Chapter 4: Friday, September 21, 2001
"Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires." Charles Caleb Colton
For just over a month, Draco and Hermione went to Malfoy Manor daily to research. Spending the majority of their time in the dank, chilled dungeons that wound like labyrinths under the property. The Library of Dark Secrets, as they had jokingly begun to call it, had been thoroughly turned over and there wasn't a book, journal, or artefact on its shelves they hadn't gone through.
Volume after volume, tome after tome, of books practically leaking Dark Magic. Every spare second was spent in the wingback armchairs, spread out on the floor, or crouched over the displayed jewelry case and frustrations ran higher each day that passed without answers. It was clear that a potion to reverse the effects had been started at some point, but it looked as if there were ingredients that Snape had been unable to procure in order to complete it. What those ingredients were however, was a complete guessing game.
"This is mental," Draco mumbled, standing up from his spot on the rug and walking to the chair Hermione was in to show her the journal he was reading through. "Look at this! They were using people as test subjects, experimenting on them with different curses and potions to see what the effects were before using them!"
"For a group of wizards who really hate muggles, they sure like to take their ideology and conform it to fit their needs." Hermione replied, glancing over the page Draco had held out to her.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"That's how muggles test vaccinations and new medications. That's how they test everything, really. They use mice first, usually. Once that shows promise, they move onto larger, more intelligent animals like monkeys. Eventually, they move on to human testing; control groups of people who volunteer to be test subjects… Things like that."
"Volunteer to be test subjects?!" Draco said in horror, his eyes growing comically wide. "Why on earth would someone voluntarily choose to be tested on?!"
Hermione shrugged, "Money, desperation, a general feeling of wanting to help. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons someone would."
Draco grimaced, his upper lip curling in disgust as he shook his head and sat back down. His knees drawn up to his chest and his back against the cold, stone wall. "Not sure I'd ever be desperate enough to allow someone to test random curses on me."
"You've also never lived in complete squalor. Plenty of people would do just about anything to make enough money to get by…" Hermione said, trailing off. She narrowed her eyes at the page of the journal she was reading, "Draco, look here…"
She handed him the book and waited, knowing he would see what she had been interested in. That was something she really enjoyed about working with Draco Malfoy. Although his snarky attitude and constant need to crack irritating jokes about everyone around him got on her nerves, he was sharp as a tack and could intellectually spar with her when no one else could.
"The water of fortune?" Draco asked, looking up at her, "What the fuck is the water of fortune?"
Hermione frowned, "I don't know. But it's been mentioned several times in this journal. Do you think that could be the missing ingredient? Maybe what Snape couldn't get his hands on?"
"Possibly." Draco said, "It's really quite irritating that the tosser had to go and get himself killed. If we could just talk to him then I could figure out how to brew… Oh my… Oh my fucking God. I am such an idiot!"
"Well yes, generally I would agree. But what specifically are you an idiot about today?"
"Cheeky tart!" Draco spat at her, giving her a narrowed glare, "We can just talk to the bloody man!"
"Draco, darling, I think you've spent too much time in the dungeon. You need some sunlight or something because you're sounding absolutely mental."
"Shut up!" he snapped, jumping to his feet. Both journals fell to the ground with a soft thud and he stepped over to the jewelry case and carefully opened the glass surrounding it. He pulled out a strange golden stone encased in sparkling metals that hung from a thin chain. The stone seemed to catch the light, making the surface glitter and shine in the dim room and Hermione quickly found herself unable to look away from it. Draco held it up, letting the stone dangle from the chain as it swayed slightly from side to side as he inspected it.
"That's beautiful," Hermione gasped, standing from her armchair and closing the gap between them to inspect the necklace. "I've never seen anything like it."
"Of course you haven't," Draco said, the smug self-satisfied look on his face that he got when he knew the answer to something she didn't. "It's nearly one of a kind and has been in the family for centuries."
"The runes…" Hermione said, looking at the ancient runes etched into the sides of the stone. "Time, Protection, Purpose, Travel?"
"It's a time stone," Draco said.
"A time stone?" Hermione repeated, disbelief coating every syllable. "Draco, time stones are a myth."
