Chapter 13
Silver chains restlessly grated against her battered fists as her shrieks were silenced by a surge of tumultuous waves. She gulped and gasped for air as the icy murky water kept rising until the room was flooded to the hilt.
Hermione's whole body was now enveloped by the turbid flood, the water filling her mouth and reaching her burning lungs in a matter of seconds. Overwhelming fear swept through her as she realised that she was going to die in the next few minutes.
Resonating through the room were the dull, solemn thuds of a wooden pendulum clock. It swayed and swayed and hovered above her head like the impending beat of a countdown timer.
Tick…Tick...Tick…Tick.
She struggled to break free but the iron grip on her wrists kept growing tighter and tighter until sprays of crimson came staining the water like drops of colour on a blank canvas.
Tick...Tick.
A pool of blood was now floating around her body and any colour drained from her face as her heartbeat plummeted until she felt so tired that she would no longer fight.
Tick.
Her eyes darted shut.
She was all alone.
Hermione woke up screaming, shattering the silence permeating the room. Seized by the kind of panic that only came visiting her in the middle of the night, she squirmed and squinted her eyes frantically, her eyes darting around the dark space in desperate search of the faintest source of light. She finally found it in the dim candle resting on Lavender's bedside table on the opposite side of the dormitory and padded her way to the lavatory to get the unsettling feeling out of her system.
Her young round face stood in front of the mirror as fresh and juvenile as she'd found it seven years ago, staring back at her with a glint of guilt and seriousness that set her apart from the rest of her classmates. She drew in a deep breath to soothe her nerves and her mind started wandering in search of answers she knew she didn't have.
Like a wild animal coming out of a dormancy after a long time, she slowly emerged from her state of drowsiness and all the memories jolted through her mind before she was able to stop them.
Her kiss with Malfoy had been just as intense as the first, unintended one.
This time, however, there had been nothing accidental about it. She had been drawn to his inviting lips like moths to a light, and there was no way she could deny the unmistakable tension that she'd felt when they'd stood close, facing each other like enemies on the verge of war.
Hermione could still taste the warmth and softness of his lips as they'd interlaced with hers, and the very thought stirred an overwhelming feeling inside of her, a strong rush of adrenaline that bloomed in her stomach, something that she hadn't felt in a very long time. Was she going insane?
For someone who was supposed to be rationally striving for the greater good, this was a rather poor decision to make.
She thought of the unprecedented journey she'd been through and how it brought her where she was and wondered if any of it was a coincidence. But none of it felt like one.
Every wise wizard knows there is nothing coincidental about the force of time.
Her mind came roaming back to Malfoy. He'd looked so different that day in the hall, when his dimmed grey eyes had locked with hers without a hint of arrogance or cruelty in them for the briefest of moments. Hermione was not sure whether it had been a trick of her mind or not, but she would almost swear he'd gazed at her like he had wanted to say something more but was unable to.
There had been some hurt and a pinch of emotion in his dull gaze that she could not quite decipher.
Her heart rate increased at the thought and she flinched, surprised by her own reaction.
If Harry and Ron knew, they would never forgive her for all that was to come. They would never understand. Because they were so pure and virtuous and honorable, and she wasn't anymore. Maybe she had just never been, and the pain of the war had brought her true self to the surface.
She wondered if things with Malfoy would have been different had she been a pureblood, and had they been on the same side of war, had the circumstances allowed it.
The brief, silly thought strolled through her mind, and just for a moment her eyes shone with a glimmer of sadness as her gaze fixated on the running water of the sink. She shook her head to banish the forbidden thought and reached for the object hanging around her neck.
Her small fingers clutched around her Time Turner, tracing small circles around the sandglass with delicate sways. Only three white pearls gleamed under the faint light of the candles.
There was the inkling of a feeling meandering its way through Hermione's heart, progressively growing louder and louder in her head like the noise of a car engine reaching her earshot. It was a gut feeling whispering in her ear that something powerful was going to happen soon, once all of the remaining white pearls turned blue.
She'd almost turned the Library upside down digging for an answer, but her months-long search had been as dry and unripe as sand in the desert. There were no records of this kind of time traveling in Hogwarts, no matter how far back in the centuries she'd gone and how many different manuscripts she'd delved into.
If any trace of such entries even existed, it might as well have been buried in some of the dusty library corners of the ancient pureblood families, and she might not be able to ever access those texts.
