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Chapter Text

As I am just in the process of completing this story I have decided to update and improve some of the existing chapters. This wont have a significant bearing on the finale but it allows me to refresh my memory to make sure I get the conclusion right and tie up loose ends. By all means re-read in you are inclined, but keep an eye out for updates if you are interested to see how this one ends.

*** 

Sometime in the 1980's...

That evening, at around seven pm, was when James Potter learnt the date that he and his wife were going to die.

It was a strange thing, to sit there in the cosy living room of their home in Godric's Hollow as the fateful news was delivered. The enormity of the disclosure hung in the air as the words faded, an air thick with a solemn silence permeated only by the occasional crackle of a log settling in the idling hearth.

October the thirty-first. Halloween. That was the day the Potter's would die.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lily took the news better than James. She had always been the cooler, more logical and practical sort. So there were no histrionics at the news, just steely resolve as Lily quested for understanding.

"Why us? Why now?"

Lily asked the question, demanding the silence be broken as she sought to move the situation on. The wizard she'd addressed, who was leaning on the ornate fireplace as he cleaned his half-moon spectacles, turned his eyes on her. His gaze startled the young witch. She was used to seeing energy and vitality there, or boyish excitement as they tackled alchemy problems as her Mentor in the Art.

But now, there was none of that vibrancy. Just sorrow, tinted with a shadow of anger behind his ancient stare.

"Both are good questions, both with answers that have evaded me until the last few days. Pursuing the truth can be an arduous task, as she tends to be a flighty temptress. But, alas, I believe I have now caught her. Or has she caught me? Such things can be difficult to define."

"You have just told us that we will soon be killed, Albus!" James riled from his seat behind the coffee table. "This is hardly the time for riddles."

Albus Dumbledore considered the irony of that statement, but kept his stunted chuckle brief and confined to the outskirts of his beard only. The Potters were rightly distressed, and the old wizard's penchant for whimsy was best stayed checked for now.

Despite James' outburst, Lily retained her stoic composure.

"Forgive my husband ... his passions often run away with him," Lily cut in in semi-admonishment. "Please tell us what you have learned."

Dumbledore, mildly aware of something bothering the spurs of his steel-buckled boots, turned to look at Lily once again. "Voldemort and his Death Eaters have become very specific in the witches and wizards that they have been targeting for murder. They have not being going after particularly prominent people ... senior politicians or powerful Aurors or people involved in the war effort. The targets are just regular folk, ones that seem unconnected from the outside. But I know our enemy well, and I refused to believe that these murders were random or isolated.

"So I have been looking more deeply at them, trying to unearth a pattern. There did not appear to be one, with the only commonality being that each victim had a young son of around a year old or less. I did not see how this could be important, knowing as I do the high value that Lord Voldemort places on magical blood. He would not randomly kill the next generation of wizard boys ... not unless he had a very deep and imperative reason to do so.

"And now, quite unexpectedly, I have discovered that this is exactly what he has."

James bristled at the news, preparing himself for what was to come. Lily chose to look down at the source of the rhythmic tick-tick-tick coming from Dumbledore's boots ... and the first spike of emotion escaped from her diligent controls over them. For there, joyously spinning the star-shaped spurs at the back of Dumbledore's hobnailed purple footwear, was her own baby son, Harry, himself barely a year old.

Lily tried to swat away a sudden concern in her mind ... her son was just a baby, she and James couldn't be connected to the other young parents targeted by Voldemort, and this was all just a coincidence.

Harry wasn't any more special than any other young magical child ... so this could have nothing to do with him...

But even as she thought the words, Lily knew they were wrong. How she knew it she couldn't have said. But she did. She had good instincts that were nearly always right, and she was sure she'd be right about this. Eager to know the details, Lily tautened to perch on the cushion of her comfy couch. She was singled minded, had eyes and ears only for Dumbledore ... which is why she rebuffed her fluffy ginger cat when he ambled by to offer support.

"Not now, Cruickshanks!" Lily snapped, pushing the cat away as he came by and butted his squashed head against her forearm. The cat hissed mutinously before sloping away in a huff. Lily didn't have time to feel guilty, she'd make it up to her pet later. "Go on, Albus. What is this reason?"

"About a year ago, a prophecy was made about Lord Voldemort, once predicting his downfall," Dumbledore began, bracingly. "As with all prophecies, the details are vague and open to interpretation. One part, however, is unusually specific, and it is this information that Voldemort is focusing on."

"What did it say?" James asked.

"That the one with the power to defeat The Dark Lord was approaching," Dumbledore revealed. "A child was to be born to parents who had thrice defied Voldemort, a child born towards the end of July of that year. This, then, is the criteria that has informed all of the Death Eater's murder choices.

"I have been to the maternity ward at St. Mungo's, consulted the records there. I have discovered that ten children were born at the right time, but of those ten only two couples fulfil the requirement of having escaped Voldemort on three separate occasions. The other eight couples, and their children, have already been killed by the Death Eaters, leading me to believe that Voldemort is intending to make a clean job of it.

"Eight children are dead ... only two are remaining. One of these children will have the potential to defeat Lord Voldemort for good ... and that child is currently sat at my feet fiddling with my boots!"

Dumbledore looked down and locked eyes with the buoyant toddler staring back up at him. Baby Harry Potter seemed to know he was being spoken about. Unable to speak properly yet, Harry could only gurgle as his contribution to the discussion.

"You ... you seem certain that it is Harry, that he is the child of this prophecy," James said in near whisper. "How can you be so sure?"

Albus moved his gaze to James. "For I have heard the prophecy ... in its entirety. I have solid information that Lord Voldemort has only heard parts of it, which is why his actions are so sweeping. He is needlessly killing the young families that he mistakenly feels could be a threat to him, leading me to believe that he is operating on incomplete intelligence. In fact, I am certain that he is."

"How?" James asked.

"I must keep my sources secret, for their own safety," Dumbledore replied, evasively. "Just know that this source came to me in an attempt to protect the family of one of the children Voldemort will target. It opened my mind to delve into possible connections between the recent murders. It became clear that Voldemort knew some of the prophecy ... it is the parts that he is yet ignorant of that will prove his demise."

"And these parts involve our Harry?" Lily quizzed. "How can you be sure of that?"

"There is a particular detail that states that the Dark Lord will mark his own equal ... meaning that he will unwittingly choose the child who will ultimately bring hm down," Dumbledore explained. "With only two candidate children left, it is a straight shootout between them for which one Voldemort will target."

"What makes you convinced he will pick Harry?" James asked. "Who is the other child?"

"Neville Longbottom," Dumbledore replied. He turned to Lily, who had buried her face in her hands. "I am sorry, Lily. This must be hard for you to hear."

"Alice ... Alice is my best friend. We went through all the rigours of our pregnancies together," Lily spoke in a cracking tone, one muffled behind her now trembling fingers. "She can't be killed, Albus, she just can't. Not if we have power to stop it. We must find a way to protect her and Frank and the baby."

"We will do what we can," Albus vowed. "For you both. But I fear that none of it will be enough."

"What other information do you have?" James demanded. "You claim to be certain that Voldemort will target Harry, and that you know we will die on Halloween, but you haven't given us any concrete evidence about either. What aren't you telling us?"

Dumbledore moved now to sit on an armchair next to the fire. Baby Harry crawled across in his wake and demanded to be part of the conversation. So Dumbledore scooped him up and began bouncing him on his knee. He turned his gaze on James, and it was a gaze that had recovered some of its twinkle.

"Now this is where things get ... curious," Dumbledore began in his cryptic way. "I may never have known for sure that Voldemort would target Harry, but there have been clues. Strangers in dark cloaks have been reported around the village, questions have been asked in the local pub. Someone is trying to find out in which house do the Potters live. I have set up magical surveillance on this place just to see who is coming and going.

"But then, someone came to me that made all that redundant ... someone bearing a stark warning not just about the fate of you good people, but of your young son, too. And this fate stretches far beyond the attempt that Voldemort will make to nullify the prophecy. It confirmed that he will mark Harry as his equal, and that Harry will bring about his eventual defeat, but that Harry's immortal soul will remain at risk if action isn't taken now.

"And why, may you ask, do I think that this information is so reliable? Why, because it has already happened... this information was given to me by a source from the future."

James blinked in doubt and surprise, Lily edged further still to the edge of the settee.

"The future? How is that possible?" Lily asked quietly.

"I am still only privy to the very basics of this situation," Dumbledore replied. "I have been promised future visits where I will learn more. But for now, I have been urged to move quickly, to put in place certain things that will guarantee a continuation of a timeline that some malevolent force is trying to disrupt ... one that will imprison Harry forever, even after he has defeated the greater threat to the wider world."

"Then ... Harry survives?" James queried. "If he defeats Voldemort at some point, then he must survive beyond Halloween when ... when we get killed. There's no way he will defeat Voldemort now. He's just a toddler."

Harry looked over at his father, with something of the miffed in his look. He might be able to defeat a Voldemort ... whatever that might be. That'd show his Dad. He wasn't totally useless, after all, as some of his farts and burps were positively lethal!

"It is my understanding that Harry will survive ... and, if we act fast and do things right, both of you will survive, too."

James and Lily swapped determined looks. "How is that possible?"

"As I have said, I am still just getting to grips with the key points of all this," Dumbledore reminded them. "All I have been told is that something happens during the final battle Harry has with Lord Voldemort. This element of their confrontation has its roots in time... and the foundation of it has to be laid now. When Voldemort attempts to strike Harry down on Halloween, it begins this connection between them. Before that happens, Harry has to learn one spell, maybe even just one word."

"How can Harry learn a spell!" James scoffed. "He can't even speak!"

Dumbledore looked back at James with a grave expression. "Then you both must do what you can to help him learn. Without this, all hope will be lost."

"What's the spell?" Lily asked.

"The Disarming Spell," Dumbledore revealed. "In less than six weeks, Voldemort will come to Godric's Hollow, he will find you and kill you. He will then turn his wand on Harry. When he casts the Killing Curse at him, Harry must know to respond with the word Expelliarmus. If you do nothing else with what remains of your lives, you must achieve this."

Harry looked up from Dumbledore's knee.

"Essel-er-are-mus," Harry tried, causing Lily's heart to melt at his cuteness as she watched from across the room.

"Almost," James grinned encouragingly. "Try again ...Expelliarmus!"

"Expel Earmuffs!" Harry giggled. Then he looked up for validation. "Mama?"

"Almost, sweetheart, but we'll get you there," Lily smiled.

Lily held out her arms and beckoned her son to her. Harry clambered down onto his stubby little legs and padded over to Lily, who scooped him up and snuggled him close.

"But I still don't understand how we are supposed to survive this," Lily went on. "No spell can bring back the dead, Albus."

"True, but magic does exist that can enable the disconnected soul to endure," Dumbledore replied. "There is a ritual that our alchemical work can assist us with. It is complex, and may be one of my most brilliant pieces of sorcery to date, but it is possible. I just need to construct a vessel to house your souls until the time is right for you to re-emerge, implanting within it a strong life tether to keep you both renewed."

"Is that even possible?" James asked, slightly overwhelmed by the concept.

Dumbledore nodded. "Not for everyone, but, luckily, it is for me. I just have to ask an old friend for some borrowed feathers. He may not be happy about my request. After all, he has only ever given one feather before ... he may need some persuading before he gives another ..."

Dumbledore looked up as the clock struck the hour with a resounding gong above the fireplace. It seemed to denote the perfect time to call an end to the night. So Dumbledore rose, threw on his long travelling cloak and prepared to bid the Potters goodnight. As he was fastening the dragon-tooth clasps to his cloak, Lily asked one more question.

"This source, the one from the future," Lily began. "How do you know their information is correct? Why do you trust them so explicitly?"

Dumbledore smiled benignly. "Because, dear Lily, this source had all the markings of a Time Witch, and an extraordinarily powerful one at that. And, as a Mistress of Time, she has to be incorruptible ... to be anything else would deny her access to such a devastating level of magic. Very few could ever hope to reach such a precipice of power.

"Oh, and there was the small fact that she claimed to be Harry Potter's wife ... and that someone was meddling with time in order to destroy their happy life together. She sounded ... incentivised, shall we say."

"His wife? You met our infant son's future spouse!" James hushed. "What was she like? She must have been a gifted witch to be able to travel through time. Did she have a name?"

Dumbledore blinked slowly. "Her name is Hermione."

Lily choked as if she'd swallowed her wand sideways. She stumbled back against the coffee table and clutched at her chest. James hurried over in concern, but Lily stepped away from him.

"Did ... did you just say Hermione? Is that the name of your Time Witch?"

Dumbledore halted at the final buckle on his cloak, looking deep into Lily's face. "Yes, that is what I said. Why do you look so stunned?"

Lily tried to gather herself. She was shaking all over, her knees so unsteady that she had to sit down.

"You know where I've been today, James? What I've been doing?" Lily began slowly.

"Of course I do," James replied, sitting next to his wife and holding her hand.

James offered Lily a weak smile. He didn't want to give her pity, knowing how much she hated him doing so. It had barely been six months since her mother had passed away, and they had chosen to sell Lily's childhood home to provide a nice little trust fund for Harry, one that could mature for eighteen years in the vaults of Gringotts. They had bought Petunia out of the inheritance as a secret present to Harry on his first birthday back in July. It pained Lily to sever the link with her youth, James could see that, but Lily was the strongest person he knew and abhorred anything that might have been construed as weakness.

That afternoon, Lily had been off meeting prospective buyers for the place, touring them around the house and trying to secure a sale. She hadn't had time to fill James in on how it had gone. Learning you were going to die in six weeks' time tends to push everything else to the back of the mind.

But now, this revelation from Dumbledore had brought the afternoon's events slamming back into Lily's brain, though she was struggling to believe the connection between them that she had just made.

"Well, the people most keen to buy the place ... well, let's just say it borders on the bizarre," Lily replied.

"How so? Who's buying the place?"

"Do you remember the old couple who live next door, Mr and Mrs Granger?" Lily began. "You must do, as I'm sure you accidentally knocked on their door the first time you came to meet my parents. Well, the husband passed away about the same time as Mum, and the old dear can't really look after herself anymore. So her son is keen to buy my old place so he can keep an eye on her. I haven't seen David since we were kids. It was the weirdest surprise when he showed up for the viewing."

"Old boyfriend, eh?" James teased.

"Funnily enough he was my first kiss," Lily mused. "And a big, sloppy one it was too!"

"Should I be jealous?"

"Maybe. I was seven at the time. And I was the one who kissed him. I never have been backwards about coming forwards, as you know. So you'll have to decide if you have a love rival there!"

"I think I can rein in my jealously for a seven-year-old ... maybe," James quirked. Then he narrowed his eyes seriously. "So, this David ...is he single?"

Lily hooted out a laugh. "No, he's happily married. I met his wife, Catrin, and their little girl. They've been looking for a bigger place, so my old house is perfect for them. The daughter is only about Harry's age, maybe a bit older, but she's so talkative. I had a full-on conversation with her. Chats at about a million miles an hour, but she's bright as a button. Cute little thing, too. Masses of hair. I'd have loved a go at braiding that.

"And she was just dripping in magic, I could tell. I didn't say anything to David, obviously, but they have a little witch on their hands, there. She'll be Muggleborn, without doubt, but I'd bet my racing broom that she's already on one of Minevra's lists somewhere!"

"And did she have a name?"

"That's ... that's sort of the thing," Lily hushed. "Her name is Hermione."

James' eyes went round. "Hermione? You're sure?"

"Positive," Lily nodded, keenly. "Hermione Jane Granger. It seemed to be very important to her that I remembered her middle name for some reason, so she told it to me about a dozen times. Hermione ... Hermione Jane Granger.

"James ... without knowing it, I think I just spent the entire afternoon with our future daughter-in-law!"

Chapter Text

Seventeen years later ...

"You know, Harry, I think it's supposed to look like sails on a ship. But I'm not convinced. What do you think?"

Harry sat up, tilted his aviator sunglasses down, and turned to Hermione with a quirky, playful expression. He watched as she turned the postcard she was holding on its side, comparing it to the famous landmark standing proud on the other side of the shimmering water.

"If you want to know what I think ... I think you're sounding like the guidebook again!" he chortled. "If you're angling for a job, the guy who hosted our cruise boat tour earlier was rubbish. I'm sure you could do better."

"Thanks ... I think!" Hermione laughed.

"But I know you won't be happy with me insulting the tour guide, as I could tell you fancied him!" Harry teased.

Hermione sat up and placed her free hand to her hip. "Excuse me, but I did not fancy him. What on earth gave you that idea?"

"The fact that you spent almost the full hour of the trip staring at his behind!" Harry hooted.

"There was a mosquito there. I was fascinated to see if it would bite him," Hermione replied in her haughty tone.

"For almost sixty minutes?" Harry funned. "How many of those minutes did you contemplate biting his bum?"

"Be quiet, you," Hermione returned, wrinkling her nose and grinning cutely as she spoke.

She lounged back and stretched out alongside Harry on the grassy bank that they were sunbathing along that afternoon. It was a glorious day at Sydney Harbour, perfect for wasting away a few hours and pondering the architectural intent of the famous opera house located barely a stone's throw away from them. That was the limit of Harry and Hermione's intent for the day.

Then Hermione looked over at Harry. "Would you feel awkward if I took my shirt off? I've got my bikini top on underneath this, and it'd be a shame to waste such great tanning weather."

Harry turned his head. "Go for it. You've had to put up with my pasty skin all day so I'm sure I can tolerate yours!"

Hermione laughed lyrically, then unbuttoned her cotton shirt, throwing it on top of Harry's discarded t-shirt when she was done. Harry blinked hard. He had never seen so much of Hermione as he had on this trip, and he was feeling increasingly rueful about the fact. She was svelte and lithe when not hidden under her heavy robes and cloaks, and today her milky skin seemed to shine in the sunlight, glistening with a light layering of sweat. All except for one bit ... a bit that Harry couldn't take his eyes off.

It was just unfortunate that this part of Hermione happened to be the very centre of her chest.

"You can look at my face if you want. Eyes up here, Harry!" Hermione teased in a sing-song voice, tracing the point of Harry's gaze.

But Harry was scowling now and far from playful. Without thinking, he reached out and ran the fingertips of his right hand the length of Hermione's cleavage. She gasped softly, but didn't pull away.

"Harry ... we're supposed to have a date and a kiss or two before I let you touch me like that!" Hermione breathed huskily. She still did nothing to stop him, however.

"Don't be daft," Harry chided, still smoothing the damaged skin between Hermione's breasts. "Your scar ... it's almost as big as mine. Did you really wear the Horcrux that long?"

Hermione breathed in deeply as she understood. "We were equals, Harry. As always. So of course I did my share. Even more so when ... you know, especially after Ron left ..."

Hermione's words tailed off. They'd only tried to discuss this once in the aftermath of the war, but it made them both soberly bitter about the whole thing. It would lead to something unsightly if they openly discussed it ... something like resentment. So they had come to an unspoken agreement to simply ignore it.

But here was Hermione, physically scarred by the betrayal. Harry could see that up close now, and he couldn't play pretend anymore.

"I'm sorry," Harry whispered, gently tracing the scar tissue again. Hermione gasped and shuddered with the maddening ticklishness of it. But she still didn't pull back. And Harry's thoughts seemed a billion miles away from what should have been an acutely awkward moment. "I ... I should never have let him come back. If I'd known he'd done this to you ..."

"Harry ... Ron didn't do this, the Horcrux did," Hermione breathed softly. "He will probably have a scar too, don't forget."

But Harry didn't seem to be listening, focusing solely on trying to smooth away Hermione's scar, as if his mere touch could erase it entirely. Her chest was heaving at the contact. She wished Harry would stop stroking her in the way that he was, or rather she wished that she wanted him to stop. But the truth was, she totally didn't.

His caress was far beyond sensual, and Hermione didn't know how to respond to it. They'd never shared anything like this before. In that moment, she was surprised and a little mindless and couldn't help but enjoy both, to thrill at the intimacy of this contact. It wasn't allowed, this wasn't the sort of ways that friends touched one another ... but the forbidden nature of it was delicious.

"Your beautiful skin, your wonderful body ... broken like this ... it isn't right ..."

Harry seemed to be talking to himself more than to Hermione. But he showed no inclination to stop his circular caresses. Two months ago in England, he wouldn't have dared to be this brazen. But they'd shared things over these last eight weeks, on this painstaking journey to recover Hermione's parents. They'd cried together, laughed together, let their hurt go together. And the experience had brought them ridiculously closer, and they were already pretty much entwined before all of this. Some part of both was dreading the day when they had to return home and give up this intimacy.

But this situation felt like they'd crossed a boundary without even flinching at the border. Even when they'd shared a sleeping bag under the stars in the Australian Outback, Harry had insisted on laying back-to-back ... just in case. He said his body often struggled to tell the difference between a sexy woman and the vibrations of the Knight Bus. The last thing he wanted was to wake up and find he was poking Hermione in the base of her spine ... he'd never live it down and her giggles would haunt him forever.

But this was something new, it was unexpected and frightfully strange. Though despite all that, there seemed to be a rightness to it, something natural and comfortable. They both felt it at the same time, sharing discomfited and confused expressions as the sensations flooded through them.

Harry finally took his hand away from Hermione's chest to gesture at her. She felt unspeakably colder for the loss of his touch.

"I should have never let this happen to you," Harry breathed, lowly. "I wish I'd been better for you, stronger. You've suffered so much for knowing me, Hermione. I'm so sorry."

"Don't you dare apologise to me for that," Hermione chastised. "None of that is your fault. I chose to try and be friends with you and I regret nothing. Do you hear me? Nothing. You are my best friend, and our relationship is worth ten times any danger that we might have faced together. You've had such a rough go at life, Harry ... and I won't tolerate you feeling guilty about any consequence I might have faced due to being friends with you. I'd face them all again and so much worse, if I had to. You're worth that and so much more."

Harry didn't know what to say to that, so he distracted himself by picking at blades of grass beneath his hands. In his silence, Hermione kept on talking.

"If I ever forget to say, I'm glad that it was just you that I brought along for this journey, now that we are nearing the end of it. I knew it would be long, and frustrating, and ultimately intense when we found my parents. That wasn't something I felt would be easy to share with anyone ... well, anyone but you.

"Just don't tell Ron I said that," Hermione added as an afterthought.

"You know, telling me secrets to keep from your boyfriend could be seen as very naughty, Hermione," Harry teased.

"I don't keep secrets from you, Harry, you know that," Hermione replied, simply. "Everyone does."

Harry turned his sunglass-covered eyes to face her. "You kept the secret about you and Ron from me. And that was a pretty big one."

Hermione pulled herself up to perch on her elbows. Harry's tone of voice was ... what was it? ... weird. That's the only word Hermione could find to describe it.

"There wasn't really anything to tell ... until there suddenly was," Hermione explained. "You didn't ... please tell me that you haven't been going around thinking that we'd been carrying on behind your back for months or something? Oh please, Harry, tell me that isn't true! With all the other things that we've had to contend with over the past year, I'd hate to think you were carrying that around with you too."

"Carrying on behind my back? You're making it sound like I was jealous or something."

Harry had meant his tone to sound playful, but it didn't quite come out like that.

"No ... no of course not, I didn't mean it like that," Hermione replied, her voice angular and awkward all of a sudden. "I only meant that I still remember some of the things Ron said, the things he accused me of. I'd hate to think that you might see that in a different light now, like we were ganging up on you because of what was happening between us."

"Nothing Ron said was wrong," Harry replied. "I didn't have a clue what I was doing, apart from putting you both in danger without having the faintest idea how to get you out of it. You were well within your rights to discuss your doubts about me."

"I really didn't say those things in the way that Ron made out," Hermione protested vehemently. "I hope you can believe that. I lost more sleep about that than I did Ron leaving. I couldn't believe how much it hurt, to think that you might have felt I'd lost faith in you."

Harry looked over. "That's a strange thing to say. Why would you cry more over upsetting me than from your boyfriend leaving us?"

"He wasn't my boyfriend then."

"But you were already in love with him?"

The question threw Hermione, caught her off guard. She had never openly discussed her feelings for Ron before, barely even with herself. And now here was Harry, vocalising them for her. But ... something didn't feel right.

"I ... I don't know that I am in love with him," Hermione confessed. "I mean, I have deep feelings for him, obviously, and I know he'll make a loyal and steady boyfriend and we'll be happy together. But love, romantic love, I'm not entirely sure I have that in me. It's not like with you and Ginny."

"I don't love Ginny," Harry replied decisively. "When we get back home, I'm going to break the news to her that we wont be getting back together."

Hermione sat up fully now. "When did you decide this? I thought you had this all planned out. What's changed?"

Harry shrugged. "Don't know, really. Maybe it's the distance giving me a bit of perspective, you know? I had doubts right after the fight at Hogwarts. When I won the duel, she ran up to me and wanted to celebrate like I'd caught the Snitch to win the House Quidditch Cup or something. There was no concern that I'd had to kill a man to end a war. I know it had to happen, because of that damned prophecy, but I still had to do it all the same. I had to kill Tom Riddle ... but Ginny saw that as just a passing footnote in the aftermath of it all.

"So I think I started to decide then. She'd not been with me for all I'd been through in my life, and that includes some seriously significant stuff. She hadn't seen how I'd changed in the last year, meandering around Britian in that grubby bloody tent. I wasn't the same, I'd grown. And I don't think she will understand that. She won't be able to give me what I need, and I don't think it's fair that I ask for it when I can't give her all of me in return. So I won't let it restart again. She'll be upset by that, but we're young and she'll have plenty of time to move on."

"And what about you?" Hermione asked, gently. "Will you move on? It can't be easy to just give her up."

"I'll be okay," Harry returned, bracingly. "To tell the truth, I think I'll always have a niggle of doubt that any girl I come across will likely be as interested in my fame as with me as a person. Ginny certainly started that way. It'll be hard to truly let anyone close, so who knows if I ever will or not."

"That makes me quite the privileged witch then, as you've kept me around for all these years!" Hermione joked. "Just as long as I'm not seen as a love rival by any perspective girlfriends in the future."

"It wouldn't be the first time for us, would it?" Harry blurted out without thinking.

Hermione felt her heart miss a step. She had become a little shaky, wondering where Harry was going with this. "What do you mean?"

"Well, plenty of people have thought something was going on between us at one time or another," Harry went on. "I can sort of understand why. I mean, I don't know many people as close as you and I, and it muddies the waters that I'm a boy and you're a girl. It's a little bit unusual."

"Who has thought that?" Hermione demanded.

"How long have you got?" Harry chuckled. "Krum, Cho, Rita Skeeter, most of Slytherin, Dumbledore, Ron, the Locket Horcrux -"

"Wait, what?" Hermione cut in urgently. "Explain those last three. Quickly please."

"Dumbledore made a comment to me that he always saw you and I spending a lot of time together," Harry replied. "He thought there was more to us than mere friendship. Ron made his feelings quite clear when he left the tent, saying you chose me over him. If that wasn't blatant enough, what we saw in the Locket Horcrux confirmed all that."

"What did it show?"

"Has Ron never told you? I assumed that he had, that destroying a Horcrux was a tale he was just dying to retell."

"No. Never mentioned it. Neither have you, for that matter."

"It's ... delicate."

"How so?"

"It showed some things ... things that might be better left unsaid."

"We don't keep secrets from each other, Harry. Remember? Please, will you tell me? I really need to know."

Harry sighed deeply. He took off his sunglasses to look Hermione directly in the face. It was a move that utterly disarmed her, causing her to shudder in the sunlight.

"The Locket looked into our souls, trying to find a weakness to exploit," Harry began. "It found that weakness in Ron. He was desperate to get you, but he saw me as a rival. And, let's be fair, he had genuine reason to. We only ever really spent time with each other, making us so close that it would be difficult for any outsider to penetrate what we had. I'm also rich, famous and successful in the ways he wanted to be. We saw his jealousy spill out many times over the years, but it was never anything that we couldn't move on from.

"And then we rowed in the tent ... when the rivalry centred on you. Ron thought he'd lost you to me, so he stormed off. It split the three of us in the most fundamental way ever. And the reason he felt this so powerfully was that it had a valid foundation. The Locket saw that in all of us, played it more directly against Ron, stoking his jealousy and making him leave."

"What do you mean it had a valid foundation?" Hermione asked, her voice trembly.

"It saw that what Ron wanted – a relationship with you – was possible, but also betrayed that the opposite – a relationship between us – was also possible. It showed this ... graphically ... as a last-ditch attempt to stoke Ron's anger and have him swing Gryffindor's Sword at my neck, and not at the Locket. Luckily, Ron had been free of the Locket's influence long enough to keep his senses and not behead me!"

"When you say graphically ... what do you mean?"

"The Locket produced two shadowy versions of us – me and you – and they ... well ... they had an intimate moment."

"They had sex!" Hermione gasped.

"No, no ... they just kissed," Harry explained.

"And you use the word intimate to describe that!?" Hermione yelped.

"This kiss was pretty hot, to be fair," Harry mused.

"And the Locket thought all this was possible? Tom Riddle thought it was possible, and tried to use it against us?"

"Like I said ... it's delicate."

"Did you and Ron discuss it after it happened?" Hermione asked in a business-like manner.

"We did."

"And?"

"We came to an understanding."

"What understanding?"

"That I wouldn't be a threat to him. That I saw you as a sister," Harry confessed.

"And he accepted that, even after what the Locket had shown you?" Hermione demanded in her brisk voice.

"He seemed to. He came back, didn't he? And you got together after he did."

"And what about you? Do you see me as a sister?"

The decision on how to answer this was one of the toughest Harry would ever face. He knew that the world would be different whichever choice he made. He looked at Hermione, determined and driven in her expression, and he knew that he couldn't lie to her, couldn't ignore what had begun to stir in him during their jaunt across Australia. He would just have to be honest with her and deal with the fallout later. So he took a steeling breath.

"No, not really."

Hermione was fully shivering now. Fretful trembles were creeping along her skin like icy tendrils. Of course she had considered a relationship with Harry, most girls her age probably had. But he'd never shown much of an inclination for her in that way, so she supposed she hadn't given him much encouragement in return. Ron would be her boy and that was suitable enough.

