Concurrent Existences
Chapter Two: Limbo
Again, lost and betrayed.
Quickly forgotten, quicker to fade.
Secrets lost, secrets found.
Lost in time, alone and bound.
"Petrificus Totalus!"
I just wanted to be left alone to read.
Hermione could not dodge.
Hermione could not dodge at all within the confines of the room. She inwardly cringed, closed her eyes and steeled herself from the incoming petrification spell.
Nothing.
What? Had the spell missed?
All the brunette had felt was a slight push back and nothing more. She quickly opened her eyes and scanned the room. Her eyes came upon Ron who still had the smug expression on his face with his wand pointed straight at her. The expression on his face though, it was really annoying, but it was also frozen.
The spell hit the Time-Turner.
Fear gripped Hermione's heart as she realized what had happened. Ron's spell had somehow petrified the Time-Turner. The Hour-Reversal Charm placed on the Time-Turner was somehow inflicted with the Full Body-Bind Curse. She quickly removed the chain around her neck and confirmed her suspicions. The sand within the glass was frozen. No matter how many times she tried shaking it, nothing happened. She began to calm herself down knowing that it would be futile to panic in this kind of situation.
"This isn't as bad as what I've faced before." She tried hyping herself up. This little mishap was nothing compared to the war she had been caught up in.
The witch finally calmed down after several moments. The effect of the Petrificus Totalus on the Time-Turner should wear off eventually, but she had never heard of Petrificus Totalus work on inanimate objects. She deemed it necessary to delve into this further and the first order of business would be to get out of this room, but not before some sweet vengeance.
Hermione never was a vengeful type of person, but the war had changed her. The war made her a more self-sufficient person, more independent and more strategic, but she knows it did not make her a better person overall. Losing her naiveté to war had brought out something from within her. She deduced it to just be the darker side people develop after going through traumatic experience such as a war. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PSTD is what muggles would have called it.
After three stress releasing low-blows and a snap of a wand, Hermione opened the door slowly to get out. It was as she expected, everything was frozen. Each and every person and item, all frozen in time.
Hermione quickly made the assumption that physics did not exist when time was frozen. This was made apparent by the fountain that had just stopped with water still in the air. She began a few simple experiments just to know more about the current situation she was stuck in.
The witch was able to move things around. She tried throwing a pencil, but as soon as it left her hand, it froze in mid-air. She concluded that objects could only move when in direct contact with her. This did not work on humans however since Ron had no reaction after getting hit three times in the groin.
One thought that scared her was the aftermath of the Time Room after the Battle in the Department of Mysteries. The Time Room had all the destroyed Time-Turners that all coalesced into one infinite time loop, rendering all unusable. Panic began to rise again, but she pushed it down.
The Basilisk, Voldemort and Bellatrix were all more scary than this!
Hermione took a deep breath before heading towards the Auror office where she could retrieve her wand. The walk only took a couple of minutes and locating her wand was easy enough. Her beautiful vine wood wand was just laying there on the counter, about to be catalogued when time froze. She quickly took her wand and apparated to Hogwarts. The brunette did remind herself to replace her about-to-be impounded wand with another fake though.
Hogwarts had an anti-Apparating and anti-Disapparating Jinx placed, but thankfully, Minerva had allowed her room to bypass that. Being a favored student to the new headmistress of Hogwarts had its perks.
Hermione re-materialized in her room. She had gotten away from that git, Ron, and it would be easy to prove to the Aurors that Ron had falsified memories. The only problem was getting out of this Time-Turner problem.
"I knew I should've gotten rid of you." She sighed while twirling and slightly glaring at the Time-Turner.
She did a swish of her wand before pointing it back at herself and casted. "Age Revelare." The Age Revelare spell was one of the simple spells to display a person's age from years to seconds. The spell would display digits that mirrored from one's own mind making it possible for any language to come out. The age displayed was correct down to the day, even including the Time-Turner aging during her third year, but the seconds weren't.
Not good.
How did she know? Well, it was because the seconds weren't moving at all. Her body was stuck in some pseudo time suspension just as everything else was. There was only one thing left to do at this time.
Research.
Hermione nodded to herself. There was no way to tell when the spell would end. The best solution she could think of is to try and figure out the inner workings of the spell herself. There should be some counter-curse. She thought about it for a moment and smacked her head.