Her frustration engulfed every aspect of her life by then. Time was flowing fast, and the end of the school year was drawing near, haunting her days as much as it tormented her dreams. She was running out of time.
Unraveling the mystery surrounding the spell she'd performed on her Time Turner was fundamental. The book that Dumbledore gave her hinted at it, but it did not get into detail on what the final effects of balancing time would be.
She had to find the answer and she needed it fast.
And then it struck her.
Ancient pureblood families.
Malfoy had mentioned having rare artifacts hidden somewhere in his Manor. If she were able to get her hands on the right ones, she might examine them and find out more about the magic.
The corners of her mouth rose into the hint of a smile as the idea progressively took shape in her head.
She was going to pay Malfoy a little visit.
Draco sat in Dumbledore's office, sprawling on the chair with his long legs brushing against the table. His eyes landed on the golden clock hanging on the wall in front of him. It was elegant and refined and embellished with silver feathers gleaming and floating around the lancets. He thought it looked rather similar to the Time Turner hanging around Granger's neck.
Granger…
She'd changed everything in such a short time. With all that magic and the time travel and the bloody dazzling clock she hid in her robe.
The thought of her used to make him sick. And now, his head was teeming with flashes of their mingled lips and the softness of her cheeks and the sweet scent of her skin and the shivers of pleasure she'd sent rushing through his body when her breaths caressed his neck.
Yet somehow Granger was still the same: the spark of curiosity and eagerness that had always characterised her glimmered in her stronger than before, bolstered by the sense of strength and a touch of wilderness she held herself with now.
Draco felt a push that drew him closer to her, almost like invisible strings pulling him towards a predetermined path, luring him into her world, and coaxing him closer like a magnetic field that was sucking him without escape.
He wondered if she felt that way, too.
"Welcome, Draco. I see you already made yourself comfortable, brilliant." The old wizard swayed his hand and conjured a white porcelain pot with two cups. "Tea?"
Draco stayed quiet and raised the upper corner of his lip in disgust, sliding his hands in his pockets to signal the wizard he was in no mood for talking.
"I'll take that as a no." Dumbledore paused and cleared his throat "I assume you are curious about why I summoned you here today."
"Get to the point."
"How much do you know about time travel, Draco?"
Draco's eyes widened and quickly darted to the clock on the wall before they hovered back to the old man in front of him. On his side, nestled on the corner of his shoulder, lay a majestic, red-feathered bird with a long scarlet tail trailing down Dumbledore's robes. The animal had round, sharp, intelligent eyes that were glued to him intensively, so much so that he started to feel uneasy under the deep stare.
"Enough to understand that something big must have happened to get the Mudblood running back in time with a spell like that."
Draco raised his head to gauge the Headmaster's reaction, but the old man did not even flinch at his use of the derogatory term used to refer to Granger this time.
"So, what do you think of Hermione's journey to get here? As you said, the kind of magic she used is quite extraordinary." He paused and stroked his bearded chin in deep thought, his eyes lost in wonder. "It does break all the rules of time traveling as we know them."
"She's always been a swot. I'm not surprised she found a way around it." He hoped to sound as unimpressed as possible.
"I believe you are familiar with your classmate, Miss Lovegood."
The abrupt change of topic surprised him, and he furrowed his brows at the wizard's baffling question.
"What does she have to do with this?"
"The Lovegoods have always had an eye, a sixth sense let's say, for magical occurrences of exceptional rarity. If I remember correctly, your family had some historical ties with Xenophilius's, is that right?"
"The Malfoys have dealt with them in the past, yeah. Something to do with selling ancient artifacts to the lunatics. I don't see how this relates to at all."
"I would like you to pass on all the information you have to Hermione. She needs to know about it"
Dumbledore's words were followed by a long, thick silence, long enough that for a moment only the gusts of wind striking against the window resonated through the room.
"I swore I wouldn't stand in her way. Didn't say I would do anything else to help her."
"You are a rather intelligent boy, Draco. I am sure you had a valid reason to accept Hermione's offer.
"Don't you try to pull your psychological tricks on me, old man. I have no incentive to. Why would I ever want to go against my family?"
"I think you do have your reasons. Your current situation is not ideal, I believe."
"How do you know that?"
"My dear boy, I have lived far more than you did. I have developed a good eye for difficult family dynamics."
