First Turn: from December 29, 1996, to July 2, 1996.
"Ah, there you are," Dumbledore said. He was waiting for her at the school gates holding the same brown schedule book, though it was now months before he had given her the other copy. He took out his pocket watch and smiled at her. "Ten on the dot. You'll want to put that in your book."
She blinked at him, then took out her copy of the schedule book and a ballpoint pen (because, really, that was so much easier than keeping track of ink and quill). December 29, 1996 back to July 2, 1996 at Hogwarts gate. 10 in the morning. Prof. Dumbledore waiting. He was beaming at her when she looked up.
"Professor McGonagall is quite excited to begin," he told her, leading the way back up toward the castle. "She was against it at first, of course. The idea of disrupting your schooling like this is an odd one—no, don't tell me why. I'm sure I'll come up with it eventually." He twinkled down at her.
He went on as they walked. He was quite tickled, it seemed. She'd shown up in his office three days after Voldemort returned at the end of her fourth year, given him the book and answered a few questions very vaguely (and the rest not at all). She'd left, fulfilling duties she wouldn't tell him about, and he'd read the schedule book through, wondering why he would choose to send her back in time so much, and then decided that his future self knew what he was doing. He had told Professor McGonagall about the book but hadn't let her look inside of it.
"Hello, Miss Granger," Professor McGonagall said when they arrived at her office. She was packing a few last books into a tartan carpetbag, which obviously had an Undetectable Extension Charm on it similar to the one Hermione had used on her school bag to fit all her belongings into it. "Are you ready to go, then?"
Hermione nodded, not sure what to say. The professors seemed to be taking it in stride that she was here ready to study, sent back from just after Christmas. And meanwhile her other self was at St. Mungo's while the Healers sealed her guts back in. She shivered.
"Are you alright?" Dumbledore asked, giving her a concerned look. He had her schedule book tucked under his arm.
"Yes, sir. Fine." She resettled her back across her shoulders. She was a bit uncomfortable, as she was dressed for Hogwarts in December instead of July, but not incredibly so. "It's just a bit odd to think of it all."
McGonagall and Dumbledore shared an amused look that she didn't like one bit. "I'm sorry, Miss Granger," McGonagall said. "It's just that, since I learned that you would be joining me this summer, you have since turned up three times to meet with the headmaster about different projects. I daresay you'll be getting a fine tan during our time this summer."
Hermione smiled, feeling thoroughly out of her depth.
Professor McGonagall came from a very old Pureblood family. She was the last in a long line, and had therefore inherited quite a bit, including a rather large estate in the Highlands. Hermione couldn't say exactly where they were, only that they were farther north than Hogwarts.
There were three house elves, and Hermione was careful not to mention it. The elves were very excited to have their mistress back and even more excited to have a guest—and it was clear that McGonagall was kind to them, and that they liked her very much.
She got a tour of the house and a vague point around the grounds. Hermione would be in a large guest room close to the library, which suited her fine. Professor McGonagall's room was at the other end of the hall.
Hermione learned quite a bit about her Head of House in a short amount of time. She was an early riser. She wasn't precisely a bookworm like Hermione, though she did read quite a bit. She abhorred gardening but one of her favorite things to do was walk through the garden. Most evenings she took herself to bed by ten with a dram of good whiskey and either Transfiguration Monthly or Animagi Today. She also enjoyed teaching, tended to miss the school and the children on the holidays, and stoutly hated Pepper Imps.
The summer was a blur. They began with quite a long assessment of where Hermione was at in her studies, and then skipped on ahead. McGonagall knew most of the other subjects almost as well as Transfiguration, with the exception of Potions and Herbology.
When she wasn't studying or being tutored, Hermione was out on the grounds reading up on things. Professor Dumbledore had given her several books on Occlumency and Legilimency with the implication that if she learned enough from them he might be convinced to tutor her on them at some point. (She committed them to memory.)
Second Turn: from August 26, 1996, to July 2, 1996.
"Eight in the morning, the headmaster's office," Dumbledore said, comparing the book in his hand to his pocket watch and smiling. Hermione smiled back, dutifully filling in her schedule book with the details he'd given her.
"How are you, Headmaster?"
"Quite well. Did you have a nice summer?"
"It was very pleasant in the Highlands," Hermione confirmed, trying to keep herself from smirking. "Professor McGonagall has a very nice home."
"I am glad you two enjoyed each other; she is looking forward to it." He twinkled. "Now then," he said, clapping his hands together and tucking both book and watch into pockets. "We have a few hours before I need to meet you at the gate. Let's get you settled."
"Yes, sir."
She would be staying in the Room of Requirement this time through the summer. Dumbledore outlined a rough plan for her, mostly consisting of further study with full access to the Hogwarts library. He would catch her up on the Potions and Herbology bits that had been lacking, and they would work on Occlumency and Legilimency.
This time the summer wasn't so pleasant. She had to remain hidden from the teachers, though luckily they weren't around often. The hardest part was hiding from Snape, who was in at least twice a week to report on the Death Eaters.
And then the headmaster was wounded. She still didn't know what had happened, but Snape had been there. She'd never seen him move so fast as when he went barreling down the hall, running from the headmaster's office to his own potions lab, then back less than an hour later.
"I understand why I concocted this time-traveling for you now, Miss Granger," Professor Dumbledore said when she saw him next, almost two weeks after. He didn't explain himself or the comment; he just pressed her even harder to her studies.
At the end of the summer, she took her N.E.W.T.s at the Ministry with a few former seventh years hoping for better marks. She got O's on everything except for History of Magic.
Third Turn: from September 2, 1996, to July 9, 1995.
It was the longest she'd Turned back, and it was a mistake. She appeared in the headmaster's office again, and was immediately sick all over his carpet.
"You mentioned that would happen," Dumbledore said, cleaning away the mess with a flick of his wand and handing her a mint. "Apparently it gets worse the further back you go."