"Finite Incantatem!" Nothing happened, the counter-curse for most general jinxes and curses did not work. "Well it was worth a try." She sighed heavily and begun to think what she should do first.
A grin suddenly split onto Hermione's face. The restricted area of the library! She would have free reign!
On the way towards the library she realized it had been a couple of hours since her last meal, but had yet to feel any hunger or even a need to go to the bathroom. She deduced that there was no need to eat or sleep since her body was in some wacky state of suspended animation. It felt a bit weird, but the situation she was in was beyond weird anyway.
No sleep, more time to read!
"Looks like my wish came true. If a bit round-about and bizarre." The witch smiled as she headed over to the library. Now she kind of hoped the spell would last a while, maybe a few weeks? There was so much she could do during this time with no interruptions what so ever. The time for peace and quiet had finally come to her! The time to browse whatever she wanted at her own leisure.
Hermione went through the wooden door that lead to the restricted section and began looking around. Ghosts, traps and whatever hidden surprises were all frozen in time leaving her undisturbed. The restricted section was well organized after browsing through a few shelves. A book on Time spells and Time-Turners were there, but she had no interest in undoing this accidental miracle right away.
The brunette took out several books and trekked towards the dusty desk. A quick Scourgify cleaned everything up nicely. She opened the first book of her small pile 'Wandless Magic: Advanced Spells'. The inquisitive teen wondered why this book would be in the restricted section, but did not ponder on it much as she began to devour the book.
A week passed.
Hermione was tidy as ever. Every time she finished a book, she would place it back where it belonged keeping everything orderly. Time was now unimportant to her and was thus ignored. She'd gone a little over thirty books and understood them all. The brunette did have a near eidetic memory and could remember most of everything she read. Application and testing would have to be done another day. Even though time was unimportant, the spell could still end at anytime if it indeed had a duration.
Magic books, story books, books of magical animals and every kind of book she went through, except for Divination. The Divination book was lucky to survive when she recalled Sybill Trelawney's face. Why it was even a branch of magic eluded her.
Worst subject ever.
The books on muggle history was another thing, but she didn't even want to get into that rubbish.
A month passed.
Hermione had no actual way of telling time. Nothing moved. The bright witch once tried to get a wrist watch, but sadly the hands of the watch did not move even when she touched it. The gears on the inside of the watch were still frozen in time even if the outside of the watch touched her. Only things she could manually move would actually move.
The girl began exploring Hogwarts in-between reading her books. Reading every single book was fine, but she needed some time to process a few of the details. Navigating Hogwarts was an easy task since she had already read 'Hogwarts, A History'.
The visit to her mentor, Minerva, was a slightly sad endeavor as she could see the distraught look on Minerva's face. Her professor was seated in her office staring down sadly upon the article released by the evil Rita Skeeter. She vowed to remember this. Rita Skeeter wouldn't get out of this unscathed. It seems that she had missed the newspaper that morning since technically only three hours had actually passed in real time.
Reaching over and slowly taking the article from the desk, Hermione began reading the dreaded article.
'Mud Sullies Gold as Hermione Granger Assaults Hero Ronald Weasley.' Her anger grew at the headlines, but continued to read. She had to be fair when dealing out her revenge against the nasty reporter. How nasty depended on the article.
'Part of the Golden Trio, Hermione Granger, has been reported to have assaulted Ronald Weasley in Hogwarts. Many bystanders heard Miss Granger berating Mister Weasley on why he wouldn't date her.'Hermione's eyes widened at how the story was twisted so much. There had to be a law against this! She would sue!
'As the fight escalated, the witnesses heard that Miss Granger had begun to blackmail Mister Weasley to go out with her or else she would expose him. The secret was never revealed.' Hermione was pretty sure that there weren't any students in the area either.
That nasty little beetle.
Mister Weasley gave a comment when we interviewed him after this altercation. I quote, "I don't know what got into Hermione lately. I knew she had a huge crush on me, but I can't cheat on Lavender. I just can't." Mister Weasley decided not to comment further after his heartfelt confession.' Kill. Hermione wanted to kill the lying git! No, she wanted to set him on fire! How could he? She would set them both on fire!
The newspaper was set ablaze before she could even read more. Apparently her magic could still burn things in close proximity to her. Her skill with wandless magic continued to grow as she practiced it day after day without fail. She concentrated on maintaining the flames so it would continue and fully burn and not freeze in time. She'd have to clean that up.