But now ... Harry had pretty much admitted that he did harbour some romantic affection for her, albeit subtly. He had told her what the Horcrux had shown, but was yet to deny that any of it was possible from his side. Was this his way of telling her that he had feelings for her? Hermione found that hard to process.

The worst part, however, was that a seed of possibility had been planted at the front of Hermione's brain. It was a seed that, if nurtured, could blossom into her pursuing a relationship with Harry instead of Ron. It was a fateful moment, for in a contest between the two, there really was no contest.

Hermione was Harry's girl, through and through. Always had been. She'd chosen him once over Ron and would do so again and again if it came to it. The understanding of the stark reality of what that meant hit her like a freight train. Harry might be open to a relationship with her, one more befitting of how they were with one another, and that possibility was monumental, no matter how small it might be.

For just like that, with Harry suddenly in the picture, all of Hermione's romantic interest in Ron evaporated into one of Sydney's clouds and drifted away overhead.

The question was, what came next? In the silence of contemplation, Harry misread the situation, as was his way.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable ..."

"No! It isn't that!" Hermione shrieked quickly. "It's just ... you've never talked about this before. We've never talked about it. We've always been just friends, so what's changed?"

"I suppose this trip has just got me thinking," Harry confessed. He had to go all in now he'd begun. "About why we are just friends. Only friends, never anything more. It's started to strike me as being a bit odd."

"How so?" Hermione urged. She barely had the patience to wait for Harry's answer.

"Do you remember that day, when we went to watch the sunrise in Melbourne?" Harry asked.

Hermione nodded vigorously that she did. It had been one of her most favourite days, after all. She and Harry, sitting on a hillside watching the sun come up. They had held hands that morning, and said almost nothing. It was beautifully perfect. Hermione still daydreamt about it sometimes. It was a lovely memory.

But Harry was talking again, cutting into her reverie. "That was the day I decided not to get back with Ginny, when I accepted for good that she simply isn't long-term girlfriend material. So I got to thinking about who might be, or what the criteria would be for any girl who wanted to get close to me. That's when I realised that the person who ticks all my boxes, for everything I'd want in a perfect girlfriend, was you."

Hermione let an audible gasp escape her mouth. She couldn't help it. And the hand she threw up in a vain attempt to catch her gasp was woefully too slow.

Luckily for her, Harry was in full confession mode now and didn't seem to notice. "You've been with me for so many important moments in my life; you've supported me, cajoled me, berated me and slowed me up when that's what I've needed. We make a great team, and I don't think I can do without you. I don't know that I've ever expressed that properly, but I can't help but think that part of you agrees. You brought me, and only me, out here with you to find your parents. I've thought about the significance of that more than once over the past few weeks.

"So it's odd that, until we came out here, I've not been able to see you for what you truly could be. It's almost as if there's been a veil over my eyes where you are concerned, but I haven't been able to notice it until I realised it wasn't there."

"And now?" Hermione asked, her voice tiny.

"And now this veil seems to have lifted," Harry replied. "But it's not gone completely. I feel it lingering, as though it will fall back onto me when we go home. And that makes me feel like it has been placed there, as though someone doesn't want me to be able to consider you romantically. Either way, I have to find out.

"I know what I'm saying sounds crazy, and I expect nothing from you, Hermione. I know you are with Ron, and I won't do anything to jeopardise that. But this is all about me, and if some malevolent force is tampering with me, I want to find out what it is."

Hermione took a deep breath and reached out for Harry's hands, curling her fingers around his palms.

"You've given me a lot to think about. But I'm a big girl and I can make my own decisions about my future," she began, softly. "I can't make any promises right now, but one thing I will say is that if there is anything to your suspicions, I will do all I can to help you get to the bottom of them. This will affect me too, Harry. It already has."

"How?" Harry asked.

Hermione reached up and cupped Harry's cheek. She smiled at him, and it was like the sun coming out after the rain.

"I'd be lying if I said you were the only one who's feelings had changed on this trip," she breathed. "The way you've been there for me when the search has gone badly, or we've taken a false lead; the way you were with my parents when we tried to explain everything to them. I couldn't have done this without you ... and its made me think things about you that I know I really shouldn't have.

"And now you've said all this! And I don't know how to get my head around it yet. All I ask is that you give me a little time, please. What you said about having a veil in front of you, I've felt that a little myself. I just hadn't noticed it until you described it yourself. You may be on to something, and I think we owe it to ourselves to work it out."

Harry smiled back and put his sunglasses back on. "Something tells me we have all the time in the world. So, where do we go from here?"

"Back to the hotel soon, it's getting late," Hermione replied, looking at her watch. "We need to freshen up before dinner with Mum and Dad."

Harry agreed, so they rose and started to put their shirts back on. Hermione smoothed a stray lock of hair behind her ear, then turned slowly to face Harry.

"In light of all that's been said, I think it might be best if I stay in my parent's room until we fly back home. If we continue sharing a bed it might be ... dangerous."

Harry sighed in resignation. He knew it was coming, but he'd grown fond of fighting with Hermione over what to watch on the hotel TV every night, just as they were fighting over which side of the bed to sleep on and who would have the lion's share of the duvet.

"Yeah, you're probably right," Harry agreed, scratching the back of his head. "I'll miss you, though."

"Me, too," Hermione smiled, sadly. "I'll miss you, too."

Harry suddenly stepped forwards and drew Hermione into a tender hug. She was powerless to do anything other than melt into his embrace.

"Something is wrong, isn't it?" Harry asked, almost pleading. "Tell me you feel it. We go home in a few days, and I'm dreading giving this up."

"Me, too," Hermione nodded. "We'll look into it, I promise. And if there is something wrong, we'll not rest until we put it right."

And with that covenant sworn upon, Harry and Hermione linked arms and made their way out of Sydney Harbour.

Chapter Text

October 10th, 1981

"So let me get this right in my head, before I ask you to explain to me again," Sirius Black began, placing his coffee cup down with exasperated movements. He rubbed his temples and scowled at James again. "You're trying to tell me that you saw something in a time memory, a vision of the future?"

"Yes," James Potter confirmed.

"And the memory came from some witch who arrived here from the future?" Sirius went on.

"Again, yes," James nodded

"A future where that little boy," Sirius continued, pointing at baby Harry who, at that moment, was zooming up and down the living room on his toy broom, "Where your son ... married a Weasley girl?"

"Sort of correct," James grinned. "The witch from the future claimed to be Harry's wife. But her reality was being altered to the become the future you just described. She was trying to work out what was happening, to save herself, her marriage, Harry and their children."

"Okay. Now, far be it from me to be the voice of reason and point out the bleedin' obvious," Sirius twittered. "But ... you know that's impossible, don't you? A Weasley girl? You're having me on!"

"I'm being serious," James argued back. "This is my serious face."

He made an exaggerated sort of grimace to demonstrate his point.

"Well, this is my Sirius face," Sirius smirked. "And I'm asking if you've finally lost your mind? Your son cannot marry a Weasley girl!"

"Ah! At last! Something we agree on!" James hooted.

At that moment Harry seemed to agree, too. Or, at least, he made some grunting noises from the top end of the room.

"Urgh! Urgh! No, no! Dada! Harry stuck! Help!"

James looked over fondly, for Harry had gotten himself jammed in the corner of the room. His toy broom was knocking incessantly against the walls, with Harry unable to turn to freedom. James got up and trotted over, setting Harry facing back down the room again.

"There you go, son," James hummed. "Go for it!"

"Weeeeee!" Harry cried, as he zoomed off towards the giant skeleton in the other corner of the living room.

"We might agree," Sirius went on. "But the reasons are very different. Harry can't marry a Weasley girl, not because there's anything wrong with the family ... but more that they can't have daughters. They aren't allowed them. You know the story."

"Yes, yes, we all sat through Binns' lecture at Hogwarts," James replied dismissively. "Gellert Grindelwald promised all families who supported his conquest attempt that they would be rewarded by prominence in his new Britain, that they would be leaders in a future of the Greater Good. A very dark future as he promised. That was until this gentleman handed old Gellert his behind on a silver platter."

Dumbledore smiled benignly and placed his cup of Earl Grey down onto its saucer with a little clink. "I do not believe it is written on my Chocolate Frog card in quite the same way. And I consider achieving Frog immortality to be one of my crowning achievements. So, let us stick to the facts."

"The facts being that you defeated Grindelwald before he was able to cross the English Channel," James went on, tipping his own teacup in a gesture of respectful salute. "And then the families who were waiting to welcome him were rightly and summarily punished, the Weasleys chief amongst them."

"That I cannot deny," Dumbledore allowed with a curt nod.

"So how is all this changing?" Sirius pressed. "The Weasleys are under magical inhibitors to prevent them ever having daughters. Molly and Arthur are living proof that the punishment is still working, when you consider the six boys that they already have. I know Molly always wanted a girl, that's why she keeps trying. Are you telling me she's going to find a way around the curse, that she'll succeed somehow? That's where I'm losing track."

Dumbledore sighed and considered Sirius sternly. "According to my information, this is precisely what will happen. But in order for it to take place, dark and nefarious schemes must be enacted throughout the timeline we are living in."

"And, I suppose," Sirius mused, "that if a girl is born to the Weasleys under such conditions, that she will be a cursed child."

Dumbledore nodded in confirmation. "A girl who will go on to marry little Harry, there. And, according to my source, this will be a terrible fate for him, as he will be inside a prison of magical manipulation more complete than any single spell or potion could ever provide."

"Is Molly involved in this?" James asked. "Couldn't we just go over to the Burrow now and confront her?"

"Time corruption doesn't work so neatly," Dumbledore told him. "Remember, the source is pointing me to events taking place in the future that will change our reality now. So the Molly we know will be as ignorant of all this as we are. The messages I'm getting are cryptic and often difficult to decipher, but I believe that the messenger has taken steps to protect me from whatever changes are coming."

"How?" asked Sirius.

"By bringing me this."

Dumbledore reached into his robes and took out a little golden device. A wheel within a wheel, and suspended between them was a tiny hourglass. Sirius looked at it in wide-eyed disbelief.

"Merlin's big hairy bollocks!" he exclaimed. "Is that a time-turner?"

"It is," Dumbledore nodded.

"But ... I thought they were all destroyed?" Sirius hushed. "The Ministry deemed time too dangerous to meddle with, even within the Department of Mysteries."

"You are quite right," Dumbledore smiled. "Despite all that, here one is. Not only that, but it was brought from the future, and I know precisely who constructed it."

"You do?" asked James, suddenly interested. "How?"

"An engraving left by the craftsman," Dumbledore explained. "Remember, gentleman, that time-turners were originally invented by ancient alchemists, the quintessential Masters of Time, if you'll forgive the pun. The more they could repeat time, the more gold and Elixir of Life they could accumulate. So, only an alchemist of prodigious skill and power could have created a new time-turner."

"And is that important?" James asked.

"It is, for becoming a Master of Time grants the sorcerer capable of it a certain amount of immunity from time corruption," Dumbledore explained.

"And so who made this one?" Sirius pushed. "Can you show me the engraving?"

"Certainly."

Dumbledore offered the Time-Turner to Sirius, who looked at it closely and read the engraving.

"A.P.W.B.D?" Sirius recited. "And you know who that is? What's their connection to you?"

"Indeed, I do know," Dumbledore smiled gently. "As for the connection ... why, A.P.W.B.D is ... me!"

"You?" James hushed.

"Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore," the Hogwarts Headmaster replied, reciting his full name. "I, indeed, am him."

"And you know how to build a Time-Turner?" James breathed in amazement. "I knew you were powerful, but that is on a different level altogether!"

"Alas, I do not ... yet," Dumbledore confessed. "But ... evidently ... I will learn how. And, at some point in the future, I will have reason to give this Time-Turner to the mysterious Time Witch who has now returned it to me."

"And that's how you found out about the real future, as well as the changes being made to ours?" Sirius pressed.

Dumbledore nodded. "The Time-Turner not only allows travel through time, but the viewing of the events it witnessed. The Wheels, you see, are the key. They allowed me to unearth who the person was who used it last, and the things that they did."

"Her name is Hermione ..." James breathed lowly, his heart hammering under his ribs as comprehension settled on him. "That's how you learned her name?"

"Her name is Hermione," Dumbledore echoed. "She was reluctant to give me her name at first, just in case I went looking for her as a child in this time period, and got involved in her life before I was supposed to. I have a role in this story, in their story, but I cannot pre-empt my entry into it. My purpose is to focus on Harry for now."

At the mention of his name, Harry jumped off his toy broom and crawled over to Dumbledore. He was distracted by the moon spurs on the back of his hobnailed boots, giggling and gurgling as he span them round and round with his chunky little fingers.

James sat back to consider the enormity of all that Dumbledore was telling them. For a while, the only sound was the soft clicking of the moon spur where Harry was spinning it madly at Dumbledore's feet. In the silence, Dumbledore continued on with his disclosure.

"This girl ... this Hermione ... used the Time-Turner with Harry," Dumbledore went on quietly. "They did two things of great importance during that adventure, and as she was in control of all they did, she became a Master of Time, just as I will. She was able to move through time and influence the future as saw fit, changing events without destroying the very fabric of existence."

"Destroying the what?" Sirius asked, slightly overwhelmed.

"Meddling with Time is extremely dangerous," Dumbledore went on. "Which is why the Ministry forbids it. Understand, gentlemen, that to change the past, you are also changing the future of whatever led up to that point. No single event stands randomly in time ... each moment is past, present and future all at once. It all depends on perspective, and only by viewing a moment from a certain perspective can we fix its state within the system."

"This is hurting my brain," Sirius complained, rubbing his temples and turning to his tea for comfort.

"So, if I've got this right," James cut in. "What you are saying is that, if you change something significant, then you change all the events that led up to that point. So the effect ripples of any change will necessarily travel both forwards and backwards through the space-time continuum, changing your reality, for continuity to be maintained. If done recklessly, the very tapestry of existence could simply fall apart."

"Precisely, and well done!" Dumbledore beamed. "But it seems that Hermione was able to change time without causing such catastrophe. To be able to hold all those variables steady, in order to alter events in time, but not change existence for everyone else and still have the universe accept it all, would require a remarkable mind, and the sort of power even I cannot begin to comprehend."

"She must be some witch!" James grinned. "She'll make him a wonderful wife. Harry, son, I very much approve of Hermione!"

"Her-my-marry," Harry babbled.

"Yes, Harry, marry Hermione!" James laughed.

"Marry Her-my-mammary," Harry promised, at least as faithfully as a fifteen-month-old could. Then he went back to his spinning.

"So, what were these two great deeds that Harry and Hermione accomplished?" asked Sirius. "You seemed to hint that they were important."

"And indeed they were," Dumbledore began, his eyes twinkling. "The first one was saving the life of someone who would have a profound connection to their eventual relationship. The other was setting that union off down an inevitable path, for they flew together on a Hippogriff after saving its life."

"What's flying a hippogriff got to do with anything?" James queried. "Not the most romantic of creatures, are they?"

"You are quite wrong," Dumbledore smiled. "Mythologically, Hippogriffs are divine symbols of love, encapsulating the transformative power of the emotion, highlighting the profound impact love can have on overcoming obstacles. And so, by saving a symbol of love from being destroyed, Harry and Hermione received a blessing in return, as a token of gratitude from the Universe."

"A blessing from the Universe?" James hushed, taking a turn to be overwhelmed by the life his son and future daughter-in-law were going to share together. It was becoming ever more clear just why this Hermione was so determined to intervene from the future, to preserve something so profoundly beautiful from being taken from her.

"What was the blessing?" Sirius asked.

"The gift of a powerful and eternal love between each other, one incorruptible by any natural force or process," Dumbledore revealed. "Their life energies were entangled from that point on."

"Ah, I see. One divine, selfless act deserves another," Sirius nodded in understanding. "Sounds a bit like a soul bond to me."

"This is more fundamental than a soul bond," Dumbledore corrected. "Soul bonds are magical creations, spells performed at a marriage ceremony. To bind any two souls, without their will or knowledge, is a corruption and a violation of their freedoms. The gift Harry and Hermione received was the potential to unite their eternal life energies in a much deeper way than any magic could ever achieve. It just so happened to be what they both wanted. I can only imagine that it led to the most satisfying, fulfilling and joyous union that any two souls could ever hope to achieve. The completeness of their joining would have been profound."

"You make them sound like some sort of power couple," Sirius chuckled.

"I believe they were," Dumbledore nodded. "A couple far more divine than the common way."

"How so?" James queried.

"Consider this," Dumbledore began. "Hermione became as powerful a witch as you can conceive, a Master of Time. Young Harry would have had to attain a comparable level of development, in order for them to be equals and for their relationship to flourish. And, as I have come to understand, he did ... not by becoming a Master of Time, but by somehow becoming a Master of Death."

James and Sirius actually gasped in unison.

"What even is that?" Sirius breathed.

"I have learned that Harry will face death many times over his early life," Dumbledore began. He offered a sympathetic look to James, who grimaced sorrowfully at the news of his son's future suffering. "But, each time, he will evade it and survive. Eventually, he will come into possession of, and develop mastery over, objects that will literally allow him to avoid Death himself.

"Essentially, Harry will become so powerful that only he will decide when he is going to die. And I cannot help but surmise that Harry will choose that moment to be the very one after Hermione dies. I cannot imagine a scenario where he would choose to remain alive in a world without her."

"He will really become that powerful?" James asked, gobsmacked.

Dumbledore nodded. "I believe he will go on to be considered the most powerful wizard who ever existed. Which is why we must not fail Hermione in what she is asking from us. We must not fail them."

"If Harry becomes a Master of Death, is that another gift from the Universe?" Sirius pondered. "Was it given to him by saving that important life you mentioned, before they rode the hippogriff?"

"That makes sense, as he would have some level of mastery over the death of others, as well as his own," James considered. "You never said whose life that was, Albus."

Dumbledore leant forward dramatically. "Why ... it was your life, Sirius."

Sirius blinked in his shock. "Me? They saved me?"

"From the Kiss of a Dementor, yes," Dumbledore confirmed.

"I ... I was going to be Kissed by a Dementor?" Sirius shuddered icily. "W-why? What could I have possibly done to deserve that?"

"I wasn't told the details," Dumbledore admitted. "Though, ultimately, I do not believe that the specifics are important."

"Me getting my soul sucked out isn't important!" Sirius quirked. "Thanks, Dumbledore!"

The old wizard looked over with a wry smile. "I did not mean it that way, as you well know. All I meant was that the reasons are not so important. The event itself is key, and that, I believe, is why I was told about it."

"I'm not sure I understand," James cut in, confused.

"Try to think of the time continuum as a journey," Dumbledore explained. "We go from Point A to B to C and so on. The travel between those points isn't necessarily important, just so long as the events themselves are unchanged. This is what my messenger from the future is doing ... she is visiting key points in her past to make sure that they happen as they are supposed to, and then studying the altered journey to see who is responsible for these changes, so that she can correct it if possible. She calls it placing anchors in time.

"And as for why you are so important, Sirius, the reason is simple. You become profoundly connected to Harry and Hermione after they save you from the Dementors. You share that adventure together, and it binds all three of you in a unique and emotional way. You become central to how their relationship blossoms after that, and act as a gentle guide to Harry, to prompt him towards realising his love for this girl without being overt about it."

"That sounds like a fun game," Sirius quirked. "Why must I be so subtle, though? That's not exactly my strong suit!"

"Because Hermione says you must be," Dumbledore explained. "She knows that to provoke Harry into a relationship, with the knowledge that you have been given about them both, would make the whole thing unnatural. It will pervert the proper order of things, if he doesn't come to the realisation about her organically.

"That is what seems to be happening with the anomaly of the Weasley daughter, who defies all we know to be possible. Her very creation is unnatural, and it sets a dangerous precedent for the things that will follow. The impact of this girl will affect Hermione's future ... and these effects are starting in our present."

"Are you saying changes are already occurring?" James asked in concern.

Dumbledore nodded. "They are barely noticeable, if you don't have the eye to look for them. Fortunately, I do."

"So, what's happened?" James pressed.

"It may not seem like a major event, but my phoenix, Fawkes, recently went through an unscheduled Burning Day," Dumbledore told them conversationally. "I was about to request a tail feather from him, but he has always been reluctant to shed his plumage for my magical purposes. As a mere a phoenix chick now, he won't regrow his feathers for many months, and those potent enough for magical applications take years to reach full maturity."

"What do you need a phoenix tail feather for?" Sirius quizzed.

"Phoenix feathers have many properties that are useful, but I have an inkling that it may be connected to my creation of the time-turner. Phoenixes live very long lives, and that durability could be encoded into their very DNA. It may be possible to extract that longevity, as a way to access the timespan that a phoenix has lived for."

"Thus giving you a side-door into the timeline," James nodded. "Fascinating."

"Indeed, but Fawkes cannot help us now, so I must put my curiosity to the back of my mind," Dumbledore replied in a rueful way.

"Can't you use a different phoenix?" Sirius asked.

Dumbledore shook his head. "Fawkes is uniquely associated with me. The bond between a wizard and his phoenix is exclusive and personal. If I am to create a time-turner, then it follows that I will have to use a tail feather from my own phoenix. Assuming I am right, of course. I could be mistaken about the whole thing."

"But you don't think that this is an accident, do you?" James questioned. "You think it may be intentional. Phoenix Burns are on a time-specific cycle, and this early Burning is evidence of a corruption of time, isn't it?"

"I believe it could be," Dumbledore nodded grimly. "Fawkes' Burns are almost like clockwork ... I could set my calendar by them. He wasn't due his next one for about seven years, so this early Burn is a clear glitch in the space-time continuum. I cannot yet see how this might be significant, but if I am right, I believe we should be prepared for more to come."

"Then what can we do?" James demanded, as though Dumbledore should have come armed with answers. "What if things change and we don't have enough time to arm Harry against Voldemort and his Avada Kedavra? We are powerless here."

Down on the floor, Harry thought they were going to start playing their new favourite game of word association, so he crawled over to James's shins.

"Awarda davara – expellimus! Awada davra – expel earmuffs," baby Harry began chiming, trying to impress his Dad by showing how much he'd been practising. James looked down fondly.

"Nearly, son, nearly," he smiled, encouragingly. Baby Harry grinned back up, and kept on nattering the words in his baby language.

"You're trying to train him to survive the Killing Curse?" Sirius cried, incredulously. "Now you are just talking nonsense. That's impossible. He's just a baby, Albus! Voldemort is big, bad and as dangerous to know as they get. In any case, there is no defence against Avada Kedavra."

"Icks, spills n' ear mist," baby Harry babbled in reply.

"Ordinarily I would agree," Dumbledore allowed. "The Killing Curse cannot be blocked ... but in this case, it will be. And Harry survives to tell the tale, or as much as he is likely to remember about it. How that might come to pass, I can barely speculate on. All I was told by the Time Witch is that Harry must be able to use Expelliarmus on the night Voldemort comes for him on Halloween."

"About that," Sirius began, somewhat bullishly and with no small hint of smugness thrown in for good measure. "You realise that I am the Secret Keeper of this cottage, Dumbledore. And I'd sooner face Avada Kedavra myself than give that secret up!"

"An admirable sentiment, but ultimately futile," Dumbledore smiled sadly. "James and Lily will die ... they must ... to protect Harry now and in the future."

"I won't give them up," Sirius insisted.

"Then Voldemort will find another way. Despite all we do, he will reach his goal in the end. It has already happened ... it will happen again."

"Albus is right, Padfoot," James smiled over. "Lily and I have come to terms with it, and we need you to do the same. Your task will be to make sure Harry is safe and well for when we return in the future. With that in mind, I need to ask something of you."

"Name it," Sirius urged.

"When we are killed, Harry will have no-one," James went on. "His only living relative will be Lily's sister ... and Harry might be better off snuffing it with us than going to live with them. Let's just say, they aren't very keen on our kind."

"Bigots," Sirius sniped. "So what do you need?"

"We want you to be Harry's legal guardian once we're gone," James revealed. "Lily and I have discussed it thoroughly, and she's right now at the Ministry getting the paperwork drawn up. We don't know exactly how the future will play out, but we'll sleep soundly knowing he'll have you to take care of him in our place."

Sirius looked as though a tennis ball had risen in his throat, and his eyes had suddenly glistened over. As an outcast son of a family who had disowned him, this gesture had cut to his core.

"I ... I ... of course I will," he stuttered out after a minute. "That's ... no-one has ever asked anything like that of me, trusted me with something so important. Thank you, James."

"I'm the one thanking you," James grinned back.

"You might want to hold back on that," Sirius quipped. "I'm an incorrigible cad ... I may turn out to be a terrible example for your son!"

"Too late to back out now," James returned. "That magical contract is binding. When we die, Harry is all yours."

Sirius looked choked up again, so excused himself to go to the bathroom. No sooner was he out of the room than Dumbledore turned to James.

"Have you considered what I proposed, regarding changing your Secret Keeper?"

James put down his now cold tea. "Sirius is our Secret Keeper. I trust him more than anyone but Lily. Why would I change him now?"

"Have you listened to nothing I have said about the anchors in the timeline?" Dumbledore exclaimed, showing unexpected passion. "Voldemort is going to come for Harry, all his thoughts are fixed on him. He has no other concern right now, and he will stop at nothing to reach him.

"Right now, we have information he does not possess ... and we are on home soil. This is your turf, and that allows us to control the narrative somewhat. If we intervene in the natural order of things, we lose that advantage. If this all plays out at a later date, the outcome may be far more permanent."

"Sirius won't let us down," James repeated, loyally.

Dumbledore sighed in his exasperation. "Sirius is brave and resilient, but Lord Voldemort is no ordinary wizard. He will quickly realise that you are under the protection of a Fidelius Charm, if he does not already, and it will not take much research to identify Sirius as your likely Secret Keeper.

"The next step will be to lure Sirius out, to capture him. Then it will be torture, both physical and magical, to satisfy the blood lust of the Death Eaters. Sirius is resolute, but Lord Voldemort is as powerful as he is depraved. Through one means or another, Sirius will be broken ... and then he will be killed ... and any hope you have for Harry to be taken care of in the future will be gone, the promise you just made utterly worthless."

James sat back as the truth of that statement settled on him. He puffed out a concerned breath and looked sternly at Dumbledore. "Then what's the alternative?"

"Change your Secret Keeper, change it to someone who will give you up willingly," Dumbledore urged. "You may actually end up saving his life that way."

"Now you have me confused," James quirked. "Do you have someone in mind?"

Dumbledore nodded. "I do ... choose Peter Pettigrew."

"Wormtail!" James laughed. "Don't be daft. Why would I do that, and how would it save his life?"

"It is well known that you ran with only three people, and that only one from their number would be trusted enough to be your Secret Keeper," Dumbledore began. "Sirius is the obvious choice, but Remus Lupin is as powerful and stoic in his own way. His ability to disappear into the werewolf community would make him a difficult target to capture, but also unpredictable at the full moon.

"That just leaves Pettigrew. He was always the – ahem – runt of your litter, if you'll forgive the joke. I suspect that the Death Eaters will target him first, as the easy option. He will break easily, but with nothing to give them they'll just finish him without much fuss. He has already confessed to being terrified of this exact scenario, ever since you went into hiding."

"So how will making him Secret Keeper save him?" James pushed.

"It will give him a bargaining chip for his life," Dumbledore explained. "We could give him just enough whispers in his ear to sow that seed in his mind. The Death Eaters are coming for him anyway, so if we plant the idea that he could go to them first, to save his own skin, I think he'll choose that option. Our whispering campaign could include a strategy to make him feel marginalised or belittled ... it might provide the incentive to become a traitor."

"That's horrendously manipulative, and not fair on Peter," James argued. "He's a good man. I'm not comfortable doing that."

"Are you more comfortable knowing that Lily and Harry will die, along with yourself and Peter in the end?" Dumbledore asked slickly. "I can barely imagine how it feels to consider what I am asking of you ... it is a horrific choice. I have never been a husband, or a father ... and I can hardly guess how difficult this must be for you.

"But it is going to happen, whatever we think about it. Right now, we have an element of control over the outcomes. Peter can be forgiven later, can find redemption if he survives and seeks it. The alternative is that he is murdered for nothing, Sirius too, and that Harry will be left alone to face an uncertain world, at a time that he will need as much guidance as he can get."

James swore under his breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. "You say you've given me a choice ... but there really isn't one, is there? How certain are you about any of this ... about your plan with Peter, about the promises of this witch from the future? I need guarantees, Albus, not your best guesses, no matter how good they are."

"Peter Pettigrew will be easily turned, you just leave the details of that to me," Dumbledore replied firmly. "As for the rest, we can see the future beginning in the events we are witnessing. Did you not say that Lily recently met with the child who will become the Time Witch, Hermione?"

"There could be plenty of other Hermiones out there," James argued, fairly.

"But you are overlooking the other piece of information about her," Dumbledore pointed out. "Her surname."

"Why is that important?" James queried.

"Are you forgetting our history?" Dumbledore pressed. "Do you not know the name of the lead trial judge, the one who placed the Child Inhibitor Curse on the families who swore fealty to Grindelwald?"

"No ... I ... I've forgotten!" James hissed. "I'm sure I used to know that."

"You probably did, but I am not surprised that the knowledge has left you," Dumbledore replied darkly. "The wizard used to be famous in our world, but his name, and that of his descendants, has slowly started to disappear from the historical record. I have been looking into this, as directed to by the Time Witch. Luckily, as a Master of Time, I am still immune to the effects, though who could say for how long."

"And what was his name? Is it important?"

"It is," Dumbledore nodded, his expression grave. "The wizard was named Granger ... Hector Dagworth-Granger, to be precise."

James's mouth fell open. "The little girl ... the one Lily met ... she's called Hermione Jane Granger. Are they ... is she a descendent of Hector?"

"She almost certainly is," Dumbledore confirmed. "So whatever is happening to him will necessarily have an adverse effect on her, too. It may even disrupt the very beginnings of her family.

"If these changes keep travelling back in time, James, the end result may be that Hermione Granger never exists at all ..."

