"In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect - Kazuo Ishiguro


Do Not Go Gentle

Professor Dumbledore looked graver than she remembered seeing him in years. "I don't pretend to understand all that you have been through, Miss Perkins, or what your reasons were for casting that spell, but I must ask you to decease use of any dark magic while you are a student in this school. It is imperative that none of the students under my care are harmed within this castle, especially after the events of last year. You are under this castle's protection and must follow the rules I set down for your safety and others."

"I know." Hermione bowed her head, flushing deeply. "I am so sorry. I thought learning that spell could help me in my desire to aid the war effort. If you wish to know…" she paused for a moment. How much should she tell him? What would he wish to know?

He seemed to sense her dilemma. "I don't ask you to share any more than you are comfortable with but I do ask you to desist from any darker magic. Further use of it and I must ask you to leave this school."

"I understand." Hermione could not bear to be expelled. She loved this school too much and took her studies too seriously to not heed the warning. "I am very sorry. If I thought through what I was doing…" she stopped again for a minute. "I have important information that I need to know how to use," she told the headmaster. "It is about Voldemort. I think it will help. I just don't know how to do so without risking the future."

There was silence between them both for a moment. "Miss Perkins," Dumbledore began. "Have you heard of the Order of the Phoenix?"

"Yes," Hermione told him. "It exists in my time too."

"That is unfortunate," Dumbledore told her. "I had hoped that it would be an unnecessary organization before long."

"My hope is that it will be before long," Hermione said.

He looked at her kindly. "You are clearly worried about meddling with time. I cannot give you the answers as to whether you should proceed with all of the knowledge you possess but I can offer you a place in the Order when you graduate. We can go from there on what to do with your information."

Hermione felt considerably lightened by this. "Thank you, Headmaster." She thought for a moment and then said. "Hopefully I can really help the Order." By then she would hopefully know whether to give up on her dream to go back.

"When you graduate," he told her. "There will be a place for you there and not sooner. In the meantime, you must concentrate on your studies and try and keep up your health. As a student here, particularly under such peculiar circumstances, you remain a responsibility of this school and your well-being is of the utmost importance."

Hermione agreed. "Thank you, Headmaster. I will do my very best."


She dreamed of Harry and Ron again that night. They were on brooms trying to catch the diadem in the Room of Requirement. It flew higher and higher out of reach. Hermione, who had never liked heights at the best of times, struggled to stay on her broom. "Wait for me!" she called out as they followed the diadem.

"I can't catch up!" she tried to fly her broom after them but as they got higher, she got lower. Her head ached as though an invisible weight was settled on it. "Harry! Ron!" The diadem now appeared, it was gleaming as it appeared and settled on her bushy hair. Harry and Ron appeared next, their wands out and their faces set with determined looks.

"Wait!" she cried. She pulled at the diadem but it would not come off. They approached her and their faces were as stern and determined as ever. They were going to cast fiendfyre. She knew it without knowing how she knew. "Don't! I'll get it off, I just need time!" But it wouldn't come off. It clung to her, making her head hurt worse than ever. Her injured hand, which had been left with a burned scar ached badly but she held it up like a shield. "Harry! Ron! Stop! I'll need more time!"

"We gave you time," Ron told her. "Over a year now. That was your time." He raised his wand higher.

"Harry!" Her friend looked solemner than ever as he aimed his wand at her. "Sorry Hermione. I have no choice."

"No! No!" The fire was cast, she was engulfed in flames.

She woke up screaming and her hand burning to find Pandora standing over her, looking extremely worried.

"This is getting out of hand, Rose," she told her as Hermione sat up, her eyes wide and frightened. "Rose, are you listening?"

Hermione's heart beat madly as she looked around her. "I'm sorry," she said as she clutched her burning hand. "I have been having horrible dreams lately. I wish I knew how to stop them." But she did know. She had to get rid of that diadem but couldn't cast the only spell she knew could do the job. What a dilemma she had gotten herself into.

"Don't apologize Rose," Aurora told her from her bed across the room. "We are just worried about you."

"I know," Hermione said. "I will just try to do better."

