Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
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"It is being done, Master Regulus," croaked the old elf. "Mistress Cissy be taking the note and I be leaving before she speaks. Nasty black book be being easy to find and nobody be seeing or stopping Kreacher from switching it with Master's bad book."
Regulus stepped forward, taking the horcrux, and put a hand on his faithful elf's shoulder. "Thank you, Kreacher. You have done a great service to the House of Black." The little elf beamed, looking up with utter devotion at his young master.
"Now, my dear elf, I have one final order for you today. I order you to return to my mother. When you leave here you will not remember that you did anything today beyond passing a note to Cissy. You will not remember any word spoken here today beyond my asking you to take the note. You will not remember any person being here today other than myself. You will not remember where I was when I called you.
"In five days you will alter the family tapestry to make me appear dead. You will not remember doing so and you will not remember that I am alive. You belong to me and will follow my orders first – no order of my mother's will make you remember anything. These orders stand before any other and can only be changed by myself. Do you understand?"
As Regulus spoke, Kreacher's proud smile broke and he crumpled, eyes welling with tears and ears sagging in misery. "Yes, Master." As he spoke, fat tears began rolling down his cheeks and dripping off the end of his nose. "Kreacher be leaving and forgetting, Master."
"You are a loyal Elf, Kreacher. These orders will keep both you and me safe. I will remember your faithful service once this war is over. Until then, you must leave and forget. That is an order."
Kreacher bowed his head, and with a mournful wail disappeared with a louder than usual pop.
Hermione turned to Regulus with a look of furious confusion. Before she could form the words she needed to express herself, Moody spoke. "Good thinking, lad."
"Good thinking?! How is Merlin's name was that good thinking? It was cruel, that's what it was!"
"Hermione. Stop." Moody held up his hand to silence her before she could build up a proper head of steam.
"It is good thinking. Use your brain, girl! That elf is bound to follow orders given by any member of the House of Black. Do you understand? If Walburga asks then he must answer. He can not keep a secret from his masters. If he was not Regulus' personal elf then we could not have risked calling him at all. As it is, only Regulus giving those orders to forget anything about us and our mission is keeping him from telling any Black who asks what has happened today. Do you understand?"
As the old auror spoke, Hermione blanched at the understanding of just how big a security leak Kreacher could have become. She looked down in shame and mumbled "sorry."
Moody nodded an acknowledgement, then stamped his booted foot hard on the floor to re-focus the younger two on himself.
"Good. Now that is sorted I think we need to organize ourselves. Regulus, you need somewhere to live where you can't be found. Hermione, you need an identity that will integrate you into this time. Any ideas?"
"Fidelus" Hermione blurted, almost before Moody had finished speaking. "If you've got a suitable safehouse, we can hide it completely. Regulus and I can stay there and work on the Horcrux mission."
Moody looked thoughtful. "Can you cast a fidelus? That's Dumbledore level magic."
"What's a fidelus?" Asked Regulus before she could answer.
Doing her best to avoid slipping into lecture-mode, Hermione answered. "The fidelus charm is a very complex piece of magic, wherein a secret – a name, or location for example – is held within the soul of a single person. It is then completely impossible for any person to learn that secret without being expressly and willingly told by the secret keeper. Even Veritaserum and Legillimancy don't work to reveal the secret."
She then turned to look Moody in the eye. "And yes, I have experience casting the fidelus charm."
After the war, Harry had, in fact, begged Hermione to learn the charm. He was utterly exhausted by his adoring fans and even though Black Manor was almost impossible to enter into without permission from the owner, there was a constant crowd of well-wishers and paparazzi gathering by the gate. It seemed that a few Order members who had become secret keepers upon Dumbledore's death had become rather loose-lipped in the aftermath of the war.
Not one to back down from a challenge – especially one that tested her academic prowess – Hermione had found the spell in one of the texts she had liberated from Dumbledore's office at the end of her sixth year. It was not, in fact, such a hard spell to cast as she had been led to believe. Magically, any reasonably powerful witch or wizard could cast it. The reason it most people couldn't was that it was intellectually difficult, in that you had to have a complete understanding of the arithmancy, as well as how the spell components and accompanying runes worked. It was the perfect challenge for the brightest witch of her age.
Moody looked suitable impressed at Hermione's casual admittance to being able to cast such a difficult spell. "Fidelus it is. I have a safe house Regulus can use – it's not much, but it'll do. You can be secret keeper."
Hermione looked ready to protest but was once again silenced by a gesture from Moody. "No arguing. How long does it take to set up the charm?"