Chapter Text

Hermione had taken a bold decision. She was going to come out of the shower draped in just her towels, as usual. One was wrapped, turban like, around her hair, while the other would protect her modesty, if Harry stopped watching Ancient Aliens long enough to notice her. She didn't quite know if she wanted him to or not. Sometimes, when she left the shower in other hotels in other cities, she often thought that Harry was sneaking glances at her out of the corners of his eyes, as if he thought she wouldn't notice him doing it.

But she'd noticed, and she was astonished to find that she didn't mind him looking if he wanted to.

In fact, it thrilled her far more than she knew it should. Her rational mind knew why Harry would be glancing at her like that, but that same logic would argue that it was Harry ... and that he didn't want her like that, so why else would he be looking? Which made her a bit cross, if she was honest. Okay, so she wasn't Olympic-swimmer fit, but she wasn't Olympe Maxime heffa-sized, either.

In any case, Harry seemed to like looking ... whatever it was that Hermione looked like. She just couldn't rationalise why.

And now, ever since his declaration two days ago, Hermione found that she was strangely shy around him. Ever since she'd asked him - and only him - to come to Australia to help locate her parents, they had sunbathed together, swam in remote lagoons together - albeit in their underwear - and shared multiple beds together. But now, it seemed that such things had become so taboo that to suggest any of the like again was akin to committing a heinous crime.

Which is why Hermione had needed to corral all of her courage to exit the bathroom dressed just in towels. There was always the possibility that she hadn't wrapped tightly enough, and whereas before - if her towels had fallen - that might have been a funny story to tell, Hermione now thought it might be a flirty little precursor to something else. Though why such things were dominating her mind she was at a loss to explain.

It was like a dam had broken in her brain, and she had no idea how she was supposed to stem it.

So it was with a curious sense of disappointment that all her racy little plans came to nought, as she found her room frustratingly Harry-less when she exited the bathroom. Instead, she found her mother lounging on the bed, watching the twenty-four hour cookery channel, in preference to Harry's addiction to the bizarre conspiracy theory that aliens had built the Pyramids of Giza.

"Mum?" Hermione queried, tightening her towels and wondering immediately why she had left them quite so loose in the first place. "What are you doing in here? Is everything alright?"

Catrin Granger turned to her daughter. Her eyes still retained a hint of the glassy glaze that the Memory Modification Charm had caused, though the St Mungo's Healers - who had taught Hermione the reversal spell - insisted this would fade over time. Hermione hoped that it would vanish sooner rather than later ... the guilt it stirred in her on seeing it made her physically sick.

"Oh, yes honey," Catrin replied brightly. "Everything's fine. Your Dad and Harry have gone down to the bar. There's something called the FA Cup Final on television apparently. They were both very excited about watching it."

"Hold on," Hermione smirked. "Dad and Harry have gone to watch the football and have a beer or two? Is that what you're saying?"

"Something like that," Catrin grinned back. "I've pretty much pussy-whipped your father over the years ... I think he's actually enjoying a bit of masculine company for a change!"

Hermione closed her eyes in her horror. "Mum, please ... never use the phrase pussy-whipped to describe you and Dad again! No amount of therapy - magical or Muggle - will remove that notion from my brain!"

Catrin laughed heartily. "Oh, don't be such an old prude, Hermione! We'd didn't raise you to be so silly! Your father and I are healthy, loving adults ... and we enjoy healthy, adult activities ..."

"Mum ... stop!" Hermione begged. "I don't want to have to perform a Memory Modifying Charm on myself to forget this conversation!"

Catrin chuckled again. "So, is there a problem with Harry socialising with your father alone? He didn't seem to think there was."

"Problem? No. Why would there be?"

"Oh ... I don't know," Catrin hinted shrewdly. "Just seems like there might be an announcement in the offing, that's all."

Hermione shifted nervously and adjusted her towels. "Why do you think that? What could we possibly announce? I told you I had a boyfriend back in England."

"And yet you brought Harry to find us ... and he came willingly, leaving his own girlfriend behind," Catrin smirked. "Seems a little unusual."

"Ron and Ginny have just lost a brother," Hermione tried to explain. "We thought they needed space to grieve."

"That's fair enough," Catrin conceded. "So explain to me why Harry looks at you like you're the centre of his world ... and you look at him like you want to rip his clothes off?"

"Mother!" Hermione shrieked. "What a thing to say!"

"Maybe. But am I wrong?"

Hermione went to say that she was, but hesitated for half a second. It might have been a lifetime.

"See?" Catrin smirked. "Talk to me, my girl. I know that you want to."

Hermione sighed deeply. It wasn't her usual huff. She normally gave that in resistance, but she genuinely craved her mother's guidance on this, and was glad she had brought it up. She always knew when Hermione was in need.

"Truth is, Mum, I think I've made a massive mistake ... and I don't know what to do," Hermione began in a small voice.

"What sort of mistake?" Catrin pressed, muting the television and turning to face her daughter.

"I, sort of, kissed Ron ... you know, my other friend," Hermione confessed.

Catrin gasped aloud. "Don't tell me he's your boyfriend? The one who always has dirt on his nose and smells like old cabbage?"

"He ... what?" Hermione quirked. "Ron doesn't smell like cabbage ... does he?"

"Reeks of it," Catrin grimaced. "We never liked to bring it up, of course, but if he bathed in vinegar he'd turn into sauerkraut. Hermione, baby ... why? We know he's your friend, but ... he looks like a scarecrow. You can do better than a scarecrow, love."

"Well, that's sort of the thing," Hermione began, trying to not picture Ron stood in a field covered in birds. Harry once said he had a dream about Ron being a soft, slow bird, whatever that meant. "I ... I only started thinking about Ron because I, sort of, gave up on Harry. Only, I never really did. And now he's said some things to me ... and I don't know what to do."

"Right, let's start at the beginning," Catrin announced decisively. "Tell me about giving up on Harry."

Hermione blushed as she sat back against the headboard of the bed. "Well, I've always fancied Harry a bit, ever since he saved me from a twelve-foot-troll in our first year. Made me feel like a princess in a fairy tale, rescued by a handsome prince or something. But I always thought it was just a little crush, it would go away eventually.

"Only, it didn't. Harry never said he liked me back, but because he didn't say he didn't fancy me, either, I suppose that flame of maybe never went out. But the longer it went on, I just accepted it wouldn't happen."

"So you never totally let it go?" Catrin asked gently.

Hermione shook her head. "I suppose I was waiting for that decisive moment ... his supernova of confirmation. I was waiting for that flash of light, like thunder screaming out for lightening. But it never came. So a tiny bit of me never gave up. I never had that last goodbye ... I never got over it ... and now ..."

"Harry's told you he likes you?" Catrin finished off shrewdly.

"His exact words were that I would be his perfect girlfriend," Hermione flushed. "What am I supposed to say to that?"

"You're supposed to offer to be his girlfriend ... but I assume you didn't?"

Hermione shook her head. "We both have partners, Mum."

"In relationships less than a month old," Catrin dismissed. "In your short lives, you've probably spent more time vomiting. I'll spend longer vomiting if I know you're dating that human matchstick model!"

Hermione laughed at that. "Mum, please! Don't say things like that! I'm trying to get some sage advice here."

"Is that what you want? Well, that's easy," Catrin grinned brightly. "Get shot of Ron before you get too deep in, and throw yourself at Harry like you've always wanted to. I swear that I've never seen a look in someone's eyes like he reserves for you. You find that sometimes, that the boys who are the quietest are the most intense, that love the fiercest and deepest. I'd call it love ... but somehow it doesn't seem enough with how Harry looks at you. What else could I use? Adoration? Worship? Even they don't quite hit the spot. Whatever it is, if someone looks at you like that you want to keep them. So keep him."

Hermione didn't know how to even process that statement, let alone how to reply to it. So she just goggled at her mother with her mouth hanging open for a full minute.

"You ... you really mean that, don't you?" Hermione muttered eventually.

"Of course I do," Catrin replied. "Harry is the best thing to happen to you ... has always been the best thing to happen to you. Ever since you first met him."

Hermione grinned fondly as she remembered. "Yeah, that was a serendipitous train ride."

Now it was Catrin's turn to shift awkwardly. Hermione noticed it with a frown.

"Mum ... what's wrong?"

Catrin closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. "Harry has said something more, hasn't he? Apart from thinking you're perfect for him?"

Hermione blushed again at her mother's vocalisation of Harry's declaration. "Yes, he's asked me to look into why he isn't overtly attracted to me, despite his body telling him he should be. Why do you ask?"

Catrin looked at her daughter as seriously as she ever had. "Hermione, whatever you do in the next days and weeks ... follow this through. Forget helping me and your dad, forget whatever you had planned for this new relationship of yours. Focus on this ... focus on Harry. Make sure that supernova of yours never happens."

"Mum ... you aren't making any sense," Hermione replied breathlessly. "And you're scaring me a bit. What's going on?"

"I'm just saying ... do you remember the first time you and Harry met?" Catrin asked cryptically.

"Of course I do!"

"Dont be so sure," Catrin warned. "What I'm trying to tell you is ... if you don't investigate this ... you and Harry will never meet."

Hermione felt all colour leave her body, her breath, too. "Who told you that?"

Catrin blinked simply at her daughter. "You did."

Chapter Text

Lily started by delicately taking a large section of hair in her hands and dividing it into four, even strands.

She placed the first strand carefully over the second one, continuing under the third and back up over the final strand. From this position, she took the new third strand, crossed it over the second one and under the first strand. She repeated the procedure until she could see that the braiding had a very obvious strand in the middle. It was going well, and Lily smiled to herself that she hadn't forgotten this complicated technique.

The little girl, sat obediently still in the crook of her lap, turned her head up as Lily paused to admire her handiwork.

"Will I look pretty when you are finished, Miss Lily?"

Lily smiled down. "I think you already look pretty ... Miss Hermione."

The little girl beamed back up radiantly. "Will you put daises in my hair when you are done? I have some. I like daisies."

Hermione held out her tiny hands and offered Lily the white and yellow flowers she had collected from the garden. She had crushed some of them in her eagerness to not miss a single one.

"I can do that, sweetie," Lily replied. "And how about I put a big lily at the top?"

"Ooh! Because you're called Lily! Can you? Pleeeasse?"

Lily laughed softly. "Of course I will."

"Pleeeaassee! Pleeaassee! Ha ha ha. Pleeasse!"

Lily and tiny Hermione turned to the sing song voice just to their right. It was coming from baby Harry, who was turning Hermione's plea into a funny sort of rhyme to entertain himself.

"What's his name?" Hermione asked, turning her head up to Lily.

"It's Harry. He's my little boy."

"Why cant he say his own name?" Hermione demanded with a little frown.

"He can, sometimes," Lily replied. "He just cant talk as well as you can yet, for you're ever such a clever little girl. Perhaps you could help him?"

Hermione gave a cute sort of huff and turned to Harry, as Lily continued on with her braid.

"Can you say my name?" Hermione said briskly to Harry. "Try it ... Her-my-oh-knee."

Harry scrunched his brow. "Her-me-only."

"No, no, you're doing it all wrong!" tiny Hermione giggled, mildly cross at her failure to teach Harry perfectly with her first try. "Her-my-oh-knee! Like this."

Then she reached out with both hands and lightly pinched Harry's lips together, contorting them to try and help him form the sounds properly. He still couldn't, so Hermione gave up and let go.

Then Harry brushed his lips against her knuckles as she tried to move away.

"He kissed me!" Hermione giggled in surprise. "He kissed my fingers! Aww! Did you see, Miss Lily?"

"I did," Lily smiled down fondly. "I think he must like you."

"I'll like him too, then," Hermione announced decisively.

Just then, David and Catrin Granger entered the living room. David was carrying a tray of tea and biscuits, while Catrin had two beakers of apple juice for the children.

"Harry's okay with juice?" Catrin checked, before passing the beaker to Harry's eager, outstretched little hands.

"Oh yes," Lily smiled. "James - that's Harry's father - and I often joke that he'll drink apple juice until he's eighteen - then it will be cider in his glass after that!"

David and Catrin chuckled at that.

"What does your husband do, if you don't mind me asking?" David began as he sat down.

"He works in science," Lily invented. "Medical research, that sort of thing."

"And you must work in something creative," Catrin beamed. "That braid is just beautiful!"

Lily blushed slightly. "Thank you. My sister is the real artist, though. She used to give me the most intricate Celtic plaits when we were girls. But it's easy to make something pretty when you have such lustrous hair to work with, like this. I'm very jealous of this little one. My hair gets so thin and wiry. Hermione's hair is just so beautiful."

Hermione turned her cute little head up to Lily and grinned widely at her.

"Be careful, Lily," David quirked. "It's quite easy to become a slave to the whims of this little one. Sometimes it's almost impossible to say no to her. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was some form of magic!"

Lily laughed sweetly. "Just keep her away from any magic wands then!"

"Ooh, Daddy! Can I get a magic wand?" tiny Hermione begged excitedly. "Pretty please? I promise I'll be good. And I'll be the bestest witch ever!"

"When are you ever bad?" David quizzed to his daughter.

"I can be bad sometimes," Hermione mumbled cutely, her eyes flashing with mirth. "I stepped on a weasel once. I didn't mean to. But he was biting my shoes. So I stomped on his tail to make him go away."

David laughed fondly. "Well, I'm sure he deserved it."

"Can I get the wand, then?"

"We'll see," David smiled back. "So, Lily, you mentioned your sister? What is she doing these days?"

"Settling into life as a suburban housewife," Lily frowned. "She married a man who owns a drill-making firm in Surrey, had a little boy with him last year, too. He's old world money, doesn't think she should go out to work, so it's all dinners at the Golf Club and galas at the Marina for Tuney these days."

David scrunched his eyebrows. "That doesn't sound like the Petunia I remember. She was always so spirited."

"Things change," Lily bemoaned. "I always thought it was just a rebellious phase, you know? Right up until her wedding day, I was convinced she'd call the whole thing off. Next thing we know she's cutting off contact, telling us not to phone or visit. I don't see her now."

"That's a shame," Catrin offered sympathetically.

"Yes, but enough about me," Lily chimed. "What about you? Any plans for a brother or sister for this bundle of cuteness?"

Lily gently squeezed little Hermione's shoulders, causing her to giggle sweetly.

"We ... cant have any more," David replied sadly. "We ... lost one ... and there were complications ..."

Lily felt her face drop. "Oh ... I'm so sorry. Catrin, forgive me. I should never have pried -"

"Oh, nonsense, don't be such a fuddy-duddy," Catrin replied with a business-like bullishness. "These things happen. The baby and I were perfectly fine one minute and then ... we just weren't. It wasn't anyone's fault. We went to see a Doctor Prewett, the finest Obstetric consultant in the country, and even he can't explain it, that's the most confusing thing.

"After that, my womb just packed in. No real reason. It just doesn't work anymore. I haven't got cancer, don't need a hysterectomy, nothing like that. I just ... might as well not have my baby-carrying bits inside. But I've done my crying over it. We might adopt in the future, but we have one little miracle to concentrate on first."

"That's me," Hermione told Lily with a smile and a sage little nod. Lily thought she'd never met such an adorable child. She looked back to Catrin

"I ... I'm truly sorry. I don't know what else to say," Lily offered miserably.

"Thank you," Catrin smiled back. "But it's fine, really, don't beat yourself up about it. I'm a Valleys girl, a daughter of coal miners and twice as tough! So, how about you? Plans for any more of your own?"

"Not right now," Lily confessed. "This one is a handful as it is!"

Baby Harry lifted his hands wide, as if to show just how much of a handful he could be. Hermione smiled sweetly at him.

"Well," Lily declared, sitting back and fluffing Hermione's hair in her hands. "I think we are just about done here. Just room for a little pink bow at the bottom and my work is complete!"

Lily attached the bow, patted tiny Hermione on the shoulders and let her leap up to see the results. She hurried over to the nearest mirror.

"Ooh, Mummy! Look!" Hermione sang. "It's so pretty! Look how pretty I look, Mummy."

"You look like a little angel," Catrin beamed fondly. "Now, what do you say to Miss Lily?"

Hermione raced over and clobbered Lily with a surprisingly firm hug.

"Thank you, Miss Lily! My hair looks so pretty! Thank you!"

"You're most welcome, sweetheart," Lily crooned, hugging Hermione back. Hermione broke away quickly and returned to the mirror to admire Lily's handiwork.

"Well, shall we get to the formalities?" David asked brightly. He slid some forms over to Lily. "Just sign here, here and here and we're all done."

"Apart from my giving you these!" Lily smirked, sliding over the house keys as she scribbled her signature into the boxes David had indicated. "And ... the place is all yours!"

"Thank you, Lily," David beamed. "This is such a lovely house. We can't wait to move in."

"I hope you get as much love out of the place as I did," Lily replied. "I'm really glad my old home is going to a, well ... a good home! I'm really pleased you're buying it."

"You and my old Mum, too!" David quipped.

"Right, I suppose we'd better be making a move," Lily announced, draining the last of her tea dregs. She stood and picked Harry up from the floor.

"Aww, are you going, Miss Lily?" Hermione asked sadly.

"Yes, it's time for us to leave now," Lily smiled.

"And will you come back? Will I ever see baby Harry again?" Hermione asked brightly.

"Oh, I couldn't really tell you that," Lily grinned with twinkling eyes. "But something tells me your paths might cross again some day."

"I hope so," Hermione nodded. "Maybe he'll be able to say my name by then! Goodbye, Harry Potter. Goodbye, Miss Lily."

"Goodbye, Hermione Jane Granger. Take care."

And with that, Lily Potter left her childhood home for the very final time.

Chapter Text

Harry brushed his teeth doubly hard that night. He wanted to make sure to remove the after effects of all the beer he had drunk with Hermione's father, which were far easier to shift from his tangy mouth than his foggy head, which was still a bit wobbly and fragile. It must have been something to do with sitting with a dentist all night, Harry reasoned, that oral hygiene had suddenly thundered to the top of his agenda.

Chuckling to himself, Harry switched off the tap and dropped his toothbrush into a little glass with a light tinkle. Then he had a light tinkle, washed his hands as the toilet flushed, and marvelled that the water swirled the wrong way down the plug hole on this side of the world. That was very strange.

But not nearly as strange as the sight which greeted him upon leaving the bathroom.

"Hermione? What are you doing?"

She was lounging, lithe and sylphlike on his bed. She was wearing the satin, periwinkle blue camisole nightdress Harry had bought for her in Canberra on her birthday. It was far too figure-clinging and revealing for her to model it for him, he thought.

But here she was, draped like a goddess over his bedsheets in nothing but it.

Harry blinked at the newness. He'd never been jealous of bed linen before. But there it was. Then he realised he couldn't see properly, and it was nothing to do with the residue of the alcohol still swirling around in his brain. He reached for his glasses.

"Leave them off," Hermione purred.

"But I'm practically blind without them," Harry argued.

"You've seen my face enough to know what I look like," Hermione whispered sultrily, slipping off the bed towards him.

It's not your face I'm interested in right now! Harry thought to himself. He felt his pulse speed in his neck. He noticed how his skin was prickling with heat.

"How did you even get in here?" Harry asked through his arid throat. "I locked the door."

"I'm a witch, Harry, I have all sorts of special powers," Hermione replied, still retaining that vampish lilt to her voice. Harry shivered as each sexy syllable kissed its way along his earlobe.

By now Hermione had reached him. Harry drew a sharp breath as her fingernails softly caressed his chest. A chest he suddenly remembered was bare. After all, he hadn't been expecting company.

"Hermione!" Harry protested weakly. He tried to back away, but his legs had picked that exact moment to decide not to work anymore. "I'm only in my boxers here!"

"It's nothing I've not see before," Hermione breathed. "They're no different to swimming shorts."

"Fair enough, but I can please put my glasses on at least? I feel so exposed."

"I just want you to relax, Harry. We have a long flight home in the morning and I want to make sure you're feeling refreshed tonight. And you don't need to see for that ... just feel."

"Feel?"

"Mmm-hem," Hermione confirmed. "Come to bed."

"Wha? Come to bed?"

"Oh, silly me," Hermione giggled in an oddly girly way. "I meant come to the bed."

"Oh, that makes more sense."

Hermione took Harry's hand in her own, maddeningly soft palm, before leading him gently to the king-sized mattress at the centre of the room. She eased Harry down into the middle of the bed, then moved behind him. She sat very close, with her thighs straddling his own. Harry's mind went into a frenzy, tickled by the softness of the satin nightgown on his electrified spine and the even softer brush of Hermione's moon-cool skin against his white-hot own.

"I'm just going to give you a massage," Hermione whispered, her warm breath on his ear causing Harry to erupt all over with spiky tingles. "I'll start with your head, then move down to your arms, your chest, your back, legs, and finally finish at your feet. Sound good?"

"Sounds amazing," Harry whispered back. "And when you're done, can I do you?"

Hermione leant her head in close. Her wild hair prickled against Harry's exposed neck. It was all he could do not angle it for better access.

"We'll see how good a boy you've been to earn that."

Harry swallowed as though it were his last breath.

"Alright ... pumpkin," Hermione continued breathily, her warm air still caressessing Harry's ear. "Are you comfortable?"

At that moment Harry struggled to define the word comfortable. But he knew that neither hell nor high water would drag him away from this exact spot, so he thought he'd better nod an affirmative to Hermione's question.

"Good," Hermione murmured lowly. "We're going to start with a few deep breaths. I want you to fill your lungs to the count of four, hold it till seven, then release by the time you reach ten, okay? I'll breathe with you."

Harry felt a smooth hand snake ticklingly under his armpit and across his chest. With almost imperceptible movements, Hermione eased Harry back into her body. He bit his tongue as he felt the spongy weight of her unhindered breasts flatten against his shoulder blades.

"Okay. Breathe with me," Hermione hushed into his cheek, for her head was resting on his shoulder now, her lips brushing lightly against his jawline as she spoke. "Breathe in, be aware of your breath, focus on it, then let it go. Pwwww. And relax."

Relax? Harry felt inert! Being relaxed was a more stressful state than he was in. This was blissful. He felt his chest rise and fall with Hermione's, where it was pressed flush against his back. They were in complete unison, total rhythm. It would have been impossible to tell where one finished and the other began. There were a perfect symbol of infinity in that moment.

"Okay, that's good, Harry," Hermione breathed. "Now we're going to start with a head and face massage. Just relax, sit still and enjoy it."

"Yes, Miss," Harry replied dreamily.

Hermione's fingertips began to roll in circles on Harry's temples. Her touch was angel-soft, and Harry was powerless to prevent a sigh of contentment from leaving his throat. Then Hermione began adjusting Harry's eyebrows, rubbing gently between them as a sinus drainer. Harry felt like she was soothing a headache he didn't realise he had.

The pads of Hermione's thumbs ran up Harry's jaw and cheekbones next. She hesitated teasingly at the corners of his mouth and the top of his chin, tantalisingly close to his lips but purposefully leaving them devoid of her touch. Harry might have felt sleepy, if it wasn't for the fact that his body was more alive than it ever had been in his entire life.

And then ... Hermione traced a finger delicately up his cheek ... and ran it the entire length of the lightening-shaped scar on his forehead.

"Oh!" he gasped breathily in surprise. The Dark Magic which had caused it would ensure the scar tissue would never be fully repaired, and it was tender and sensitive still. But Harry had never had it touched like this before. He turned his head involuntarily into Hermione's caress.

"Is that okay?" she whispered.

"It feels like healing," he mumbled back, his eyes closed in contentment as he rubbed his head against Hermione's fingers.

She continued to smooth the jagged line for a few moments longer, before moving up to Harry's hair. She began to thread her fingers rhythmically through his messy locks, which were still a little bit wet from his earlier bath.

"I'm going to give this a quick brush," she hummed to him, letting his hair flow from her wrist to fingertips in soporific cycles. Harry nodded his compliance, but he totally under her power anyway.

Hermione conjured a brush from somewhere, but before it even touched Harry's hair, she held it close to his ear, first the left side then the right, and lightly drummed her fingernails against the wooden reverse side. The tap, tap, click, click so close to his ear made Harry burst out in yet more of those wonderful tingles. They popped all over his skin, thrilling his body from his head to his toes and everywhere in between. It happened again when Hermione ran her hands slowly and deliberately against the teeth of the brush on the other side.

"What are you doing to me!" Harry breathed in euphoric helplessness.

"It's all part of the massage," Hermione whispered back, her mouth so close to his head that Harry could have sworn her teeth grazed his earlobe. His body exploded with another wave of those shuddery, prickly sensations, so much so that Harry felt as if he was being electrified.

"Now, lie back," Hermione encouraged, easing Harry into a face-down position on the bed.

Utterly powerless to resist, Harry went where he was guided. Then Hermione's fingers found the old Triwizard wound on his shoulder blade.

"You have so many scars," she winced lowly, as though hurting for him, as though his wounds were her own. "I should never have let you face that dragon."

"Without you, it would have killed me," Harry reminded her. "I'm lucky that all I have is a scar to show for it."

"Lucky isn't the word I'd use," Hermione muttered. She traced the outline of the Hungarian Horntail's assault with that gossamer-fine touch of hers. Harry trembled as she did so. "Okay. I'm just going to do a quick assessment of your body."

"And what are you looking for?"

"Areas of bad energy," Hermione replied softly. "And when I find them I'm going to pluck them out and flick them away."

For some reason, she delicately enunciated the clucking sound at the end of each pluck and flick, inflecting them upwards as she carried out her 'assessment'. Harry felt the effect travel through his body as though Hermione had licked the length of his spine. Now what in the hell was that all about?

"The only problem is we have a barrier," Hermione purred vapidly. Then Harry felt her snap at the elastic of his boxer shorts. "These are in the way. I'm going to need to take them off."

"Hermione!" Harry protested shrilly. "I'd be naked then! You do realise that?"

"Of course, but how can I give you a full body massage while you are still covered?" Hermione asked, fairly but in the sexiest voice Harry had ever heard from her. "I need to get your gluteus maximus when I get down that low."

"Well, it is the biggest muscle in the body," Harry accepted reasonably.

He lifted his hips slightly, and Hermione slipped his underwear clean off in one movement ... almost as if she'd done it before. Hermione shifted position to lift her thigh over Harry's body, straddling him just above his buttocks.

Then Harry felt a tangled mass of slightly moist hair scratch against the base of his spine. With a shock of understanding, Harry realised that Hermione wasn't wearing any underwear, either.

This new knowledge sent Harry's mind into cartwheels. He could focus on little else. Not when Hermione began gently squeezing his shoulders, not when she conjured warm oil from somewhere and began dripping it mercilessly along his overworked spine, nor even when she began running first a feather and then her own hair with tantalising slowness over his searing hot flesh.

His mind was in one spot, on that warm triangle pressed firmly into his lower back.

Then Hermione leaned in low and spoke again. "Turn over, Harry."

"I don't think I can," he moaned back.

"Turn over."

"No, seriously, Hermione," Harry begged. "I cant! Please!"

"I know exactly what state you are in on the other side," she purred softly. "At least, I hope you are in that state, if I've worked you up right. I want you to be like that, Harry, so there's no need to be embarrassed. Now, turn over."

It was a command Harry had to obey. He had no choice. In any case, his groin was so pressurised that it just had to be freed before it exploded. He turned, slowly, and when that firm part of him met the warm, slick part of her a sensation hit Harry that he had zero concept of how to describe. He just sat back and tried to catch his mind where it was trying to escape his body.

"What is this, Hermione?" Harry pleaded. "What's happening?"

Hermione ran her fingers over the sore remnants of Harry's Locket Horcrux scar. He felt no pain, only more hot senselessness crash into his body. Hermione looked into his unfocused eyes.

"I love you, Harry. I've always loved you. For one night ... let me make love to you."

And Harry gave to her with a willing sigh.

"Yes."

So she did. She was slow and sensual, she built Harry to peaks, then eased off to let him calm down, before starting the whole process again. She pleased him in every way she knew how, showed him how to please her, causing feral noises to escape her throat time and again, the type of which Harry had never even imagined she was capable of making.

Time. What was that? Harry had lost any notion of what it meant or how to mark it. But all too soon Hermione was getting up from him, pulling her nightgown back on and kissing him sweetly.

"I'm just going to freshen up," she whispered, before sashaying off to the bathroom.

Harry grinned as he watched her leave. Then he began to frown, for someone was knocking on the hotel door.

Knock, Knock.

Harry tried to ignore it.

Knock, knock.

They must have the wrong room. They'd give up soon.

Knock, knock, knock.

Harry looked at the door in cross frustration. Who could be knocking? He was more than a little annoyed. His body had recovered sufficiently now, following his first round with Hermione, and he was cheekily hoping for a chance at an encore.

A further three knocks. Scowling deeply, Harry threw on a robe and crossed to the door.

"Yeah, what?" he demanded before he'd even fully opened it.

"Good morning to you, too! I was just seeing if you wanted to come down for breakfast. But I see your mouth is already full with joyous welcomes!"

Harry's jaw hit the carpet, his eyes popping in shock.

"H-hermione?" he stuttered, stumbling backwards in his surprise. "How did you get there? Did you Apparate?"

"No, Harry," Hermione quipped brightly, following him into his suite. "I walked. Are you okay? You look a little peaky. Hungover, by any chance!?"

But Harry was still just staring at her, gobsmacked. "You cant be here, Hermione."

"Look, Harry, I know we discussed this and decided not to share a bed anymore," Hermione replied with a gentle snigger. "But a room? I'm sure we can show some restraint, cant we!?"

"No! You don't get it," Harry implored desperately. "You can't be here, because you should be in there!"

Hermione followed the line of sight to where Harry was pointing. "The bathroom? I should be in your bathroom? And why is that again?"

"Because you just ... we just ... look, I'll show you!"

Harry grabbed Hermione by the wrist and hauled her over to the bathroom. He practically kicked open the door and looked frantically around inside. It was empty, but perfectly ordered, apart from the fact that the hot tap had been left running and had steamed up the mirror.

"Harry? What's going on?" Hermione asked seriously. "Why do you think I should be in your bathroom?"

"Because you just walked in here, that's why!" Harry insisted desperately. "You've been with me for hours and you just stepped in here to freshen up."

