Chapter Nine


"Here."

Hermione looked up from her desk to see Olivia, hand outstretched toward her, offering a key. "Thanks?" she said questioningly. "What's it for?"

"It's a flat in London," Olivia replied. "I've signed it over to your name, and I think now that it's your property, you should add Minerva to the deed so that she's free to take care of it in your absence. With Isobel being a complete twat and disowning her, it will free Minerva up to have a place to call home until she returns to Hogwarts in a few years. For the next few months, it'll be a place you two can be together, and I won't have to listen to your sister bitching about how much racket the pair of you make shagging up a storm."

She blushed. "I'm not even going to argue with you on this one, Mother. The last thing I want is Constance to be up my arse about my sex life. I had been concerned about how Min would take care of herself in the next few years, and this does solve a large chunk of the issue. I plan to leave her as a keyholder to my account as well so she has access for emergencies. I know her enough to know she won't touch it unless she has to."

Olivia eyed her critically. "How is your account going to get money put in it if you're not here, Hermione?"

"Well it's got a decent chunk now, from the last year of working and wisely investing," she admitted. "It isn't as though I have much in the way of cost of living. I think by July I'll nearly empty it and invest the bulk of what I have, and just let the return from those investments help build the account up over the next fifty years."

Her adoptive mother's eyes widened in understanding. "You're investing in companies which are only upstarting now, but you know will grow into successful ventures."

Hermione nodded. "The Nimbus broom company is going to be huge. I am far from being a Quidditch fan, but I'm not an idiot. It's just getting started now, and I had enough capital available to essentially buy a quarter of the company's stock. That stock's value will skyrocket over the next five decades, so if Minerva is ever in a pinch, she could sell a few shares and be more than covered. Other companies haven't got the stock route so much as the partner route, committing to a share of future profits outright and in perpetuity, so for an investment of ten Galleons now in, say, Zonko's, I can help them get off the ground and I'm bringing in five percent of their profits forever. Five decades from now they're making three hundred thousand Galleons a year easily, so I'd be pulling fifteen thousand Galleons per year off that one investment. Per year."

Olivia snorted in amusement. "Well, I guess I needn't worry about your future financial security. I certainly see why you sorted to Slytherin, my dear. You're very suited to there."

She had wondered, over the years, if she might have actually sorted to Slytherin had she not grown up Muggleborn, but rather in a Wizarding home. Her bloodline was Wizarding, in the end, so that was that, but her upbringing did lend to a certain sympathy toward Muggles that wasn't often found in Slytherins. While Pureblood supremacy hadn't always been a key enterprise of those in Slytherin House, the Pureblood agenda had been, at least where the survival of the Wizarding race was concerned.

Historically speaking, Salazar Slytherin's primary objection to the inclusion of Muggles and Muggleborns in their society was a concern that it would dilute the gene pool, forcing more and more Purebloods to wed and procreate with other Muggles and Muggleborns, until there was nobody left who was truly a Pureblood. His concern was for legacy more than supremacy, and Hermione could respect that. In any sort of breeding humans did for animals, be it livestock or recreational animals, it was a respected practice to keep lines pure and not mix with those outside certain traits. Why then, was it so hard for people to understand that a human might think to keep their own line equally inclusive of specific traits?

It had been two weeks since news of Anne Avery's death had arrived, and Minerva hadn't spoken to her since. Hermione knew she was grieving and was giving her space, but she also knew that graduation was upon them and they needed to have a discussion about where they were going from here. If Minerva wished to part ways now, Hermione needed to know, and entrust her with certain instructions before they did. If Minerva wanted them to spend these last few months together, then they needed to make a plan. Olivia's gift of the flat in London, perhaps, was just the opening Hermione needed to start a conversation.

She opted against commenting on her House placement. At first, her choice to lead people to believe she was a Slytherin had been a deliberate decision to keep Albus Dumbledore disinterested in her, but the more she thought about it the more she realized the greater value in perpetuating the lie. She knew full well that with the coming war, Slytherin was going to earn a very poor reputation for being a cesspool of Death Eaters in the making, so much so that even those disinclined to side with Voldemort wouldn't be given half a chance by those allied with the Order. Hermione hoped that, if the young Witches and Wizards she had gotten to know this year remembered her with some fondness and recalled her to be a Slytherin, that perhaps they'd not be so quick to jump to judgment about every Slytherin who crossed their paths in the coming years. Perhaps, she mused, that would save more than lives. That could save souls.

