Concurrent Existences

Chapter Three: Burning Time

Searching high, searching low.

Years flash by as time stops its flow.

Light at the end, destination in sight.

Years still burned, still alone in my plight.

'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 was not a spell book.

Seven years passed.

Hermione looked as fresh and clean as she did since the start of the time limbo. Nothing about her appearance had changed aside from a slightly aged look that her brown eyes gave off.

She had gone through nearly all Ministry records to search for a clue. The Ministry had no secrets to hide, from her anyway. The Department of Mysteries, the surviving areas of it, weren't so mysterious anymore. It was laughable how easy it was to get in a lot of the areas.

The brunette had gone through the whole Ministry just as she had gone through Hogwarts. Each of the Ministry's ten levels had been thoroughly visited. All reports, experiments and whatever else the ministry had to hide was open for Hermione to touch and read. She had almost set the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures ablaze after some reports, but decided against it.

Going through a lot of the Ministry records was mostly a big pain though. Her search wasn't so thorough because there were just too many useless records around.

The girl that was supposed to be around twenty five years old, if time had been moving, grimaced as she recalled a few of the reports that concerned her. The only report she had expected was the 'assault' charge that Ron had stupidly filed against her, but that was nothing compared to the other documents uncovered.

Gringotts Wizarding Bank had actually filed a complaint against her, complaint being a tamer word for it. In short, Gringotts apparently wanted her head. The report implicated all three of the Golden Trio, but Gringotts realized that a muggle-born without a family would be a good place to start with. Gringotts had asked for one hundred thousand Galleons as reparations or 'We will accept lifelong servitude as repayment'. Hermione gaped.

My bloody arse. Hermione Granger was not going to be anyone's slave. Burning the file along with the room was tempting, but she had opted to leave everything as is. The less impact on time, the better.

She was actually surprised how much she held back burning everything. She had learned how to cast Fiendfyre a while back from a dark spell book, maybe it was time to use it? She could cast the Fiendfyre and not concentrate on it, which would leave it frozen in time, then she could cast a lot of them that would go off when time resumed.

You're getting crazy, Hermione.

Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures had also filed a complaint against her for riding the bloody dragon from Gringotts. The file claimed that she had needed to pay ten thousand galleons in reparation as well as a full paid trip for ten bloody years in Azkaban.

No. Never.

Never would she be imprisoned in Azkaban without dying first or under her own terms. Hadn't she liberated the abused dragon from the goblins? Ungrateful pests!

These secrets were among the very base of what the witch had found out. Conspiracies, blackmail and every other horrible thing possible was draped all over the Ministry. The new Ministry, even under Kingsley, would not do much better than before. The rot was too deep to try to reform. It seemed as if Voldemort was on to something in wanting to destroy the Ministry, not that he was very smart about it.

Too inefficient. She would have done much better than that noseless snake.

Hermione was saddened by all the truths. Her own outlook had begun to turn darker after everything she had gone through. Isolation from when she was a child where she was first disliked due to her reading hobby and then feared due to her budding magic.

Everything in Hogwarts controlled by a manipulative old man who had Compulsion Charms flying out of his arse like the candy he offers.

Her parents still stuck in Australia without a care in the word, it wasn't their fault, but still. It's like she had no one. Nothing to hang on to. Harry, Ginny and Luna, how much of their friendship was actually true? Had they been inflicted with Compulsion Charms too? How much of Dumbledore's plans were not written in his damned diary?

Ignorance was a blessing.

Maybe being stupid wasn't such a bad thing. She shook her head. She wouldn't blame herself for the injustice the idiots that were playing game-master were doing.

The time she spent alone, all this time, didn't help her psyche at all. However strong minded a person could be, being alone for years had to take its toll somehow. The girl still had one thing to focus on and it was how to undo the time lock. Everything else she had seen would be put at the back of her mind, for now.

Everything and everyone would be dealt with accordingly. This is one thing she vowed to herself.

There was nearly nothing though, until she had actually visited the Time Room. Hermione didn't rush straight to the Time Room since she didn't know what the time distortions could do to her current state, but in the end she just had no choice.

Her time problem finally had a lead after a visit to the logs of the Time Room. Eloise Mintumble, the unspeakable, who had been the last tester and researcher for Time Magic. According to the buried report of 1899, Eloise Mintumble was able to go back four hundred years into the past for five days, but returned to the present four hundred years older. The case was not exactly what she was experiencing, but it was a variant. The Time Room had been no further help since the battle destroyed most other records.

Well, it was something at least.

The Ministry resources were exhausted. It was time to visit the Mintumble personal libraries and any other old family connected to the Mintumbles. The Ministry may have had several million records, but aside from the Department of Mysteries, there wasn't much knowledge to learn from the Ministry. It did take a long while to actually go through the documents at the Department of Mysteries. The brunette also didn't skip out on reading a lot of the reports from the other departments, but she couldn't really go through everything. She still went through most.

Knowledge is power. She was done with people manipulating things. Dumbledore, The Order and the Ministry could all go screw themselves, at least the noseless snake was upfront with his bullshit. Come to think of it, Voldemort was pretty upfront with all his plans. He didn't really outright lie to people.