"Harry - I've been with my Mum all night," Hermione told him with a concerned expression.

"That's impossible," Harry argued hotly. "You've been with me."

Hermione looked curiously at him. "If I just walked in here, where did I come from?"

"From my bedroom ... from my bed, Hermione," Harry muttered lowly in his confusion.

Hermione didn't know how to respond to that. She investigated the bathroom herself. Maybe someone had Polyjuiced into her. Maybe someone who looked like her had crept in. Harry wasn't wearing his glasses, after all, and he was blind as a bat without them. But the room was totally empty. Though Hermione did spot something unusual.

"Harry? What's that? What's that on the mirror?"

Harry joined her and peered in close at the glass. "It's writing. Someone has written something in the steam on the mirror!"

Hermione bent down to see for herself. "It says ... H/Hr ... inside a big heart! What does that mean?"

Harry gulped hard. "I think it means ... Harry ... and Hermione! They are our initials!"

Hermione lost her breath in a sharp rush of air. "Harry ... this person you think was in here ... this other me ... what were you doing with her?"

Harry turned and looked sheepishly at Hermione. "Well, actually, she did most of the doing," Harry confessed shyly. "Or you, because it was you, Hermione. One hundred percent you."

"And what did I do?"

"You made love to me. And it was utterly perfect. I wouldn't have wanted to lose it in any other way."

"L-lose what?

"My virginity," Harry smiled at her. "Right here, in this room ... you took my virginity last night, Hermione."

Chapter Text

October 31 st , 1981. Halloween .

"NO!! Let me go!"

"I cannot do that."

"Release me, Dumbledore! I demand it!"

"I cannot do that, Sirius," Dumbledore repeated.

"But Lily and James! I can help them! There might still be time -"

"You cannot help them!" Dumbledore thundered. "They're gone!"

"NO!"

Sirius howled in his anguish, hot tears rose boiling behind his eyes and burned on his cheeks as they spilled out. His flesh switched to fur and back as he lost control of his Animagic. He took two fistfuls of Dumbledore's robe and clung to him for dear life, fighting the sorrow coursing through his veins. His knees gave way and he fell, pulling Dumbledore into a graceless arc as Sirius crumpled at his feet.

"They're gone," the old Headmaster echoed in a far gentler tone. "There's nothing we can do."

"But how?" Sirius sobbed. "I never gave away the Secret! I swear I never ..."

"I know, and I believe you," Dumbledore consoled in a firm manner. "But someone did. We must determine how ... but also who."

"Do you have a suspect?"

Dumbledore drew a deep breath. "Only two did not respond to my Protean message. The Longbottoms were one, but I fear that they are unable to respond. Rumour has it that Voldemort sent the Lestranges to Kent. I am concerned for Frank and Alice. If Bella has gotten her hands on them, well ... you know how much your cousin likes to play with her food before she eats it. I am heading there now ... hopefully I may be in time to prevent her devouring the main course."

Sirius scowled bitterly as he stood up again. "And who was the other?"

"Only one other response did not reach me at Brompton Road," Dumbledore began gravely. "The only person who did not reply was ... Peter."

Sirius blinked in heartsick shock. "Wormtail? No. Impossible."

"My message was received by all I sent it to," Dumbledore argued softly. "Peter is the only one yet to reply. I will give him time but ... I am fast losing hope."

"Peter would never ... he's too ... he wouldn't ..."

"If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

"Alright, Sherlock, let's say you're right. What can I do?"

"You must go to Godric's Hollow, right now," Dumbledore insisted. "I have sent Hagrid to protect the village, but he will not be able to know the exact location of the Potter's cottage. But you do. Whatever is happening, despite these changes, your Fidelius Charm remains active. You must reach Godric's Hollow while you still remember where it is."

"And I'm to get baby Harry?" Sirius confirmed.

Dumbledore nodded. "Not only that, but you must - and this is vitally important - you must recover a wand that will be with Harry somewhere in that house. It is made of holly and has a Phoenix feather core."

"What's so special about that?"

"It is a wand that came from the future," Dumbledore replied cryptically. "It is also the brother wand of Voldemort's own. Harry used it to kill him tonight."

Sirius stumbled back in shock. "Kill him? Dumbledore - Harry's just a kid! A toddler! How could he have defeated the greatest Dark Wizard since Grindelwald?"

"I don't have all the answers to that question," Dumbledore confessed. "Know only that he did. Harry's act was no coincidence tonight. James has been conditioning him for weeks to be able to cast Expelliarmus with that wand. There is something about Harry and that spell - particularly when used against Lord Voldemort - that makes it able redirect Avada Kedavra. It has saved his life before ... in the future. It has saved his life tonight."

Sirius sat down on a nearby wall and rubbed his temples. "I don't understand any of this. My head hurts. So you're saying ... Harry can survive the Killing Curse?"

"Only when cast by Tom Riddle, and only when one of them uses - or is in possession of - their brother wands."

"And that Harry has done this before? In the future?"

"On at least two occasions. And it is that vital occurrence which would, I think, have made all the difference," Dumbledore replied.

"The Power of Three!" Sirius exclaimed suddenly. "Three duels ... in three different time periods ... using the same spells and the same wands ... it creates a paradox between them!"

"Now who is playing at being Mr. Holmes?" Dumbledore smiled benignly. "I surmise that at some point in his life Harry will come face to face with Voldemort again. Indeed, I have been told that he does."

"By that Master of Time Hermione character?"

"The same," Dumbledore nodded. "She reasoned that for Harry to survive tonight he would have to be in possession of a power that Voldemort knew nothing about - a highly personal variant of Expelliarmus. His signature spell, if you like. Powered by his inherent goodness - a power that Voldemort knows not."

"Ah, I think I see where you are going," Sirius replied, pacing as he processed the idea. "And because he had already twice survived Voldemort by using Expelliarmus against Avada Kedavra, on the third occasion he would actually beat him with it."

"The Power of Three," Dumbledore smiled. "But, curiously, his final defeat happens in the future, but the special power of the spell has to begin tonight."

"Even though it started in the future, and the effects travelled backwards through the space-time continuum to now, getting stronger as they did," Sirius mused. "So that by the time the future duels happen, Harry is protected by the super-charged Disarming Spell! It's a perfect circle!"

"I had no idea so you were so versed in temporal dynamics," Dumbledore mused. "I must confess myself impressed."

"I live alone. I watch a lot of late-night documentaries! I also love a bit of sci-fi!"

Dumbledore chuckled deeply. "As do I. The non-linear nature of time and existence has allowed this. But it is where I feel the perversion of it is happening, also."

"Go on."

"If we assume that all this began in the future," Dumbledore started. "Then not only does Harry's ability to defeat Tom Riddle come from there, but whatever changes are happening to us must also originate at some distant point. The Time Witch, Hermione, made it clear that changes were happening in her world. And that a major one caused her to act ... at the risk of damaging Time itself to put it right."

"What major change?"

"Harry didn't remember that she was his wife."

Sirius blinked. Hard. "Harry didn't remember the love of his life? The one he was blessed to be with? He didn't remember that they were married?"

"Or that they had children, who he didn't recognise as his own, either," Dumbledore confirmed. "That's what set Hermione on this path. To find out who had made changes to her life and when. She traced a strand through history. It links somehow to the Weasley family, and the girl who her Harry was convinced he was actually married to. Hermione didn't give me any more details than that. She said that was not my part of this puzzle to solve, that she was giving that task to someone else."

"So what's my part in it?"

"You must recover that wand," Dumbledore insisted. "It is of paramount importance that you do. I know it is difficult, but forget baby Harry for now. Leave him with Hagrid. He'll be safe with him. The wand must be your priority. Lily and James' lives depend on it."

"I ... what? I don't understand. You said they were dead."

"They are ... for now," Dumbledore returned. "But their spirits reside in that wand. When Harry casts it against Voldemort for the final time, the circle will be complete, and they will return to help Harry finish the job, destroying the evil of Tom Riddle for good. We can only hope that the wand survives intact until that fateful duel."

"We'll see that it does," Sirius announced decisively. He pulled his cloak tight around his shoulders and threw a leg over the huge motorcycle parked at his side. "I'll head to Godric's Hollow now. Where should I tell Hagrid to take Harry? Hogwarts?"

"No, he must first head to his Aunt in Privet Drive, Surrey."

"Not Petunia!" Sirius cried. "Dumbledore, she hates the boy, almost as much as she hated her sister. Not quite as much as she hates herself - for not having magic - but still ... you cant leave Harry with her!"

"There is a protection enchantment that I must complete," Dumbledore explained. "Lily knew all about it. It will keep Harry safe from any real harm until all this blows over. We must tidy up the world, round up the remnants of Voldemort's followers. Harry will not be safe until we do so, and he will not be safe with us as we carry out the task."

Sirius fumed, but he saw the logic. "There will be those who might seek revenge on the boy, is that what you mean?"

Dumbledore nodded. "Or those who may see him as a replacement Dark Lord. For now, Harry will be safer away from the world of magic."

"Safe - where Petunia Dursley is concerned - may be a relative thing," Sirius warned darkly. "I hope you know what you are doing, Albus."

"It will all be well ... I've written her a letter," Dumbledore replied confidently.

Sirius remained unconvinced. "So, you are for Kent?"

"I am," Dumbledore confirmed. "I can only hope that I reach the Longbottoms in time. I do not think I can bear to lay eyes on another child butchered by Bellatrix Lestrange."

"Then go," Sirius urged. He kicked the engine of his motorcycle to life. "I will find the wand and deliver it to you later."

"Good. And Sirius - if you run into Peter Pettigrew before I do, try not to kill him. He is innocent until proven guilty. Right now, all I have is a theory about him that happens to fit the facts."

"As you wish," Sirius grimaced. "But if you do find him, hold him until I get there. Whatever his reason, that is one rat's tale that I will be very interested to hear."

***

"Right. You stand guard at the gate. Let no-one pass," Sirius demanded. "I'll head inside and find the baby."

"Gotcha," Hagrid nodded.

He took up a position as an impassable barrier, between the two yew trees that flanked the garden gate to the cottage where the Potters lived. Or, as Sirius considered miserably, where they had died. He wiped angrily at a fresh surge of tears as he left Hagrid behind and made his way towards the shattered house. He stopped before crossing the threshold. He didn't think he could do this.

James and Lily would still be inside ... dead. He wasn't sure if he was ready to see that. To finally accept it.

He fell to his knees, weeping freely now. His fingernails became claws and he scratched bitterly at his own skin. He had to feel something that wasn't this abject wretchedness, this impossible pain. He couldn't process it. James and Lily, dead. Just gone like that. His best friend, and the wife that Sirius had come to view almost as a sister.

He wasn't sure he knew how to go on in life without them.

But he knew that he must. There was a child inside and he was in danger. A child that would change the future, that would end this darkness for good, and meet the girl who would help him put all this right.

Sirius took a raspy, steeling breath and looked up at the full moon overhead.

"Get up," he commanded himself, his voice shuddering in grief-stricken determination. "Harry needs you. So man the hell up."

Sirius rose from the ground, drew his wand and stepped forward firmly. The house was ruined, that was the most stark realisation. James must have put up one hell of a fight. Sirius ground his jaw in bitter admiration of his lost friend.

"I hope you put the shits up him, James!" Sirius spoke out powerfully. "Snake-bothering old bastard!"

Sirius picked his way across the debris-strewn living room, the broken kitchen and the dining room, which looked oddly intact. It was in breathtaking contrast to the destruction elsewhere.

"They cant have made their way in here," Sirius mused, looking around with a frown.

And then he realised ... where was the body?

The battle looked to have been confined to the kitchen and the living room, but as he reached the foot of the stairs - which were as neat and ordered as if they hadn't been used that day - Sirius realised that James' body was missing. That angered and confused him in equal measure.

The answers must have been upstairs, so Sirius padded slowly up the carpeted steps and headed towards the nursery at the far end of the landing. Slowly, with nervous movements, he pushed open the door...

And he lost his breath at the sight.

For the bodies of James and Lily were there, laid out side by side as if they were sleeping on the floor. Someone had even closed their eyes for them. Voldemort's body was there, too, kicked roughly against a wall and away from the cot beneath the window.

A cot that had a figure standing over it.

"Stupef -" Sirius tried to cry, but before he'd even finished the spell he was hit with a Shield Charm so powerful it pushed him back into the hallway and pinned him against the wall there.

"I'll let you go in three seconds," a cool female voice told him. "But if you raise your wand again I will have to Disarm you. And if you wake baby Harry I will get very cross with you, Sirius."

Sirius blinked in shock. "You know my name?"

"No, that was just a wild guess!" came the sassy reply.

Sirius couldn't help but smirk. He was still pinned back, but he didn't feel in any danger now. "You have me at a disadvantage, in more ways than one. Can you at least give the name of the witch who has finally managed to tie me down?"

The witch tutted good-naturedly. "You are an arrogant scallywag in any time period, aren't you? Very well, my name is Hermione ... Hermione Potter."

Sirius sucked in a stunned breath. "You? You're the Hermione? You're the Time Witch?"

Hermione turned to him with a curious expression. "Time Witch? Hmm. I sort of like that. But I'm just a gifted witch with an affinity to Time Magic, really. I don't need a title for it. I'm not like him."

And with that she spat angrily at the corpse of Tom Riddle, where it was contorted at awkward angles against the wall.

"Can you tell me what you are doing here ... tonight, of all nights?" Sirius asked.

Hermione gave him a simple, old-fashioned sort of look. "Someone had to come and look after my future husband until you arrived. He's just a baby, you know."

"Then you knew I was coming?"

Hermione sighed patiently. "If we start down the road of 'what I know' we'll be here for eons. Oh, forgive me."

And with that she released Sirius from her Shield Charm. He straightened out his robes and joined Hermione at Harry's crib.

"How is he?" Sirius asked, looking down at the baby.

"Unharmed, apart from his scar," Hermione replied, smoothing the lightening-shaped cut on baby Harry's forehead. "I've cleaned it out as best I could, but it needs time to seal on its own. And he needs a feed. I was going to do it myself but ... that would be a bit weird."

"Weird?"

Hermione raised her eyebrows at him. "Breastfeeding my own husband? That's fraught with all sorts of psychological trauma, don't you think!?"

Sirius chuckled as he understood. "I see what you mean. And the kitchen was wrecked. If there was any baby food there it's gone up in flames."

"Precisely. Speaking of flames, I have a job for you," Hermione replied. She crossed to Voldemort's corpse, giving it a good kick just because she felt like it. "When I'm gone, you need to burn this. Scatter the ashes as far and wide as you can. Vary the locations, tell no-one where you do it. If I get back to my time and find there's a shrine anywhere, you and I will have a serious falling out!"

"Why do I get the impression that I don't want that!" Sirius chortled.

"Now you're getting the idea," Hermione smirked back.

"I can see why Harry married you," Sirius chuckled. "If he grows up anything like James, you'd be just what he liked. You're so much like Lily it's unreal."

Hermione smiled warmly at him. "I consider that to be a compliment of the highest order, by the way. Maybe you aren't so hopeless after all!"

They laughed together a moment, then Sirius turned to look at the bodies of James and Lily.

"Your doing?"

Hermione nodded. "It'll be easier to transport them like that."

"Transport?" Sirius queried. "Are you taking them somewhere?"

"Not so much somewhere ... but somewhen," Hermione replied confusingly. "I have to take their bodies into a sort of temporal flux. They will exist outside of time and space as you might understand it. It is where they will stay until Harry brings them back out in the future."

"I didn't understand a single word of that," Sirius moaned.

"I know," Hermione smiled sadly. "But you will ... when you go to that place."

Sirius swallowed deeply. "Me? I'm going to go there?"

"Yes," Hermione replied simply. "I'm telling you this only so that you wont be afraid when it happens. The one thing Harry always fretted about was how scary it was for you ... when you died for him. This way, he'll know you weren't frightened when it happened."

"I ... I died for him," Sirius breathed, his heart pinging against his throat. "When? How?"

"I cant tell you that," Hermione shot him down. "In case you try to contrive it at the wrong time. Just know that at some point, quite a way in the future, Harry will be in dire need of rescue. You will go to give aid, and in a battle with Dark Forces, you will be killed. You will fall through a unique archway and it will take you into the realm that I will soon take Lily and James."

"Will they be there? In this weird dimension?"

"Yes, waiting for you," Hermione smiled. "Don't be afraid, Sirius. It wont hurt, and Harry will bring you back shortly after he revives his parents. We will all see each other again ... so long as Harry fulfils his destiny with this."

Hermione reached into her robes, and handed over the gleaming Holly and Phoenix feather wand. Sirius took it covetously.

"Harry was still holding this when I arrived," Hermione told Sirius, before smiling fondly at the slumbering infant as he babbled in his dreams. "You must make sure Dumbledore gets it now. He'll give it to Ollivander at the right time and make sure the cycle continues."

"You mentioned cycles - and that my death had to happen at the right time?" Sirius quizzed. "What does that mean? What if something happens to me before that?"

"Try to make sure it doesn't!" Hermione quipped. "Try and keep yourself alive until then! Did Dumbledore show you his Time-Turner?"

"Yes he did."

"And did he tell you how they were first invented? Or by whom?"

"Alchemists, he mentioned alchemists," Sirius remembered.

"The fundamental Masters of Time," Hermione nodded. "They are manipulators of it. Altering natural processes of refinement to achieve perfected states, things that nature would take an incredibly longer period to do. But true alchemists are not concerned with the physical ... their Work is all spiritual. Alchemy is an arcane art at its core. Gold, elixirs, Philosopher's Stones ... all by-products for the base and limited.

"True alchemy transforms the soul ... and a true alchemist never works alone."

"Ah, I think I get it!" Sirius exclaimed. "You are an alchemist ... or you and Harry are!"

"Precisely," Hermione smiled. "I Mastered Time when Dumbledore gave me his Time-Turner, Harry Mastered physical alchemy when he earned the Philosopher's Stone. Then we embarked on a life-long journey of Love and Enlightenment together to complete the upper, spiritual Work.

"And we are far from done. Which is why I am so cross and furious with whoever it is that is fucking with my life! Forgive me, I don't swear that often. But I am very cross, Sirius! Very cross, indeed!"

Sirius wanted to laugh, but thought better of it. "So, my death is part of this process?"

"Yes, it marks a transition from the beginning Black Stage, what we call the Nigredo," Hermione explained. "You are the quintessential Black Death, Mr Black! Harry will complete the Albedo - or White Stage - when Dumbledore dies. Then the Rubedo, Red Stage, will be reached when our friend, Ron, sacrifices himself to allow us to go on alone and finish the Opus. Win the game, just like in chess. Soul and spirit, leaving the body behind. As it must be for us all."

Sirius listened to the solemn words. He looked at baby Harry, full up with love for his Godson, and accepted his fate on the spot. He loved nothing else in the world now, besides that child. If he had to die to protect him then so be it.

"So I just have to stay alive until the right moment," Sirius nodded. "Any advice on that?"

"Go and find that rat Pettigrew and make it look like you slaughtered him," Hermione scythed bluntly. "Make it dramatic. Let them sling you in Azkaban for a stretch. Your Animagus form will keep you safe from the Dementors and you'll stay alive."

"Sounds a jolly holiday, that one, Hermione!" Sirius laughed. "Cant I just jet off to the Bahamas for a bit?"

"That's up to you," Hermione frowned sternly. "But if you decide to let one of Voldemort's unmasked minions run around freely and pose a threat to Harry for the next ten years, then you and I will -"

"Have a serious falling out, and I don't want that," Sirius sniggered lightly. "Got you. But why cant I actually murder Peter? I very much want to, you know, if he is behind this betrayal of my best friend."

"Because, he somehow makes his way into the hands of a woman that I loathe, one I suspect is behind the changes in my life," Hermione explained. "And she gives him to one of her children as a pet. I haven't found out about that bit yet, but I feel certain it's important. They protected a Death Eater for years and years. I have to know the reasons why."

"Then Peter did turn on us?" Sirius mused. "But how did he give away the secret of this place? I am the Secret Keeper."

"You were," Hermione agreed. "But at some point James and Lily changed it to Peter. Remember, for me, this has all happened before. In my timeline, James and Lily sacrificed themselves deliberately, to save the other children that Voldemort was targeting, knowing that he'd come for Harry eventually and that they'd come back in the future to help defeat him for good. I had no idea of my own role in it till Lily explained it all, years after they returned."

"How do you keep your head on straight thinking about this?" Sirius quirked. "I'm dizzy just listening to you."

"I have a remarkable mind!" Hermione grinned cheekily. "Harry says it's his favourite thing about me. That's explanation enough!"

"So, what will you do now, to get him back?" Sirius asked. "Dumbledore told me what happened to you in the future."

"I have to find the source of the disruption and eliminate it, but it's taking time," Hermione explained. "Luckily, time is something I have plenty of. I just have to be careful where I go and what I do. But I have to make sure there are some anchors in the timeline that remain the same, things that cant be changed. I went to see an older Harry recently just for that purpose."

"To do what?"

"I cant tell you that," Hermione smirked. "So don't ask again."

Hermione pulled out a pocket watch from her robes. It was a curious timepiece, for instead of hands and numbers, little rotating planets were spinning around the edge.

"It's time to leave," Hermione announced briskly.

She drew her wand and cast a spell in a language Sirius didn't recognise. Instantly, a split opened up in the fabric of the very air itself. It was blindingly bright. Sirius had to shield his eyes against it. He peeked through his fingers long enough to see Hermione float the bodies of James and Lily through the vortex to ... wherever it was ... that she was taking them.

Then Hermione crossed to Sirius. She leant close and placed a chaste kiss to his cheek.

"Goodbye, Sirius, Until we meet again. When we do, don't make out that we've met before. You might not remember me, anyway, if I fail in my mission. Oh, and don't forget to dispose of Riddle's corpse."

"Is there nothing else I can do? I feel so useless."

Hermione grinned at him. "You can always try and get me and Harry together sooner! You did try to pair us off, sort of, but maybe convince him to ask me to the Yule Ball we have in our Fourth Year at Hogwarts or something. I was dying for him to ask me, and I so wanted a snog with him that night. He looked so dishy! But he didn't ask his Godfather for any sage advice on the matter, so I was left very cross with him!"

"And - let me guess - I didn't like you cross?!" Sirius laughed.

"Something like that," Hermione smirked. "Goodbye, Sirius. Farewell."

And with that, Hermione Potter gave a small wave and disappeared into the ether.

Chapter Text

Hermione was in the back garden of her parent's Abingdon home, watching the colourful barges pass along the canal on their way to the horse fair in Oxford, when the doorbell chimed unexpectedly. In truth, she was fetching top-up drinks for them all so they could cool down in the warm Summer weather. It was past two o'clock now and more than socially acceptable to have a small glass of chilled white wine with the selection of bread and cheeses that they were nibbling at on their sunny verandah.

So the doorbell came as a rather unwelcome distraction. That was until Hermione actually answered it.

"Harry!"

It was an exclamation. She couldn't help it. The events of their last day in Australia had made things unreasonably awkward between them. Hermione simply couldn't understand or accept that an alternative version of herself had slept with Harry, and he confessed that he could now think about little else. What that meant, and where it might lead, left them at an impasse that neither knew how to get beyond.

But it seemed now, after barely two weeks apart, that Harry had cracked first.

For not only had he brought himself, but he was also pulling his heavy Hogwarts trunk behind him. It contained, Hermione knew with a heavy heart, all of Harry's earthly possessions. Her heart flipped crazily at the idea, for if Harry ever offered himself to her completely, this might be what it looked like.

"What are you doing here?" Hermione asked, breaking from the hug she'd clobbered him with on sight.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't stay away," Harry muttered lowly, toeing the gravel path with his battered shoe. "And I couldn't stay there, either. I'm sorry ... I had nowhere else to go."

Hermione knew that the there in this case meant The Burrow. She, herself, had been giving the place and its family a wide berth, but Harry had been left with no choice but to return there. Now, it seemed, he'd had his fill.

"I wont be a burden," Harry promised. "It'll just be for a night. Maybe two. Your Dad mentioned he had a potting shed ... that'd do just fine. If I could just -"

"If you honestly think I'm heartless enough to simply let you sleep in my garden shed when I have soft pillows going spare, then I'm going to be very cross with you, Harry," Hermione quipped semi-sternly. "What sort of best friend do you take me for? We have an attic room that my Aunts often use when they stay. You're welcome to use that for as long as you like."

"No, I ... I don't want to intrude," Harry argued sheepishly.

"You intruded when you saved my life from a twelve-foot-troll," Hermione smiled warmly. "Now, come on in and tell me what this is all about."

"I couldn't stay there, with the Weasleys," Harry explained as they mounted the stairs. "It felt odd. And not just because of ... you-know-what."

Hermione felt her cheeks heat up in spite of herself. She still couldn't picture Harry's description of what had happened to him on that last night in Sydney ... or the rabid jealousy that it hadn't been her that he'd shared that experience with. Although he insisted that it was, or at least as far as he was concerned it was, however confusing this all sounded to her.

"Why? What was wrong?"

"I could feel things ... changing," Harry tried to explain. "Changing back to how they were before we went away. And not because I wanted them to ... they just were. I cant explain it. But I hated it. I wanted to ... I wanted ..."

"What?" Hermione pushed gently.

"I wanted to feel like I did back in Australia, when it was just us," Harry confessed. "And not just on that last night. But before then. I missed it ... that feeling I felt when I was with you ... and just you. I missed the intimacy, I missed the emotion ... I missed you. And I'm scared, Hermione."

Hermione had forgotten how to breathe a moment, but she jerked back to herself at Harry's declaration of fear. It was so heart-felt and genuine that Hermione felt her own heart bleed just from hearing it.

"What are you afraid of?"

"I'm afraid that ... someone's trying to take it away," Harry confessed in a tiny voice. "That feeling. And I don't want them to, Hermione. I don't want to lose it. It terrifies me that I might. I like feeling this ... whatever it is for you. I know my timing is atrocious, but I know now that this is what I want to feel. It doesn't even matter that you don't like me back like that. Will you help me, Hermione? Help me to stop whoever is doing this? Please?"

"Firstly, who said that I don't like you back like that? I never said that," Hermione smiled gently. Harry could barely believe his ears, and language was beyond him now, so he just listened. "Did I - or did I not - travel back in time just to make love to you?"

Harry reddened so adorably that it took all of Hermione's restraint not to pounce on him right there. But she held firm.

"You did," Harry choked out. "And it was all sorts of gorgeous. But why have you suddenly accepted that?"

"Because of something my mum said," Hermione confessed. "She spoke to another version of me, too, one who came from the future, to say that someone was attacking her life ... or mine ... in that time. Oh dear, this is so confusing."

"You're telling me," Harry agreed, scratching his head. "How were they attacking your life?"

"She didn't say explicitly," Hermione replied. "But it has something to do with the first time we met. Apparently, it wasn't as we remember it. Do you still think it was that first day on the Hogwarts Express?"

"Yeah, you came into my compartment as you tried to help Neville find his toad," Harry described. "That was the first time we met."

"Apparently not," Hermione told him, sitting down on the bed. "My mum had forgotten about it, too, but then this other me reminded her. That was important, apparently, because it showed that whatever Dark Magic was at work stretched only to me - and her - and not our family. But that didn't make sense to the other Hermione for some reason, so she went away to try and figure it all out. Or I had to. This is making my head spin.

"Describe this thing you felt, Harry, when you were at The Burrow. Let's start with that."

"It's not easy to," Harry began, sitting next to Hermione on the bed. "I came back from Australia determined to finish it all with Ginny. We never really re-started, but I sort of told her to give me time to get over everything that had happened and that I'd talk to her again after that. She took that as promise enough."

"But something happened when you saw her? You didn't break it off?"

"Not so much that I didn't ... it was as much that I couldn't," Harry moaned. "It was like the words were there, but I'd forgotten how to say them. Ginny gave me a hug, even flashed me in just her bra from the top of the stairs, and then I noticed it going."

"What? This feeling for ... for me?"

Harry nodded glumly. "I remembered ... seeing you. Or, you know, the other you. I remembered how you felt, your skin, your weight, the scent of you ... how you ... tasted. But the details were slipping away like moments from a dream. And I didn't want to forget, Hermione. It was all I'd thought about since it happened.

"So I fought hard to cling on. But it was like the seal had broken. The details kept vanishing. Now I cant even remember what you were wearing when I first saw you ... only that it took my breath away. And I'm gutted to have lost that memory, Hermione."

"Why? It was just me ... of a fashion."

"Yeah ... but not like that," Harry replied, the hint of a cheeky smile touching the corners of his mouth. "I cant remember it ... but it was like looking at something divine. Would you want to forget something like that?"

Hermione shifted an inch closer to Harry so that their thighs were touching. Then she smiled sweetly at him.

"No, and once we solve this, maybe we can create a store bank of those images together. Lets see Ginny and her Dark Magic stop us then."

"Ginny ... who is that?"

Harry and Hermione snapped their heads to the far corner of the attic. It was completely in shadow, despite being just to the right of a sunny skylight.

"Peruvian Darkness Powder," the female speaker explained to the stunned expressions facing her. "Useful for not being seen. Now tell me who Ginny is? I've heard the name a few times, but I don't know who it belongs to."

"Hermione!" Harry hissed under his breath. "That's you! The other you!"

Hermione frowned at him. "I worked that one out myself, Harry. I know my own voice when I hear it. The question is ... what do I want?"

So she asked herself out loud.

"I am trying to find the root of a problem," the future Hermione explained. "And this 'Ginny' character keeps popping up. So I need to know who she is. Hello, Harry ... again."

"Um ... hi," Harry replied sheepishly. He felt the need to cover his crotch for some reason, despite being fully clothed. The Hermione next to him scowled jealously.

"Ginny is our friend's sister," she explained. "She's fancied Harry something chronic since she was a girl."

"What else can you tell me about her? Significant events in her life, that sort of thing."

"Well, the most interesting thing to happen to her - apart from somehow coaxing Harry into fancying her last year - was that she was possessed by the spirit of Lord Voldemort during our second year at Hogwarts. She plays Quidditch a bit, she has an affinity for bats with sinus issues, and she's a smart-mouthed little tart. We also call her ASDA - because her legs are open twenty-four hours! Am I missing anything, Harry?"