"Thanks for the flat," she said to Olivia. "I need to speak with Minerva about it, obviously, but honestly she has few options otherwise. She won't want to put Robert or Malcolm in a position to risk being disowned themselves by helping her. Genia is just as disowned as she is. Garrick won't allow Elise to help Minerva too much…"

"The Ollivanders are notoriously neutral like that," Olivia agreed.

"... and if I know Cordatus at all, he'll be too concerned that if Ignatius is seen giving that sort of aide to Minerva," she went on, "that it would send the wrong message, and scare off potential brides. I expect the Woods would feel much the same and caution Roland in the same manner."

"Which is why I thought it prudent to offer a solution," her mother said pointedly. "I did already consider this, Hermione. You obviously love the girl, and she you. There's no reason for her to struggle in your absence. You're a Dagworth, and if she's the one you'll marry in due course, then so is she. We take care of our own."

"You're terribly sentimental, you know that?" Hermione teased.

"You're my daughter," Olivia remarked. "I'm allowed."

"But I'm not," she reminded the older woman.

"Aren't you?" the Healer inquired, eyes sparkling. "My dear, you are living in a time loop. I may not have given birth to you, but magic predetermined that you would come back in time and live for this year with us, and that while you were here you would be under the assumed identity of Hermione Dagworth, my daughter. Not Dagworth-Granger. Not Black, or Potter, or Prince, or Lestrange, or Fudge, or any other name. You were meant to be mine, dear child. Just as Constance was meant to be mine by birth. You may have each come to me by different avenues, but that makes neither you nor Constance any less my daughters."

Hermione was suddenly thrust into her own memory, briefly, of when she'd met Constance for the first time in the future. Once the older Witch had decided she was satisfied with the paperwork at Gringotts, she'd asked Constance what she should call her, figuring the older woman would prefer some sort of honorific given she was, in fact, Hermione's great-grandmother. Constance had seen right through her question and replied, "Hermione, our relationship is hardly conventional. I wasn't there when you were in nappies, nor did you grow up in and out of my home as my other grandchildren have. My given name will suffice. Give it a year or so, and we'll see after that."

Give it a year or so, she'd said. Hermione understood now. Constance was telling her, without telling her, that a year from then they'd be just as much sisters as they'd be grandmother and granddaughter. While the biology couldn't be erased, the emotional connection of having shared a mother was something that bound her to Constance more tightly now than the vague notion of a grandson Constance would never know, or a son who'd died when Hermione was very young and who she barely remembered. Olivia had become the thing that made their kinship seem real. It was the common bond, and therefore what made them sisters was more grounded. Hermione absently wondered how much Minerva and Constance had been in touch over the years.

"Constance will have to play at being suspicious of me, when the Goblins reach out and tell her about me in the future," she commented. "She seemed like she was, the way I remember it."

"Well it wouldn't do for her to seem eager, obviously," Olivia retorted. "That would make you suspicious."

Just then, an Owl flew in the window, and dropped a letter in front of Hermione. It was from her sister. "Speak of the devil," she muttered, offering the Owl a treat from a drawer.

The Healer's eyes brightened. "Oh, I'm fairly sure I know what that's about. I had a notion and asked your sister to make some arrangements."

Hermione raised an eyebrow and then ripped open the envelope, quickly scanning the contents of Constance's letter. "A ball?" she asked. "Seriously?"

"Balls are the bread and butter of high society, my dear," the Healer said pointedly. "Everyone who's anybody is obligated to attend such things. I hear Charlus Potter is Head of his House now, since Fleamont got himself killed in that bloody war. He and Dorea will likely attend."

"You're mad," she said, shaking her head. "You'd throw a ball, honestly, with the likes of the Lestranges, Blacks, and Carrows in attendance, all so I have a reasonable opportunity to meet Harry's grandparents and bring him home memories of a family he's never known?"

Olivia shrugged. "You're a Dagworth."

Hermione groaned, having learned by now that when her mother said that, it really was the end of the discussion. A small part of her couldn't help but hope for a future with Minerva in which they had children of their own bearing the name, and she could be offering them assistance like it or not, answering their petulance with the same phrase, "You're a Dagworth," and have them know, as she did, that those words really did explain it all.


Hermione's familiar Otter Patronus bounded up to Minerva as she sat atop the Astronomy tower. Tomorrow was graduation, and they'd not spoken in nearly three weeks. For the first two weeks, Minerva just hadn't been in the right state of mind. She'd been grieving Anne, and in some ways grieving Hermione. Until the moment Hermione had walked out of the Room of Requirement and left Roland to help her through losing Anne, the idea that Hermione would be leaving her in a few short months was merely an abstract concept in her mind, but like a wave crashing down on her, it hit and she felt like she was drowning. The woman she loved was going to leave her, and there was nothing she could do about it.