Aurora and Pandora both looked exasperated and even Emmeline seemed ill at ease. "Always with the trying," Pandora told her. "You need to try less, Rose, not more."

"If you try anymore, you are going to land yourself in the infirmary again," Aurora said gently. "We don't want to see that happen. Your health is important."

Hermione couldn't help but agree. Yet her dilemma was real. She needed to do something about the diadem but what to do? Dumbledore had forbidden her from using the spell again and she did not know how else she was to destroy the diadem. It was not yet March and she had until June, how would she ever hold on so long with this on her mind? She lay back on her bed for a moment, her body aching. "I just need sleep," she said aloud. "Sleep without any more terrible dreams." Pandora and Aurora exchanged a worried look with each other.

"I'm taking you to Madame Pomfrey if this keeps up," Pandora told her but Hermione was already drifting off into another dream.


"You are quiet lately," Regulus told her the following day. They were sitting together in the library in their usual spot from the year before. "You look terrible. Haven't you been sleeping?"

"Not really." Hermione felt tired as she spoke. "I am not sleeping well." There was no point in pretending otherwise, he was more than perceptive enough to see through it.

"Is it your hand bothering you?" he asked her. He took her silence as an assent. "It still is bothering you." He was quiet too for a moment. "I wish you would tell me what had happened to it."

She didn't answer. "I have been studying too hard, I guess. It keeps me from getting much rest but I want to do well."

"You need to rest," he told her sharply. "We all want to do well at school but not at the expense of our health." At her look his replies got colder. "You don't listen very well," he said. "Why don't you at least listen to your Ravenclaw buddies? I know they have been trying to talk sense into you as well."

"I'll go to sleep early tonight," she told him. In reality, she thought it was about time she learned to cast a silencing charm around her bed. As long as she had the diadem, she would have nightmares but no one but her should have their sleep disturbed by them.

"It's not just the sleeping," he said. "You don't look well at all."

He was right. She was tired, her head hurt, her hand burned, and her thoughts were clouded by the diadem. It consumed her as much as if she had tried it on. Whenever she picked it up and handled it, she could feel the heavy weight of it, yet the pull to try it on grew with every moment she was around it. It had a feeling she imagined an addictive drug to hold for an addict. Unhealthy and dangerous yet it filled her with a longing so intense that it grew by the day. The power of enhanced wisdom beyond the norm…

"If you are not honest with me," he said. "Are you at least honest with them?"

Hermione remembered her third year at school, how many classes she had taken and how little sleep she had gotten. Ron had told her more than once that she was doing too much but she had never listened. It was in her nature to overwork herself, but never had she had anything like the diadem weighing on her mind. She wondered how Ginny had felt dealing with the diary. Had it sapped her energy and preyed on her thoughts the way the diadem was now doing? Was that part of the reason she had stolen it back from Harry?

"I just am doing too much," she replied. "They tell me to slow down too." Then to change the subject, she added: "I don't see you with your friends anymore. Has something happened?"

Regulus scowled at her. "What makes you think something has happened?" At her look of disbelief, he clarified. "Maybe we just moved on to different things is all. Sometimes people don't remain friends forever."

She remembered her conversation with him at the end of last year. Did this all mean he had decided against being a Death Eater? Did his friends realize this and that was why they were no longer seen together? Somehow Hermione felt like she knew this to be the answer, had perhaps even suspected it back when he had been hurt in that Quidditch match at the end of last year. He had changed his mind and they knew it and were giving him a hard time over it all.

"Rose? What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing is wrong," she told him. She couldn't even let the possibility of an altered timeline bother her now. A weight had been lifted and all she could hope for is that she was right. For once her time travelling had yielded decent results and she couldn't let the future sour what good she had achieved here. He was so young; they both were so young and she wanted to see their futures unclouded by war and Voldemort. She knew if he continued down this path he would die young. Hermione did not want to see this happen, he was brighter and could be a better person than he even knew.

She smiled at him and leaned and touched his hand with her good one. "I'm actually really glad to hear this. You can do much better than Barty Crouch and Evan Rosier."