The dead lord promised gifts to people that would follow him, soon after used Avada on them. It was said that death is a blessing, he probably took it literally. Oh god, she was identifying with a madman.

She sighed and dismissed her wandering thoughts.

After a quick visit to the records room, Hermione had the addresses she needed. Mintumbles, Crouch, Malfoy, Black, Rosier, Selwyn were just a few of the old pure-blood families that Hermione planned to visit. A lot of forbidden and forgotten magic were probably housed in their mansions especially the Blacks and the Malfoys, where Voldemort resided for a time.

Normally, it would be impossible to raid any pure-blood house. The magical protections and wards placed to protect the pure-blood properties vaporized any intruder. Luckily, the time freeze had frozen all magic flow making them all useless.

Hermione was just about to leave the Ministry when she saw the room she had been detained in years ago. Ron was still standing there, slightly bent over due to the low blows she had dealt at the time. The weasel's wand still snapped in half while still in his hand. She had contemplated several times to add more shots in, but thought better.

Not yet.

Several years without sleep, human contact and bombarded with truths would mentally age a person. Her age, mentally anyway, would be around forty or fifty by now. Merlin, she was like some kind of time hermit. The brunette couldn't help but face palm at the thought.

With a flick of the wrist, the table and two chairs that had been destroyed were restored instantly. Hermione's wandless magic leapt in bounds over the course of several years, but still had trouble with stronger spells. It occurred to her that the Dragon Heartstring used as the core of her wand would be the main catalyst for enhancing magic. She took a mental note to visit Gringotts and Ollivander's wand shop in the near future.

It was time to visit the darker side of things. It might actually be lighter compared to Dumbledore's hidden laundry and the Ministry's hidden garbage.

Only time would tell.

She knew she still had a lot of that.

The witch stuck in time found herself stuck in her thoughts when she reached the place she had been tortured all those years ago.

Malfoy Manor. The place where her scream echoed throughout the halls as the hateful dark witch carved into her arm. The place where the war truly took the toll on her. The place where she was up against terror-incarnate. It was sad how useless she was against the dark witch at the time.

Could she have a chance now? Yes. Maybe. The dark witch always looked as if something held her back. Whether scars from Azkaban, a mutinous wand she didn't own or whatever else there was. The brunette was actually somewhat glad that Bellatrix was insane, how strong and powerful would a sane Bellatrix be?

Bellatrix by far was the only other threat in the war, she may have been a bitch, but the dark witch had Hermione's respect.

Two sides of the same coin.

The brunette still couldn't get over the fact that the only true female Death Eater was bested by a healthy housewife. The one monster that haunted her dreams for months, killed by Molly Weasley when even Luna, Ginny and herself couldn't win against her all at the same time. Rage at Ginny being nearly killed? The only thing rage ever brought Hermione was her mind getting duller.

The witch left the area and began to look around to find the library. She wasn't here just to sightsee. Lo and behold, Draco was there in the hallway.

Her animosity towards Draco had dispersed especially during the last few months of the war. The young Slytherin became much more introverted due to the war and likely due to narrowly escaping a trip to Azkaban. Harry had vouched for Draco and Narcissa, apparently, that was all that was needed to get them cleared.

Lucius was another thing though. Stuck in Azkaban, at least the Dementors were being removed, well, supposedly.

The Malfoy library was huge. Before Hermione even could start perusing the books, she saw Narcissa seated on one of the chairs with a book on the table and a picture frame in hand. The three sisters were all happily smiling from a time when there wasn't a war, from a time when they were but students in Hogwarts. So much for Bellatrix being an evil monster from birth.

Hell, Bellatrix was prettier than Ginny or Gabriella, hands down. She stopped that train of thought.

I am losing it. Shite.

The white lily on Bellatrix's ear really did suit her though.

Fifteen years had passed since the time lock.

Hermione finally found her answer.

There was so much she had learned over several years since she left the Ministry. She chuckled as she recalled going over the pure-blood histories and family trees for fun. Many of the so called pure-bloods were not so pure after all. There were just so many secrets she had uncovered that it was ridiculous.

So much for Pansy being a pureblood.

There would be a lot of time to use the information for the future, if she could get time to move again. Hermione went back to the Gryffindor common room where everything started. The witch swished her hand and the chair moved behind her instantaneously and a book she had not seen in over a decade floated towards her.

Hermione gazed fondly at the new items that adorned her finger, wrist and ear. She had combined the knowledge that she had borrowed from the goblins and from the wand maker to create artifacts that acted as a wand. It was laughable that items such as these were not created before. They probably were, but lost in time.

Artifacts that augmented wandless magic making a wand unneeded. It was probably due to all the racism and hidden secrets that it was never discovered. She highly doubted the goblin and human wand makers would ever collaborate, in this century at least. She had created two rings, two earrings and two armlets. Each of the artifacts she had made contained a single strand of Dragon Heart String. She would have created more, but she could not handle more.