"I should be ready in a couple of days."
"Right. Until then, we need Regulus here to disappear. I don't trust those Blacks not to scry with his blood, and the only place I have that is that safe is the shack we started off in. Sorry, lad, but I think we need to head back there now."
Regulus grimaced. He was the Heir to the House of Black and the idea of spending a couple of days cooped up in that miserable shack was not something that excited him. He hoped that he wasn't expected to sleep on the floor – dying at the hands of inferi seemed almost preferable to that!
When they arrived moments later, Hermione did something that surprised both men. Once more digging into her beaded bag, she withdrew a small package and grinned smugly. A sharp swish of her wand and the package unfurled into a small tent. Regulus' mood instantly lightened and he proceeded through the canvas door to explore his temporary abode.
Moody didn't follow. He watched cautiously as Hermione walked the perimeter of the shack, waving her wand and muttering. Once she was finished, he raised a questioning eyebrow at the young girl. She blushed.
"Just our regular camping wards from the horcrux hunt," she explained with a shrug. "They kept us safe for months, despite being Undesirable 1 and 2, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to add them here while Regulus is staying."
Moody gave a short nod, but Hermione knew that he would be expecting a list of all the spells she used as soon as she had time to put quill to parchment. They followed after Regulus.
The tent was simple and not very big (by wizarding standards) but would prove more than adequate, and much more comfortable, for a couple of nights while Hermione prepared for the fidelus. There were two small bedrooms, each currently outfitted with a single bed. A shared bathroom lay between them. On the other side of the tent was a large open living space with a kitchenette at one end.
Regulus was currently occupying one of the sofas in the living space, his focus on the many bookshelves that decorated the wall. Hermione joined him while Moody satisfied his curiosity by poking his head into each room (and then all the kitchen cupboards).
"Not that I'm not grateful," Regulus began, "but why in Merlin's name do you have a tent in your handbag?"
Hermione shrugged, blushing lightly before she muttered "constant vigilance?"
Moody guffawed.
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Hermione had intended to stay with Regulus in the tent, however Moody was having none of it. He insisted that keeping a young, repentant Death Eater in hiding for the duration of the war was one thing. Doing the same to a girl whose only crime was idiocy was another. So, once satisfied that there was sufficient food to keep the Black scion happy until morning, he dragged Hermione back to his own home.
By the time they returned it was early evening and they went straight into the kitchen to prepare dinner. Hermione felt honoured when he pointed at a bowl of potatoes and grunted: "get scrubbing." He trusted her enough to prepare food.
Over dinner, Moody informed her of his plan to integrate her into wizarding society. He had not long received news that his grandfather's brother's great-grandson had died childless and that he was the closest living relative to inherit the family property.
Apparently, Moody's father's cousin had emigrated to New Zealand at the turn of the century and the two branches of the Moody family had lost contact with one another. In fact, Moody was barely aware that he had cousins in New Zealand, and now that side of the family was all gone.
He decided that Hermione was to be his great-grandniece. After the tragic dragon pox epidemic that had claimed the rest of her family, she was left with no family and little money so, after finishing her final year of schooling, she had sought out her long lost uncle in the hope that he would help her get on her feet.
Fortunately for them, the British Ministry considered the people who lived in the colonies 'backwards' and so considered their school documentation worthless. If someone were to emigrate to the UK, they were required to go to the Ministry and take their OWLs or NEWTs in order to gain 'proper' accreditation to be considered for a job.
This worked well as a cover for Hermione's complete lack of school documents. Moody (or Great Uncle Alastor as he now insisted she call him) insisted that there would be no trouble arranging for her to sit her NEWTs alongside the homeschooled British students at the end of June.
Hermione was not impressed at having less than two weeks to revise all her books and remember any differences in the curriculum. She did not want to risk her grades by mentioning any spell or theory that was not known of in the current time. With a sigh, she decided that at least it would be a good opportunity to get comfortable with the time difference in general before she had to meet anyone.
Her personal identification documents would be less easy to come by (legally, at least) but she was assured that it would be no trouble for his 'contacts' to arrange. Her new name would be Hermione Eglantine Moody, born 19th September 1959. She was less than pleased with her new middle name, but when she went to protest, Moody simply asked what was wrong with his mother's name and she meekly acquiesced.
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The next week passed incredibly quickly for the bushy haired time traveller. She had spent most of the first two days keeping Regulus company in the tent while preparing to cast the fidelus. Fortunately the Slytherin was more than happy to sit quietly and read while she carved out runes or calculated arithmantic formulae on scraps of parchment.