For a moment, there was a shimmer of sadness in the headmaster's eyes, but it flashed through his gaze so quickly that Draco wasn't sure he'd actually seen it.
"Why are you asking me, anyway? Isn't she friends with Lovegood already? Why don't you tell her that yourself?"
"I have my reasons, too. And I hope you will consider the urgency of my request."
The way the wizard ended the sentence was low and definitive, signaling to Draco that this was the end of the conversation.
With a hardened scowl and tight lips, Draco was about to turn and leave, but the old man's voice was once again reverberating through the room.
"One more thing, Draco."
"What is it?"
"Miss Granger seems to believe that the … upcoming events involving you will be determinant for this war. But sometimes victory lies in much more minor details. We can control our actions, but can we really change our fate?" There was a small smile forming at the corner of his lips, and a spark of easiness glittered in his gaze.
"I don't understand. What are you rambling on about?" he spat, irritated at the man's obliviousness.
"I have no doubt Miss Granger's intentions are pure and honorable. However, altering events in such a radical manner might not always lead to the best outcome. When the time comes, I want you to remember what I just said."
Bafflement and confusion shone in Draco's eyes.
"What are you talking about? I made a vow that you are well aware of."
"Did you? Had I supervised it, I would know." Dumbledore said with an innocent shrug.
And he saw it. The hint of a deeper meaning in Dumbledore's knowing look.
"Are you asking me to go behind Granger's back?"
"I am suggesting that sometimes we need to do what is necessary for the greater picture. There are unwavering forces molding our future, and they have already been set into motion. They might need a little push, but it is different than what you might think."
Hermione's long embroidered cloak rustled and fluttered behind as she strolled through the halls with her hooded head down.
On the other side of the corridor, huffs and whispers and chatter bloomed from the smudgy, restless portraits, grinning at her figure under the dimmed light of their corner. She glowered at them with a harsh gaze that made most of them reluctantly look away. But a couple of them, a fair young lady in a fancy laced dress with rounded features and long braids, and a long-bearded sailor with a white mustache, hovered closer to the side where she was walking and started following her steps, matching her pace like shadows creeping along the walls.
"Silence her words, time traveler!"
This was enough for Hermione to come to a halt and go back to her tracks until she was facing the portraits directly.
"What do you mean? Who are you talking about?"
Her questions were met with complete silence, and for a minute she stared at them with an inquisitive look, before the young lady's figure started quivering and then vanished from her sight in the blink of an eye. On the side, the old sailor scurried away, hiding in the wooden boat that was navigating in the background.
Enraged by the lack of response, Hermione's features hardened even more, glowering at the painting with intensity. A few moments later a tall, seething blue fire branched out from the tip of her wand.
"I asked you a question. Now you answer it if you don't want to turn it into ash."
At last, the sailor emerged from its floating vessel and hovered over her with horror on his face.
"You can't let it happen." there was a sense of urgency in his tone that resonated like the ring of a bell in the mind of the young witch.
"What if I do?" She said.
"You already know the ending to that story. We cannot afford that."
"What?"
As soon as the words left her mouth, the images in the painting started melting away, blurring into a blend of colours until, a few moments later, she found herself staring at a blank canvas. There was no trace of the painting at all: the rippling waves, the storm, the boat had all vanished like they had never existed.
Her walk to the Astronomy Tower was a silent one. Her feet moved nervously through the halls, rushing through the stairs with fast strides. Her hair scattered around, ruffled by the wind that seeped through the open windows.
Entering the spacious room felt peaceful and soothing, with dim lights floating through the air and slicing through the shadows that clung to the corners.
Outside, the sky was clear and striking, and the bright stars stared back at her with ease and graciousness, sprawling across the night in countless shimmering dots. It would have been a beautiful view, had she had the time to dwell on such trivial things.
"What do you want?"
She turned around and her heart skipped a beat. He was standing still, leaning onto one of the large stained glasses that overlooked the ice-strewn grounds of the castle. The white strands of his hair shone under the lights with a soft glow, standing out thanks to the contrast of his black robes. And there it was: the warm, tingling sensation spreading though her body like a wildfire, rushing through her system as soon as he'd turned towards her.
Malfoy was not moving, the stillness between them growing heavier, and she felt the urge to break the silence.
"I need your help."
He was looking at her with an unreadable expression, his gaze trailing down to the base of her neck, halting where her Time Turner was glistening. Although she knew that was not directed at her, she felt heat quickly warming her cheeks, flushing her face in an instant. She hoped the room was dark enough for him not to notice.