"Time stones are rare, which makes people think they don't truly exist. This could be the only one left, I have no idea. But that's what this is."
"The only person to have ever been known to even see one of these was Nicholas Flamel. You expect me to believe that you've had one of these sitting in your cellar all this time and no one's used it to change the outcome of well, everything?"
"Had my father known what it was, I'm sure he would have tried," Draco said, a distant anger lying under the calm in his voice. "But considering that man was an absolute moron, safe to say he wouldn't have realized what it was when my mother asked him to store it with her precious jewels."
"Your mother?"
Draco nodded, "Black family heirloom. Passed down several generations. It was stolen once, if I remember correctly, but somehow ended up back in the hands of my mother."
Hermione tore her gaze away from the stone and met Draco's eyes; they were swimming with excitement, a look he rarely showed. She pondered the implications for a moment. Having had experienced time travel in short bursts years ago, Hermione had made the decision after third year, that it was not something she'd want to be involved in again. Bu this was Harry's life on the line! This was dozens of muggleborn-turned-dementors lives on the line. If she could go back to when it all started, back to the first war when the Order was developed and accepting help from a defected Severus Snape…
She sighed, rolling her head on her shoulders and said the one phrase she knew Draco was positively dying to hear her say, "I think you're right, Draco."
Draco beamed, a smile brighter than one he had ever shown her before. "Of course I'm right! Now, all we have to do is find a vessel for the curse, extract it, and make our way back to figure out how to eradicate it."
"Oh, is that all?" Hermione said, the new piece to the puzzle only serving to further overwhelm her in the amount of things they needed to figure out.
The next night, Hermione and Draco had finally discovered the ritual that would allow for them to extract the curse from Harry's person. The only difficulty being that it needed a living vessel. They could not simply trap it in an ancient artefact or magically sealed bubble; it would need to be passed from one vessel to the next.
The more they pieced the process together, the more daunting a task the entire thing seemed. The ritual had to be performed under a full moon, which meant they had to wait until October, seeing as the September full moon had already passed. It required a blood sacrifice of the living vessel who would be taking on the curse and a third party to be present to continue the casting of the spell once the curse had accepted its new vessel. On parchment, it was straightforward. In practice however, they knew the obvious danger was there.
If it worked, Harry would live. He would awaken and they would be successful. However, the vessel would then be cursed and the time frame became very real.
"Are you fucking insane?!" Draco cried, nearly throwing his quill at her as he launched his notes across the table. "Have you gone completely around the bend?!"
"Draco, you know I'm right!" Hermione argued, "You know there isn't anyone else who has a magical core strong enough to take in the curse and survive!"
"Justin is a muggleborn-
"Justin is still recuperating after nearly being severed in half! Or did you forget how badly he was injured? He won't survive! And if he does, it won't be long before he's turned! Do you think you could look anyone in the face if that happened? Could you look Pansy in the face and tell her that you volunteered her boyfriend to be cursed and he turned into a Dementor?!"
"Granger, we'll find someone else!"
"When?!" Hermione shouted, slamming her palm against the wood of the table, "Harry is dying and the next full moon is just a fortnight away! If Harry can hang on that long, it'll be a miracle! You know I'm right!"
Draco clicked his tongue a few times and ran his tongue over the front of his teeth before nodding, "Let's see it then."
"See what?"
"The equations, Granger!" he snapped, "The bloody equations! I know you've worked it out already! Let's see them!"
Hermione huffed, pulling the parchment out from under the journal she was reading and handed it to him. He was right, of course, she had already done the equations. Hermione had already converted the reading of her magical core into a complicated arithmancy equation that gave her a rough estimate of time before she would begin to lose her magic and transform.
"Just over two years," she whispered. "I would have a little over two years to figure it out. That would be plenty of time to get the answers we need."
"And if we don't get the answers, you'll be turned into a Dementor and I'll be killed."
Hermione smirked and shrugged, "A sacrifice I'm willing to make."
"You're a right bitch sometimes, you know that, don't you?"
Hermione sighed, "Draco, you know I'm right. We're running out of time and options are very limited. If Dolohov is using this curse again, and we don't know how to reverse it properly… A lot of people are going to lose their lives. And the Death Eaters will either gain an entirely new army of Dementors, or we lose everyone around us to painfully slow deaths. This is the only way."