Harry couldn't help but laugh. "She writes terrible Valentines Poems! She thinks that telling someone their eyes are like a 'freshly pickled toad' is a compliment."

"Does she also think your hair is as dark as a blackboard?" future Hermione quirked.

"You've heard it?" Harry laughed back.

"I have," Hermione confirmed. "But how curious."

"I'm sorry, er ... me," Hermione began. "But what's curious?"

"Just call me Hermione, Hermione, or we will end up going around in circles."

"Aren't we doing just that!" Hermione cried shrilly. "First rule of time-travel is that you must not be seen, especially by yourself. But here we are talking!"

"But can you see me?"

"Well, no ... but I'm not really sure this counts."

"Well I wont tell if you won't," future Hermione laughed. "Or maybe I'll just talk to Harry instead."

There was something sultry in her tone that - if Harry had heard it from another girl - might be construed as a taunt. The Hermione sat next to him certainly took it as one.

"No, you'll talk to me," she spat possessively, shunting so close to Harry on the bed that her thigh was practically atop his. That took his thoughts - and his bloodstream - in a southerly direction at warp speed. "What was curious about the poem? You said you had heard it before?"

"I have," came the reply. "Only it wasn't from a girl called Ginny ... but from a boy called St.John ... St.John Weasley. He was Ron Weasley's younger brother."

"What!" Harry and his Hermione chimed together.

"We used to call him 'Ginger Sinjie', or 'Ginger Johnnie'," future Hermione went on. "Fred and George started the nickname to annoy him, obviously, but it sort of stuck. He was somehow ginger-er than the rest of the clan. And he was just obsessed with Harry, pretty much from the get-go. It was hero worship at first, but it developed into quite a dangerous infatuation as the years went on.

"This is fascinating. I think I see what she's done now, or is trying to do ... the question is how?"

"What who has done?" Harry asked. "Ginny?"

"No ... Molly," Hermione corrected.

"Mrs Weasley?" Harry choked out. "But why would she do ... whatever it is that she's done?"

"Because ... Molly Weasley hates me ... and I hate her right back," Hermione scythed. Oddly, Harry swore he saw the Hermione next to him nod in slow agreement.

"But why?"

"Because she's an arrogant cunt, the worst witch I've ever met," future Hermione explained acridly. "She had her first baby when she was still at Hogwarts, you know. Bill was born when she was just fourteen, conceived on one of Molly and Arthur's Hogsmeade visits. If the Arthur Weasley you know is anything like mine, then you know he's no ladies' man. He just couldn't keep control of his excitement on their first time. And then Molly forgot the incantation for the Contraceptive Charm.

"She told us this as a funny story when we were staying at Grimmauld Place over Christmas of our fifth year. Arthur had just been attacked by Voldemort's snake, Nagini, and everyone was swapping stories, as you do. But I couldn't help it ... I gasped in shock when Molly told that one with a smile on her face. I know how terribly judgemental it must have sounded ... and Molly never forgave me for it.

"And I'd never forgiven her for sending me Bubotuber Pus in a letter, after stories came out that I was cheating on my Harry with Viktor Krum during the Triwizard Tournament."

"Wow," Harry breathed. "So those events happened exactly the same for you as they did for us, then?"

"Almost exactly," Hermione replied. There was the hint of a smile in her voice. "The main difference was that there was something going on between my Harry and me. We were skirting around it in the most silly of ways, but Rita Skeeter's articles made us do something that I've come to learn that you two didn't."

"What was that?" Harry's Hermione asked.

"We looked it in the face ... actually discussed it," the other Hermione replied fondly. "It was painfully formal, and we laughed crazily about it in the years that followed, but you know what we're like, Hermione. I basically interrogated my Harry about his feelings for me. The poor lamb didn't know what hit him!"

"How did that happen?" Hermione asked. It sounded as if she was desperate to know what she'd done wrong in her version of the events.

"After the Second Task, it was clear that something was different between us," came the explanation. "Because I was the hostage taken into the Lake for Harry to rescue. I was the thing that he'd miss the most. Apparently, I was Krum's, too, but Harry would have missed me so much more ... so I was his.

"So, practically as soon as I was dry, I dragged Harry for one of our epic walks around the Lake for him to explain it to me. He did a terrible - but adorably cute - job, spluttering and stuttering his way through his answers to my examination, but he managed to tell me how he'd liked me as more than a friend for the best part of a year, and that it was getting stronger all the time, and that his image of me coming into the Common Room as his date for the Yule Ball was the memory he now used to conjure a Patronus.

"I practically melted when he told me that. So we agreed to go to the next Hogsmeade weekend alone, without Ron for the first time, and see how it went. As it happened, it went very well, so we took it slow from there."

"So you ... we ... started going out?" Harry breathed reverently. It was as though he'd suddenly come up with a brilliant new idea, the best one the world had ever seen, and he couldn't understand why he hadn't thought of it before.

"Not right away, not even that school year, really," Hermione confessed. "But we were essentially inseparable after that first Hogsmeade date. And then all that drama happened with Cedric and Voldemort returning in the graveyard. My Harry was so wounded ... I was heartbroken just being at his bedside. The effects of the Cruciatus Curse gave him severe PTSD, and lingered with him all Summer. I visited him weekly, wrote to him practically every other day. Poor Hedwig didn't forgive me for all the extra flying for at least six months after that!

"At first, the letters were what you'd expect - general correspondence and notes of concern. But they began to change as our feelings sharpened focus. We'd almost lost each other, before whatever it was that we'd started had even really got going. And we both knew how much we'd have regretted not giving into it fully. So we started to, in what we were writing in our letters.

"By the time we were ready to board the Hogwarts Express again in September, we weren't just writing to keep in touch ... we were pretty much sending love letters to each other."

Harry and both Hermiones felt lumps rise in their throats, as the words hung softly in the air between them. Then Harry looked down, for his Hermione had tracked her fingers up over his hand and was now holding it tenderly, and seemed completely unashamed for doing so, too. Harry just enjoyed the warmth of her touch, allowed himself to feel it in ways he never had before.

"Meeting up again was awkward at first, after all the intimate things we'd said to each other via Hedwig," future Hermione went on. "But by the end of that first train journey, we'd gotten ourselves sorted. We brought Ron in on what we'd decided ... on what we'd become. He was disappointed, as he had started to fancy me, too. Seriously, I never expected three boys in the space of six months would want to date me!

"But I only wanted Harry, and Ron knew that. He accepted it begrudgingly, was over it by Halloween and started seeing Hannah Abbott, but it fizzled out by Christmas."

"But you ... I mean, we ... didn't? Fizzle out, I mean," Harry asked quietly.

"No, Harry. We never fizzled out. We just got stronger and stronger. If anything, fighting Voldemort and all that drew us closer. No-one had shared what we had, could ever replace you in my heart, and I knew it was the same for you. We defeated Voldemort, left Hogwarts, got engaged on my twentieth birthday and married at twenty-five, ten years to the day that we'd first swapped those fateful 'I love yous' with each other.

"Oddly, it was you who remembered that fact, who thought it would be terribly romantic to say 'I do' to me, on the same date as you'd first told me you were in love with me. It was all very sweet. But that's when things started to change. And I'm only just starting to see how Molly Weasley is behind the whole lot of it."

"How so?"

"We didn't let her come to the wedding," Hermione explained. "We, sort of, had to put a Restraining Charm up against St. John and Molly kicked off about it. His obsession had become dangerous. He'd turned up at our daughter's school and threatened to kidnap her if Harry didn't marry him instead of me. He even began the process for a full gender-swap operation, after Harry refused his numerous approaches for a date, thinking maybe he'd have more luck as a girl.

"But it didn't matter about gender or sexuality. Harry loved me, and that was the one thing that nothing and nobody could change. And Molly hated that about me. She tried so hard to prise Harry away from me. She'd send invitations to Weasley parties addressed just to Harry, leaving me out. She'd contrive elaborate ways for Harry and St. John to be alone together, things like that.

"In the end, Harry had a blazing row with them both and vowed never to speak to either again. Molly desperately wanted Harry to marry her child ... she was determined to have him as a son-in-law. I just never imagined she'd go this far."

"So, you think that because we've been in Harry's life for everything important, and bonded so deeply as a result, that Molly is somehow trying to remove us from it now? Maybe put Ginny in our place?" Harry's Hermione asked in quiet horror. "Starting with the first time we met? Mum told me about your meeting with her."

"That's my working theory, but I don't know how far her action goes or even how she's doing it," came the reply. "But I have to believe that replacing her youngest son with a daughter has to be part of it somehow. She might be trying to place this Ginny as a rival to me from the very start, maybe including love potions or other forms of Entrancement magic. I know she's got previous with that."

"You do? With who?" Harry asked.

"Sirius," Hermione volleyed back bluntly. "She was obsessed with him when they were at Hogwarts, despite the age gap. She had him under a spell for at least six months when he was thirteen or so. Ever wondered why they were so cool towards each other every time they met? There's your answer. Sirius feels violated by it, as would I."

"You ... you sound like you know Sirius," Harry began quietly. "More than I would expect you to."

"That's because I do," Hermione replied. "Harry - in my timeline, we brought Sirius back ... right after we revived your parents. They showed us how to open a portal at the back of the Veil in the Department of Mysteries. Sirius fell right out, as if the fight there had just finished, just with four more years of memories from his time in the afterlife."

Harry gripped Hermione's hand as the concept crashed into him. "We did ... what? How?"

"There was an incredibly complex piece of magic performed when you were a baby, that allowed you to survive Voldemort's attack. It was supposed to trigger a chain of events that would bring your parents back to life when you duelled Voldemort for the final time during the Battle of Hogwarts. James and Lily's souls reside within your wand, Harry. And when you cast Expelliarmus against Voldemort with it, they were supposed to emerge and kill him, while he was held defenceless in Priory Incantatem by you. But, and I don't know why, that hasn't happened, has it?"

"No," Harry whined sadly. Then he sat bolt upright. "But ... I didn't use my wand against Voldemort. I used Draco Malfoy's! Mine was broken!"

"Ahh!" Hermione breathed in something like triumph. "That may be the key, Harry! You haven't completed the circle yet!"

"The question is ... can he?" younger Hermione asked. "I mean, this timeline doesn't seem completely right either, judging by what you've said."

"Go on."

"Well, look at it," Hermione continued. "For seven years - as far as we've both been aware - Harry and I haven't ever seriously considered getting together romantically. Then we pop off to Australia for a month and - and I think I can speak for Harry here, too - suddenly it's all we can do to keep our hands off each other. It's like a dam has broken - as though what we both truly want has abruptly burst into the open."

"True," Harry nodded with a grin.

"And this timeline you describe," Hermione went on, addressing her future self. "That sounds like the most beautiful dream I could ever have. I hate that I didn't live that myself! But maybe we weren't allowed to. Harry says a fortnight with the Weasleys is making him forget what we shared in Australia, as though somehow our affections are being denied to us. Could that have been happening to us forever? Could Molly have done something to purposely keep us apart?"

"That's the theory I'm running with," came the reply. "I just need to know how far it goes. I've been travelling through time, nailing down anchors in our timeline. You both need to understand something ... as soon as we saved, then flew, on Buckbeak we joined our hearts together in the most profound of ways. The universe ordained us that night ... made us meant to be. I'm pinning my hopes on that ... that no matter what Molly or Dark Magic tries to do, our love will prevail above all of it."

"What anchors?" Harry asked.

"Key events in our relationship," Hermione explained. "I went to watch over you after Lily and James were killed so you'd be safe, I told Dumbledore about the time paradox, so he would tell James so he could prepare you. I gave him your phoenix wand. Then I went see you in Sydney ... relived our first time pretty much as it happened for me. And don't worry, Harry ... you get better and last longer as time goes on, trust me!"

The Hermione, at Harry's side, couldn't help but giggle at that, as she curled her head onto his shoulder in a consolatory sort of way. But he did his best to ignore all of his own inexperienced failings for now. For he felt a sheer rush of affection for Hermione, for both of them, for the entity that was Hermione Granger in that moment. She was the girl that had cared for him and watched over him so diligently for pretty much his entire life.

And if what he was feeling for her now wasn't love he was pretty such nothing else ever would be.

"Tell me," Harry asked to the future version. "Can you feel this?"

Then he turned bodily and drew his Hermione to him, holding her tenderly tight, closing his eyes at her touch.

The older witch swooned from the corner. "I can feel it! Almost like a sweet memory. It shows we are still connected ... that you, Hermione, can still go on to become me. But this is Time Magic ... and who knows when that might change."

"It also sounds like Dark Magic," Harry replied bitterly, letting Hermione go with painful reluctance. "Do you have any idea what Molly might have done?"

"Just one, and it's oh so vague," Hermione replied.

"Try us," Harry urged.

"Okay, the only link I can find is St. John's possession by the diary Horcrux," Hermione explained. "He was never purged of it and I'm sure there must have been some lingering effects. It may have accounted for portions of his madness in later years. Not only that, but Peter Pettigrew lived in that family for ten years, then a year after the possession. Being so close to St. John - with Voldemort in his mind - must have triggered something, maybe even caused his Mark to burn.

"And Molly would do anything for her kids, I have to give her that. But I also knew she was desperate for a daughter, and determined to break the Curse."

"Curse? What curse?"

"The Weasley Curse to deny them daughters," Hermione explained. "D-don't you know about that?"

"No," Harry returned worryingly. "We knew that Ginny was unusual - the seventh child of a seventh child, because Molly was the youngest of seven children herself, but we heard nothing about a Curse. What was it?"

"Grindelwald promised them a daughter who would lead a Pureblood revolution in Britain, in return for support on his campaign across Europe," Hermione explained. "When he was defeated, the Weasleys were among a number of families who were cursed to never have daughters, so that Grindelwald's Promise could never be fulfilled. That ... that must be what Molly is doing! Trying to break that curse."

"Or ... trying to prevent it ever being cast in the first place!" the other Hermione breathed in horror.

"Worse than that," Harry whispered darkly. "What if she's trying to turn it on you?"

Both Hermione's gasped deeply. "What do you mean?"

"Think about it," Harry urged. "You said that we didn't meet as we remember, yeah? And that your Mum said we wouldn't meet at all if we didn't get involved in this? Well, what if, somehow, Molly has turned the Weasley Curse into the Granger Curse ... as an ultimate revenge against you? Against us? You always said it was strange that you had very little magical ancestry at all, that even in Squibs and Muggleborns magic can sometimes skip generations. But it was just you. What if Molly has done something in the future, and it has affected the beginnings of the Granger family way back in the past? A family that died out over generations?"

"By preventing them having daughters!" Harry's Hermione cried. "We wouldn't meet because ... I'd have never been born!"

"But how would she do that? What would she need?"

"She'd need a Granger girl ... a Granger daughter," Hermione from the future hissed in abject terror. "My daughter! I have to go."

A blinding rent opened up in the air of the attic. Harry shielded his eyes against it, but kept his head long enough to scream-

"Hermione! What do we do? I don't know where - or when - you have to go, but let us help you in the here and now! Tell us what to do!"

"I'm going home, to find out what that bitch has done to my daughter, to my Sophie," Hermione called back angrily. "If I fail, or if Molly captures or kills me, find out all you can about a Hector Dagworth-Granger. He was the one who placed the curse on the Weasleys in the first place. If you have to, steal a bloody Time-Turner and go back and place the damned curse yourself! Just do not be seen!"

"And what about Sirius!" Harry yelled. "What about my parents?"

"If we assume that this Ginny scrut is the person I knew as St. John Weasley, Voldemort's essence lives on inside her," Hermione replied. "You have to find a way to draw him out in her and engage her in battle. Hit her with Expelliarmus using your Phoenix and Holly wand and complete the cycle. Your parents will emerge and they'll know what to do next."

"And what about me?" the younger Hermione asked. "Will I just cease to exist if Molly wins?"

"Yes, but Team Potter never loses when we work together," came the smiling voice again. "Do what you can. If I am able, I will return to help you. If not ... I hope to be you later, Hermione Granger. My my, it's ages since I called myself that! Hermione Potter has such a nicer ring to it, don't you think? Oh, and Harry ... put a ring on it, will you, honey?! I don't like seeing my wedding finger without that band of beautiful Welsh Gold wrapped around it!

"I love you."

And then she was gone.

Chapter Text

"You know, Harry, as first dates go, this is pretty much perfect. You really do know the way to a girl's heart!"

Harry curled his eyes up at Hermione in a quirky look as she laughed lightly at his side. Behind her, tottering shelves of books and parchments rolls disappeared into the misty gloom of a high ceiling.

"I don't know about that, but maybe it's the way to your heart ... Arch-bibliophile as you are!"

"I like that ... Arch-bibliophile ... maybe that can be my new name."

"I thought we already decided on your new name ... I mean, isn't that why we are here?"

Hermione blushed adorably and threw Harry a radiant look. She wasn't confident enough right now, and their relationship wasn't quite there yet, but she was desperate to reach over and give him a little a kiss ... a chaste peck, a demure lip touch, a full on snog ... either would do. Hermione's loins mewled in frustration that this wasn't moving anything like as quickly as they wanted it to be.

So she pulled more books and parchment files towards her and took to her task with renewed aplomb. The Hall of Records, here in the bowels of the Ministry of Magic, may not have been most girls' notion of an ideal date location. But, for Hermione Granger at least, books were old friends, shields from her social awkwardness, a library the place she felt most comfortable and herself ... and besides, the smell of parchment was her most powerful aphrodisiac.

It was only a lack of courage that stopped Hermione from re-enacting her Australian de-flowering of Harry right here on the messy, book and parchment strewn kidney-shaped desk in front of them. That was a fantasy she'd indulged in on more than one occasion in both timelines that she'd lived.

But they were here to take their first steps towards getting their relationship to that level or, as Harry reminded her with his mind-bending words, back to that level. Hermione had to remember and console herself with that fact, though the whole situation was difficult to hold steady in her mind, even a mind a powerful as hers.

The best strategy, she decided, was to be playful, to pretend that the other timeline was actually the real one and that the life she remembered was simply some kind of fanfiction written by Rita Skeeter, as part of some revenge-fuelled wish fulfilment vanity publishing project or something. Hermione liked that idea, and saw her task now as a sort of homework assignment, to disprove Rita's nonsense that Harry and Ginny had any sort of romantic compatibility, that herself and Harry were platonic only, and that a big, happy Weasley family was viewed as an ideal endgame.

Purging the world of such lunacy would require a complete destruction of Rita's 'canon' ... and Hermione was determined to find cannons of her own with which to blow the idea into a million useless pieces.

And her motivation was fuelled by focusing on all the beautiful things her future self had told her about the real timeline. So she turned to Harry with a teasing expression to talk to him about it some more.

"You know, of all the amazing things that happened in our other life, I still can't believe that it was you who proposed to me!"

Harry chuckled and looked up from the file in front of him. "Why not? I'm well known for my bravery!"

"But would you have been scared that I'd say no, do you think?"

"Terrified."

"Well, there you are then! I must have left you in no doubt. So I made it easier for you which, if you look at it a certain way, means I was the one who proposed, really!"

"If that's how you look at things, I suggest getting your eyes tested!" Harry laughed. "I wouldn't have been scared that you'd not want to marry me, but you might not have wanted to get married at all. You're a modern girl, so maybe outdated ideas of bonded relationships are too archaic for you."

"Pfft! Don't be absurd!" Hermione cried. "I'm a traditional girl as well as a modern one. I don't see why one box has to be exclusive of another. I'd have wanted to commit to you, wanted everyone else to know it, and wanted to make sure other vacuous witches would stop swarming around you. It's rather annoying, but you are quite dishy, Harry!"

He felt the room heat up at the sound of that, but he revelled in the blush that swept his cheeks. Harry found that each little flirt, each bit of something that hinted at a more-than-friends relationship that came from Hermione acted like an antidote to whatever spell or curse was affecting their timeline. It was as if their very affection was a shield against the machinations of Molly Weasley.

"However it happened, we got married in the end," Harry conceded. "Right now, what I'm more interested in is how that has been taken from our own future."

"And how the past relates to putting it right," Hermione agreed.

"Precisely. So, who exactly was Hector Dagworth-Granger?"

"I don't know, but one thing we can be certain of is that he is connected to me somehow," Hermione frowned. "The other me was quite explicit about that. And another thing we can rule out is that he is part of my Muggle heritage."

"How can you be so sure?"

"My father's brother, Jack, once did an extensive family tree," Hermione explained, fishing for a paper document from her bag. "He traced the family back right to the English Civil War, and beyond to our French origins. But I had a look at the time around the turn of the century up till 1945, when Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald, and there is no mention of a Hector Dagworth-Granger on the tree.

"Now, that doesn't mean we aren't related, of course. Only that he probably disappeared into the magical world and was never heard from again by the Muggle side of the family. The bigotry and persecution of anything arcane at the time would account for that. Alternatively, he might have been on the family tree, but these timeline changes have erased him."

"Which means we have to move fast while his records still exist in this world," Harry nodded. "So, what do we know for sure?"

"Very little," Hermione huffed. "There is no mention of Granger, Dagworth or any derivative on the list of Ancient and/or Noble houses, or even as part of the ancient Sacred Twenty-Eight. And it's like he didn't even exist before 1945. The first mention of him is as one of the three Judgementors of the Wizengamot during the time of Grindelwald's rise in Europe, but how he got there without being a prominent member of wizarding society is, frankly, baffling to me."

"Judgementors?" Harry quizzed. "What are they?"

"Senior members of the Wizengamot responsible for handing out judgements against the worst of criminals," Hermione read from a piece of parchment in front of her. "They decided on, and handed out, sentencing, were well versed in all aspects of magical law and were considered the highest legal authority in the land."

"And if Hector was active at the time of Grindelwald, then what the other you told us makes sense," Harry nodded. "He would have handed out the sentences against any traitors who supported the invasion. I found this, look ... it is a list of families punished by the Wizengamot for collaborating with Grindelwald and his regime at the time. The press called the trials The Bloody Sympathises."

"The Weasleys ... Crabbe, Goyle ... The Diggorys! That's interesting," Hermione read from the sheet Harry passed to her. "All bound by a powerful curse to never allow them to have daughters."

"It's worse than that for some," Harry pointed out to her. "Some were cursed to never have more than one child of any gender. The Diggorys being one ... Cedric would have been the only child the law permitted that family to have ..."

"You aren't to blame for that, Harry," Hermione consoled gently, reaching over to squeeze his forearm. "Cedric's death was not your fault."

"Try telling that to his father," Harry muttered sadly. "Amos refuses to forgive me, even to this day. He made that clear in remarks he made to the Prophet, when they ran stories about my defeat of Voldemort and made me into a national hero. He says they've overlooked a lifetime of indiscretions by me. He's even started a campaign to include details of my role in Cedric's death on my Chocolate Frog card, when they announced that you and me were getting our own ones next year.

"I can see my card now ... Harry Potter, famous for the defeat of the Dark Lord Voldemort, basilisk slayer, most powerful Patronus cast in the history of Hogwarts, Triwizard Tournament Champion ... oh, by the way, he had to get Voldemort to kill his main rival to win that one (detail insisted on inclusion by Mr. A. Diggory). Hardly something to be be a collector's item, is it?"

"Then that resentment hints at a darker side to his family, one that was prepared to side with a wizard like Grindelwald sixty years ago," Hermione scoffed back. "Such a person is not worth losing sleep over, Harry. Let him wallow in his grief and be done with it."

"That isn't kind, Hermione."

"To hell with kind!" Hermione cried. "Amos Diggory harbours resentment against my future and once-was husband. Screw him and his grief if he thinks badly of you, Harry! And that goes for the rest of the world, too."

Harry smiled weakly at her animated expression. "You know, I wish you'd told me you felt this passionate about me before now. We've lost out on so much time together."

"Don't remind me ... it makes me angry with myself to think about that," Hermione huffed. "But still, we have the time now to make it right. So, Hector Dagworth-Granger? What can we surmise, especially in relation to Molly?"

"We have to assume that he cast the Curse on the Weasleys specifically," Harry mused. "The history books confirm he was in place to do so, and your future self suggested that he had."

"Which gives Molly motive," Hermione agreed crossly.

"For the worst kind of revenge," Harry nodded.

"Bitch."

"Quite!"

"But then what might she have done?" Hermione pondered. "How would she have altered the timeline?"

"Well, getting back is easy enough," Harry replied. "After all, we've done a bit of that, ourselves. But it's what she did when she got there that we have to work out. And it seems the attack was two-pronged -"

"- allow herself to have a daughter and turn the No-Girls curse onto Hector," Hermione scythed. "Not only does she create a child who she could train to seduce you, but she would eliminate me entirely, either by preventing my existence in the first place, wiping out my family line, or even turning me into a boy, thus preventing any attraction between us."

"Yeah, that makes sense," Harry agreed. "Sorry, I know I should be all fluid, as is the popular trend, but it's girls for me all the way. I'd no sooner fancy you if you were a boy than I would Ron or Neville or Draco Malfoy."

"You and Malfoy might be cute ... a haters-to-lovers sort of thing," Hermione teased. "We could call it Drarry or something ... Draco slash Harry. It has a certain ring to it."

"Same goes for you and him ... Dramione!," Harry volleyed back with a scrunched brow. "Aren't girls supposed to like the whole bad boy thing? It's exciting and dangerous and something to reform! It'd be no weirder than, say, Anne Frank getting the hots for Heinrich Himmler, would it?"

"A tasteless, if accurate, analogy," Hermione frowned, narrowing her eyes. "Besides, there's a difference between bad and evil ... and we both know which side old Draco falls on, don't we?"

Harry nodded bitterly. "Yes, we do. I knew that from the moment he said he hoped the basilisk would kill you first, when those attacks happened in our second year at school. My hatred of him was fixed from that moment on. It lasted right up till the Battle of Hogwarts, when he was still trying to tell the Death Eaters that he was on their side. Part of me wishes I'd never saved him."

"That's more about who you are than any concern for him," Hermione argued. "It makes you the better person, even if it was a shame that a random curse didn't bring a wall down on his head or something."

"Mmm, but all this fine talk about yet another alternative version of our lives isn't helping us to solve the problems in the ones we know about already. What could Molly have done, do you think? What would have killed two birds with one stone?"

Hermione's eyes went round in her fright. "She could have killed Hector Dagworth-Granger! Gone back, trapped him, and done away with him before he could place the Curse! It would have been easy then to Polyjuice into him and gave a different verdict at the Weasley trial!"

"Then Hector just vanishes without a trace ... Molly fakes his retirement, on stress grounds or something, then returns to the present and waits for the timelines to change." Harry muttered in his horror. "I mean, there's no trace of him in the historical record after 1945. It's like he just drops off the face of the Earth."

"Oh, Harry! That sounds so possible!" Hermione yelped. "What are we going to do?"

"You know more about the magic of temporal causality than me," Harry urged. "Is there anything you were told, when you were given the Time-Turner by McGonagall, that could help?"

"I'm trying to think," Hermione fired back, wracking her brains. "If Molly has tampered with the timelines like that, then it's obviously been successful in some regards. St. John Weasley has become Ginny, we don't remember the actual first time we met, thinking it was just at Hogwarts.

"But not everything that she might have planned has happened yet. I'm still here, for example, and we still remember all the experiences that bonded us and made us so close ... our relationship still has all its foundations. If she'd erased them, things would have changed already between us."

"That's why the other you has been hopping around through time!" Harry exclaimed. "To make sure that everything that made our relationship so strong still happened between us. If those events, so loaded with emotion, hadn't happened, we wouldn't have been drawn so close together, would we? Our bond wouldn't be nearly as potent."

"Exactly. It'd be as if we met later in life, or if I'd gone to Beauxbatons and only met you during the Triwizard Tournament or something," Hermione agreed. "We'd be totally different people, for a start, as a product of different environments. We might not be compatible at all. We might not even like each other."

"And we wouldn't be bound by all those experiences," Harry went on. "No troll at Halloween, no getting my first hug from a girl in the undercroft of Hogwarts ... I wouldn't have been so fundamentally shaken by seeing you Petrified by the basilisk -"

"- no saving Sirius, no riding Buckbeak," Hermione took over in a hurried mumble. "No cosy walks round the lake as your only supporter when your name came out of the Goblet, no Rita Skeeter stories, no denying rumours to Viktor and Cho that there was something going on between us, no thinking we were going to be Prefects together -"

"- no surrogate parenting for Grawp, no teaming up to outsmart Umbridge, no losing my mind when I thought you'd been killed by Dolohov -"

"- no backing away from you when I thought I'd let you down by nearly being killed by Dolohov."

"What? You thought what?" Harry demanded, turning his head to her sharply.

Hermione just shrugged. "I did, okay? I'd mistranslated my runes ... eihwaz means partnership, not defence. I thought I should partner you at first, then I fell at the Department of Mysteries, so I convinced myself I should defend you instead, because I clearly wasn't strong enough to be your equal partner. Even though I knew the translation was wrong, I went for it anyway. There was a cosmic clue in my Hogwarts exam, but I trained myself to ignore and forget it."

"Hermione! Really?" Harry groaned. "Is that what you did ... or ... or is that where Molly's timeline effects started to kick in! Is that where she intervened in your life? Made you mistranslate the rune in your exam ... or changed the rune entirely, from eihwaz to ehwaz? It would be such a subtle change to make that you wouldn't really challenge it!"

"No, Harry! Do you really think that could be true?" Hermione hissed, aghast at the suggestion. "The two runes could be easily switched, couldn't they?"

"They could," Harry mused angrily. "Especially as you still see that as the time when you purposely drew back from me. Because up till then, if you think about what we just said, there were a lot of indicators that we could have been more than friends. And they are just the first ones that come to mind ... I'm sure there are others if we look even closer."

"So Molly has made those changes," Hermione sniped bitterly. "Just as the future me is trying to keep big events between us the same, Molly is trying to change other things, ones that might make either of us jump from friends to more. Changing my perception of what I could be to you, turning one of her sons into a daughter, anything that might stop either of us from focusing on each other romantically."