Hermione had also wanted to be symmetrical when wearing her newly created artifacts and thus created a pair for each. The problem was that the brunette had almost died when she put on more than three of the artifacts at one time. Keeping the raw magic from overwhelming and destroying her own magic core took a few days to contain and another few days to fully recover.

The time she spent recovering on the floor was not something she wanted to repeat. The itch on her nose she couldn't reach almost killed her. Maybe that was the reason Voldemort took his nose out?

The witch decided to wear one of each pair. A ring and earring on the right and an armlet on her left. It looked like she could only use three of them at the moment. She wondered if this was like holding three wands at the same time. Had anyone actually tried using more than one wand? What about tying more than one wand together using the special string? She still had many ideas, but ingredients were hard to find. The rest were locked in a vault that not even she could open easily.

It wasn't easy to create the trinkets either. It took over a year without rest or doing anything else to create what she currently had. It was trial and error, this type of thing wasn't her forte anyway. The brunette also realized she had a penchant for creating bombs since most of her early attempts at creating her pseudo magic foci ended up in a spectacular explosion, glad she tried that outside. Thankfully, it wasn't a subject at Hogwarts.

Hermione reopened the book that had been floating in front of her. Death and his Dementors. The tome was actually a compilations of stories surrounding Death and Dementors. It also included 'The Tale of the Three Brothers' in where Death created the Deathly Hallows during the thirteenth century. It had been dismissed as just another fairy tale by most, even by Albus Dumbledore, but Hermione had her own suspicions. Most fairy tales had some truth in them. This would be no different.

One particularly interesting tale in the book told a story dating thousands of years ago, before the Wizarding World was even established. The story spoke about how several thousand Dementors were in one place at one time. It was unknown as to why the Dementors converged on this particular area, but the dark entities continued to slowly coalesce into one space. Years passed with nothing being able to go near the area for miles. Nothing in the area grew, even animals that came close dropped dead after a few steps. When the mass of Dementors finally disappeared, it appeared.

Death.

The book insinuated how Death could possibly be some type of Dementor. It was unheard of, but after over a decade of spells, theories and knowledge, nothing was impossible to a degree. It was laughable how Hermione could believe that a being such as Death could even possibly exist. In retrospect, Kelpies, Unicorns, Phoenixes and Dragons existed, why not Death? It was another mental note on the brunettes 'To-Do-List', but it would be hard to accomplish. She had spent approximately fifteen years here with over thirty years of work done since she had no need for sleep and food. She had no need for a toilet either, which was kind of awesome.

The lone witch closed the book after a few moments of nostalgia. Things were never going to be the same. The spell she had prepared for the Time-Turner could literally unravel time. She could end up like Eloise Mintumble and age over fifteen years since time froze or end up aged to death. She estimated she'd be around her late thirties if it did occur. It was slightly amusing that the smartest witch of her age would be stuck in time for close to two decades.

Didn't that only happen to reckless people? Apparently, she was gaining attributes from Ron and Harry.

She did not think it would have taken this long, but there was no going back. There was no unlearning the knowledge that she had gained throughout her excursion. The stillness of the world had already gnawed at her mental strength, what was left of it wasn't much.

The brunette thought of the last words she had heard uttered towards her.

"This is no place for your ideals. You won't change anything."

The statement had been true at the time. A muggle-born with no family left and barely any close friends. A little girl with no authority, large sum of money or blood purity to throw around. The only thing she had back then was her love for books and her drive for excellence. Her love for knowledge granted her more spells in her arsenal, more strategies against enemies and more ways to survive. It was obvious why Dumbledore wanted her as a babysitter for Harry. It was a wise decision, but her finding out his machinations was probably not in any of his calculations. If it was, then the old man severely miscalculated.

What had changed though?

The only thing she had done during these frozen years was going over old tomes and trashy reports. Hermione smiled. She thought it was a smile since she had not made that expression for a while now.

Both hands glittered with arcs of dark, light and elemental energy augmented by her artifacts. She did not want to be arrogant, but she doubted even Albus Dumbledore and Voldemort could match her now. The two powerful wizards would most likely taunt and brag to each other before firing a spell anyway. It would also be one spell at a time. Being wandless made multiple spells possible.

What changed?

She levitated the broken Time-Turner with one hand.

Everything changed.

I've changed.

Focusing the magical energy through her new trinkets, she let the magic gather at the edge of her finger while laying out a complex magical algorithm in her mind.

All the research boiled down to this one moment. The activated trinkets hummed with even more power than before, the outline of a magical seal began to project outwards and the witch knew that it was ready.

It's time.

"Restitue Tempus Maxima!"

Restitue Tempus Maxima - Restore Time Maximum

The spell sounds simple, but the output of the spell depends on the efficiency of the Time Turner, the amount of magic being placed in the spell and also luck.

((Eff + Mag)^2/(Luck+1))

Yes, there's a formula! Engr classes are killing me.

AN: Thank you for the feedback! I hope that all of you will enjoy this one too.

Don't forget to wish Hermione luck with her spell!

Questions, comments, constructive criticism and suggestions are always appreciated!