"How would you know?" he asked her but she thought she heard a bit of a softer tone to his usually haughty voice. "This is not just you trying to make a project out of me like last year, is it?"

"No." she shook her head. "It's me worrying about a good friend." She was still smiling at him. Even his usually haughty nature could not get in the way of her happiness at the moment. It might affect the future but she could not care for that too much if the payoff was him not becoming a Death Eater. Somehow her project as he called himself had become as regular a part of her life here as Pandora or Aurora. She needed him to know that, that he was one of the important links to her life here.

"A friend," he repeated. "Most of the friends I have had don't act like such a mother hen."

"Well, you will have to learn to deal with that because all my relationships are like that," she replied. "I worry about and care for those I have as friends. I am a bit like someone's mum when I get going."

"Trust me," he told her. "You are noting like my mother."

Somehow, having seen that shrieking portrait in his house, she felt that she could agree with that. Maybe he could stand a little positive female attention for once in his life.

"That's fine," she said. "Whatever positive attention you get is important. You will get used to it too." At his look of disbelief, she clutched his hand tighter. "You'll see."


It was strange being openly friends with him yet somehow the past few months of not talking had faded away and a floodgate had opened in their wake. She needed only to see him waiting for her after classes and walking with her through the halls to see that. It was only a friendship yet the kiss from last year remained in the back of her mind. She had hurt him by rejecting him over the summer and it was likely his pride that kept him from bringing that up or trying for more than friendship.

Her Ravenclaw friends seemed oddly fine with her friendship with him. They had not questioned her too much on it and she appreciated this. Lily Evan's had given her an oddly knowing look when she saw her before class the first day they had walked through the halls together. Evan Rosier had a far uglier look. His sneer could not be interpreted in any encouraging way.

"To hell with him," was Regulus's brief answer when Hermione had asked if there were any problems lately. She hoped that meant that there had not been too much interaction between the two Slytherin's.

At night the dreams came and went and Hermione struggled to weather them. She did cast a silencing charm and screamed her way through ugly dreams filled with fire and destruction, while the diadem's pull only grew stronger as March began and spring came nearer. If she was paler and more tired looking, she tried to keep it together. Pandora dragged her to Madame Pomfrey for a pepper up potion one day. The motherly healer suggested more pep potions, rather like a doctor prescribing a vitamin.

Her health was likely to keep declining though with the diadem on her mind and her constant dreams. One night in March she woke up to her head feeling held down by weights. It was as though an invisible diadem were on her already. She managed with effort to sit up in bed. With effort she climbed out of bed and made her way to her trunk. Opening the lid, she pulled out the diadem.

"What am I going to do with you?" she whispered as she held the culprit of all her current trouble in her hands. It seemed almost to be gleaming as she held it. Were horcruxes meant by nature to be this compelling? She didn't know and could not imagine there was anyone who could tell her. If she were in her own timeline, she would have asked Ginny about her time with the diary. The diary must have wanted to be written in as much as this diadem wanted to be worn. She imagined, though it was only speculation, that the soul incased in the inanimate objects wanted to have a human form again.

With an effort she placed the diadem back in her trunk and closed the lid. Part of her wondered if taking it to the headmaster wouldn't be the smarter option. Should she or could she manage to wait until the end of the school year and then once off the grounds cast the spell and try to destroy it for good? What she was going to even do, aside from join the Order when she left school was also up in the air. It was only three months away. Hermione had exams to study for, job prospects to think of, a horcrux driving her mad, little sleep, and an extremely clouded way forward out of her predicament.

"I don't need another visit to Madame Pomfrey," she told Regulus Black one day late in March as he steered her towards the infirmary. "I just need to sleep more."

"Which hopefully she will help you with," was his cold reply. He scowled as he caught sight of his brother and Pettigrew heading in the opposite direction. "I've caught him watching me around the school lately. He hasn't been subtle," he said sourly.

"Maybe he is concerned about you," Hermione told him. At his look of disbelief, she continued, grateful for the reprieve. They were nearly outside the infirmary and she did not want to go in again. "He is your brother."

"He gave up on that when he left home," he told her. "We have barely spoken since and never have we had anything positive to say to each other."