"And at the same time the effect of removing Hector is getting stronger all the time," Harry added. "I'm going to make a guess here and say that the closer we get to the time that Molly went back, the more of these timeline changes we are going to see."

"I think I get where you're going!" Hermione cried. "So first the effects hit his ancestry in the Muggle world, then they come here. There's no record of his future and soon there will be no record of his past, either. Because time is not linear ... it's circular. If she erases him not only will his future cease to be, but all the events and people that led up to his creation will vanish too ... the effects will travel right back to the first ever Granger and stop that person being born at all!

"Oh, Harry! What are we going to do?"

"We go back ... back to the time of the Weasley trial," Harry announced suddenly.

"What? We can't!"

"We can," Harry disagreed vehemently. "We are in the depths of the Ministry of Magic. The Time room is down in the Department of Mysteries not far from here. I'm sure I can still remember where it is. We go in there, steal a Time-Turner, then go back to the moment all this started."

"And do what?"

"Find Molly, stop her from ever making that initial change," Harry replied. "We get to Hector and protect him until he can deliver his guilty verdict and set the Weasley Curse. Then we come back and complete the cycle, by going back to the final battle with Voldemort. We'd need to find a way to get my Holly and Phoenix wand into the hands of my other self, then my parents will return and do the rest."

"Or better still, replace him with you!" Hermione cried. "And me with me. Those versions of us are ignorant of all that we've discovered about each other in the last two months. They need to stop existing!"

Harry grinned at that, and had to restrain himself from outright kissing Hermione there and then. "After that, we just have to taunt Ginny into a fight, coax out the shadow of Voldemort that she carries inside and destroy it. Then everything will be well again."

"Unless Molly has hurt our daughter in the future," Hermione snarled through gritted teeth. "Oh, I really hope I got there in time to stop her. I've never met our little girl, but I already love her so much that I know I'd kill for her!"

"Me too," Harry agreed. Then he looked down in horror at the parchment in front of him ... horror because the name of Hector Dagworth-Granger was slowly fading, as if the ink was being removed a drop at a time. It struck Harry as if he were watching a sand-filled hourglass draining away a few grains at a time, each second taking away his dream of this most beautiful promised life.

So it was time to find an hourglass of a very different sort to put it right.

"Hermione, look!" Harry breathed in a shaky voice. "We don't have much time."

"Then let us get some more," Hermione cried resolutely. "Come on. We have to forget the future for now ... our business lies in the past, and I'm going to make Molly Weasley regrets the day she ever heard the name Hermione Jane Granger."

Chapter Text

Sparrow's Nook, Cornwall, Eleven Years Later

Hermione raced down the narrow lane, her heart beating at a thousand miles an hour, fuelled not just by her vigorous exercise, but by the fear of what she might find when she returned home.

That is if the place still was her home.

For things had already fundamentally changed in her world, she noticed that as soon as she re-emerged in the Time Chamber in the underbelly of the Department of Mysteries. The Temporal Distorter, the device she had been using to punch holes in time, vanished right before her eyes ... which could mean only one thing ... she had never invented the thing in the first place.

That would change other key things, such as her permission to even be down here in this part of the Ministry in the first place. As a senior research Fellow of the Department she had access to all areas, but as her work was literally disappearing before her eyes, she could only assume that this was no longer her job. To be caught down here now would carry a severe punishment, perhaps even a stint in Azkaban.

Hermione riled against that as the thought crossed her mind ... she loved this place, this work ... loved investigating mysteries that would push her brilliant mind to ever more extraordinary levels. Not for her a life in politics or Healing. This was her true calling. There was rarely a dull day and she absolutely adored what she did

In fact there was only one thing she adored more, and she was frantic to discover if any of that was still hers anymore.

Which is why she was to be found now hurtling down the maze of narrow country lanes that led to Sparrow's Nook, the home she and Harry had set up together three years after leaving Hogwarts. They hadn't moved in together right away ... they had gone travelling for a year after Voldemort's defeat, feeling some time away from the spotlight of the Magical world was just what they needed.

So they visited the ancient sites of Greece and Rome, Egypt and Mexico ... sunned themselves on beaches in Florida and the Bahamas and the Balearic Islands ... fell asleep in each others arms under the sweeping lights of the Aurora Borealis. It had been a perfect year. Then Hermione enrolled on a Bachelors Degree at Oxford University, having passed the entrance exam with an exemplary score, and having her Hogwarts qualifications verified by the secretive department of the ancient university that dealt with Magical students wishing to study there.

Two years later and the first baby came along, and neither Hermione's dorm room nor the flat that Harry had rented in the city were anything like suitable enough.

So they chose Cornwall for its seclusion and beautiful scenery. They weren't far from the open-air Minack Theatre, and it soon became one of Hermione's favourite things to take her babies - both small and big - to sit on the stone pews and while away the days with an ice cream or a mug of Earl Grey. In fact, it was where Harry had clumsily - and soppily - proposed to her, shouting out for her hand in marriage whilst pretending to test out the acoustics of the amphitheatre-like venue.

It was the image Hermione would call on if she ever needed to produce a Patronus.

But now all that was in danger of vanishing into the mists of another time. Hermione could feel her pulse in her throat at the very thought, hoping against all dying hope that she was wrong. She soon rounded the last bend ... the house was in sight, the garden gate she knew so well ... this would be the test, this would be how she knew ...

And then she promptly rebounded off the security charm around the garden, crying out in heart-sore horror as she hit the floor with a bump. But it wasn't horror of a bruised thigh that was terrifying her so ... it was the sobering realisation that the house was denying her entry without permission.

It meant she was no longer its Mistress.

Hermione wailed at the understanding. She and Harry had agreed on that security feature, even for people that they knew. Ron had often brought his new girlfriends and one-night stands around unannounced, and the next thing the Potters knew was that there were exclusive articles in Witch Weekly detailing the fabulous inside of their private manor. So they decide to restrict access to everyone but their immediate family.

But now that family did not include Hermione. She was filled with an ice-cold sense of dread at who might have taken her place as the Lady of the House, though the angry part of her soul knew just who she would find inside. An acidic hatred bubbled in Hermione's breast, it choked at her, drummed a relentless tattoo of bile against the inside of her throat. She had to get inside, had to find out for sure ... then find a way to put it right.

Hermione soon heard footsteps on the white-gravel path. She looked up, hoping to see Harry ... but instead she saw a young boy, maybe six or seven years old, walking towards her in a spritely quickstep. She didn't know the boy, but she did recognise some of his features ... dark, messy hair, sparkling green eyes ... but no scar, no glasses and, as far as Hermione was concerned, no name.

But he knew hers .. and when he used it she felt a chill reach into her very bone-marrow.

"Auntie Mione? What you doing on the floor?" the boy asked curiously.

Hermione wasn't sure what was worse ... being called 'auntie' or 'Mione' by this boy. For one thing, she hated the contraction of her name. Always had. Girls at her primary school had used it to bully her with, and she'd never forgotten that. Then there was the use of 'auntie' ... which came with all sorts of negative connotations. Hermione didn't want to believe what her worst thoughts were telling her.

But then she looked beyond the child to see Harry striding from the house. Hermione's heart-rate accelerated at the sight of him, at the sight of his goofy grin as he crossed to the gate and flicked the security spell down with his wand. Then he offered his hand and helped her to her feet.

"The security ward told me it was you," Harry quirked with a wry smile. "Fancy telling me why you're trying to break into my house?"

"Harry, I need to talk to you! Now!" Hermione hissed, urgently. Then she threw a look at the alien child still watching from the garden. "Alone."

Harry looked at Hermione curiously, but he was never one to question her when she was this serious. He turned to the boy.

"Run along into the house, James. Help your sister with that tower of blocks she's building in the living room."

"Lily doesn't like me playing with her blocks," little James protested. "She always says she need them all, but she doesn't really."

"Just go an play somewhere else then," Harry insisted.

James, knowing a dismissal when he heard one, shrugged a goodbye to Hermione and slouched into the house. Then Harry turned to Hermione.

"Alright, we're alone. Now do you want to tell me what this is all about?"

Hermione grabbed onto Harry's robe sleeves and tugged him close. "Where are the kids? How are the kids?"

"Well, you've just seen -" Harry tried to say, but Hermione cut him off sharply.

"No, not him, where are the other kids?"

"My other kids are fine, they are in the house," Harry replied suspiciously. "Are you alright, Hermione? You look a little green around the gills."

"No, I am not bloody alright!" Hermione cried. "Where are the children? I want to see them."

"Why are you suddenly so desperate to see my children?"

"Because of the way you're calling them my children!" Hermione snapped. "But mainly because I am supposed to be their mother .. your children are supposed to be my children, too!"

Harry blinked his eyes in concerned shock. "Look, Hermione, I know we have always thought about our kids as one, big happy family ... but this is going a bit far. Are you ill? Shall a call a Healer?"

"No, Harry! Listen to me. Or, better yet ..."

Then Hermione leaned in, took Harry's face in her hands and tried to kiss him. But he backed away hastily.

"Whoa, whoa! Hermione! What are you doing!?" Harry hissed. "What the hell are you playing at? If Ginny saw that she'd go mental!"

Ginny! A low groan of some magnitude left Hermione's throat. Her knees buckled and Harry had to grab her before she collapsed to the ground. It was all true then, all true ... Molly had succeeded and changed the past. Hermione had failed.

Harry eased Hermione to an old tree stump and sat her down. He looked her over in deep concern.

"Hermione, what's wrong? Something is deeply wrong. Tell me. Maybe I can help."

Hermione looked up with tear-strewn, puffy eyes. "Just tell me something ... do you still love me?"

"Of course I do. You know that, that'll never change."

"No ... I mean love me, love me? Am I still your wife?"

Harry drew in a sharp breath and sat back on his heels. "Hermione ... what?"

"I'm not, am I?" Hermione whimpered. "We aren't married ... you don't love me ... you've never met Sophie."

"Who? I don't know a Sophie."

Hermione howled shrilly in her grief. Harry gave her a moment to let it all out, then she looked back at him.

"Sophie is our daughter, Harry ... our eldest daughter," Hermione whispered through her weeping. "She has long black hair, curly like mine, green eyes like yours ... she likes singing songs about monsters and playing a pretend game where all the kitchen condiments get together to colonise the Moon. You have to play at being the Sun, or sometimes be Mrs Nesbitt when she makes you have a tea party with her dolls.

"She's our baby, Harry! And she's just vanished from existence. She's been taken from us."

The effect on Harry was profound. He stared at Hermione with a worried, anxious expression. He didn't suddenly believe that this was all true, but he was convinced that Hermione did ... and that was enough for him to want to help.

"I don't understand what you're trying to say, Hermione," Harry muttered. "We aren't married, we don't have children ... or at least, I don't remember us being that way."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you, Harry!" Hermione cried desperately. "We are and we do. But the past has been changed and you've forgotten all that. You've forgotten that you ever loved me."

Harry looked at her in deep pity and concern. "How could I forget something like that? And how do you still remember?"

"Because I've just come from the past, I had to tell our earlier selves to ... to ..."

"To what?" Harry prompted.

Hermione gasped in her terror. "I don't know! I've forgotten. My memories are disappearing, Harry! The timeline changes are starting to affect me. My daughter has vanished from existence, my husband is married to someone else ... the tapestry of my life has been unravelled and is now being rewoven together wrong. I have to stop it."

"Your daughter hasn't disappeared from existence," Harry reassured her.

"She hasn't?" Hermione asked in hope.

"No, of course not. Come on, we're just about to go and see her now. Let me take you, I'll show you that everything is okay."

Hermione numbly allowed Harry to guide her into the house. She saw her living room, her fireplace, but instead of pictures of her and Harry and their daughter she saw images of Ginny, of that boy from the gate, and some other little girl she didn't recognise. It was Harry's other family, his own little contribution to the Weasley dominion.

Harry led the way into his study. Hermione groaned as she saw it ... this was her library, these were her books ... Harry wouldn't have need of so many. In fact, Hermione could have told him all the ones that he'd bought for her over the years. But then he was calling out to the children.

"James! Lily! Come in here. It's time to go to Grandma's."

"James and Lily? Are you serious?" Hermione seethed. "You named both your kids after your parents?"

"Only two of them," Harry replied, slightly cross. "And it was Ginny's idea."

"I bet it was!" Hermione riled. "Play on your vulnerabilities to keep you sweet. Sly bitch."

"That's my wife you're talking about," Harry fired back. "Watch your language, please."

"She's not your wife, I am," Hermione replied, fiercely.

"And I've forgotten, as you said," Harry returned, dismissively.

"Exactly."

"Right, I'm getting you a Mind Healer. Today. Jim! Liliput! Get in here, now!"

"Don't call me Liliput, you know I don't like it," said a round-faced little girl as she entered the room carrying an arm full of toy blocks. She had the trademark Weasley red hair. She looked up when she saw Hermione, dropped the blocks into a heap, and ran to hug Hermione's leg. "Auntie Mi! When did you get here?"

Hermione wanted to swat the child off like she was a fly in her tea or something, but she was held on like a limpet. So Hermione had to endure it.

"Not long ago, Lily, not long," Hermione replied emotionlessly. She looked over at Harry. "So where is my daughter? You said we were going to see her."

"We are, she's at your house," Harry explained. Then he took a handful of Floo Powder and crossed to the fireplace, where he threw the green dust into the Hearth and yelled, "The Burrow!"

Hermione felt all colour leave her face. "Are ... are you saying I married Ron, we had kids ... and we lived at The Burrow!"

"You know you did," Harry frowned back. "You even let the ghoul babysit the kids in the attic nursery."

That was too much for Hermione. She turned and hurried to the window, grabbed a planter that was on the sill and vomited heavily into it. She knew it would be empty, as she'd placed it there only days ago in her old world ready to plant some chrysanthemums that Harry had bought for her. The fact that some things were still the same ignited a flicker of hope in her.

"Come on then. Take me to my daughter," she demanded briskly. She was bristling for a confrontation with her new world now.

So Harry led her warily through the fireplace, holding hands with both his fake children as they were transported to The Burrow. There was a birthday party in full swing for Verity, George Weasley's wife. She was cooing to their baby as Bill and Fleur fawned over her. At the back of the room, Ron, Neville and Luna were sipping on glasses of punch, while Arthur and Molly were dancing together in front of the Wizarding Wireless set in the corner. There were other children and people dotted around, but Hermione was too dizzy to take much notice.

Then a little girl suddenly ran up to them. She had ginger pigtails and lots of freckles.

"Mummy!"

"There you go, Hermione!" Harry beamed in triumph. "As good as my word!"

Hermione pointed down furiously at the little child with her arms eagerly outstretched for a hug. "Who the fuck is that??"

"Hermione ... that's Rose Water," Harry muttered quickly. "Your daughter."

The little girl looked up in hurt and shock and repeated in a small, nervous voice, "Mummy?"

"Stop calling me that!" Hermione yelled. "My daughter is called Sophie. She has black hair and hates pigtails. I don't know who you are!"

The child erupted into tears and raced over to hug onto the legs of Ginny, who was standing in the middle of the room holding an infant in her arms.

"And who the fuck is that?" Hermione screeched, gesticulating wildly at the baby.

By now the whole room had gone deathly silent. Ron traipsed over as Harry moved close to Hermione and whispered, "That's my youngest boy ... that's Albus Severus."

Hermione spat out a derisory laugh. "You called your son Albus Severus! Are you actually kidding me? Were you setting the kid up to be a cunt or what, naming him after those two bastards!? One who despised you, the other who manipulated you for his own ends! I can't believe I'm hearing this Thestral-shit!"

"Language, Hermione!" Molly hissed from the corner of the room. "There are children present. "

"You can shut your pie-hole too!" Hermione seethed at her. Then a flicker of memory sparked in her brain. "You ... you're responsible for this. I ... I cant remember how, but you are. What did you do to me?"

"What are you talking about?" Molly asked, smoothly. "Harry, dear? Do you have any idea, because I'm sure I have none?"

"Hermione isn't well, she needs to rest," Harry replied. "She's having some ... er ... memory problems. I'm going to fetch a Healer to see her right away."

"What's wrong, babe?" Ron asked, slightly slurring his words from too much punch. "What have you forgotten?"

"Don't babe me!" Hermione sniped, folding her arms and stepped back towards the fireplace.

"Harry?" Ron tried.

"Nor me ... that would just be weird!" Harry smirked lightly. Ron chuckled back as he understood.

"Come on, Jeaney-Weeney," Ron went on in baby language. "I'll take you for a lie down and you can tell old Ronniekins what you're fretting about today."

"Touch me with those hands and cut the bloody things off!" Hermione snarled. "I'm warning you, Ronald, stay back. I mean it."

"I'll take her, Harry," Luna volunteered bravely. "She does sound very sick. I'll take care of her until you get back."

"Thanks, Lu," Harry smiled gratefully. "Hermione ... will you please go with Luna?"

Hermione thought for a second then quickly agreed. If anyone here was likely to believe her wild story, it was Luna Lovegood. Hermione had never had greater need of the quirky witch in all her life.

"Alright ... but don't be long," Hermione agreed. Then she stepped close and whispered into his ear, "If I forget by the time you get back, just know that I love you. I've always loved you."

Then she placed a chaste kiss to his cheek. Harry looked at her curiously, as if remembering something about her, but the moment passed just as quickly.

Luna led Hermione away from the quiet room, which crackled to life in gossiping whispers as soon as the door was closed. Hermione wanted to rush back in and hex them all for their snidiness, but Luna guided her up the stairs to the cool air of the bedroom that she shared with Ron. They sat on the musty, creaky marital bed ... and Hermione buried her head in her hands and wept profusely for several minutes.

Luna showed admirably restraint, allowing Hermione to calm before finally speaking.

"What's wrong, Hermione? Is there any way I can help?"

Hermione looked up in hope. Even her voice was laced with it. "Maybe ... just by believing my story?"

"I cant believe it until you tell it to me," Luna smiled, sitting next to Hermione on the bed. "But I like a story, so I'm happy to listen."

"Thank you, Luna!" Hermione cried, throwing her arms around Luna for a hug. "I don't know where to start ... but I know for a fact that everything about my life is wrong ..."

So Hermione began to tell her tale, but the details were drifting away so fast. She remembered her marriage to Harry, their children ... she remembered going back in time to stop the changes she'd already noticed, to find who had caused them. But the finer points were fading like the scenes of a vivid dream.

"And now I'm here!" Hermione finished. "With kids I don't recognise and a marriage to a man I don't love. Does this sound totally crazy?"

"Well, yes, but that doesn't mean it isn't true," Luna replied, thoughtfully.

"Then you believe me!" Hermione exclaimed. "You don't think I'm losing my mind?"

"No, of course not," said Luna, brightly. "In fact, I think I know what this is."

"You do? Tell me. Please!"

"It's called The Mandela Effect," Luna explained. "My Daddy just did a big article on it in The Quibbler. I was showing Neville and Ronald downstairs. I can show you, if you like."

"I do, I do like!" Hermione cried. "What is The Mandela Effect?"

Luna unfurled a copy of the magazine from inside her sleeve and opened it to the centre-page article. "It's a phenomena where people remember history differently, but are convinced their version is right. It got it's name from when people started to say they remembered the South African leader, Nelson Mandela, dying in prison. They claim to have remembered seeing his funeral on television, and even problems with his wife claiming his legacy and estate after his death. But, of course, Muggle history records it very differently."

Hermione felt her heart pounding as she quickly skim-read the article. Luna carried on talking as she did so.

"There are loads and loads of other examples from the Muggle world. There's a cartoon that confuses people ... is it Looney Toons or Looney Tunes? ... lots from films ... life was like a box of chocolates for Forrest Gump, or life is like a box of chocolates for him ... did Darth Vader say 'Luke, I am your father' or 'No, I am your father?' ... was it Sex AND the City or Sex IN the City? ... did the character on the Monopoly game have a monocle or not? ... was the cleaning product febreeze spelt with two 'E's' or febreze with one? ... was the breakfast cereal called FRUIT Loops or FROOT Loops? ... the list goes on.

"But the main characteristic is that lots and lots of people, thousands in fact, swear that the accepted version of history is wrong."

"And did your Dad find out why?" Hermione asked keenly. "What causes this to happen?"

"His conclusion was that it happens either when two universes collide in the multi-verse, and that causes the change or swaps one bit of information in our universe to something similar from another one, or that someone has gone back in time and done something that leads to the change, however minor."

Swapping one bit of information that's similar ... eihwaz to ehwaz ... Hermione didn't know why that bit of trivia from her past had suddenly flashed into her mind, but she felt it deeply, as though another version of herself was whispering a hidden message to her ... or maybe her memory was whispering to itself.

"Sometimes," Luna went on. "Another universe gets so close to ours that we can see other people from that universe. We mistake them as ghosts and things, but they are actually real people, right next to us but totally divided by a whole other universe. And, at other times, when the universes bang together, people themselves can be moved from one to another. It's all very fascinating, don't you think?"

"Yes, very," Hermione agreed, thinking hard. "So ... this is what you think is happening to me? I'm suffering from The Mandela Effect?"

"It certainly sounds like it."

"So all these things that I think happened ... they just happened somewhere else? Or some time else? They were all true for me before?"

"Yes, but it isn't true anymore. This is your new normal now. You'll soon get used to it as your mind adjusts."

"But I don't want to to adjust!" Hermione cried fervently. "I want my old life back. I want to go back to how things were. They were better like that. I know that above anything."

"I don't know that you can," Luna replied sadly. "My Dad never found anyone who did."

"Then I'll be the first," Hermione declared resolutely. "And the key lies with that wally Molly. Come on, Luna. She's going to tell me what she's done to me or I'm going to punch her teeth out."

"Hermione! Wait!" Luna yelped. "That's not a good idea! She's much bigger than you, for a start!"

But Hermione wasn't listening. She bounded down the stairs two-at-a-time until she was outside the living room. The door was ajar and the whole party were listening to a story Arthur was telling. Hermione blinked in astonishment at what he was saying.

"Well, if Hermione doesn't get better, we can always use this new toy I found to send her back in time until she does," Arthur chuckled.

"New toy, Dad?" Bill was asking. "What's that?"

"Oh, just something I picked up on a raid just recently," Arthur replied smugly. "We had a tip-off that some Muggles were experimenting with a dangerous new technology, something involving temporal manipulation. So we had to have a look. Turns out that they had found a way to send someone back into time, into a sort of loop of their own lives only. They had little control of when or where they would go, but it was proven to work at least.

"It sounded utterly fascinating, but it was far too dangerous to leave in the hands of Muggles, so I had to confiscate it and bring it back here."

"You don't still have it, do you?" Fleur cried aghast. "Such a thing needs to be given to the Ministry to be destroyed. Time tampering is far too dangerous to be left out so recklessly."

"I will turn it over, just as soon as I've finished my analysis of it," Arthur replied, brightly. "You can only visit your own past life, or that of your ancestors if you fancy a risk. And you can only go back and forward within your own lifetime. You cant go into the future. It could have some very useful applications."

Like manipulating my life! Hermione seethed in her mind. Where the hell was this thing ... it was Hermione's only hope. Luckily for her, Arthur Weasley was a naive simpleton.

"I just want to see if I can go back to build better foundations for the garage. It isn't wholly safe there at the moment."

"Hermione! No!"

Luna cried out loudly as Hermione bumped her out of the way and bolted for the door. The cries roused the others, who came out to see what the fuss was. Luna explained quickly and there was uproar as the entire Weasley clan took off in pursuit.

But by the time they found Hermione she had already reached the device, thrown up a Shield Charm around the garage that none of them could penetrate, and was already setting about trying to activate the time-travel vortex.

"Hermione! Step away from the Quantum Accelerator!" Arthur cried out angrily. "It's dangerous and you don't know what you're doing with it! You could get hurt ... or worse."

"Fuck off, Arthur!" Hermione scythed back. "You're a clown for messing with this ... and you wife has been using it to fuck with my life. I'm going to put it all right."

"Hermione! Don't do it!" Ron yelled. "Come back ... think of our children!"

"We don't have any children!" Hermione screamed. "Those two things aren't real. They didn't come from my womb. They are aberrations of nature!"

"They can hear you! You're upsetting them."

"Good. Now shut up and let me work."

"Hermione? What are you doing?"

Suddenly, Hermione swung around and found Harry right behind her. She gasped at how close he was.

"How did you get through my Shield Charm?" Hermione demanded.

"I don't know ... I just walked right through," Harry quirked. "Now tell me what you're doing ... before I'm forced to subdue you."

Hermione stepped in close and placed her hand to Harry's face. Remarkably, he closed his eyes at her touch, as if on reflex ... as if it were the soft caress of a lover. He looked at her with confused eyes.

"I don't understand ..." he whispered

"I know ... but you will," she hushed back. "I'm going to make everything right. I promise."

"You're going to make what right?"

"This ..."

Then Hermione leaned up and kissed Harry softly on the mouth. He was surprised at first, but then found himself kissing her back, threading his hands into her hair and pulling her face close to his own. On some level, very deep down, he remembered something profound, as though they'd done this before ... maybe lots of times before. And there was something that just felt so right about it.

They broke apart breathlessly. Harry searched Hermione's face with bewildered eyes.

"Hermione, I ... what is this?"

"It's the truth, Harry," Hermione whispered. "Molly has used this device to go back and change that truth ... and I want to use it to put it right. Help me? Help me, my love ... if you believe in nothing else, believe in that ... believe in our love. It defined who we both were ... and I know you still feel it, somewhere in here."

Hermione then pressed her hand to Harry's chest, felt his heart beating fast and strong ... beating for her, beating for them. She willed him to know, to believe her. He searched her eyes hungrily, desperately, trying to win a war inside himself.

And then ... with an almost imperceptible movement of his head ... he nodded.

And Molly Weasley screeched out as she saw it.

"NO!"

A second later and Hermione's Shield Charm came under magical assault as Molly drew her wand and began firing her most vicious spells at it. Ginny joined her and soon the whole Weasley clan was attacking the magical barrier, which shimmered as it began to weaken.

"Help me, Harry!" Hermione begged.

"Alright," Harry agreed quickly. "Step onto the platform. I'll see if I can get it to work."

So Hermione did, standing on the hexagonal-shaped plate as Harry scanned the base for a way to activate the Accelerator.

"Ah! Got it!" Harry cried. "There's a button down here ... if I just ..."

"Oof!" Hermione cried from above him, doubling up in pain. The Weasleys had broken through the Shield Charm and Bludgeoning Hex had struck Hermione right in the mid-riff.

Harry roared out in anger and leapt up, drawing his wand as he did so and darting in front of Hermione. He ranged off against the Weasleys, every single one of them, and they hesitated a moment. No-one fancied a duel against Dark-Lord-slayer Harry Potter.

But Harry had no intention of duelling. Remembering a spell that Dumbledore had once cast against encroaching adversaries, Harry whipped his wand around and around his head, sending out a jet of white-hot flame with each rotation until soon he and Hermione were encircled by a cyclone of fire, harmless to them but deadly to anyone trying to cross the threshold.

"Are you alright?" Harry demanded, turning back to Hermione in deep concern.

"I'll live," she grimaced. "Thank you ... for believing me."

Harry grinned at her. "Believing in you has never led me astray, not in any life. Who am I to argue with the smartest witch of any age?"

"I prefer it when you call me your wife!" Hermione smiled back. "Send me back, Harry ... let me get you to call me that again."

Harry went to kneel down again, but he couldn't help himself ... he just had to kiss Hermione again. He stepped back with a smirk.

"If I believed nothing else, I'd believe that was right," Harry remarked. "It was like my lips were made to kiss yours."

"And they will again, I swear it," Hermione vowed. "I'm ready to go."

Harry dropped to his knees, placed his finger to the button, then looked up one more time and smiled.

"Good luck, Hermione. Hope to see you soon ... as Mrs Potter once again."

Then there was a flash of light, a deafening rush of air, and the Quantum Accelerator came to life. A second later, and Hermione Granger vanished into her past, with Molly Weasley's squeals of blue murder ringing loudly in her ears.

Chapter Text

The Ministry of Magic, London, 1945 ...

Harry and Hermione stepped into the Atrium and moved quickly to one side, to prevent being jostled by the early morning crowds hurrying to work. The place looked remarkably the same as they remembered it ... or at least as they remembered it pre-Voldemort. The Magic is Might statue was gone, and the original monument of the witch, wizard and house-elf was back in it's place. Hermione frowned as she looked at it.

"You know, I don't know which one is worse," she frowned. "Wizards trampling on each other for power, or trampling on sentient magical creatures instead. They are as bad as each other in their own ways."

"When we put all this right, we'll build you a new one," Harry promised. "With my reputation, I'm sure I could arrange it for you. What should we have?"

"Don't ask me that just now," Hermione replied, grimly. "I might respond with something like, 'Molly Weasley's head on a spike' or something. And that would simply be a waste of an opportunity to spread a message of tolerance!"

Harry chuckled at that. Then he looked at Hermione in seriousness. "So, what's the plan? Are there any time-travel rules that we have to follow?"

"Well, the first one we can ignore," Hermione replied. "And that's Do Not Be Seen .... because, as we don't exist yet in this place, we are safe from that."

Harry nodded. "That certainly makes moving around easier. I suppose the next problem we have is how to get inside the Ministry to find Hector. We have no reason to visit, and I'm not sure we could bluff our way past security. This is a post-war period, so I imagine tensions and suspicions are still pretty high."

"I tend to agree," Hermione mused. "But we have historical events on our side."

"Which are?"

"The trials," Hermione explained. "The Bloody Sympathises ... as they were called ... were big news at this time, and members of the public flocked to watch them. All we have to do is say that we're here for that."

"And if they check citizenship records and see we aren't on them?"

"We'll say we've just come back from an espionage mission in Europe and our records are kept Top Secret," Hermione replied. "Britain sent an expeditionary force of combat wizards to fight Grindelwald. Many were mercenaries, some were even criminals, but they all wanted security for their families if the war went badly. So their records were moved for security reasons."

"And what about our age?" Harry argued. "They might say we're too young to go to war."

Hermione turned with a half-patient, half-pitying expression. "Wizards as young as fifteen lied about their age to sign up. In the end, the Recruitment Office had to install an Age-Line to expose potential hoodwinking."