She wanted to suggest that she not Turn back any further than she already was, but the thickness of the brown leather schedule book didn't give her much hope. Instead, she accepted the mint and filled in the top line on the appropriate page.
"What will I be doing this time?" She tried to recall what she had done directly after the end of her fourth year. There had been a few awkward weeks at home with her parents, trying to decide what to tell them, and then Mr. Weasley had arrived to cheerfully bring her to Grimmauld Place, where she spent the rest of the summer trying to learn all she could about the Order and cleaning with magic.
"A bit more involved this time," he said, twinkling. She wished he wouldn't; it seemed like all he ever did. "You will be going by the name Charlotte White." He handed her a packet of documents and credentials that said so. "And you will be studying Healing in France."
"Oh," she said belatedly, blinking at the documents. Her N.E.W.T. and O.W.L. scores were there, but it was the wrong name. Charlotte Katherine White. Entirely different birth date. An orphaned half-blood. She'd been a Gryffindor and had a shining letter of recommendation from her Head of House.
"I'm afraid we're getting to the point of all this sending you back now, Miss Granger," the headmaster said without a trace of the twinkle. He steepled his fingers in front of him as he spoke, and all she could think about was how strange it was to see him without the withered hand. He had forbidden her to tell him before it happened, and had made sure she was a good enough Occlumens to keep him from being able to look into her mind and see if for himself.
She took a Portkey to France, where she was placed in a clichéd country cottage with other Healing students. There were six of them in the cottage total, but the others were infinitely better roommates than Lavender and Parvati.
It was an intensive nine-month course. The first month was mostly anatomy and health. Within the first week of that, almost all of the students had taken up some sort of physical fitness routine, and Hermione was no different. Her roommates went running every morning and she went with them. It was awful at first, but before long it was just part of waking up.
The rest of the course was more challenging. After they had the foundation, they began to learn spells. There was a week devoted to disease, another for magical disease. A week for general wounds, a second for magical wounds. They covered potions and poisoning, charms accidents, mind magic gone wrong, spell damage in general, and several weeks on magical treatments for general ailments. They had to learn how to brew standard healing potions (such as Blood Replenishing potion).
If she had been taking the course with Harry and Ron, she wouldn't have had time to do anything but keep up with her own work and keep the boys on track. As it was, everybody was in the class because they wanted to be a Healer, so nobody had to play task-master. It was a relief, and she felt a little guilty about enjoying it.
She met a very nice boy named Claude, and they didn't exactly date but they spent a lot of time together. They studied in the same room and quizzed each other before tests. He was a lot like her, bookish and quiet. He was tall, dark and handsome. And, when they had a moment of down time, he liked to kiss her. He was very sweet; he called her Lottie. They even took a weekend to go sightseeing in Paris.
When the course was over, Claude was staying in France for an internship with Rafael's, the French equivalent of St. Mungo's. She told him she was going back to England and promised to write but knew she never would. That broke her heart a little bit.
Fourth Turn: from April 12, 1996, to January 3, 1995.
The illness wasn't quite so bad as the last time, but it was still quite uncomfortable. She very nearly threw up.
When she had herself under control, Hermione wrote down the when and where, then Apparated to Hogsmeade and wrote that down, too. She met the headmaster at the Three Broomsticks, chatting about her course and what would happen next.
"Next is St. Mungo's, of course," he confirmed, taking out a new packet of documents. This time, she would be Jean Isobel Blakely, Gryffindor. Her marks from the Healing course and her N.E.W.T. scores were there with a shining recommendation from Albus Dumbledore himself. "Come," he said, obviously excited. "I have you set up in an old Order safe house. Not quite so secure at Grimmauld these days, but it isn't headquarters, after all."
He Side-Along Apparated her, and she very nearly threw up again. Side-Along Apparation was much worse than going by herself.
The flat was lovely. Small, but she was the only person who would be living there. (That would be strange after sharing a small house with five other women.) There was a bedroom and bathroom, a small kitchen, and a living room that was dominated by a large dining table and a small sofa.
The internship at St. Mungo's was a coveted one, and Hermione wondered how the headmaster had managed it. He was Albus Dumbledore, so that explained some of it, but not the part where she would have to be interviewed and evaluated before they accepted her. She wondered if that would be something she did in the future even though it was currently in the past.
Most of the time, she could keep her own timeline straight without much difficulty, but whenever the headmaster got involved she began to get a headache.
On the ninth of January, she began at St. Mungo's and she very quickly forgot to think about anything else. It was an exclusive program for a reason; only the people who could handle it were selected. She might not have chosen to go into Healing, but she thought she might have made the choice on her own anyway. It was fascinating, if gruesome at times. She liked that she was helping people while she developed her skills for the Order.
It was about midway through October before she realized that she wouldn't be going back to Hogwarts. Not as a student, anyway.
Fifth Turn: from January 6, 1996, to July 1, 1995.
It didn't seem to matter that the Turn actually passed less time than the last time she'd gone back to July 1995; it was farther from her place in linear time than she had been, and she felt it. Dumbledore had put her in the Room of Requirement to do the Turning, and it was lucky. The room provided a soft floor for her to land on when she collapsed, and a nice, big bucket for her to vomit into. She wondered why she vomited on arrival in July but not January.
When she cleaned herself up and wrote down the travel details, she met Dumbledore waiting outside the Room. He wasn't twinkling, probably because he'd heard her being sick, but looked in a pleasant mood. The students would have left for the summer recently, which meant that he had a school full of teenagers out of his beard for a few months to deal with the Ministry and recall the Order.
"Right on time," he said, putting his pocket watch back in his pocket. She smiled at him, maybe a bit tensely. She was still annoyed, though mostly at herself for not realizing that this little side project would turn into her life and take her away from her friends. She reminded herself that his end goal had to be important, or he wouldn't have done it. Harry was important to him, and one of her main functions had always been to look out for Harry.