Draco stared at her, his face pinched in thought. He jammed a hand through his hair and his shoulders sagged in defeat, "After it's removed from Potter, you'll go back. You'll go back, find out what you can and get insight on the missing ingredients and come back to this time before that two years is up."
It wasn't a question. Draco was giving her an order, and she understood what that meant. He was taking the responsibility of what would happen in her absence. He knew what was on the line and he was making sure Hermione understood it as well.
She did.
Three hours, half a bottle of firewhiskey and four different texts on ancient ritualistic time travel later; Hermione felt both confident that the plan they had would work and also that somehow, it would implode completely. She was confident that the extraction would work. Curse extraction, while not usually used to remove a curse off a living person, wasn't unheard of. Infact, it was part of the job of a cursebreaker.
Time travel with an ancient and incredibly rare amulet that just so happened to be sitting in Malfoy Manor, on the other hand? That had her nerves worked into tight coils.
Hermione wasn't blind to Dark magic rituals, she had spent a lot of time studying them after the Battle of Hogwarts. After spending nine months searching for Horcruxes, feeling completely lost and terrified, she never wanted to feel that uneducated on a subject ever again. She had been blinded to Dark Magic and what it entailed. Hermione knew defensive magic, better than most if she were being honest. She knew about creatures and beings and beasts, knew how to dispel Boggarts, Doxies and Pixies. She had a wealth of rudimentary knowledge on the topic of Dark Arts, but she was ignorant when it came to the really Dark magic. The stuff they didn't teach in Hogwarts. The books that were so Dark, they had been removed from the Restricted Section or the library at Grimmauld Place.
It was this niggling fear that she was treading, once again, into uncharted territory that had her wishing desperately to talk to Harry.
She supposed that was why she was sitting at his bedside, half drunk at almost midnight. Hermione and Draco had returned to the Shrieking Shack around eight that evening, drank and debated what the best course of action would be and she had asked him to cover for her. That she needed to come see Harry.
Hermione held Harry's limp hand in her own, casting a charm to look at his vitals, as she always did when she visited. They were holding strong, everything except for his magic. His Magical signature had dropped again, and she frowned at the symbols. She waved her wand again to get rid of the hovering information.
"I turned twenty-two the other day, you know," she whispered, reaching her free hand out to brush some of his wild hair from his forehead. Her fingertips lingered on the lightning bolt scar before returning to her lap, "It was weird that you weren't there, shoving cake down my throat."
The first few days that Harry laid unconscious, Hermionefelt silly talking to him. She encouraged everyone else to do it, knowing that Muggles swore it helped coma patients. But to do it herself, when there wasn't evidence it was helping? It felt silly. Tonight however, she needed her best friend, so she talked.
"Blaise misses you. I'm glad he's finally coming in every day to see you and his spine is almost completely recovered. Regrowing a spine should be impossible, but Malfoy's rather brilliant at things like that. Don't tell him I said so, though. Wouldn't want his head to grow anymore…."
She squeezed his hand, a sad smile ghosting over her features.
"Do you remember third year, when we used the time turner? I'm going to time travel again. We've figured out a way to extract the curse from you, but we don't know how to get rid of it yet. I think they knew though, your parents. Sirius… Remus… Draco thinks Snape is the answer, but I don't agree. Snape was brilliant at potions, he wouldn't have written down half a recipe. There's an ingredient mentioned that I can't find anywhere. In all the research I've done over the years, you would think I would have seen it somewhere…"
Hermione leaned forward, pressing her elbows into her knees and pushing her hands through her massive hair. She sighed, focusing on the slow rising of Harry's chest as he breathed.
"But then, I had a thought…" Hermione continued, "Do you remember the essays Remus had us do in third year? Of course, you probably don't. I'm fairly certain it was extra credit, and I may have actually written yours for you… Anyway, we were to give a report over a silly story of his choosing. Do you remember? I believe you got Jack and Beanstalk. I remember Ron had Hansel and Gretel, I thought that was funny because it's about eating… Most of the stories he assigned were muggle. Mine wasn't."