"And I bet I can guess who cast the enchantment!" Harry hushed, grabbing Hermione and tugging her bodily behind a large plinth nearby.

"Harry! What are you doing!" Hermione yelped, somewhat crossly.

"Quiet! Look ... over there."

Harry gestured towards the crowd, but there was no point, really. For the throng had parted to allow a single wizard to pass through them, making quite a scene as he did so. When others realised who it was, they began to applaud wildly ... but a youthful-looking Albus Dumbledore simply ducked his head modestly and tried to brush off the adulation.

Hermione felt Harry tauten next to her. She could see his pulse hammering in his neck, so she reached out to try and soothe him.

"Merlin, Harry, you are tense!" Hermione hushed and she kneaded Harry's clavicle. "I need to rub these knots out of you."

Harry turned to her with mischievous eyes. "Perhaps not here ... I know what happened the last time you gave me a massage! You may not have been there, but trust me, it was electrifying ... though not anything like appropriate for a public arena!"

Hermione felt a heat steal all over her flesh, colouring her cheeks and pooling like lava below her waist. One day, she was determined, she'd create more memories of such experiences with Harry, ones this version of herself would actually be there to be a part of.

But for now, she had to stay in the moment. "Why are you so tense? It's only Dumbledore."

"I know ... but it's the first time I've seen him alive since ... since that night ... that night on the Astronomy Tower ... "

Harry's voice broke and tailed off into silence. Hermione closed her eyes and swallowed hard.

"Oh."

"Yeah. He's younger, obviously, but it's still him. He's still the man I watch getting murdered in sixty years or so."

"Sorry ... I didn't think of it like that."

"First time for everything, eh?" Harry quipped with a weak smile. Then he turned to look at Dumbledore as he strode away from view. "You know, I don't think I'd ever get used to seeing him with brown hair. It's just ... weird."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "You've seen him like this before, then?"

"Yeah, in Tom Riddle's diary," Harry reminded her. "That can't have happened much after this time. Dumbledore looks like he did in that memory, only his hair and beard are a bit shorter here. They were both past his shoulders in the diary memory, though the colour is the same."

"He can't have long defeated Grindelwald in this time period," Hermione pointed out. "That explains his celebrity status."

"Do you know something that I can't explain about that?" "Harry began. "It's how Dumbledore won at all."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, Grindelwald had the Elder Wand, didn't he?" Harry went on. "It was supposed to be an unbeatable wand ... but Dumbledore beat him and took it from him. How is that possible?"

"You should have learned by now that subtle laws govern wand ownership," Hermione replied. "Dumbledore must have won it's allegiance another way. Perhaps even through their relationship."

"Relationship? What relationship?"

Hermione sighed and rolled her eyes. "Didn't you ever read Rita's book about Dumbledore when we were stuck in that tent hunting Horcruxes?"

"No ... I only used the pages when we ran out of toilet paper," Harry scoffed. "I don't like to think about that tent ... I could have been chasing you around it rather than bothering with pieces of Tom Riddle's soul."

"Harry!" Hermione admonished, her cheeks turning pink with Harry's inference. "I should tell you off for comments like that, but at least it shows part of you still desires me, which means Molly hasn't erased that from you yet. But, to get back to topic, yes ... Dumbledore and Grindelwald were ... well .... intimate."

"They were having sex, you mean."

"Well, yes."

"Then why didn't you just say that?" Harry asked.

"I was just trying to be delicate."

"Why? I mean, all they were doing was having sex. Anal sex, obviously, but still just sex. Nothing wrong with that, but I grew up with Vernon Dursley, who always insisted on calling a spade a spade. I suppose I absorbed the habit. Does anal sex make you uncomfortable or something?"

"I don't know ... I'll tell you when we try it," Hermione fired back vampishly.

Harry just watched his jaw, as it dropped sharply and smashed through the floor between his legs.

"But my point is that there might have been more to it than simply the physical aspect," Hermione went on shamelessly, as though she hadn't just shattered Harry's mind with a single sentence. "Dumbledore and Grindelwald had a relationship, in which they did relationship-things ..."

"Like plotting to take over the world," Harry quirked.

"Well, perhaps that wasn't the best of them," Hermione grimaced. "But my suggestion was that maybe Dumbledore disarmed Grindelwald of the Elder Wand in another way, rather than by simply out-duelling him."

"Such as?"

"Maybe he told him that he loved him."

Harry blinked hard at the suggestion. "Would that have worked, do you think?"

"Perhaps, but this is only a theory," Hermione replied. "But if Dumbledore had said that, and Grindelwald felt the same, it may have created a sort of neutrality between them -"

"- meaning their wands would work just as well in the hands of the other -"

" - and they wouldn't be able to fight each other with full intent to harm -"

" - because they loved each other, and their magic would refuse to be weaponised in such a way if they ever fought," Harry nodded.

"Exactly," Hermione agreed. "It might also create a sort of duality in their wands. Magical energy in a wand comes as much from the witch or wizard as it does the wood type and core. Will and intent, emotion, these things are simply channelled and enhanced by a wand."

"So, in theory, Dumbledore and Grindelwald's combined energy might have made Dumbledore's wand the equal of the Elder Wand, or allowed him to channel its power."

"That's my theory, yes," Hermione replied with a haughty nod.

"You know ... we've always been able to use each other's wands like that, have you ever noticed?"

Hermione turned her eyes down coyly. "I have."

"And do you think it might be for the same reason?"

"Might be."

Hermione bit her lip and looked so cute that Harry ached for her in that moment. And something else was happening in his mind, almost as if his world-view was changing before his eyes ... he was seeing Hermione differently, not as a sister, as he'd once told Ron in what seemed like another life ...but so much unlike a sister, in fact, that the concepts might have been night and day.

So Harry leaned over and kissed Hermione full on the mouth, his dry lips pressed cautiously to her moist ones. Hermione whimpered in her throat and stepped close to deepen the contact. It would have been all sorts of wrong if she hadn't. Then they broke breathlessly apart.

"Is this really the moment?" Hermione panted in a gasp, pressing her forehead to Harry's and looking deep into his eyes.

"You know ... it actually could be," Harry mused. "We think our first kiss happened somewhere out there ... in the future or another time line. But what if it happened here, now ... in our past ... when the timelines were as one? What if this was one of those anchors that the other Hermione mentioned, only one she wasn't able to place?"

"Because she'd never been here!" Hermione hushed. "This was one event that we had to live, or re-live ... Merlin this is confusing! ... in order to secure our future."

"Everything that happens, in the past and in the future, arises from the past, and only by understanding the past, can we make our way in the future," Harry muttered.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing. It was just something that Dumbledore once told me, that's all ... when we were revisiting his memories about Tom Riddle. But I think I understand what he meant now ... he meant this."

"What? Us kissing?"

"Well, maybe not that exact thing," Harry sighed flippantly. "But he meant that to get to where you want to go, you need to understand where you are, which means understanding how you got there in the first place. Understanding your past ... to make your way in the future. And I think I understand now."

"Understand what, exactly?" Hermione queried. "Because, frankly, I'm lost."

"I understand now just how important you are to me ... you are the most important thing, in this world, this life, or any other I might have led," Harry returned without ceremony. Hermione simply goggled at his confession in wide-eyed astonishment. "You say you are lost, but the truth is that I'd be the one who'd be lost if I'd never found you. I think I've always known, in a way. I cant pinpoint a moment when it started, but it's been there for so long I've just grown used to it. I think it's only now, when Ron has threatened to take you away for good, that it's finally come into my conscious mind.

"And that might be part of the spell ... one that kept me from ever crossing the more-than-friends line with you. We've had so many near moments, but something has always disturbed or disrupted it. But here, in the past, with just you and me ... a bit like it was in Australia ... there's nothing to stop it. This is just like our last time-travel experience, when it was just the two of us and we couldn't be seen ... we might as well have been in our own personal world.

"And after that night I realised just how deep you'd burrowed into my actual world. I told you about living with Sirius ... you were the only one I shared that deeply emotional moment with ... and it was the happy thought that provided the fuel for my Patronus that scattered a hundred Dementors. It was just you, and me, and I should have known then that that was how it was meant to be."

"So what are you saying?" Hermione breathed, her spirits all sorts of flustered. "That kissing me now has at last sent you over that border? That it's the final piece of the puzzle?"

"Perhaps not the final piece ... but maybe the first piece, if we are at the beginning now," Harry grinned. "And if we've put this one in place maybe we can get all the others back, too. So no matter what Molly does to create this paradox in time, we can still undo it. We just have to start here and work our way forwards."

"Just like the other me started in the future and made her way backwards! It created a perfect circle! Or it will when we merge the time lines again."

"A genius! In any time period!" Harry grinned. "So come on, let's find Molly and see what she did."

"Just remember, Harry, when we do find Molly, we can't let her see us," Hermione warned as they moved off and joined the surge of trial spectators again. "Of all the people here, she actually knows us. If she spots us, she could make changes again ... and all that we've learned will be for nothing."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Hermione, but if Molly does see us, wont she just be reliving an event that's already happened?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, take that time when I saved you, Sirius and I from the Dementors, right?" Harry began. "When I first lived it, I thought I saw my dad casting the stag Patronus, but it was actually me. Which must mean that the two time lines were happening in sync. I saw myself time-travelling. Wont the same thing apply here?"

"No, I don't think so," Hermione considered. "For the subtle reason that with Sirius, an intervention from the future was a timeline event ... we couldn't have been saved without the help of your future self ... so it linked the two together. Here, that wasn't the case, the events were never corrupted by time ... at least they weren't, until Molly stuck her big nose in it.

"There's also the fact that we are trying to change something back to an earlier state. It could be that our intervention now actually caused the original timeline. If that makes sense."

"It doesn't," Harry grimaced. "But if it does to you, that's good enough for me. You are never wrong."

"Well, I am ... sometimes."

"Name one time!" Harry cried, incredulously.

Hermione blushed furiously. "That time that I thought you'd never see me as more than a friend. I was wrong then ... wasn't I?"

The nervous hope in her last words made Harry grin, as he knew he had the power to make her happy by confirming her mistake.

"Yes, you were ... more than you can ever know," Harry whispered, stepping close again. "But we won't count that as being wrong, more as you having a happy accident."

Hermione laughed deeply. "Okay, I can live with that. Come on, the security gates are just up ahead. Game faces on, Harry."

As it turned out, passing through the barriers was easy. The sheer volume of witches and wizards scrambling to get in to watch the trials meant the security checks were reduced to merely the most basic of scans and pocket-searches. So after a fractious five minutes of stressing in the queue, it took less than thirty seconds after being beckoned forwards for Harry and Hermione to be reunited safely on the other side.

"That was almost too easy," Hermione frowned.

"Don't complain," Harry grinned, smugly. "We hardly ever get any luck. Maybe this is the start of a paradigm shift!"

Hermione narrowed her eyes, but allowed Harry his moment of exuberant triumph. Maybe he was right, so what harm was to be found in letting him revel in it?

"Which way now?" Harry asked, looking around as if hoping to see a signpost pointing in Molly Weasley's direction.

"The Judge's chambers must be near the courtrooms," Hermione mused. "We should try and locate Hector Dagworth-Granger, maybe shadow him and see if Molly turns up."

"Follow me, I think I remember the way," Harry whispered grimly, as the memory of his own trial by the Wizengamot bloomed large in his mind.

Hermione, as if sensing the rise of Harry's irritation, locked her forearm around his in a show of solidarity. "That was a miscarriage of justice that was eventually overturned. We're here to make sure Molly's meddling goes the same way. Lead on, Harry."

So he did, slipping them back into the jostling crowds as they crammed into one of the golden elevators heading down into the bowels of the Ministry. An uncomfortable ride later and they were buffeted out into the cool air of the shiny, onyx-tiled walls of the Department of Mysteries, which is where the trials were being held.

"Bit grim down here, isn't it?" Hermione muttered lowly, clinging to Harry as if to offer very-late support in lieu of missing his trial, as they made their way along the windowless, bare-walled corridor.

"I think that's sort of the point," Harry hushed back. "I was in Courtroom Ten down at the far end. It was just a grimy black door, like the entrance to a dungeon. You'd hardly think it was anything important at all."

"Well let's not go in there then," Hermione suggested, as though worried she might trigger an anxiety relapse in Harry. "In any case, I think we need to find Hector before the trial. If Molly does get to him to make him change his verdict, that isn't likely to happen in full view of a courtroom full of people."

"I agree," Harry nodded. "But how will we know where to find Hector?"

But before Hermione could answer, her expression darkened like a thunder cloud. She scowled at something on the other side of the corridor.

Or, more precisely, at someone.

"I think our best bet would be to follow her," Hermione hissed below her breath.

Harry followed Hermione's line of sight. "Molly!" he whispered. He reached instinctively for his wand, but Hermione threw out a hand to stop him.

"No, Harry, we cant do that!" Hermione breathed.

"Why not?" Harry snapped. "We could take her out here and now, before she gets up to her mischief."

"But she might have already done it," Hermione argued, fairly. "Either way, we have to find out exactly what it is that she's done ... or is about to do ... so that we can reverse it later. One thing we aren't short of, Harry, is more time."

Hermione tapped the tiny hourglass hidden on a golden chain beneath her high-collared robe. Harry bristled and gritted his teeth, but accepted that Hermione was right as usual, not that it doused his angry frustration, just set it to a rolling simmer.

"Fine, we do it your way," Harry grimaced. "But I reserve the right to hex that hag right between her piggy little eyes if your plan doesn't go as you hope."

"That's fair," Hermione accepted. "Just make it a good one, wont you?"

"It'll be the best," Harry fired back, bullishly, conceding with significant reluctance.

Even so, he pocketed his wand as Hermione guided him through the flow of witches and wizards and into Molly's slipstream, albeit a comfortable distance behind. She didn't stick with the crowds for very long, turning sharply down a narrow flight of rough stone steps that led off the right-side of the corridor. Harry and Hermione had to wait a toe-curlingly frustrating few moments for Molly to move a safe distance ahead before they followed her, catching sight of her only briefly as she disappeared through a nondescript black door, which she sealed tightly behind her.

"Hector's Chambers," Hermione muttered as she read a dirty bronze sign set into the door. "What Molly is doing to us, this is when she started it!"

"And you're still sure I cant curse her?" Harry checked.

"I'm wavering, so don't push me," Hermione begged. "We have to know what she did to change history. Even the cleverest people can't see all ends without the facts."

"Well, at least we know Hector actually existed," Harry pointed out. "Some of the cryptic messages from the other you hinted at something else."

"I was pretty certain he had to have been alive," Hermione replied. "He is my ancestor. I wouldn't have been born if he hadn't been."

"So why didn't Molly just go back and kill him?"

"Because her plan isn't just about me," Hermione fumed. "It's about making sure her overworked womb can produce a girl, too. She has to stop the curse being placed on the Weasley family to deny them daughters, remember?"

"And at the same time stopping the flow of descendants that lead to you," Harry riled. "For all we know, Hector might not have had the child yet that would become your grandparent. Molly might be trying to stop that. Or to hurt the child if it has already been born."

"That's possible," Hermione spat. "I hope not ... it would make everything so much more difficult if I had to go and protect my infant grandfather for the next ten years or something."

"It might not be as simple as that," Harry argued. "If Molly wants to stop the female line of the Granger family from developing, all she has to do is learn the spell Hector was intending to cast on the Weasleys and use it against him. That would prevent your birth quite neatly."

"And allow Ginny to replace St. John in Molly's world ... which already happened in ours! Oh Harry, we might already be too late! Hexing is sounding more and more like the right idea. Oh, why didn't I listen to you?"

"We can't be too late, we are in the past, at the beginning, remember?" Harry reassured her. "Whatever Molly does now, we have the means to reverse it and change it back. We just have to make sure we know precisely what she did, just so that we don't miss anything next time around. She's tricksy as all hell, she's demonstrated that Dark Art ... we have to be meticulous in undoing her meddling."

Hermione cocked an eyebrow at him. "Since when did you become the logical one and I went all hot-headed? Something's gone awry somewhere."

Harry smirked at her. "I always said you were a bad influence on me. You've made me more cerebral, but I miss being hot-headed ... I like that quality about me!"

"I think it's one attribute you should be happy to jettison," Hermione funned. "I'll certainly sleep easier knowing you've gotten rid of it."

"So long as you're sleeping in my bed, with me, then I'll be happy to go along as an enlightened philosopher!" Harry chuckled.

"One step at a time, eh?" Hermione smiled. Then they heard movement behind Hector's door. "Quick! Down here!"

Hermione tugged Harry across the dim corridor and into the thick shadows of an alcove set into the opposite wall. They watched as the door opened and a slight, wiry figure emerged. He had thinning hair, half-rimmed spectacles and stiff, angular movements.

"Hector, I presume?" Hermione muttered, her hot breath causing Harry's earlobe to tingle where it touched it. "You know ... he looks a lot like my Dad!"

"I can see that," Harry agreed, as Hector slouched his way along the corridor and away from them. "You know, he moves heavily for such a slight wizard."

"But where's Molly?" Hermione asked. "If she has him under the Imperious or something she'd have to have left his Chambers by now."

"Let's go and see."

And Harry was up before Hermione could stop him, sprinting across the corridor and into the open door of the Chamber. The place looked neat enough, with little sign of a struggle. The only thing that might have seemed out of a place was a small cauldron on a side table, that was still steaming as if recently used.

"Whatever was in here only had enough for a single dose," Harry concluded, as he assessed the remains of a gelatinous substance clinging to the inside of the cauldron. "This is so small it could be a toy. I recognise the smell though, I just can't place it. Come over here and tell me what you think."

"I don't need to. I can guess."

Hermione's voice was tiny, infinitesimal even. Harry span on his heel at the pain lacing her tone. He saw Hermione cradling a limp body on the other side of the room.

"It was Polyjuice, finished off with hair cut from this piece of Hector's head," Hermione mumbled, delicately holding up a clump of hair that had quite clearly been recently snipped off. "Not that he'll have any need of it, though."

"Why not?" Harry asked, though he felt he could guess the answer. He didn't feel any better about Hermione confirming it, however, as she looked up with teary eyes and said,

"He's dead. Molly killed him ... and I bet her Time magic means we wont ever be able to undo it." 

Chapter Text

"What do we do now?" Hermione cried in a shrill and panicked voice.

"Well, for a start, we don't panic," Harry replied.

"Don't panic!" Hermione shrieked, incredulously. "How can you say that? How can you be so calm? Molly has killed Hector ... he's dead, and so is our future."

"Our future is not dead ... and neither is Hector," Harry muttered, ruffling through some papers on the desk to the right of the room. "In fact, I'm not sure he ever lived at all."

Hermione blinked in her confusion. "Harry - have you lost your mind? I'm cradling a dead corpse in my arms, the corpse of Hector Dagworth-Granger. If he's dead now, then he was definitely living not so long ago."

"You're cradling a corpse, yes, but it isn't Hector ... at least, not according to these documents."

Hermione grimaced in a mixture of surprise and disgust and pushed the dead body away from her lap. "Urgh. Then who is it? Who has Molly killed?"

"That man's name is - or was - Maurice Dagworth," Harry revealed, sliding a parchment identity sheet over to Hermione after she leapt up and joined him at the desk.

Hermione's eyes flashed over the document at rapid speed. "It says here that he is the judge due to attend the trial today. Look! His schedule there confirms it!"

"And he has to pass judgement on the Weasleys," Harry added, flicking through the scattered papers of an open folder. "And four other families, too. Including the Diggorys. Fancy that. You know, it really irritates me when you see just how many Magical families were willing to support Grindelwald in his blood war ... it makes you wonder just how many of them would have secretly supported Voldemort, too."

"I'm not sure the support would have been all that secret," Hermione muttered darkly. "The ideals of both tyrants were strikingly similar, and the world view of many Magicals, who we might consider moderate or tolerant, skirt the borders of the ideas of supremacy anyway. I don't think it would be much of a stretch for such families to switch sides."

"That's a bit harsh," Harry frowned. "I don't see the Weasleys as blood supremacists. For all that Molly is doing now, I'd draw a line at outright bigotry. The Weasleys suffered losses to Voldemort don't forget."

"The two things aren't mutually exclusive," Hermione argued. "Sometimes, the most worrying form of racism is the one conducted in ignorance or worse ... not seeing that those actions and opinions are wrong. "

"How do you mean?" Harry asked, turning with a curious expression.

"Well, didn't you ever get offended by the way that Arthur, Ron and others decried the Muggle world, even if it was in a jokey and jovial style?" Hermione questioned, cautiously. "You were raised a Muggle, don't forget, just as I was. And I know how I felt to those slanders."

"You were offended? By what?" Harry asked, irritation stirring in his gut before he'd even understood why.

"By the way that Arthur in particular looked at the Muggle world as quaint and backwards, like Muggles were curiosities to goggle at in a zoo," Hermione went on, bitterly. "Ron was simply dismissive of all things Muggle ... his view was akin to the sort of thing Draco Malfoy might have said. Every time he criticised the Muggle world, I felt a bit of that ... I felt insulted on behalf of a culture not there to defend itself."

"And you decided to be his girlfriend, even with such strength of feeling?" Harry quirked.

Hermione blushed and looked away. "I hoped I might educate him in time. I was a Muggle, and if he really cared for me it might change his opinion on things."

"Educate Ron?" Harry scoffed, derisorily. "You tried that for six years at Hogwarts ... remind me how you got on with that? I love Ron, but being a student never suited him!"

"I wish I could argue against that," Hermione sighed in defeat. "But didn't you feel the insults too? You were a Muggle once."

"But my life as a Muggle wasn't like yours," Harry reminded her. "I didn't grow up in a house of love and support ... my experience of it was very different. Very, very different."

Hermione dropped the identity parchment and stepped close to Harry. She took his forearm in her hands ans spoke softly.

"You ... you've never told me all about that. Not everything, anyway."

"I've never told anyone everything," Harry mumbled meekly. "I don't know that I ever will. It's best not to ask, Hermione ... those wounds run pretty deep. It was the sort of thing only a strong life partner would be able to hear ... anyone else would likely run a mile."

"And you decided that was Ginny?" Hermione scoffed.

"No. I never intended to tell her."

"And do you intend to tell me?" Hermione asked, gently.

"I think the other me would have told the other you," Harry muttered, curling his eyes away. "He knew what he had, even if I didn't. He would have felt safe enough to tell you anything."

"And, like the other me, this Hermione wants to hear it, too," Hermione soothed. "When we are past this, when we put things right, I'm going to build that sort of trust with you again, Harry ... I'll make you feel that level safe with me. I promise."

Harry wanted to kiss her again, but he held firm. They had to earn that sort of reward by dealing with the problems at hand. "I believe you. But we have to act fast to stop Molly, so that we have a future to go back to."

"The first thing is to establish what she's doing," Hermione said. She began pacing the room as she thought aloud. "We can make some pretty solid assumptions with what we have to go on already."

"Such as the fact that she's killed poor Maurice over there and intends to take his place as a judge," Harry sniped.

"And then give an alternative decision that, we can assume, will absolve the Weasleys of any blame or culpability in their connection to Grindelwald," Hermione added.

"Allowing the birth of daughters in the future."

"Allowing the rise of Ginevra flipping Weasley! Allowing her to take my place as your future wife!" Hermione spat in her ire. "I really hate her for that!"

Then Hermione gasped and flung a hand to her mouth. It was the first time in this universe that she'd voiced aloud her desire to become Hermione Potter. It marked a watershed moment between these two best of friends.

"I ... I've crossed a line, haven't I?" Hermione whispered in a shaky voice.

"Yes, but you didn't even flinch at the border," Harry grinned as he crossed the room to her. "I think the other you would be proud ... shows she still in there somewhere."

"She's in here everywhere," Hermione argued hotly, pointing at her chest. "Ever since she visited us in my attic, I don't think she ever truly left me. Whatever happened to her in the future, I feel her inside me now, waiting to get out."

"Then let's help her," Harry declared.

"How?"

"By creating the very person we came here to find."

Hermione crinkled her eyes. "Create?"

"Yes," Harry replied simply. "I think I'm starting to understand now why we couldn't find any prior mention of Hector Dagworth-Granger in the historical record. There wasn't any ... because I don't think he existed until today."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Think about it," Harry pressed. "Molly has come back here make sure that the No Daughter Curse on the Weasley family isn't cast, and we've assumed that she wants to turn that curse against your ancestor to stop you being born. But what if that isn't possible? What if there is no justification to curse your forebears in place of the Weasleys?"

"Then ... Molly would have to find another way," Hermione gasped in horror. "By murdering my great-grandfather, or whoever this man was!"

"Exactly," Harry riled. "We've been looking for evidence in the wrong place, Hermione. We focused on the historical records of the Magical world, when all we really needed was an accurate copy of your family tree."

"But this man is called Dagworth, not Dagwoth-Granger," Hermione pointed out reasonably.

"He's also called Maurice, not Hector," Harry grinned. "Is it really a coincidence that one of your favourite stories is The Iliad?"

Hermione blinked in surprise. "I didn't know you knew that. Come to think of it, how do you know that?"

"I'm not so unobservant," Harry quipped. "I watched you a lot, especially when I thought you weren't looking, and even more especially when you were relaxing. It relaxed me to see that crinkle of concentration absent from your forehead for a bit. I always thought that it was because I liked seeing you stress-free ... but I'm not sure that's the truth any more."

"Then what is?"

"I ... I think it's because that's when I find you at your most attractive," Harry replied, bashfully. "Cosily curled up with a mug of Earl Grey and a good book, one to get lost in and not plough for answers to an essay problem. It's quintessentially you, at your most comfortable, and I don't think there's a sight more beautiful under the sky."

And Hermione showed far less restraint than Harry had earlier. She swooped close and dragged his face down to hers, their lips meeting with unfettered abandon. It was a full minute before they drew breathlessly apart.

"When did you learn to say these things to me?" Hermione swooned.

"Must have been in our other life," Harry grinned. "Maybe part of that is bleeding in to me, too."

"Then let's start a new bloodline to bring them closer," said Hermione. "That's your plan, isn't it? To turn me into Hector?"

Harry nodded. "If we create Hector now we can actually start the Granger family, by adding your surname to the Dagworth family line."

"And, as we create it, it will be almost impossible for Molly to erase my origins," Hermione cried in triumph.

"Unless she tries to kill us both," Harry added, grimly.

"Pfft, let her come and try!" Hermione scoffed. "We beat Voldemort, Harry ... I don't think we have much to fear from a walking Weasley baby factory!"

Harry tittered at that. "The only thing we really have to do is to get to Molly before the trial and try to find a way to disgrace Maurice, but not in a way that is unforgivable. Just enough to make his children drop the Dagworth portion of his new name."

"But how to we get him to take on that name?" Hermione fretted. "He's dead after all."

"Can we fake a marriage certificate?" Harry asked in hope.

And suddenly , Hermione was feverish with potent energy.

"That's it, Harry! That's it!" Hermione cried, her eyes gleaming with the sheen of victory. "That's Molly's mistake! She will be tested under oath before she takes a Seat of Judgement at the trial, and she wont be able to hoodwink it. When the test discovers Maurice is dead, it will fall to his next of kin to take his place. All we have to do is doctor the records to say that Hector is his successor."

"Is that how it works?" Harry asked, doubtfully. "I would have expected a judge like Maurice to be qualified for the job?."

"This is where the archaic practices of a peer-driven society can work in our favour for once," Hermione sang excitedly. "This was a trial presided over by peers of the accused, I read that back in our time ... they needed no formal qualifications in the law at all. It's a bit backwards to you and me, but this is just how things worked. They probably still do, come to think of it. We can use this to our advantage now."

"By positioning you-as-Hector as the one to take Maurice's place," Harry nodded as comprehension settled on him. "So ... it's going to be you who condemns the Weasleys to never have daughters. Poetic, really, that you get to prevent the very creation of the girl designed to supplant you in my life."

"We'll write our own epic poem to immortalise it," Hermione laughed. "It'll be our own version of The Iliad!"

"Okay. So ... how do we start your transformation?"

Hermione gulped hard as she considered how best to begin. She blinked at Harry.

"You ...you're going to have to cut my hair."

Harry shook his head. "No. I like your bushy locks. You wouldn't be you without them."

"It's just hair. It'll grow back," Hermione insisted. "We have to make this convincing. There will be photographers there and those pictures will survive into the future. Remember the first rule of time-travel, Harry."

"You must not be seen," Harry recited. "Even all the way into the future? Even though we weren't born when these pictures will be taken?"

"Not ever," Hermione confirmed. "There can be no corruption to the continuum. We are too well known in our time ... eventually, someone will spot something. All it takes is for a hack like Rita Skeeter to go digging and unearth something and it could trigger all sorts of ripple effects."

"And, as we've seen, those effects wont necessarily travel forwards in time," Harry mused. "They could go backwards, too, and who knows what might happen then."

"Precisely," Hermione agreed. "So, we have to cut my hair and change my appearance a bit. I might need to borrow your glasses, too. Now take out your wand ... and try to cut my fringe in a straight line!"

Chapter Text

It was a very frenetic Hermione Granger who returned to the present day. She raced immediately towards the Ministry of Magic's Hall of Records, with Harry panting as he struggled to stay in the slipstream of this restless ball of energy.

"Hermione! Wait!" Harry called after her. "What's your rush?"

"We have to see," Hermione cried back. "We have to see if it worked."

"We know it worked ... we just saw it! Just did it," Harry reminded her in puffy breaths.

"I know that! But I still have to see."

And that was that as far as arguments went. So Harry gave up trying to slow Hermione down, and just did his best to keep with her. He watched as she skidded out of sight into the the Hall of Records to the left of the corridor, and by the time he'd reached her again she had already pulled several copies of old Daily Prophet trial coverage to her, as well as the official parchment documents stored by the Ministry.

Harry didn't dare interrupt as Hermione read, but he didn't have to wait long. It was barely a minute before Hermione looked up at him, eyes shining and a beaming smile crossing her face.

"We did it, Harry! We did it!" she sang, before flinging her arms around his neck and threatening to squeeze the life out of him.