Once the spell had been successfully cast, the pair moved their studying into the living room of the small cottage safe house that Moody had donated for their base of operations. Hermione had a minor panic attack when she realised that there were only four days before her first four NEWT exams but had calmed considerably by the end of the day when her notes of time-related curriculum changes covered barely eight inches of parchment. She had read all the course books cover to cover and there were very few differences she was not aware of as 'recent innovations'.
She spent three more days reading and re-reading the course books, practising spells and huffing at Regulus' teasing smirk. He couldn't believe someone could get so wound up about exams that they had already passed. Much as Harry had during their years at Hogwarts, Regulus made sure that the witch took occasional breaks from studying to eat and socialize.
Unlike Harry, he had the perfect excuse to guilt her into a relaxed conversation over a game of Chess. He simply pouted that he had nobody else to talk to and reminded her whose fault it was. Although she quickly retorted that if it were not for her he would probably be dead by now, she would still place a bookmark in her current tome and allow the distraction.
So, on the morning of June 29th, a nervous Hermione accompanied her Grand Uncle Alastor into the Ministry for the first of two gruelling days of examinations. Unlike at Hogwarts, where for the most part there was only one subject exam per day, the small number of people sitting the summer NEWT session allowed for four subjects to be tested each day. Today she had Charms, Herbology, Arithmancy and History of Magic. Tomorrow would be Transfiguration, Ancient Runes, Potions and Defence.
Moody dropped her at the Wizarding Examinations Authority offices, where she was introduced to Madam Marchbanks as his grandniece. He then left for the Auror headquarters with the promise to meet her at the end of the day.
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Hermione was exhausted. She had just finished her last NEWT exam, the DADA practical, and she felt drained. There was a reason Hogwarts spread the exams out – she felt like she'd been run through a mangle and had the magic squeezed out of her. She probably shouldn't have shown off with her Patronus charm... using such high-level magic at the end of two days of casting every spell she should have learned over seven years of education was probably not the best idea.
As she was considering collapsing to the floor in exhaustion, Uncle Alastor appeared at the end of the corridor. He gave her one look before throwing the object he had been holding at her. Instinctively, she caught it. She may not have been a seeker, but she had trained with one. Looking at her prize she grinned in relief as she recognized a bottle of pepper-up.
Not being unaware that Uncle Alastor enjoyed testing her situational awareness at every opportunity, she carefully checked the contents of the phial before it went anywhere near her lips. Satisfied that it was the right colour, consistency and smell for pepper-up, she downed the potion and felt instantly better.
"Thank you, Uncle. I was feeling utterly spent."
"You won't thank me later, lass. You'll be feeling twice as bad when that wears off."
She grinned cheekily at the auror. "Oh, I know, but at least I have the energy to get home and collapse in a bed, rather than here in the corridor."
"Old Selly was mighty impressed with you. Said you were the brightest witch she's seen in a very long time. Mentioned you showing off with patronus charms, too."
Hermione blushed. She could hear the underlying pride in his tone and it made her heart swell. Somehow, in the last week, the cantankerous old man had become family. Changing the subject, she asked "Selly?"
"Madam Marchbanks. She was friends with my Mum."
They continued onto the lifts in silence. As the golden grates opened on the left-hand lift, Hermione almost had a heart attack. There, lounging at the back of the lift, were two very familiar faces. A much younger, healthier Sirius Black was standing, head thrown back as his barking laughter echoed in the small space. At his side, a young man who could only be James Potter.
In less than half a second, Hermione slammed her Occlumency barriers up to the maximum. She would pay for the extra magical exertion when the pepper-up potion wore off, but she could ill afford to break down now. The sight of James Potter, looking so much like her Harry was ripping her heart in two. Suddenly, after a very busy week, the fact that she had left her time hit her like the speeding Hogwarts Express. She would never see her Harry again.
She was barely aware of being guided into the lift, of the two boys trying desperately to gain her uncle's favour. She ignored Sirius' easy flirtation and simply rested against the wall, eyes closed, fighting her emotions.
James had looked concerned at her behaviour, but had quickly backed off with a rather impressed look when Moody had explained that "the poor lass has just sat eight NEWTs in two days".
Once they reached the apparition point, she barely reacted to his firm grip on her arm as she was side-along apparated home. As soon as she saw the familiar surroundings of the home she now shared with her Uncle Alastor, Hermione let go of her Occlumency and collapsed into a puddle of agony on the floor as her heart broke for the friends and family she had lost forever.
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A/N - Thank you to all my wonderful followers and extra special thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far.
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