"It helps when I get to make up the schedule as I go," she said, nodding at the brown leather book tucked under his arm.
He chuckled, then got down to business. This time, she'd be in America attending a summer seminar on Arithmancy at the Salem Institute. Immediately fascinated (Arithmancy was her favorite subject, by far), she eagerly took the packet of details from him. This time her name would be Jennifer Marie Belvue (she immediately decided she'd be a Jen), a Gryffindor, and her N.E.W.T. scores didn't change. Her Healer license and internship certificate weren't included, which made sense, she supposed. The seminar was open to anybody who wanted to pay for it, so there was no letter of recommendation for her to chuckle over.
"Well, we need to be off. You Portkey out in twenty minutes, and orientation starts in Salem in half an hour."
And that was the story of her first few weeks. The seminar was incredibly fascinating, and Hermione learned quite a bit. It took her a few days to get her mind back in Arithmancy-mode after spending so much time thinking in terms of Healing spells and anatomy.
At the end of the seminar, in mid-September, the paper Hermione had written with a few of her classmates was published in an Arithmancy journal. It was both wonderful and sad. She was proud of her work, but when she was back to the proper time of things, it wouldn't be her paper anymore. Jen Belvue and Hermione Granger were two different people.
She was invited to Alexandria by the professor in charge of the seminar, and, after a hasty international Floo call with Dumbledore (as it happened, the time difference made it quite early in Scotland, and Dumbledore was distracted, muttering a bit about Stan Shunpike while she tried to get him to answer her one way or the other on Egypt).
The Muggles believed the Library of Alexandria had burned to the ground in ancient times, taking priceless information with it. In truth, it had been erased from Muggle histories after the Statute of Secrecy went into effect. It was the largest collection of Wizarding history in the world; Hermione was in heaven.
Her part in the project began in the library, working with runes and Arithmancy, doing research. It was wonderfully fascinating, but when a colleague of the professor's asked her if she wanted to do some work in the tombs she could hardly say no to the opportunity.
The pyramids were interesting, to say the least. She spent a lot of her time squinting at hieroglyphics and talking about different rune languages. At one point, she caught herself writing her notes on the project in glyphs.
The shine wore off the project when she ended up trapped in a tomb for two days. Somebody outside had triggered a ward, closing the stone around her. She was luckier than Tim, the other student that had been brought from the seminar. He was crushed by the closing stone.
She had no food and only conjured water, but that was enough to keep her alive. She spent too much time in the dimness, though. Lighting her wand tip hardly penetrated the darkness of the tomb, and she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched by the dead, as if they were waiting for her to join them so that they could tear her to shreds. When the others finally reopened the tomb, she was a wreck. They sent her back to England, apologizing but obviously wiping their hands of her.
Sixth Turn: from December 5, 1995, to July 20, 1995.
The headmaster was not pleased when she turned up at Hogwarts when he thought she would be in Egypt for another month. He gave her a very disappointed look, consulted his schedule book again, and sent her back to July.
Again, Hermione was quite ill. Not as bad as the time before, but still sick. After the shock of the time in the tomb, she wasn't able to shake off the feeling of wrongness, either. She felt out of place.
The hardest part was going back to Alexandria. Not actually getting there—Dumbledore was very free with the unauthorized Portkeys, and, as the library was all about sharing information, she didn't need a special group or cause to go there. It was the mental part that was difficult. The pyramids so close, the desert sand everywhere reminding her of what had just happened.
She didn't have to bother with her official research this time, either. She gave them the name Liz Belvue (while anybody could enter, everybody had to register at the front desk so that they could keep track; some of the books were dangerous). When asked later, she told everybody Jen Belvue was her sister, which was why they looked so much alike.
Hermione loved the Egyptian robes. Loose, flowing cotton in light colors, and such pretty scarves. It was polite for women to cover their hair in public, but she often forgot when she was immersed in a book, and her scarf would end up trailing around her shoulders. Her lover, an Australian named Roger, thought it was cute.
The light robes proved to be very absorbent, too. One evening, she and Roger were reading in the bowels of the library, and she came across possibly the dustiest book she'd ever found. She had flicked away the majority of the dust with her head scarf, and spent a pleasant evening getting lost in the ancient book. It wasn't a nice book, to be sure. It was full of Dark spells, dissecting them, how they worked, where their power came from.
She was three-quarters of the way through the book, looking at a particularly gruesome illustration of the effects of a curse that had, thankfully, been lost to time, when it hit her. There was no build-up, no warning. One moment she was pleasantly relaxed, reading across the table from Roger, the next she was jolted out of her chair screaming.
The Healers later told her that the curse had flayed her back like a whip. They estimated forty lashes, all more-or-less simultaneous. She had almost no skin left on her back. It took two days to grow the skin back, all the while coating her raw flesh with a creamy potion to keep the infection away. It got infected anyway, of course; it hadn't been a nice book.
Her back was a mess at the end of it. The skin came back before the muscle and flesh underneath did. This was good, because it meant she wasn't raw and open to more infection. It meant heavy scarring, though. Huge, deep valleys showing clearly where each stroke had cut into her flesh.
At night, when she finally got out of the hospital, she would lay on her stomach across the bed, and Roger would trace his fingertips across the sensitive new skin. She knew he didn't know what to say. She could never tell what he thought when he was tracing his fingers through the new grooves. She didn't know what she thought of them.
Seventh Turn: from November 16, 1996, to December 31, 1994.
She hadn't put the book in her schedule. She'd completed the research Dumbledore had needed her to do at the library despite all the time in the hospital, so she hadn't brought it up. She knew it was immature and impossible, but she felt like Dumbledore should have known. He shouldn't have sent her back to Alexandria. He should have known she was in the hospital and visited. He was the headmaster; he should have known.