She couldn't even be angry with Hermione. Not really. The older woman hadn't led her on at all. She'd been honest about her origins and the fact that she may well one day leave to go back to the future before they'd officially gotten involved, so Minerva hadn't any call to feel used for temporary comfort in a strange place and time. She knew what she'd signed up for, intellectually speaking, even if the emotional implication was only now sinking in. For two weeks, she'd processed all of those thoughts and feelings, and for the last week she'd just been trying to work out how to even approach Hermione again, and what to say. How was she to explain to Hermione that she wanted to spend every waking moment with the older Witch from the moment she graduated until the moment Hermione was taken from her without sounding overly clingy? How was she going to express to the woman she loved that she didn't have it in her to let go as she knew Hermione wished she would?

"Minerva," the otter said softly. "I can't begin to imagine what you're going through right now, but we're running out of time. We need to talk. Please meet me at the Room of Requirement. You'll find me where we spent our first night together."

The Otter vanished, message delivered, and with a sigh the Scottish woman stood and silently made her way back down to the seventh floor. The Room seemed to sense her approach and the door began forming right away, Minerva not doubting in the slightest she'd step inside to find the quarters of her older counterpart where she and Hermione had come the night she'd first learned her lover was a time traveler.

"Hi," she said in greeting as Hermione turned at the sound of her entry. The Defense Professor was standing in front of the bay window, staring out over the ruined castle grounds below. Minerva wasn't sure how her lover could stand the sight of Hogwarts in such a state, but it seemed to calm her.

Hermione smiled at her. "Hello Minerva. How are you?"

She let out a weak laugh. "Stressed?"

The Defense professor nodded in understanding, and waved her over to share a seat on the sofa. "Tell me," she suggested, not initiating any physical contact. "What are you stressing over?"

"NEWT results," she began. "Anne's death. My impending apprenticeship with Dumbledore. That I need to find a job at the Ministry to tide me over financially since Mother is disowning me. I've got a bit of savings, but not much. Roland says I can stay at his place for a bit, but I'll need somewhere else before too long. Mrs. Wood is lovely, but she won't want me there for long. It wouldn't be proper, after all. Then there's Rob and Mal hovering and wanting to help out, but I won't let them risk getting disowned as well, so I'm refusing anything from them. Then of course there's the fact that the woman I love is likely to literally drop out of existence for the next five decades in a few months and the reality of that is starting to really sink in. So yeah, Hermione, stressed."

Now Hermione reached out with her hand and touched her cheek. "Close your eyes, darling," she whispered.

It didn't even occur to Minerva to do anything other than obey. Her eyes fell closed, and she felt Hermione's hand leave her cheek and pick up her right hand. She felt lips gently kissing the inside of her wrist, and then she felt a cool band sliding onto her ring finger, and her breath hitched. "Hermione?" she questioned.

Her lover kept holding her hand, suspending it in the air between them. "Look at me," came a quiet request.

Minerva did as she was asked, seeing the tender expression on Hermione's face briefly before her eyes darted down to her hand, unable to resist seeing what exactly had been placed on her finger. It was a beautiful Claddagh ring, positioned to indicate she was in a relationship. Her eyes flitted back up to her lover's face. "Oh Gods," she breathed.

"Min," Hermione said, looking unusually nervous. "Given the situation, I haven't any business asking you to marry me. I also haven't any business asking for your fidelity, so I won't. We both know my time here is limited, and if you are of the same mind, I want to enjoy what we have for as long as we can. After that, life will go on for you, and then years down the road, Merlin willing, we'll meet again at the proper time, when I'm Hermione Dagworth again and not Hermione Granger. If you still want me at that time, I swear to you I will properly propose and put this ring on the other hand. I'll give you my name, children, and the future we can't have now. I wish I could promise so much more, and I wish I'd be here to help you through the coming hardships, but I can't. I didn't want to leave, though, without promising you this - I promise you have my faithfulness, until such a time you outright tell me you don't want it from me. I promise that I loved you when you were older and I will love you again at that age, just as I love you now. I promise to hold nothing against you, no matter what you go through in the years we're apart. That is what this ring is, love. It's not a proposal, because I can't ask you to marry me until I'm sure I'll be staying around to actually marry you, but it is a promise that I'm going to fight to get there. It's a promise to remember this year with you, and a hope that you'll remember me."

She wasn't exactly certain how Hermione Dagworth planned to top most romantic things to say and do whenever she did propose, because that had been swoon worthy. Minerva was speechless, and in lieu of speech, she just moved forward and kissed her lover deeply, taking great satisfaction in the taste after those absent weeks. "I love you," she whispered. "I love you so bloody much."