Hermione tucked her bottom lip between her teeth, chewing at it absently as she usually did when lost in thought. She could practically hear Harry telling her to stop gnawing at her lip before she chewed it off. She smiled sadly again and took his hand in hers once more, continuing her thoughts aloud.
"The missing link in the potion that I haven't been able to figure out is called 'water of fortune.' Odd, isn't it? The story that Remus assigned me in third year was called 'The Fountain of Fair Fortune.' I wrote the essay in twenty minutes, I don't really even remember what it was about. But for some reason, I can't get it out of my head. Harry, I think Remus knew. I think he knew what was happening, even back then, during the first war."
She furrowed her brows together as her hands began to knead the muscles of Harry's arm, attempting to massage the atrophy from his tightened muscles. She worked her thumbs in pressured circles as she gnawed on her bottom lip, lost in the memory of that silly essay and the complaints the entire class had given.
"He always did everything with purpose," she whispered. "I wish he was still here. He would know what to do."
Hermione prattled on for more than an hour, talking aimlessly to Harry's sleeping form. She spoke softly, hoping that she wouldn't invade his mental state too much, if he were able to understand what was going on. She wondered how angry he would be if he knew what she was planning to do. If he knew she was going to act as the living vessel to absorb the curse and work against the clock to find a way to fix it. Hermione chuckled out loud at the thought.
"You would be cross with me," she confirmed. "You would be so cross with me. But Harry, I can't let you die! Not after everything we've been through together, after everything we've fought for! You should be here to see it through! You're the-boy-who-lived and I'm just-
"The brightest witch of our age," Ginny's voice came from the doorway and it was only then that Hermione realized she had been crying.
"Gin…"
Ginny crossed the room and pulled Hermione away from Harry, wrapping her in a tight hug. "Draco told me everything," she whispered. "He told me what you're planning on doing."
"There isn't another way," Hermione said.
"I know. Do you think we'll know? Will time keep passing while you're gone?"
Hermione shrugged her shoulders, "It's hard to say. It's a rare amulet Ginny, there's not a ton of recorded uses. In theory, this timeline just sort of… stops? And when I come back, if our theory is right, I'll return to the same place I left, at the same time to resume the timeline."
"That's barmy," Ginny said on the end of a heavy breath. "I can't wrap my head around it. But you and Draco are the two smartest people I've ever known, so I trust you know what you're doing."
Hermione crept into the library, sighing in relief when she found it empty. Being three in the morning, she expected the house to be silent, but it rarely ever was. She sat on the floor in front of the bookshelf in the corner that had a collection of odds and ends on it. Old books that had no real value to their missions, journals written in handwriting no one recognized, loose bits of parchment and muggle vinyl records that had been found amongst the wreckage of Grimmauld Place.
Justin had been the one to suggest they hold onto the records. He had even gone as far as risking his neck in the earlier days of the war to go into muggle London and purchase a record player. Several of the occupants of the house had tinkered with it until they were able to get it to work and occasionally, they would enjoy the music they had found.
Most of the records were typical of what Hermione knew to be popular in the 1970's, and a few from the earlier decade. But there was one album that she always sought out when it was late and the shack was quiet, aside from the soft snores of the Order members who were living there. With deft fingers, she plucked the worn cover from the shelf and smiled, staring down at it. The white cover was worn and frayed a bit around the edges, on the front read two words, embossed into the cover: "The Beatles".
Hermione pulled the vinyl from the cover and placed it on the record player on side two. She tapped it with her wand and waited in anticipation for the one song that has always lifted her spirits. Ever since she was a young child and her father would play the album over and over, singing every word to her as they made breakfast or rearranged his model aeroplane collection together. Listening to the album made her feel closer to her parents, even though they were long gone now. Whether still in Australia, or dead, she wasn't sure; Hermione had mourned them either way. But these quiet moments, late at night when no one else was around, when she needed to hear words of comfort she waited for the light voice of Paul McCartney.
"Blackbird singing in the dead of night. Take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise…"
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a/n: Reminder that the story is pre-written so updates will come every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
Also, fear not, Remus and the gang will be making his appearance soon enough.
Mega alpha love forever and always to Mayghaen17, you are the best human I know. Thank youuuu.
Thanks for reading, please remember to leave a review!
xo