But he hadn't.
She was incredibly sick after the Turn. If she hadn't just spent weeks in the hospital for her back, she would've said it was the worse she'd ever felt. She'd been unaware when she was Petrified, and the cat incident second year hadn't actually hurt any more than Polyjuice usually did.
When she began to recover, after the first day, she was filled with dread. The fact that the headmaster knew her and had her brown leather book meant that she would Turn back at least once more, which meant she'd be even sicker.
"Feeling better, Miss Granger?" the headmaster asked her the morning after she'd arrived.
"Marginally, sir." It was strange how he could reduce her to fourteen years old with a look and a few words.
"We'll give it a few more days, I think," Dumbledore said, handing her a book. He took the seat by the head of the bed, folding his hands and striking up a conversation. She lay there, paging through the book he had handed her—it was a Dark book, full of Horcruxes; she could feel the tingle of the evil in the pages across her fingertips—as she listened. He was working his way up to a conversation she didn't want to have.
This time, she went to Spain to stay with a contact of Dumbledore's so unsavory that he actually warned her about him. Remy Bird had been banished from three different countries. The only reason he was still in Spain was that the government couldn't make anything stick to him.
"I wouldn't send you if I didn't think it absolutely necessary," he said quietly. He wasn't twinkling. Looking at him, she was sure he thought it was absolutely necessary. She didn't think so. All this preparation he was having her do seemed excessive; she'd understood the Healing and why he'd had her take her N.E.W.T.s, but the Arithmancy and Dark Arts research didn't make sense to her.
Remy Bird was as unsavory as she'd been prepared for and more. He looked normal enough—tallish with a bit of a gut, bristly eyebrows, and strange golden eyes—but there was something in the set of his shoulders that she didn't like.
The house was in the country, secluded. It was an ominous place. She had the room upstairs, and he had loaded it with all sorts of Dark objects just waiting to jump out and get her. The first night, she was almost killed by a Lethifold. Then there was the incident with the screaming tea kettle, the bear rug on her bedroom floor that tried to bite her leg off, and the issue with the lewd mirror in the bathroom.
She learned a lot from Remy in a very short period of time. Over the course of the first month, she mastered more Dark spells than she had ever wanted to know. She'd also learned to counter them, even learning some nifty Healing spells particularly applicable to Dark magic.
Hermione was just beginning to think that it hadn't been an awful idea to come to Spain, even though Remy was very unpleasant to be around, when the bottom fell out. Remy had been removed from Portugal, Britain, and Germany for organizing "Muggle Fights." He kept witches and wizards in cages and made them fight with their fists, teeth and any wandless magic they could conjure up. Eventually, he let them go, modifying their memories first, of course.
Hermione had assumed the Muggle Fights were a thing of the past, otherwise Dumbledore wouldn't have sent her to Spain. She had operated on that assumption until she'd ended up in one of the cages.
She was his prime brawler for six months. He gave her a wand—a stunted thing that didn't like her at all—to Heal herself after each bout, and often had her heal his other favorites. Her knuckles were constantly splitting, her nails broken. Her eye sockets were cracked open so many times, she had permanent black eyes despite the Healing.
He didn't let her go. She tried to escape twice and failed both times. She was punished for her attempts, too. Then, after six months, something broke. She'd been decent with wandless and nonverball spells in the past, but the time in the Fights had honed her ability with a few useful spells. It was exhausting, and she tended to feel like she was going to burst apart at the seams from the raw magic of it, but she finally took too many blows and the line was crossed. Her third escape attempt was successful; after she got out of her cage, she took a wand from one of the handlers and left ashes behind her.
She killed Remy with a wire meant for slicing cheese. He had a big, old-fashioned block of yellow cheese always in his kitchen, with the long wire strung between wooden handles close at hand. The man loved that cheese.
It was a very convenient tool. She'd entered through the kitchen and found him at breakfast. He'd been too surprised to react, and then he had drawn his wand. She was used to him, though; he liked to talk. She'd talked to him, gotten a good hold on the cheese wire, and then wrapped the slicer around his neck like she was going to strangle him. It sliced clean through his windpipe and other vitals, right down to the spine. She left it in him, climbed the stairs to the room she'd occupied. Her things were as she'd left them and she retrieved them, cleaned up, and then held her wand tight in her fist as she cast Fiendfyre to burn the place to the ground. The authorities would assume the crazy Dark wizard had lost control—they would probably be relieved.
Hermione wasn't relieved. She had nightmares, and she felt like she was going to be sick most of the time. She didn't feel guilty; if anybody had deserved to die, it was Remy Bird. She thought about the people she'd killed in the Fights, though. She didn't know how to think of herself as a murderer.
Eighth Turn: from July 18, 1995, to September 1, 1994.
Hermione didn't go to Dumbledore after Spain. She took what she thought she might need from Remy's, burned the place to the ground, and found a secluded place to Turn back. She was knocked flat on her ass immediately, and spent a day floating in and out of consciousness, the week after that feeling truly awful.
When she felt human again, she snuck out of the Muggle hospital some kind passerby had stuck her in and got herself a room at La Casa, Madrid's Leaky Cauldron. She hid out for almost a month. She got her notes together for Dumbledore and wrote him a long letter railing against all that he'd put her through, then burned the letter and tucked her notes away for later.
She stayed in Madrid for almost a year. She went over her notes from Alexandria again with a new frame of reference from what she'd learned from Remy. She practiced with Fiendfyre (not in her room, of course; off in the countryside) so that she'd be able to destroy the Horcruxes when they found them.
At last, she felt stagnant in Madrid and returned to London. It had been a year and she didn't dare stay away any longer. But, when it came down to it, she couldn't go back. The stupid time in the cage, the Dark Arts, and Remy were all on her mind, and she didn't think she could face returning to a war zone. She Turned back before Voldemort returned, feeling a bit ashamed about it even as she did it.
