not one of them" The Albus impersonator said.
Hermione did not lower her wand.
"What's the lunch served today?" It was a secret code the order had come up with, during the height of Voldemort's reign.
"The second of July."
Hermione's eyes widened and her expression softened. Still she did not lower her wand.
"You still do not trust me Ms. Granger?"
"I attended your funeral."
"How very strange, as I did not."
To her horror, a soft snort escaped her. She had missed her Professor's strange sense of humor.
"Well, constant vigilance and all that." She defended lamely.
There was a lull in the conversation, in which all of the people in the room considered each other with cautious curiosity.
"Ms. Granger, I would ask though, how you are privy to such delicate information. And how you seem to be familiar with the teachings of one of my order members."
"I'm part of the order of course."
Still, they regarded each other cautiously, each wanting the other to be who they appeared to be, but neither quite ready to accept it yet.
"You'll have to forgive me for being so blunt Ms. Granger, but I think we have some common ground, in that I attended your funeral as well."
Now she lowered her wand, not being able to see any reason for a deatheater to pretend she was dead.
And so the two brightest wizards in all of Britain sat deliberating how this could be possible.
It was another two hours before the next of their party woke.
Luna sat up, quite dazed, and announced to the room, "I've always wanted to visit a different dimension."
"What do you mean by that Luna?" Hermione asked. The brunette had stopped questioning how Luna knew things a long time ago, and even accepted that Luna could be a clairvoyant. Although she still maintained that Trelawney was a fake, prophecy or not.
"Well, I think it's obvious isn't it? Everyone's auras are quite different here."
Hermione had considered that theory as well, and more and more it was seeming like the only possible explanation. Unless she was experiencing an incredibly realistic dream, which she doubted, considering she didn't think she was creative enough to imagine an entirely different dimension.
The only questions left now were how and why?
Relatively speaking, Ron and Neville woke up rather soon after that. Ron went immediately to check on his sister, and after ascertaining that she was fine, went to hug Hermione, who, although she knew logically that if she was fine he should be too, had been worried for her fiancé and soulmate.
Madame Pomphrey eyed their black marks with interest. Soulmate tattoos were rare now, and black ones were even rarer. She was glad though, that these children who had met such unhappy ends in her world had found their happiness elsewhere.
Neville checked on Luna, who smiled and hugged her protector, staring up at him with an affectionate smile. None of their group could exactly define their relationship, just that they loved each other, and that was all that needed defining really.
"When do you reckon Gin and Har will wake up?" Ron asked the ravenclaw.
"Ah, Mr. Weasley, Mr. Longbottom, and Ms. Lovegood, I'm glad you're awake, preferably we would wait until your friends were awake as well, but I'm afraid that we must get this settled before news spreads too quickly." Dumbledore said, striding into the room and cutting off any response Hermione might have given.
Ron and Neville stared at their late headmaster, not a little flummoxed, while Luna didn't seem to think anything was strange. However, their nerves were calmed when they saw that Hermione didn't seem to think anything was amiss either.
"We'll talk with you, but we won't make any decisions until Harry is awake."
"Ah yes, that is something else I wanted to discuss. I'll have to ask your forgiveness, but I hope you understand the necessity of using occlumency to make sure you did not pose a threat?"
Hermione did not look happy about it, nor did Ron or Neville for that matter, but she had to admit she would have done the same in his situation.
Taking her silence as acquiescing, Dumbledore continued on, "I've identified Ms. Weasley of course, however your other friend has strong mental shields up. We've not been able to identify her, and I'm afraid that I really cannot allow her to stay here much longer without knowing if she is a threat."
The brunette seemed to miss the last part of the professor's explanation, instead focusing on the not being able to identify The Girl Who Lived part.
"You mean Harry's not alive here?" she asked it softly, it was one of those statements that were so world altering, that one could not say them too harshly for fear of breaking the world altogether.
"My dear girl, none of you are."
And so their world broke.
For Hermione, it was easier. She knew the theory behind parallel universes. She had long ago accepted that they might exist. She knew that her other self's death would not affect her, and was probably what made her existence here possible in the first place.
That is to say, that it was easier, but not easy in the slightest.
What one knew, and what one believed are two very different things, and though the young witch had spent the majority of her life reconciling the two, current circumstances proved enough to sway even lifelong habits.
Accepting her own death was one thing, in the way that teenagers believed they could never die, simply because teenagers didn't die.
Accepting her friends was something entirely different, because as a soldier she knew how easily and quickly and unexpectedly death came to those she loved.
But really it wasn't as if they were really the dead. Her soulmate, the Ronald Weasley she knew, was alive and well with his arm around her shoulder. But that didn't stop her from thinking about how a Ronald had died, and some version of Molly and Arthur and the twins had grieved for him.
Perhaps it wasn't easier, because brilliant witches tend to understand things too well, and bring that burden upon themselves.
For Ron, it was hard to imagine a world without his friends and in which none of anything he had ever done had really happened. He wondered if his existing in this universe made his nonexistence for six years real, and if there was another Ron somewhere, who had lived a totally different life than him. He hoped that there was, and hoped that a Ron had grown up without Voldemort and had kept all his brothers.
His brothers. Were his brothers alive here? Surely whatever higher being that controlled them all could not be cruel enough as to have two different universes in which George existed without Fred.
It was hard for Ron because hearts that are too big tend to feel too much.
Neville, perhaps, was more concerned for his friends than he was for himself. He never expected much, and so he didn't get hurt easily. He knew where Ron's mind was, and he knew how Hermione would overthink it all, and he worried for them, in the way that friends do.
He took solace in knowing Luna would be the best able to adapt.
Neville worried for others, and didn't think of himself because that's how people who are not used to being thought act.
They didn't tell the headmaster about Harry. For one, he would not believe them. For another, they knew Harry would want to introduce herself, before taking charge.