"Aren't you the one with all the answers? Why would you need anything from me?" he spat.
"There's something I'm missing. I need access to your Library. I've already dug into the Restricted Section and I can't find answers on this kind of time travel."
"What makes you think we are friends now?"
"We aren't. But I feel confident saying that you haven't got much choice by now."
She smiled knowing that he had to comply. The Vow really did wonders for her.
"One day, after all this is over, I will make you regret the way you spoke to me." She could hear the venom and resentment in his words.
"Looking forward to it. In the meantime, you better get to work."
There was a pause and for a few moments, all she could hear was his deep breathing before he finally spoke again.
"Ok."
"Ok?" she asked, incredulity shining through her voice.
"Don't make me spell it out loud, Granger. How many books do you need?
She felt a wave of relief surging up her chest.
"As many as you can manage. " She said, lowering her chin to shoot him a glance through her brows.
He'd shot her an expressionless nod before turning around to leave, and she'd watched his figure slowly fading from her line of sight, wondering what it was that had been altered between them.
This is how Hermione worked her way through the Malfoy Library. Books kept piling up on her desk, and, as the weeks progressed, the newly acquired information was stored in her brain as fast as she was able to process it.
She had learnt so much about how all kinds of Time Turners and the way they worked after they were pieced together. Some of them traced back to the early 1940s, but none of them were apparently connected to the spell she'd used. However, some appeared to be more powerful than others, and had previously been shown to cause peculiar side effects in the user, like memory loss or distortion of reality.
One particular case stood out from the rest, and it was recorded just a couple of decades before her first year at Hogwarts. A wizard, whose name was not disclosed, had attempted to bend the rules of time by extending his time turner's time travel magic and making the object more powerful in a way that others hadn't.
Like most recorded cases she'd skimmed through, this one was obscure, elusive in writing and not very detailed, but there was enough to grasp the overall spell dynamic and it had involved a combination of several rare ingredients that had molded the features of the object. There were several similarities with her own story, including the fact that the Time Turner seemed to be able to travel much farther back in time than normal ones.
The faint, yellow shafts of light filtering through the Library windows were slowly ebbing away as Hermione's tired eyes scanned through the pages, dwelling on the elusive paragraphs permeating the last tomes that Malfoy had retrieved from his manor.
The night had been way quieter than she'd remembered, maybe because this time she had no one to rely on. Harry had spent weeks avoiding her like the plague, shooting her subtle glances in the corridors when he thought she wasn't looking. She could see anger, bafflement, and a pinch of concern in his expression when he walked past her in the halls. Hermione knew that Harry was not ready to have that conversation with her just yet. As much as he was unprepared, so was she: the emotional baggage she was able to carry with her had shrunk to the point that having this kind of talk terrified her.
She had exchanged very few words with Ron in the past weeks, as he had been drifting in and out of consciousness and slowly recovering, but she knew that she needed to address the situation very soon. Hermione had spent hours visiting him in the Hospital wing when he
Stress and insomnia increasingly weighed on her shoulders. For a moment, she wished she could use her time turner to halt the state of things for a while, to pause the overwhelming feeling that her decisions were never good enough, and shut herself off from the world one last time before the impending responsibilities would come crashing down on her.
At this time of the day, the was a desert: silence settled over the empty corridors and enveloped her surroundings, amplifying the rustling of the pages.
Hermione huffed again and checked her clock: he was more than thirty minutes late. Godrick, she hated latecomers.
She darted her eyes back to her reading. The text seemed to have stayed untouched for years: the dust on the cover gave it an ancient look that reminded her of the one she'd found in the other timeline.
Hermione had lost herself in her research, sinking into the chair with slouched shoulders, wandering through endless content and possibilities from which to choose.
Eventually, enough time passed for her to grow more than frustrated at Malfoy's lateness.
Her eyes darted to the fresh newspaper in front of her. She looked at the date and, for a moment, time froze.
She'd been so absorbed in her research that she had forgotten about that night of seven years ago.
Trembling hands shut down the covers that she had spent hours immersed in with a thud. There was no time to think and before she knew she found herself on her feet.
Her legs moved on their own accord as she stood up suddenly, tossing some of her quills up in the air and knocking over a stack of books that came falling down with a thud, and started sprinting through the halls. Flashes of pillars and stairs flew by through the corner of her eye, mingling with the blurred figures of the very few passing students, but she did not have time to dwell on any of them.