Ninth Turn: from September 12, 1995, to June 1, 1994.
In another part of the world, Hermione Granger was desperately trying to teach Harry the Summoning Charm, playing owl between her two best friends who weren't speaking to each other, and flirting with Viktor Krum. Here, Mariah Northup was working in an apothecary. She kept her head down, did her work and did it well, and spent a lot of time jogging around Muggle neighborhoods.
She didn't make any friends. She didn't buy any books. She didn't hardly eat. She just went about her business, trying not to think about the coming war. She wondered if she could just keep Turning back until she was as old as Dumbledore.
She probably drank too much.
Tenth Turn: from June 18, 1995, to January 1, 1994.
Hermione had almost made it. She'd been thinking a lot about the Triwizard Tournament, wondering if she should try to change things. She'd even gone so far as to draft a letter to Dumbldore about Barty Crouch, Jr. and the Portkey. She'd worked up an Arithmancy matrix, evaluating potential outcomes of her interference and… in the end, she hadn't interfered. Voldemort's Horcruxes made his return inevitable; might as well face the devil she knew.
Or run from it, as it were. She went back as far as she could stand the thought of, cursing her own chicken-shit heart.
By February, she was ready to be back in her own time. She was slightly less of a drunk, and she didn't avoid thinking about the war anymore. Actually, she spent a lot of time thinking about it, building an Arithmantic matrix and feeding it variables until the contributing equations took up reams and reams of parchment.
In March, she got a job in Wizarding radio to pay the bills (mostly because the hours-to-pay ratio was good and it sounded kind of interesting), providing the Muggle-born perspective for a talk show. The general skew of the whole thing was to be informative of different ways of looking at social problems in the Wizarding world, and she found herself doing a lot of research on Wizarding class divisions and employment, all sorts of things she wouldn't have thought about otherwise.
In August 1995, the radio program was "cancelled." The studio was burned to the ground in an attack by Death Eaters. Hermione spent almost a week holed up in her flat trying not to have a nervous breakdown. She Turned back when thinking of doing anything else made it impossible to breathe.
Eleventh Turn: from August 30, 1995, to March 1, 1994.
Hermione disappeared into Edinburgh. She kept her head down, trying not to think of what she'd been doing the first time around (or any other time around). She didn't want to remember that this way the day this happened, or that person died. She just wanted to catch up to herself and move forward. She was furious with herself for reacting the way she had. Running away. Again.
Her flat was in a quiet Muggle neighborhood, a large house remodeled into six units. The houses on the same side of the block were similar set-ups, but across the street were detached single-family homes, newer developments. She was the only witch in the area, which suited her just fine. She still went overboard on the wards, but she relaxed enough that she only kept her wand in a specialized pocket of her shorts when she went jogging in the morning.
She took another job at an apothecary. She worked in the back room, no customer interaction. She prepared ingredients, wrote out labels for the bottles and jars, and kept the books. She worked Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning, and came in at her leisure either Satuday or Sunday afternoon to work with the ledgers.
She went by Samantha Barnes, Sam. The people who met her liked her, especially the potioneer (not a Potions Master, and he wasn't particularly happy about that lack) who ran the shop, but she made an effort not to stick out in their memories. Jack Boot, the potioneer, had a cousin at Hogwarts, and she tried not to think about it.
By January, Hermione's private research into the Horcruxes had reached a standstill. She knew more about them than anybody alive. The knowledge gave her nightmares sometimes, especially considering the amount of killing she'd done in the Fights.
The only way she could learn more would be to create a Horcrux herself, and that was decidedly not going to happen.
She put away her research, and closed the door on that particular project. Instead, she concentrated on all possible things Voldemort could have considered worthy of turning into those awful Dark objects. The list wasn't particularly long, but there were still too many possibilities. In the end, she put that project away, too; Dumbledore had the information needed to make any headway, not her.
Thinking of Dumbledore's cursed hand, she began to work on curse theory. It was Arithmancy-centered, breaking apart the bones of a curse (or, for her practical tests, simple charms) to have a look at the components. All spells could be broken down into runes, though it took some doing and wasn't particularly useful. Except if she could get it just right and use the runes to see where treatments could be applied, to investigate each rune and its reaction to the other runes that made up the spell, to find where the symptoms were coming from, which runes created them, and change the runes, break the curse from the inside out. It was a very backwards way of doing things—curse-breaking usually involved developing counter-curses or disarming the levels of a spell, not picking apart its bones. She'd always liked starting puzzles from the centers, though.
Then came the final Task, and Voldemort. Horror at Hogwarts! was plastered across the front page of the Daily Prophet, an article (and many, many more like it on further pages and in later issues) featuring scattered accounts of the event from students and other onlookers. It had been chaos; nobody knew what had happened apart from the fact that one of the champions had wound up dead. Mention of Voldemort and Death Eaters had been carefully kept out of the papers.
Hermione made her way to Dumbledore's office (and he was thoroughly appalled that she was able to make it to his office unnoticed in such a time of crisis) a few days after the return and gave him the schedule book. She felt almost… bereft without it.
Three weeks later, she arrived perfectly on time to attend the first meeting of the Order of the Phoenix since the Potters had been killed. Mad-Eye Moody answered the door and held her at wand-point until Dumbledore had been called up from the kitchen to approve of her.
"I invited her here, Alastor, just as I once invited you," Dumbledore said calmly, as if it had been his idea to include her. If he wondered how she'd known the time and place of the meeting, he didn't show it. She kept her face blank, her chin up, and her eyes on Mad-Eye's wand arm.
"Fine." He'd waited too long to say it, and they all knew it.
She followed them down the familiar narrow hall. Everything was darker and grimier than she'd ever seen it. Nobody but Sirius Black was in residence yet, though, and Black seemed to be caught between exuberance at being away from the Dementors and terror at the prospect of being caught out and returned.