It was slightly eerie not hearing anyone speak or any sounds for several weeks. Hermione realized she hadn't even heard her own voice for a long while now. It looked like the time had come to begin researching on how to undo the dilemma she was in.
"I don't know if this is heaven or hell anymore." The brightest witch of her age sighed and began her trek back to her sanctuary, the restricted section. The girl began to wandlessly spin conjurations of fire, water, earth and wind around her hand. It was no wonder the advanced book was hidden in the restricted section. There was just too much damage that could be done if wandless magic was truly mastered. Even learning it was dangerous. She winced as she remembered burning her hand and cutting the other by mistake. She was glad she didn't try to practice in the library.
A year passed.
Over a thousand books had already been read. Each nook and cranny of Hogwarts had been searched and there was next to nothing about the Time-Turner. There was one book she found, but barely talked about anything she needed.
Hermione started to become frantic after the first three months passed without any success. She estimated three months anyway. She began to try and calculate time. According to her calculations by her 'words per minute' while reading a book and 'steps per minute' while walking around, it seemed to be three months. This time thing was starting to make her loony for even thinking about it like that.
Her expression slightly deadened when her stay in the perpetually frozen time had reached about a year. She enjoyed the peace and quiet and all the time to research, but begun to miss her friends and some interaction with people. Even began to miss the sexual assaulting idiot, well, before he got to that point anyway.
The restricted section had the very basics of Time Magic. Professor McGonagall's library combined with the former headmaster Albus Dumbledore had a wide range of interesting, restricted and forbidden magics. It was tempting to spend time reading the tomes, but it was not what she was looking for. She would have to go over all those juicy books in their office, but she wanted a way to solve the time problem.
One particular object did pique her interest though. A diary of Dumbledore that she found under Fawkes' perch in the headmasters room. It would have always been protected by Fawkes and by enchantments, but Fawkes was gone after Dumbledore died and time was frozen. She hadn't meant to find the diary, she was trying to see if there were any phoenix feathers that she could gather. For research purposes of course.
The smile the exceptional witch had while looking through the diary soon fell apart into shock then into disbelief. She had opened it to maybe find a couple of Dumbledore's signature spells or anything interesting, but not this.
The diary was enchanted and spanned back several decades to the time when the first Dark Lord, Gellert Grindelwald was still amongst the living. She was surprised that Albus Dumbledore, leader of the Order, would have possibly been a co-Dark Lord to Grindelwald if the altercation between his family had not happened. The part she was concerned about was more recent, the years that she and Harry were in Hogwarts. She had never truly realized how manipulative the headmaster had been until now.
Hermione had been a pawn from the very start. From start to end, it seemed everything was calculated.
'The hat was slightly more complicated to persuade. The hat had been created by the founders of Hogwarts and would not yield to any conventional magic. It had taken a lot of research and other means to manipulate the hat and all that would only work for a limited duration. The duration would last for only one student and I already have the perfect candidate.' Gryffindor was not even supposed to be her house, it was Ravenclaw, but he had manipulated the hat.
Hermione's heart began beating faster, but she had to know more. She read on.
'Placing a Compulsion Charm on most of the Gryffindor first years turned out to be easy enough to conjure. Miss Granger needs to be isolated in order to drift her towards Harry. Mister Weasley should be easy to maneuver as well. Another Compulsion Charm may be needed to anchor Miss Granger to one of them in the future, but that is still years to come. It is all for the greater good.' He had been controlling everything from the start. She flipped to another page.
'I can feel my end nearing. The curse that came from the ring that held the Resurrection Stone continues to kill me slowly, poisoning my failing body bit by bit even now. I have put another series of Compulsion Charms on Miss Granger to fall in love with Mister Weasley. I would have connected her to Harry, but I need him focused on the task at hand and his destiny. I hope that both of them will get deeper into a relationship so that Miss Granger would be fully tied to them even after the Compulsion Charm fades. I know it will fade slowly after my death, but I believe it will be enough time for them.' Apparently it had not even been teenage hormones. It had been a Compulsion Charm. A Compulsion Charm! Morgana, she wanted to burn something!
Hermione closed her eyes. She wanted to cry, but tears would not fall. She didn't regret the time spent with Harry and Ron. The adventures they had went on were the highlights of her life even if she didn't really want to go. Her problem was that everything had been a lie. Everything was orchestrated. She couldn't believe her life was always endangered due to an old man playing god. An old man who needed children to do his dirty work. She flipped the pages to the near end, not wanting to read much more.