The door busted open as her hair sprung up in the air, floating around and charged with adrenaline and magic, and moments later she found herself surrounded by darkness.
It reeked of a strong poignant smell that she knew very well, and nausea sprang up to her stomach as her eyes started to adjust to the dim lighting. Her gaze trailed down to the red-stained tiles and horror pervaded her senses when she realized what she was looking at.
His pale, spasming body was lying on the floor, strands of hair obscuring his face like curtains.
Much blood spurted from Malfoy's white shirt, which was now soaked and left a trail of crimson all around him.
A horrible, painful heaviness bloomed in her chest.
Before she could process it, she plunged towards him, kneeling on the floor and crouching on his figure as her trembling hands went to rest on his chest in an attempt to halt the bleeding. Panic rose to her throat and her eyes quickly darted around the room, searching for any faint trace of people in the vicinity. Harry wasn't there anymore. He must have fled minutes ago, looking for someone to help.
His body could not stop trembling violently and the strain in his voice was agonizing and so raw that it made her skin crawl. Her fingers instinctively hovered over his face to move the hair out of his way, brushing through the sweat and the slick and making their way to cup his cheeks.
"Malfoy? Malfoy! Can you hear me?" her voice was trembling and strained with fear.
There was no response.
His eyes were clenched shut, squeezed tight and quivering in pain,and warm tears were trickling to the corners of his eyes, wetting his cheeks and trailing down to the edges of his mouth.
With some hesitation,she reached out to open his shirt and cast the healing spellsas best as she could. By the time she could make out the wound, her hands were dripping in bloodand her eyes widened to grasp the severity of his condition.
The scars on his chest stretched out to the edge of his shoulders and his abdomen, weaving patterns of red marks that were slicing across his pale skin.
The war years had sharpened her dueling abilities like the edge of a sword, but healing had never been her strongest cast a few spells and stayed still as beams of light shot out of her wand and settled on his bleeding scars. She hoped they would be enough to pull him back from the brink of death.
She didn't understand why the room was empty. Where was Snape? Hermione knew that he'd immediately intervened and saved his life after Harry had cast the spell. Why wasn't he there this time? Had she altered the course of things? She must have made a mistake somewhere, a choice that had shifted the events of this timeline.
Logically, she knew it shouldn't matter: this event was bound to happen and there was no significant reason to prevent it. In the grand scheme of things, the event that had taken place in that bathroom was nothing she should be concerned about.
But experiencing it firsthand was completely different.
Malfoy was writhing and convulsing on the cold tiles, alone and wounded like a stray dog, and for some reason, the sight disturbed her to an extent she was not able to fully understand. Her heart was ridden with guilt and remorse and something else that she couldn't quite grasp.
What she'd seen in the past years had numbed her senses, and there was no death, no suffering that had hindered her spirit after a while. Nothing had shaken her more than what she had experienced in the war years. Harry and Ron's past, horrifying deaths had taken place right after the start of the war, and they had torn her apart in a way that was too painful, too jarring to recover from. But this one had an emotional undertone to it that she had not felt in a very long time.
Her mind flickered back to when he'd saved her. He had taken a massive risk and it could have cost his life. He might have been acting out of impulse, but it had still stirred something inside of her, and it pressed on like a burden that she could not shake off, no matter how hard she tried.
She could not bear to leave him there.
Faint noises were slowly rising from somewhere in the distance, but at that moment, she could not focus on any of them, even when they rapidly turned into footsteps right outside the bathroom door. Her gaze was glued to Malfoy, tracing the faintest of his movements, circling his wounded chest back and forth as if she were able to ease his pain by just looking at it.
There was a sudden pressure weighing on her shoulders, shaking her body with slight but firm pushes, but she stayed still, unmoving, uncaring of what was happening in the world around her.
By the time she turned her head around, she could sense that there was someone lurking close to her, and adrenaline rushed through her veins because she already knew who it was.
Slitted black eyes awaited her in the dark and she knew that she was no longer alone—someone had been watching her all along.
Notes: I am so sorry I updated just now. It was so, so hard to write anything these past months and I am not happy at all with this chapter, it's messy and unedited and i don't like how I wrote many parts of it but it had been so long that I just wanted to update. I really appreciate your comments as always! They really make me want to write more :)