"Maybe its time this changed," Hermione said. "You have changed a lot this past year, maybe the two of you should try and patch things up."

He glared at her. "With him? Sirius made his choice when he left home, he would prefer to be Potter's brother instead."

The grapes could not have been sourer if they tried, Hermione thought. This was not about blood traitors and their parents. This was and perhaps always had been about James Potter. She wondered how much Sirius Black leaving home and choosing James Potter over his family had caused Regulus's original descent into pure blood supremacy and his becoming a Death Eater? Was it all just to prove himself better than the older brother he had likely always lived in the shadow of?

"I still think you should give it a try," Hermione said. "I wish I had a sibling myself to be close to."

"They are overrated," Regulus told her. "In the end they are never there for you when you actually need them. It's the way of it. I come from a large family and all you see in the larger families is infighting."

She could believe that. In fact, with the portrait of his mother being as she was, she could believe that it was worse than just simply squabbling. She remembered the burn marks on the Black family tapestry. Sirius would already have had his name removed and so would his cousin Andromeda that she had met over the summer. Hermione felt a pang when she thought of the parents she had not seen in almost two years. How could someone have their family so close yet refuse to bridge the gap when it was possible?

"I think you both should have a reconciliation eventually," she said to him. "It is wartime and you don't want important things left unsaid."

"The only important thing right now is that you go in the infirmary and get your health looked into," he told her crossly.

"Now who is playing the mother hen?" She asked him, smiling slightly.

He glared at her. "I mean it."


In the end it was more pepper up potions and questions for her. Though Madame Pomfrey declared her overworked from exams, she knew the dark truth was lurking away out of sight. How long would she have that terrible weight on her?

Regulus Black, she noticed, did everything he set his mind to with an extreme intensity. If planning studying, he was intense, if feuding with his older brother, it was focused and intense. If trying to work out her poor health and lack of proper sleep, similarly intense. She was now as much a project for him to fix her health as changing his mindset had been a project for her the year previously.

She was not used to being the center of someone's attention like this. Hermione had spent most of her first five years at Hogwarts attempting to help Harry through a number of various troubles. It was in her nature to help others when they needed it, not the other way around. She now had no less than four people looking after her health and who she had to hide her poor sleeping habits from, no easy task when you shared a dorm with three other people. The best she could do was stay away from her room and the diadem as much as possible.

"I know I have been worrying people lately," she told Regulus one day shortly before Easter when they were sitting in the library. "I feel sure though that things will change in June." She could see that they were not the only ones in the library. It was a rainy day and many students had headed in there, likely to start studying for end of year exams. Madame Pince, her usual grim look in place was checking out books for a group of fifth year Hufflepuff's.

"That is over two months away still," he told her. "The exams are stressful for everyone, but most people don't need multiple trips to the hospital over it. You are hiding something and I still don't know what."

"I'm sorry," she replied. Then to change the subject, she asked: "How are things with your classmates?"

He scowled. "Don't change the subject, Rose. You know how things already are."

She did indeed. He had shown up to the library two days earlier late, with a bruise forming on the left side of his face. She had failed to get any answer out of him as to what had happened then and was clearly not going to now.

"I'm sorry," she told him. "It wasn't over me, was it?" she asked him.

He glared at her, then got to his feet. "I've told you before that not everything is over you, Rose." He began gathering his books. It's almost Easter and I have letters to answer." His face soured slightly as he said this.

Hermione wanted to ask about his letters but wisely refrained. If he wanted to tell her, she hoped that he would in good time.

As it turned out she didn't have to wait long, only until the next day. When she had finished breakfast and headed out of the Great Hall with Regulus, she got her answer. He saw her first, his face tensing and his hand clenching her good one.

"She came after all," he said quietly, more to himself than her.

Hermione looked where he was standing. There her blood turned cold at the sight of someone who had haunted her nightmares at the end of her fifth year.

Bellatrix Lestrange was standing in the entrance hall.


So yes this chapter is also mostly filter, but it's not all for nothing, next chapter Hermione gets to meet dear Bellatrix and we get to find out what she is doing there.