Dumbledore took his seat at the head of the table, his magnificent magenta robes going blood-red in the dim firelight. She wondered if the room was kept dim for the ambiance of secrets, or if it was simply because the lamps around the room had yet to be cleaned out.
Mad-Eye took the last seat, so Hermione stood by the fire at the far end of the table from the headmaster. It was an enjoyable warmth, and it put her in a good spot to see everybody. Most of them were familiar faces—Mad-Eye, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Bill Weasley, the funny man with the top hat, Hestia Jones, Remus Lupin, Professor McGonagall, Hagrid. They were the old guard, those who had fought last time. Excepting Mad-Eye, they all had a raw, panicked look to their pale faces that spoke volumes about the trauma they knew came with this war.
Surprisingly, those looks made her feel better about their situation.
"Tom Riddle has returned to the corporeal," Dumbledore said, all traces of his grandfatherly persona gone. He was the wizard who had defeated Grindelwald and it showed.
"How?" Lupin asked, his voice hoarse. He sat next to Black at the far end of the table from Hermione.
"Dark magic," Dumbledore said, and she almost thought she saw the hint of a twinkle. He enjoyed the tense silence—all of them daring him not to give them more information—for the space of a breath before he continued. "Young Mr. Potter witnessed the rite in the graveyard. I ask that none of you ask him for details. Let the memory fade as well as it can."
"What's our move, Headmaster?" Black asked, his voice quiet, after they'd all had a chance to nod to Dumbledore's request.
"Severus has returned to spy for us. We'll be able to plan strategy when he brings back what information is to be had."
"You mean the information his Dark Lord wants him to give us," Mad-Eye growled. Dumbledore stared at him until the old Auror glanced away. Hermione noted that his magical eye was fixed on her, but she probably shouldn't have been surprised at that since she was the only newcomer.
"Until we have that information, we wait and we watch. Keep your eyes open. We need allies, but more than that we need information. Cultvate your old sources; find new ones. Be on the lookout for people who might be willing to join our Order, but nobody is approached until you clear them with me."
People along the table murmured their assent.
The meeting moved along into the details. The Weasleys would come stay at Grimmauld Place with Black, help to clean the place up and get it running as a functional headquarters. Mad-Eye would go meet with dear old Mrs. Figg to give her the latest means of contacting the Order and remind her to keep a close watch on Harry in the coming weeks. Hagrid would go to the giants. Lupin would go to the werewolves. Jones and Diggle (the man with the top hat) would start stocking the old safe houses.
"And what about her?" Mad-Eye asked, turning both eyes to her in a strangely squinty glare. Hermione looked coolly back at him, then flicked her eyes to the headmaster and raised her eyebrow in her best impression of Professor Snape.
"Ah, yes," Dumbledore said, smiling benignly. "I forgot you hadn't been introduced. This is Samantha Barnes. She will be our Healer."
"You work for St. Mungos?" Black asked. His hands were clenched on the edge of the table like he was ready to run, and Hermione smiled almost fondly at him when she remembered there was a clause in the St. Mungo's contract for Healers to report any dealings with fugitives.
"No. I work in an apothecary."
"You were dismissed?" Mad-Eye asked, his brown eye gleaming with something close to malice.
"I opted out."
"You opted out—" Mad-Eye began mockingly, but Dumbledore silenced him with a raised hand and a stern look.
"Enough, Alastor." His voice was calm. He glanced at Hermione before speaking to the table at large again. "Miss Barnes will also be brewing potions for us as needed."
"Snape got too much on his plate all of a sudden?" Black asked petulantly. Hermione resisted the urge to roll her eyes; she'd forgotten how petty the two could be about each other. The adults had been as careful as they could be about keeping the spats out of sight, but they hadn't been entirely successful.
"I said enough," Dumbledore repeated, now turning the stern look on Black. The younger man looked down at the table in front of him, frowning.
Dumbledore charmed the bell pull in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place to make her pocketwatch chime. It was a fascinating adaption of the Protean Charm that she wished she had the time to study—there were hundreds of potential permutations that could yield some interesting results…
She'd returned to her flat and stared out the window at the Muggles going about their normal lives for a long time. She had a bottle of red wine and she opened it, nursing a glass while she watched them.
The worst part about it all was that, by returning to Hogwarts and giving Dumbledore the schedule book, she'd basically consented to it. The horror, the scars, all of it. She'd accepted it, accepted that it would happen and become part of her past. The time she'd been Turning—and it had been almost ten years—was written on her skin, carved into her flesh and her psyche, and giving that book to Dumbledore had been the catalyst for it all. The paradox of it didn't even matter.
She had a light buzz going from the bottle of wine when her pocket watch chimed. She grabbed her kit out of the cupboard, downed a Sober-Up (a potion developed by the same distributor who thought up Pepper-Up), and went down the hall to the Apparition point.
Dumbledore waited for her alone in the kitchen.
"You don't seem to be in pain," she observed, working a complex little trick on her satchel—a favorite convenience, supple leather Extended and made Weightless—so that she could fold it down to wallet size and stash it the back pocket of her blue jeans.
"I'm afraid I have something horrible to ask of you."
He's going to ask me to kill somebody.
And he did, and if he had done it just a few weeks before she would never have given him the schedule book, paradoxes be damned.
She returned to her flat and dressed carefully. Her dragonhide boots, a plain cotton tank top, leather strips to wrap around her hands and wrists, a dragonhide vest. She'd developed an odd flair of Wizarding style in the past few years—adjusting to life in robes, acquiring items like the satchel and trinkets braided into her hair—that she removed from herself now. She wore nothing but the protective gear, her wand and a small knife strapped in a sheath on her left forearm.