'My time has come. I will have Severus kill me in order to push the plan forward and cement his role in the dark side. Harry will be the one to lead this age to the light to a new golden age for wizards and witches everywhere. The one last protection I have done for him is to place another Compulsion Charm on Mister Weasley and Miss Granger to sacrifice their life if ever Harry's life is in danger. I'd like to apologize to both Mister Weasley and Miss Granger, but everything I've done has been for the greater good. Perhaps I can apologize to them in the next world. I will see you soon, Gellert.' Speechless. There was still much of the past to read, but she could not bring herself to read another page. The infernal diary would be kept until she deemed herself ready to ready more of Dumbledore's machinations.
Hermione could not even bring herself to read another book for several hours. She cast a specialized diagnostic spell that came from Dumbledore's other custom spell books to check if there were any charms left on her.
Nothing.
All the charms that had been placed on her had faded soon after Dumbledore had died. It was no wonder she felt nothing towards Ron after the end of the Wizarding War. There was nothing in the first place. The utter bastard.
She sat in the corner of the restricted section of the library. She really wished she could cry herself to sleep. Instead, the brunette just stared blankly in front of her.
For the first time in her life, she felt stupid.
A stupid little muggleborn that had no place in a society run by purebloods. Sure, there were muggleborns and half-bloods here and there, but in the real hierarchy of things, they didn't matter.
She used to believe she had truly made a difference for muggleborns by helping the Order in the war, but how much of it was actually by choice? Would she even be part of the war if not for the machinations of the old man?
The Order, proclaiming their helpful and understanding stance on muggleborns, just how much of it was a farce? The Order, lead by Albus Dumbledore, a half-blood, also populated by mostly purebloods. Had Dumbledore placed compulsion charms on everyone while they were still young? If a person was under the compulsion charm long enough, they probably wouldn't be able to discern it and most likely be fully indoctrinated as they grew up.
Hermione laughed seeing the parallels.
How much of a difference did the Order and the Death Eaters have? A half-blood leader and a council of mostly purebloods. Voldemort had probably gotten the support of purebloods early on which is why Dumbledore had to take getting the support of the muggleborns.
Stupid.
So stupid.
There was no point in being sullen for long. There was still a lot of things to think about and that was for the future. Right now, she had no future until she could get time to move forward again.
Hogwarts did not have the answers. The girl smacked her head wondering why she had only been searching at Hogwarts when the world was ripe for the taking. She had not read everything in Hogwarts, but she had already gone over all the interesting material she could find. Wandless Magic, Elemental Magic, Dark Curses, Jinxes, everything she deemed important had been read. There was no way to master every single one of them right away, but with the base knowledge, the possibilities were endless. She could work on mastering the knowledge some other time.
Hermione contemplated on using Ron as live target practice, but decided against it. A target dummy though, she chuckled.
A year without needing any sleep, baths and food had been a blessing to Hermione. Dirt and grime did not cling onto her leaving her as fresh as the day time froze. The amount of training and learning she had done would amount to at least three to five years if she had done it in regular time. It was a curse as well, but she decided not to dwell on the fact.
The witch went to the common room one last time to look over her things. She had not been here for months since she had stayed in the restricted section. She moved towards the bookcase, the same bookcase Ron had slammed into. Her brown eyes zeroed in on the book that had smacked Ron's head and remembered that she promised herself to read it. Hermione decided to read one last book before a visit to the Ministry.
'Death and his Dementors'. She opened the book to look at the author, but there was none. Author name, publication date, all the information was missing.
Odd.
Hermione's interest was stimulated, even if it wasn't a spell book.
Age Revelare - Age Reveal
AN: Thanks for the reviews and pms! Decided to post up this chapter instead of waiting longer (I'll probably get slower and slower though x.x). Sorry for the ones who hate Time Magic, but I'll need to use it a bit. It might have been obvious from the 'Concurrent' part of the title.
I won't screw up cannon as much as I can though. I'll be working around it.
I do hope you enjoy this chapter even if it is a bit wordy. Not much interaction either, but eh, plot! Forgive me for grammatical errors too!
Questions, comments, constructive criticism and suggestions are always appreciated!
Edit: Errr, added a poem-ish thing like the first chapter. If everyone thinks it's bad I'll remove them. (They're kind of like mini-spoilers, that don't really spoil anything?)