Hermione smiled brightly as they snuggled up together. "And I, you," she replied. "As for your stress, I can't fix all of it, but I do have the solution to some of it."

She snorted. "Of course you have. Do any of your solutions involve me not leaving your side between now and when you have to go?"

"Possibly," the older Witch allowed. "I have a flat in London. Mother's doing, don't ask. Anyhow, my thinking was that we could go there together until I have to leave. We move in, get settled, and just live together. I'll add you to the deed so after I'm gone, it'll just be your place. It can go back to being ours when I get back. It would likely make a decent safehouse during the wars, considering in due course you'll be spending most of your time at Hogwarts. Eventually you'll reside at Ross Abbey during the summers."

"I wondered if that would be the case, given the hint you made about the Abbey the other week," Minerva said pointedly. "Did my older counterpart ever say how that happened?"

"All she mentioned was that she inherited it after her mother passed away," Hermione confided. "She never said how or when that occurred. Given what I now know, I'm guessing that after your mother goes, Robert rescinds your disownment, making you heir again. You'd already told me that he and Malcolm both informally abdicated."

"They only went the informal route so that their children would have the option of inheriting down the line," Minerva remarked. "With what my mother did, I figured the Abbey would pass to one of them. Not me."

"I have no idea what happens to Robert and Malcolm's families," her lover reminded her. "I do know that you end up with Ross Abbey. In any case, I was thinking about it the other day and if I know Mother at all, she means for me to end up with Dagworth Manor. It was Boleyn Manor previously, but they changed the name when she married Father. Mother is keen on it remaining the seat for the Dagworths, and while Constance is a Dagworth, her children are Dagworth-Grangers. I'd not put it past Olivia to have willed it in such a way that suggests that Dagworth Manor go to me after Constance's demise, or at the least that it go to our children provided we produce them, before it would go to any Dagworth-Grangers."

Minerva snorted in amusement. "That does sound like Olivia alright. So what else are you doing to reduce my stress?"

Hermione looked torn. "I do think you should get a part time job at the Ministry. You meet people there who are important to your life. That said, I will also be leaving you with a key to my Vault, which considering the investments I've made in the last year, is decently lucrative and will only continue to grow."

"I'm not going to live off your money, Hermione!" Minerva snapped, a bit irritated that another person was trying to pay her way. "I can sort it out myself!"

"Fine," Hermione said, rolling her eyes. "I'm still leaving you a key to my vault, as I won't be able to make use of it for the next fifty odd years, and I implore you to at least consider making use of it, at the least, in case of emergency. I will also be leaving you a short list of students whom I would appreciate you slipping some funds or otherwise giving them support in the way of supplies. Oh. OH!"

"What?" the Scottish woman asked.

Hermione giggled. "I just figured something out. Bloody paradox. In my First Year, Harry showed extraordinary skill on a broom, and was recruited as the Seeker for Gryffindor. He was gifted a Nimbus broom, the latest model. You want to know who gave it to him?"

Minerva raised an eyebrow. "Me? Why would I do that? I mean I know I'm Quidditch mad and I know I'm supposed to be Head of Gryffindor, but I tend to loathe favoritism. That doesn't sound like something I would do at all."

"If I asked you to?" Hermione pressed. "And you were using my money to buy it?"

The younger woman huffed. "Like I'd ever say no to you."

"Buy Harry the bloody broom, Min. Latest Nimbus," her lover said, grinning. "Besides, you'll likely enjoy watching my younger counterpart fume over how it was against regulations for him to get any broom. First Years aren't allowed, after all."

"That's more of a guideline than an actual rule," Minerva said pointedly. "I looked into that my first year here. I desperately wanted to be on the team right off. Didn't work, but I certainly made a good show of trying."

"Oh? How so?"

"I was on the pitch practicing with the school brooms every time the Gryffindor team was scheduled to practice," Minerva grinned. "I always came an hour earlier, so I did have time to practice, knowing they were likely to kick me out, but mostly I was proving to them how dedicated I was, and that I was a good flier. By my Second Year, the Captain grabbed me on the bloody train and said, 'McGonagall, I expect to see you at tryouts,' as if it was a given I'd be on the team and the tryouts were just the official process of making it happen."

"Was it?" Hermione asked, curious.

"Basically," she grinned. "Roland got on the team that year as well. We're both Chasers, of course. Iggy made the reserves Second Year. He got put on the team full time Third Year when the previous Keeper graduated, taking his place. The three of us have been inseparable since."


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