Dumbledore had given her a name and address on a slip of parchment. Wendell (her father's name, some hateful recess of her brain reminded her) West. He lived in Bath. He wasn't a Death Eater, but he was a major financial backer, a loud voice among those calling false on Dumbledore and Harry.
He lived alone in an oppulant manor that spoke of old money, guarded by wards that hadn't been tended in decades. It was a matter of minutes before she was through them, the old spells believing she was a member of household and therefore uninteresting. Mr. West had fallen asleep in his office; she conjured ropes and bound him to his chair.
"Legilmens."
A once proud manor falling to ruins, dark and dust in all the corners. Crowds of robed and masked Death Eaters standing at attention in a moldy sitting room. Voldemort's reptilian face all harsh lines as he questioned those who returned late, one after another, sparing this one but killing that one. Mr. West handing over bags and bags of galleons with a smile. Mr. West begging to be allowed to wear the Mark and refused each time, but still bringing more money and hoping this time he would be allowed to properly join.
The memories flitted past, faster and faster. Mr. West had been new to the cause at the end of the last reign; he was trying to buy his way in this time around. He wasn't trusted, though. He had a Squib uncle who'd married a Muggle. He was also fairly dim-witted, or at least lacked the brains to see how he was being manipulated and misled. Voldemort was bleeding him dry, and then he'd be used as a scapegoat for something.
Hermione closed her eyes, cutting his mind off from hers. He gasped with relief, and she almost winced in sympathy. Dumbledore had probed at her mind a few times since she'd handed over the schedule book, not with the aim to hurt her but not particularly gently either; he wanted information that she'd promised not to give him. (It was a complicated situation.)
She used the knife to kill him, slitting his throat in one smooth movement. She felt it, as she'd felt all the deaths she'd caused in the Fights. It hurt. She could feel the magic leave him, the soul leave him. She gave herself a moment to mourn for it, to mourn for herself. She wondered if Dumbledore had any idea what he'd asked her when he gave her that slip of parchment, but she would never ask him; she had a horrible, crawling, itching, aching feeling that he knew exactly what he'd asked of her.
When the blood had stopped flowing from his neck, Hermione stood and put the knife back in its place. A quick sweep of the manor turned up no useful objects, Dark or otherwise. He had a beautiful quill set, but she knew better than to start collecting trophies. There was nothing useful to the Order, so she would leave it all. She even left the gold in the bottom left-hand desk drawer where he'd hidden it away for his next rendezvous with his Dark Lord.
She began with the body, casting the Fiendfyre and watching it all disappear into dark ash. First the wizard, then his chair, then his desk. Then the entire room was in flames and she moved down the hall. Room by room, floor by floor. And then she was standing out on the lawn, and the house was crumbling into dust just the way Remy Bird's much smaller house had in Spain. And then it was time to call the Fiendfyre back, the hardest part of working with the cursed flames, but she'd had practice.
When she left, the manor was no more than dark earth smoking quietly at the center of the overly green lawns. The Aurors would be on the scene within the hour, since that level of Dark magic sustained for so long would be shooting an alert through the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
She went back to her flat and took a very long shower, scrubbing herself until it hurt. Then she got out of the shower and slowly reassembled herself as Sam Barnes. She wore a blue-black feather, a raven's, under her hair at the back of her head, the tip of the feather tickling the nape of her neck and poking out at the collar of her robes. She braided the hank of hair over her left shoulder behind her ear, tying it off with a bit of colorful string hung with a silver Muggle charm in the shape of a crescent moon. She had beads on a twist of hair back towards the crown of her head on the right side, small beads of all colors. When her hair dried it would be wild with curls, and these little touches made her look more exotic, like the wild hair was a choice instead of a nuisance.
She wore a robe from Alexandria, peachy-salmon colored, unadorned, flowing. It was open down the front and had wide sleeves. She wore a cream tank top beneath with a square neck and khaki shorts. Sandals. The scarf she would have had over her head in Egypt, a gauzy teal thing, hung loose around her neck instead to hide the top of the scar from the Department of Mysteries.
When she'd finished dressing, she realized she had nowhere to go. Dumbledore would have left Grimmauld Place hours ago while she was poking her way through West's pathetic wards. She couldn't go to him at Hogwarts, not least because it was past three in the morning. She couldn't write him, first because she didn't have an owl to carry the message and second because that would be creating her very own incriminating evidence after she'd so carefully burned the rest of it.
Sighing, wishing she could erase the day in its entirety, Hermione opened another bottle of wine and watched the sun rise.
In August, there was another meeting. The table had been expanded to fill most of the kitchen, benches and chairs found in an attic or spare room. Hermione arrived late—she didn't want to talk to friends who thought she was a stranger—and ended up standing by the fire again. Within moments, she was joined by Professor Snape, who ignored her.
The strangest part had been walking in past the line of Weasleys, her younger self, and Harry standing along the banister. She remembered it, watching the mysterious witches and wizards of the Order of the Phoenix gather. She remembered the small witch with beads and braids in her mass of hair, wishing that she'd be able to own the rat's nest as well as that some day.
Oh, the irony.
Hermione refocused, looking down the table. Familiar faces had filled out the ranks—Bill and Percy Weasley, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Tonks—as the summer went on. There were unfamiliar faces, too; those that arrived by Floo and left the same way, carefully secret from the children watching the door. Their numbers were small compaired to the Death Eaters, but they held key positions, brought important talents to the table, as it were.
The discussion at all the meetings was dominated by the Department of Mysteries and the Hall of Prophesy. Guard rotations, the wisdom of leaving the prophesy where it was, what was Voldemort doing regarding the prophesy. She wanted to shout at them that it didn't matter, it would be broken within a year's time and one of them would be dead, but she held her tongue.
Dumbledore motioned for her and Professor Snape to follow him out of the room at the meeting's end, and they did so. They passed Fred and George on their way up the stairs, and she carefully kept her hair between their eyes and her face. Dumbledore placed himself between her and the first bedroom on the right as they passed, and she recalled that that had been the room she shared with Ginny.
The library was musty, full of cranky books and damp curtains, but the chairs weren't uncomfortable. Faded Slytherin green, the apholstery gone lumpy, but they were still a step up from leaning on the mantle in the kitchen. The headmaster settled in the chair closest to the empty fireplace with a pleased look. Professor Snape took the chair opposite, leaving Hermione to perch awkwardly on the center cushion of the sofa.
"I felt we should make a proper introduction," Dumbledore said, smiling benevolently at them. She raised her eyebrow at him, realized she was doing her Professor Snape impersonation, and stopped, throwing a nervous glance at the professor. He seemed to be too busy not-quite-sneering at Dumbledore to notice her.
"As you know, Miss Barnes, Professor Snape is our spy. As such, it is likely that he will be the one you tend to the most. Severus, this is Samantha Barnes, our Healer."
Professor Snape looked her over critically, face impassive. She got the impression that she fell short, in his eyes. He'd always looked at her like that, though, so she didn't bother reacting. "Miss Barnes," he said after too long to be exactly polite, tipping his head ever so slightly.
"Professor," she responded, turning back to the headmaster but giving him a careful look out of the corner of her eye. He looked exactly as she remembered him, fish-belly pale wrapped up in black wool. The choice of frock coat and trousers spoke of a Muggle upbringing the way her tendency to wear blue jeans under her robes did; she hadn't realized that before, but it hardly changed things. From a Healer's perspective, she could see that he was overtired, stressed, and needed a few hearty meals. There was a very slight tremor in his hands, but she couldn't be certain if it was a lagging sign of the Cruciatus Curse or something else. Not nerves, surely.
"I think I'll leave you to get to know one another. You'll be working together quite closely—I expect you'll be helping our Severus with the brewing before the summer is out, my dear. It might be a good idea for you to give him access to your home, I think."
Hermione nodded. Professor Snape didn't like Black and Black didn't like him; it would remove both awkwardness and antagonism if they could limit the time they spent with each other. The professor especially wouldn't appreciate waiting in Black's kitchen while he was hurt.
"I will see you both Tuesday next."
They murmured their goodbyes, and Hermione realized that she was nervous. This was Severus Snape, Potions Master, Death Eater, spy. She wasn't afraid he would hurt her. She was nervous that, as a spy, he would realize who she was. She'd been very careful that didn't happen so far, especially coming into contact with people who could know her so regularly, or nearly regularly. She'd added more beads and charms to her hair, started thickening her eye liner to give the impression of a different shape to her eyes.
"So. Miss Barnes. Or is it Healer Barnes?"
"Just Sam," she corrected. "Most everybody calls me Sam. And, no, definitely not 'Healer.' I've never been employed as a Healer."
"What are you doing as a Healer for the Order, then?" he snapped. She wanted to frown at him or roll her eyes, but she took a different tack. She gave him a gentle, patient look and hoped it would get on his nerves.
"I've been offered several positions as a Healer, not the least of which came from St. Mungo's."
"Too good for them?" He was aiming for haughty, she could tell. She smiled, which made him frown.
"The entire purpose behind my training as a Healer was for the benefit of the Order. If I were to take a job at St. Mungo's—or anywhere else, for that matter—as a Healer, the hours would quickly prevent my usefulness. And there are certain stipulations in the contracts at St. Mungo's that would hamper my—providing services—to vigilantes. So instead, I work at an apothecary; predictable hours, you see. That leaves me with plenty of time to be at headquarters for meetings, to tend to any need that arises, and such."
So far, she'd been called once to sort out Fred when he'd Splinched himself trying to Apparate out of the kitchen with a platter of cakes he wasn't supposed to have, but that was it.
She was hard to read. Yes, there had been a moment of panic when the headmaster had departed and she'd found herself alone with him, the Death Eater in their midst, but then she was just… calm. Pleasant, almost.
She has a hell of a bedside manner.
They talked. He asked her about the apothecary and her brewing, trying to decide how annoyed he should be with his employer for setting him an assistant. She asked him about his medical history and if he had any allergies. It was a very strange conversation.
Her flat was in Muggle Edinburgh, and the wards were ridiculous. If it hadn't been for the subtle touches of magic noting its maker, he would have thought Dumbledore had set them for her. He reevaluated his opinion of her, though that didn't say much. She was still an unknown.
"Here you are, then," she said, handing him a simple key, one of the small, modern ones for Muggle locks. "It will let you through the wards and the door."
The way she smiled cheekily as he took it made him think she was flirting with him, but the reservation in her dark eyes suggested otherwise.
He saw her the next day in Diagon Alley. He'd been to Gringott's, getting what he'd need for the next several months before the place was swarmed with students buying their things for the beginning of term. He'd left the bank, begun to make his way down the steps, and there she was. She left Flourish and Blott's, tucking a pair of thick tomes into the ever-present satchel (which they should not have fit into, yet did without even a bulge in the leather), and turned toward the Leaky Cauldron.
He watched her walk, watched the way she all but disappeared into the crowd. She was tense, though she didn't really look it. She radiated a sort of aversion to attention that he'd honed for himself years ago. She looked approachable enough, yet nobody would dare.
She's sharp and ragged, hardened at the center, he thought, matching his observations with those he'd made the previous night while they talked. Whatever she's been through, it's made her hard. Whatever brittle bits she was left with from the hardening have broken off around the edges and left this sharp, hardened thing. She used to be soft, you can see it in her infuriating bedside manner.
She's a weapon.
No, she can't be. She's a Healer.
… Where the hell did Dumbledore find this witch?
AN: Sorry for the enormous chapter of exposition... had to get it in. But now we can start getting into the meat of it.
Cheers!
— M