"H-Hermione," Harry panted. "I'd quite like to see this amazing future of ours, so do you mind not choking me out of it?"

Hermione let go sheepishly. "Oh. Sorry."

"Don't be," Harry half-grinned, half-grimaced as he massaged his neck. "There are few things as potent as a true Hermione Granger hug. Even the ones that hurt are worth it."

"Hush you," Hermione huffed genially. "Enough of that though, let me show you the proof of our success."

Hermione guided Harry back to the table and gestured at the documents spread out before them. Moving pictures of the trial screamed back up at them ... or, at least, the one of the Polyjuiced Molly Weasley did.

"Wow. She looks pissed!" Harry chortled.

"Wouldn't you be, to be fair?" Hermione argued, reasonably. "We'd just derailed all her plans for a domination of your life through a daughter she lost the right to have when she became a Weasley. All those schemes, all those elaborate strategies, up in flames, just like that. It's the sort of thing to really put a dampener on your day."

"What does the article say?" Harry asked.

"Well, the most important document is this one, the Court Minutes from the trial," Hermione began, passing the offending parchment sheet for Harry to look at. "See here ... Englebert Weasley, for the Act of Treason in promising his daughter, Ethel, to the New World Order of Gellert Grindelwald: Convicted as Charged. Sentence: The denial of future daughters to the family line. Signed, Hector Dagworth-Granger, presiding judiciar and curse-caster. You know, I think I should have come up with a better signature. My 'w' is all wonky."

"It was your first go, don't be so hard on yourself," Harry chuckled. "You won't have to do it again, will you? So it doesn't really matter."

"I suppose not," Hermione accepted in a sniffy voice. "It was a good job that the curse was already lined up to use. We didn't really think about that, did we? It was lucky we didn't get caught out."

"I prefer to call it serendipity," Harry argued. "It was just meant to be. It was more of a good thing that you cast spells so perfectly at the first time of asking."

"You know, I think I will really get used to these showers of compliments you keep giving me," Hermione laughed. "Where has this you been hiding all these years?"

"The same place as the alternate you, in a world corrupted by Molly bloody Weasley," Harry sniped, bitterly. "Speaking of her, what does the article say, the one in which she is screaming blue murder at us from across time?"

Hermione picked up the stored edition of The Prophet and began to read.

"Drama today from the Supreme Court," Hermione began. "The Senior Judiciar, Maurice Dagworth, presiding over the so-called 'Mothers of the New Order' trials was exposed as leading a double life mere minutes before the start of today's proceedings. Evidence came to light of a series of affairs with women outside of the Sacred Twenty-Eight noble families, but perhaps more seriously, with MUGGLE women. You know, it's really annoying how that is seen as a crime. Like Muggle women are parasites, or something."

"It was a backwards time, and a convenient 'offence' for us to use," Harry tried to placate her, ignoring how little the Magical world had moved on in it's views, lest the realisation stoked Hermione's ire even more. "Read on and try not to blame them for being so simple."

Hermione huffed, but relented as she went back to her reading. "Disaster was avoided, however, as Mr Dagworth's place was taken by one of his bastard sons, one Hector Dagworth-Granger, with questions over his legitimacy allayed by the support of Charlus Potter, who vouched for him.

"I know Hector very well, Mr Potter testified before the Wizengamot. He is a decent and honourable wizard who has agreed to condemn the actions of his father and renounce the surname of Dagworth should the Council demand it of him. I urge clemency, however ... Hector has committed no crime and should not be punished for his father's transgressions. He is an upstanding member of the Magical Community and should be trusted to take his father's place in presiding over this trial. I vouch for him with all the power of my family name."

"And thank Merlin that was enough," Harry interjected piously. "That could have been a sticky situation. Good old great-great-granddad Charlus. Top bloke, I always liked that one."

Hermione's eyes widened in suspicious understanding. "Er, Harry ... how did Charlus know Hector again? Enough to vouch for him so stoutly. Remind me, please ... considering that we invented him!"

"Ah ... I wondered when you'd get around to that," Harry grinned, guiltily.

"Harry! You didn't!"

"That all depends on what you're accusing me of," Harry returned in a silky tone.

"Well, as I know full well that you didn't have enough time to brew up a batch of Polyjuice of your own, I can only assume you used the Imperius Curse on him. It was you saying all those things, not Charlus. And I know that you've had previous with that particular spell."

"I prefer to call it practice."

"Harry! You shouldn't have done that! That spell is illegal. And to your own ancestor, no less."

"And you shouldn't have Confunded Cormac McLaggen to give Ron an ego boost," Harry pointed out. "Though the stakes for us were considerably higher than a silly Quidditch team, don't you agree?"

"Two wrongs don't make a right, Harry," Hermione frowned. "I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this, not at all."

"Pass me your Time-Turner, then, and I'll go back and undo it," Harry suggested. "Molly will win, you'll cease to exist, and Ginny will be the wife and mother that you are supposed to be. Would your conscience be more comfortable with that?"

"Of course it wouldn't," Hermione snapped. "Okay, fine. I'll allow you that one, so long as you stop being such a sassy bitch about it. But no more Unforgivable Curses, or even I won't forgive you for them, agreed?"

Harry laughed heartily. "I can live with that. I wonder if Molly knew that it was us who thwarted her? If she had even an inkling of who it was that had stepped in to intervene?"

"I highly doubt it. I've never had Molly down as the intuitive sort," Hermione sniffed. "If she has to rely on an enchanted clock to know that her own kids are in danger then she's unlikely to have guessed that we are better at time meddling than she is."

"True," Harry agreed. "That clock always bothered me, you know."

"It did?" Hermione quirked, raising her brow. "Why?"

"Well, do you remember when Ginny was possessed by Riddle's diary, and Molly warned about trusting an object when you can't see it's brain? Well that seems to me to be exactly what they are doing with the clock. It knows things ... and if it knows things -"

"- then it has a brain!" Hermione hushed in astonishment. "The question is, then, do they know where it keeps it?"

"Or are they keeping it for it?" Harry added, darkly. "Reeks of Dark Magic, if you ask me."

"The whole house does, if you look deep enough. Well deducted, my love."

Harry and Hermione span around at the new voice whispering just behind them. Harry blushed, Hermione scowled, though she couldn't decide on what she was cross about the most. She still hadn't quite forgiven her future self for sleeping with Harry before she did, even though she had to accept the reasons, however begrudgingly she did so. But now there was another reason, since she could see herself in the future flesh this time.

"Well, at least I can say I aged well," Hermione huffed, looking her future self up and down for the first time. She had filled out her figure, looking womanly and elegant. Hermione couldn't help but be envious.

The older Hermione laughed. "We came into our own after Hogwarts. You'd be amazed at the grace we discovered when we stopped lugging around a satchel-full of heavy books every day. Though, of course, my Harry was a chivalrous gentleman in the old fashion and carried my books for me after we got together."

"You could have done that for me," younger Hermione huffed to Harry. "You'd have saved me from having such a bad back."

Harry shrugged in reply. "If I'd have offered you'd have probably told me it was an example of the dominant patriarchy and that I was a misogynistic pig for even suggesting it. I didn't want to impede on your independence!"

"Pfft. If you were to cart my books around it would have been as a slave carrying out my whims. Impeding my independence. Ha! I would have been the one dominating you!"

"And I'd have happily accepted," Harry grinned. "All you had to do was ask."

"The only thing I want to ask now is what I'm doing here talking to myself in person," Hermione countered. "Now that's not a sentence I thought I'd ever hear myself saying. I assume this means we succeeded?"

"Not yet," future Hermione replied. "A great deed is not complete until it is finished. And you both have a few more things to do yet before it is."

"But we have secured our timeline, our existence?" Hermione argued. "We are both still here, after all."

The older Hermione nodded the affirmative. "The first, and perhaps most important, aspect has been achieved. "We have preserved the Granger line. You managed to thwart Molly's actions in the past, and well done for that. Replacing Maurice Dagworth as the trial judge ... she really did do the thing properly."

"Then Maurice was the original judge?" Harry asked. "He set the Curse against the Weasleys and the Diggorys and the others?"

Hermione nodded. "That's why I put you onto the name of Hector Dagworth-Granger. I deduced that there must be a connection there but, ironically, I didn't have the time to investigate it. Molly was moving through time, just as I was. I had to prioritise my focus. Luckily, I knew I was brilliant in any timeline!"

Hermione smiled down at her younger self, who coloured slightly under her own praise. Harry found the whole display hard to get his head around.

"But where did the Granger name come from in your timeline?" Harry pressed. "Or were you called Hermione Dagworth before you ... I mean, we ... got married?"

"No, I was never a Dagworth ... but my mother was," Hermione explained. "Maurice was my great-grandfather, and it is through him that magic was passed to me. My mother was a witch, but she wasn't a very good one, so she lived happily as a Muggle once she married my father."

"But haven't we changed all that now?" younger Hermione fretted. "We've introduced the Granger name three generations early!"

"If my guess is right it wont change all that much," future Hermione replied. "Magic will still pass down the same way, and once it reaches our parents they will probably be the ones who decide to re-amalgamate the surname anyway. David Granger will meet Catrin Dagworth-Granger and that similarity might be the spark that interests them in each other in the first place."

"And after they marry they just drop the Dagworth part of their surname," Harry mused.

"And the second Granger bit, too" younger Hermione added. "I mean, it'd be a bit silly to call me Hermione Granger-Granger."

"I don't know. Maybe you'd be like New York," Harry teased, explaining when Hermione looked confused, "You know ... so good they named you twice!"

"Shut up, Harry," both Hermiones chorused. Harry laughed at the twin ways they rolled their eyes at him in their pity for his awful joke. He rather thought he'd enjoy being chastised by them like this in any universe.

"But if we've solidified our existence, isn't it dangerous for you to be here?" young Hermione asked to her older self. "You're breaking the First Rule in a much more blatant way this time."

"I don't believe it will matter," came the reply. "For this version of me will soon cease to be, I think. Until you become me, that is."

"What? You're not going to die, are you?" Harry gasped. "You can't. After all you've done ..."

"Don't think of it as death, more of a fusion," Hermione explained. "The energy that is Hermione Potter, nee Granger, still exists now thanks to our efforts and can no longer be extinguished. It will lay dormant in the young woman before me, blossoming naturally as you go through life until one is indistinguishable from the other."

"But I don't want that!" Hermione argued hotly. "I want to be you. Right now. I want to be Hermione Potter!"

"And you will be," future Hermione assured her, gently. "So long as this young man doesn't mind."

Then she looked over at Harry, who was frozen solid at the announcement. The older witch simply smiled at him.

"But he looks a bit like a rabbit caught in the headlights right now," she whispered softly. "So let's give him this for safe keeping, just until he is ready to ask the question properly."

And with that the older Hermione slipped a shining band of Welsh gold from her ring finger and placed it into Harry's palm, curling his fingers around it.

"Remember, my love, the Minack Theatre in Cornwall, on Midsummer's Day in five years time," Hermione hushed softly into Harry's ear. "Till then ... for safekeeping."

Older Hermione closed her fist around Harry's and placed a chaste kiss to his forehead.

"For safekeeping," Harry echoed, his throat jammed up with something he couldn't swallow and his eyes welling despite the joy pounding through him.

The younger Hermione crossed to Harry and took the place of her older self by Harry's side, replacing the hand that was covering what was to become her wedding ring in his still tight-closed fist. The enormity of the moment threatened to take the floor from beneath them both. It was Hermione who regained her composure first.

"So, you said we still have tasks to do," she announced briskly, addressing her other self. "If you are to hide inside me soon, I suppose you've come here to give us the responsibility."

"I have," older Hermione confirmed. "There's no more that I can do. "The recent past and the future are now in your hands. You have to see this through if our future is to prevail."

"Then tell us what we still have to do," Harry demanded. "We're ready."

"The circle has to be completed," future Hermione implored, forcefully. "This won't be over until the essence of Voldemort is wiped from the living world. And if you want to do that and bring your parents and Sirius back, Harry, then you have to face him again ... you have to face Tom Riddle one more time, my love."

Harry shuddered in his trainers. He had finally thought he was done with that Dark bastard, and the mere mention of him was still enough to cause Harry's skin to tingle with prickly spikes.

His Hermione felt the turn of his mood and squeezed his hand tight, just to remind him of what she immediately voiced next. "But you wont be facing him alone this time ... I'll be right there with you."

Harry looked hungrily into her face, drew strength from the fierce support she was offering him. How had he never seen her like this before? Never known what was right in front of him all along? He really was unworthy of her for being so ignorant for so long.

Harry took a steeling breath. "What must I do?"

"Go back, Harry, back to the Battle of Hogwarts," older Hermione instructed. "You must take your phoenix wand into the final duel with Voldemort. It is from there that your parents will emerge to finish the job. You wont have to kill him at all, that isn't the final piece of Tom Riddle that you must face."

"Then what is?"

"The piece of shadow that exists within St. John Weasley, the girl you knew as Ginny," the older Hermione went on. "The possession by Riddle's diary for so long left an imprint on him/her. The ability to speak Parseltongue, an acuity to Dark Magic ... it is the trace of Riddle within that person ... and it must be destroyed.

"Molly used that to pervert the timeline from the future, she wouldn't have had the power to do it by herself. She merely carried on the Dark traditions of the Weasley family, a tradition started by Englebert that was honoured by Arthur when he provided a decade of sanctuary to a Death Eater on the run."

"He did what?" Harry spat. "He sheltered a Death Eater? I never knew that."

"Of course you did," younger Hermione mumbled softly. "Only you didn't know him as a Death Eater ... you knew him as Scabbers the Rat."

Harry's jaw fell open. "Scabbers ... that bastard Pettigrew! Of course. And you are saying that Arthur knew?"

Older Hermione nodded. "How could he not? His job was to spot magical corruption of the mundane, and he was particularly good at it as he regularly committed such crimes himself. Enchanting cars and such. And then there's the clock in the kitchen. You mentioned it yourself."

"What about it?" Harry demanded. "It is a Dark object, then?"

"Almost certainly," Hermione revealed. "After all, if a vicious Death Eater like Pettigrew was residing in their house, riding around in the pocket of first Percy then Ron, don't you think that the clock would have read Mortal Peril for the entire time? Surely there can be few worse dangers ... unless the clock was a Dark Artefact of a Dark Family, one that saw Death Eaters as friends and comrades and thus didn't see them as a threat.

"Then there's the Marauder's Map. It sees through magical concealment, as you know. Fred and George Weasley were in possession of that map long before it came to Harry. Do you really believe that in all that time they didn't spot the name of a strange man with an infamous past that was always with their brother, one that even slept in his dorm? No, the only logical conclusion is that they, too, knew who and what Scabbers truly was. Either that or they were under some sort of magical control from their parents to not register it. You can decide which explanation suits you best."

"But the Weasleys were on our side against Voldemort," Harry argued. "They suffered losses and injuries, lycanthropy and death. I can't believe that Arthur was so treacherous when the cost was so great to his family."

"Neither can I, but I can imagine anything of Molly Prewett," future Hermione countered darkly. "She lost two brothers in the first Blood War, then married a man who couldn't give her the daughter she craved. Did she know that was the case before the marriage and then decided to try and change it? Who knows. All we can assume is that it made Molly desperate and devious, and she is self-centred enough to have made it her life's work. Her actions in trying to destroy my life are all the evidence we need to prove that.

"Try not to think of things as good and evil ... life is rarely so arbitrary. There is no good way to kill someone, but if that someone is unhinged and threatening you and your family, then sometimes killing them first is the only solution. Molly Weasley killed Bellatrix Lestrange defending her son in my timeline without using a Killing Curse. Does that make her evil, for protecting her child with violent magic? Of course it doesn't.

"But going back in time and trying to eradicate my existence before I was born? Now that's a different kind of Darkness entirely."

Younger Hermione bristled in her anger. "So we go back to Hogwarts and give Harry the phoenix wand? That will put everything right?"

"It might not be that simple," the other Hermione replied. "In your experience of events, Harry's wand is broken at the time of the Battle, am I right?"

Harry nodded as understanding settled on him. "And if we give it to him, before he's recovered the Elder Wand to repair it, then he'll know and it will cause all sorts of problems to the timeline, wont it? Which is why I have to go back and ... and take his place."

"Yes," future Hermione returned. "It was in the very recent past for you, so I doubt that anyone will notice that it is a different you. But you're going to have to pick the moment to replace yourself very carefully, if I understand the sequence of events in this timeline correctly."

"Ah, of course!" the younger Hermione cried. "We can't replace you before you stupidly stride off by yourself into the forest meeting with Voldemort, as his Avada Kedavra would actually kill you this time. That Horcrux in your head isn't there to protect you now."

"True. So it has to be sometime after that. Perhaps in the chaos after Neville beheaded the snake? It was all a bit mental then."

"That sounds like a plan," Hermione nodded. "We know roughly where you were when Hagrid brought you back from the forest. If we find you, immobilise you, then you take your place under the Invisibility Cloak ... under your own Invisibility Cloak, too, so that you from the past doesn't see yourself from the future, my this is complicated! ... then you jump out and into the fight with Voldemort. Does that sound about right?"

Hermione looked to her older self for validation, but future Hermione could only give a gentle shrug of her shoulders. "If you say so. Things didn't play out quite like that in my time, so I can't advise you on how to proceed in this one."

Younger Hermione's breath hitched in sorrow a moment then, as she suddenly realised something. "So ... are you saying that your past is gone now? That the things you went through, the events that got you and Harry together, they won't happen now and I'll never know about them?"

"No. I don't think they will," the older witch declared in a sombre tone. "You might dream of them, or remember them in flashes of confused memory, but I doubt they'll ever become a part of your active thoughts. Even your mind would struggle to align the two existences to solve the dichotomy."

"But I was so hoping they would!" Hermione moaned. "I wanted to experience all those letters and emotions and everything else you told us about. This is so unfair. Fucking Molly Weasley!"

"Don't fret, Hermione," the older witch consoled. "You and I may have experienced different lives, gone through different paths, but you and your Harry have had a set of adventures and events of your own that have eventually led to the same conclusion. And that's the main thing."

"But what was the point in all those hooks and tethers in our lives you mentioned?" Harry cut in. "What was that all about if your are just going to pop out of existence?"

"It was all about making sure that the life energies that bear the names of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were intimately entwined, just as Nature had allowed the possibility for. That I've come to think Nature hoped for, in my silliest and most arrogantly romantic daydreams. Harry and Hermione were meant to be together, it's just how both energies want to be. The events that led to it are just window dressing.

"My Harry and I had our own path, some parts similar and some different to your own. But both sets of circumstances made our relationship what it is. And some parts have to remain the same for the development to happen. We had to meet when we did, we had to have the obstacles to overcome ... no matter the difference in name and gender ... and we had to have the events that made us unspeakably and inseparably, close. Any significant deviation and we are simply other characters, and any truly meaningful connection between us would be thrown into doubt."

"I think I get that," younger Hermione nodded. "If I'd met Harry in Fourth Year, or something, there'd be no troll, no Petrification, no Sirius and Buckbeak, none of that or anything else. The foundation of our relationship, romantic or not, would be undermined."

"Ah, so you went through the past to set all that in stone," Harry added. "You bonded our lives and energies, essentially."

"Exactly," Hermione beamed. "And because the energies are joined now, it means that future branches will still exist ... when the time comes to create them."

Hermione gasped aloud. "You mean our daughter! Does that mean she was saved?"

Future Hermione smiled. "She will be. But all in good time. Let's not terrify Harry anymore than he needs to be. Just look at the poor lamb!"

Both Hermiones grinned fondly at Harry, but he wasn't as typically boyish as his girls were convinced.

"Her name ... what was our daughter's name?" Harry mumbled.

"Sophie. Sophie Lyra Potter."

"Then we'll have two, a Sophie and a Lyra, just to honour you," Harry declared quietly. He looked to his Hermione as if for permission, but she had temporarily lost all concept of speech and language from her world. So she just stayed silent and grinned all over, which was a good enough promise for them both.

"It is your life, but I will rest happily knowing that," the older Hermione replied after a moment. "I have given you your roadmap ... replace yourself, Harry, at the Battle of Hogwarts and duel Voldemort with your phoenix wand. It is only your wand that is important ... the Thrice Cast magic of your super-charged Expelliarmus will be enough to disarm Riddle.

"When his Avada Kedavra meets your Expelliarmus for the third time it will complete the Paradox, a time portal will open up in place of Priory Incantatum, and your parents will remerge as if Halloween 1981 were just yesterday ... and they will be ready to kill Lord Voldemort, just as they did in my time."

"Then I hunt down Ginny and ... do what, exactly?" Harry asked. "How did it work in your world?"

The older Hermione turned her eyes down. "It didn't, don't forget. Harry and I overlooked St. John, allowing Molly to manipulate things as she has. You are going to have to come up with a solution to that one on your own. Try not to kill if you can ... neither Harry nor I ever took a life, and I think we'd both like our eternal souls to remain intact and free of that Darkness."

"We'll think of something," younger Hermione vowed. "But there is one other tether to our past that we have to deal with, one I wont be able to tolerate if I know it still exists. So that's where we are going to start ... that's the point we are going back to."

Harry looked over at her. "And when is this point, exactly?"

"It's still at the Battle of Hogwarts," Hermione announced in her sniffiest, haughtiest voice yet. "It's just after we met you, when Ron suspiciously managed to speak Parseltongue and opened the Chamber of Secrets to get to the basilisk fangs. There's something I did then, a huge, massive mistake that I made just after Ron mentioned saving House-Elves, a mistake that I just have to undo ... and I wont be able to live with myself until I do ..."

Chapter Text

It was like slipping back into an old nightmare.

For a moment, Harry just marvelled at it. Marvelled at the fact that he'd become accustomed to a world that didn't feel like this. He hadn't fully appreciated at the time the very heaviness of the atmosphere, of the leaden nature of an air so coated with oppression and anxiety that Harry, used to his freedom, found difficult to breathe now.

He looked over at Hermione, who seemed weighed down with the pressure of their latest jaunt to the past, too.

"Do ... do you remember it like this?" Harry murmured.

Hermione looked over, eyes wide and heavy and dark with fear. "All too well."

"I suppose I just never noticed," Harry went on. "My entire life has been lived under this cloud. I don't think I realised it wasn't there until just now, when I felt it wrapped back around my shoulders. What does that say about me?"

"Only this ... that what should have been wrapped around your shoulders were my arms, to protect you from all the darkness. I'll put that right, Harry, I swear it."

Then she stepped close and made good on her promised, enveloping Harry in a Hermione-hug, only one with deep tenderness replacing her usual bone-shattering ferocity. Harry thought he could get very used to this new version.

But that was ll for later. He turned to Hermione as they slipped apart. "So, what's the plan? I know my bit, but what are you going to do in the meantime?"

Hermione scrunched her eyebrows. "I don't like your bit at all. I don't like the idea of you going off on your own, to somewhere that I can't protect you."

Harry chuckled at that. "I can look after myself, you know? And don't roll your eyes with that barely look! I have to get into position to replace myself, don't I? Besides, it will give me time to rethink that godawful speech I made the last time I did this!"

"Don't joke, Harry!" Hermione yelped. "How can you make jokes at a time like this?"

"Because they're still funny?" Harry teased. "But enough about me. Are you finally going to tell me what this big thing is that you have to do? Where are you going to be, while I'm huddled down on the lawn by the castle?"

"Off stopping the biggest mistake I ever made," Hermione huffed. "You plan to replace yourself ... and I plan to do the same."

"Why?" Harry asked with a frown.

"So that I never kiss Ron," Hermione announced briskly. "I'm going to get my other self out of the way somehow, then take her place for the rest of the night."

Harry shuddered at the idea. "I don't like that. Not the not-kissing-Ron bit, I'm totally onside with that part, but as for the rest ... it's too risky. So much happens after that and you could get hurt, or worse. We got by on sheer luck last time."

"And we will again," Hermione replied brightly. "Don't worry ... I'll be fine."

"What makes you so confident? You'll be changing history and who knows how that might affect things."

"I'll be fine," Hermione repeated. She stepped forwards and cupped Harry's cheek in her right palm. "And how do I know? I'll be with you, that's how. You're the safest place for me to be in any time period. I'll replace myself after me and Ron find our way to the Chamber of Secrets, then I'll make sure I don't kiss him, then by the time you get to the final fight in the Great Hall I'll be there waiting for you."

Harry huffed and crossed his arms. "There's no talking you out of this, is there?"

"Not a chance in hell," Hermione confirmed gravely. "I might even give you a hint of my affection for you, see if it hurries us along at all."

"That might not be a great idea ..."

"Hey, you went right back to fawning over Ginny after Voldemort was killed," Hermione scythed, bitterly. "I need to put a stop to that, too!"

That made Harry laugh, and he finally gave in. "Alright, but just be careful, will you? All I'm going to be doing is laying in wait under my Invisibility Cloak, while you'll be out there fighting. No reckless actions, okay?"

"Okay, that's fair," Hermione agreed. "Though I am going to be fuming to myself, knowing that you're off doing your stupid saving-people-thing again, without me there to box some sense into you!"

"It'll be the last time, I promise," Harry vowed sincerely. "And I'll be saving you and me and our future this time, and little Sophie and Lyra, too ... think about it that way."

"You talk me around far too easily," Hermione scoffed, shaking her head. "I should have put a cork in that years ago."

"It's your own fault for falling for me!" Harry funned. "Now, we'd better get moving. You be careful and I'll see you soon."

"I will. You just get working on that speech!"

And with a quick peck on the cheek, Harry and Hermione hurried off in opposite directions to re-write their histories.

* * *

Hurrying through an ancient castle in the dark had become an innate skill, one that Hermione would never imagined she would become a master of when she first stepped through the doors as an eleven-year-old. But here she was, close on eight years later and it was as if she had Harry's Marauder's Map imprinted onto the inside of her skull.

Harry. He was the cause of all this. Of a life more full of danger and adventure, of mystery and wonder than the bossy, friendless child Hermione had been could ever have imagined happening to her. And now he was promising to be part of all the future stories that Hermione would get to write about herself.

She'd not really thought hard enough about all that yet, hadn't really had time to, ironically. It had been such a whirlwind few months that Hermione hadn't been able to draw breathe through all the changes and revelations. But she thought about it now, as she ambled through the silent castle, keeping close to the deep-shadows of the walls just in case she encountered someone who might recognise her.

And Hermione thought about her, the earlier version of herself that was, at that precise moment, several floors up with other versions of Harry and Ron in the Room of Requirement. The very notion of her made Hermione cross. This was an incarnation of Hermione, barely three months younger than he current self, who had given up on Harry and convinced herself that she could settle with Ron, a boy whose mother had been busy trying to wipe Hermione from existence at all.

Not that any of that was Ron's fault, and Hermione could apportion no blame to him. Ron was Ron ... loyal as a puppy, funny, a bit of a chip on his shoulder that could make him turn nasty from time to time. Hermione thought about the last time that had happened, when Ron abandoned she and Harry in the tent, leaving them to hunt Horcruxes without him. She wondered at having forgiven him so easily.

And the answer came to her surprisingly quickly, as though a half-buried memory had burst it's way to the surface. She hadn't been that mad at Ron when he returned, she was past that by that time. And the reason? For she'd had all that time with Harry, and they'd grown immeasurably closer in their solitude. They had been to Godric's Hollow, shared that moment of breathtaking intimacy at his parent's graveside. Something had shifted between them that night, and Hermione was sure Harry felt it, too.

Then he just went back to Ron as soon as he turned up grovelling.

Hermione remembered how her heart had sunk at Harry's seemingly depthless emotional ignorance where she was concerned. That was the last time she'd hope for him, she remembered deciding that. He wasn't interested, never would be ... only now it turned out that it was all because of Molly Weasley's meddling.

Oh, how Hermione despised that woman now! As interfering busy-bodies went, Molly set a new standard. Hermione never thought she was capable of hating anyone. She feared and loathed Voldemort, found Draco Malfoy a persistent irritant ... but she stopped short of outright hatred. But she was fast coming to feel that Molly Weasley had crossed that threshold ... that Hermione had found someone that she could honestly say she hated.

She had tried to part her from Harry, and this was a crime that Hermione could not abide.

And the Harry upstairs was still suffering under the effects of Molly's temporal tampering. He was dampened to the possibility of any affection towards Hermione that was upwards of platonic on the scale. Hermione seethed at that, would have to fight the yearning to simply shake the stupidity out of him on first sight.

But that would never do. The integrity of the timeline had to be preserved until just the right moment. Hermione knew that, and steeled herself as she continued up the stairs and formulated her plan. It was a plan designed to right a romantic wrong, and the very notion made Hermione laugh to herself. She thought about her eleven-year-old self again and wondered what she would have made of all this.

She probably wouldn't have expected any of it, to tell the truth. Friends had been hard enough to come by as it was, so the chance of boyfriends was remote enough to have been missed by the young Hermione's radar. But when friends did eventually come along, the only two real ones were both boys, and that opened up unexpected possibilities to the emotionally guarded girl of the trio.

It soon became clear that a relationship for any of them outside of their tiny circle would be fraught with difficulty. As the years and adventures came and went, the three of them became so tightly bound that penetrating their dynamic wouldn't be easy for anyone. After all, how could anyone hope to understand them and appreciate what they had been through together?

Of the three of them, Ron was the most likely to have success in that area with someone from outside. He had come from a safe, loving home, surrounded by his parents, his siblings and extended family. He was the most emotionally adjusted of the three of them. Hermione had almost no-one; Harry had even less. They were more alike in that sense, had a greater appreciation of companionship and affection, and Hermione began to see that they were more suited because of it than she and Ron might have been.

And Hermione began to shyly hope for Harry. She would hope for him for the longest time ... years, really, without ever truly expecting anything to come of it, without ever receiving much encouragement from him. She was cross as she realised that she hadn't given any real encouragement either, and resented her future self who had, leading to her relationship with Harry, the one that this Hermione was deeply jealous that she'd not been able to experience herself.

But here she was, on the verge of creating her own version, of being the heroine who got the guy ... she just had to be careful not to mess it up at this delicate late stage. That would make all Hermiones - wherever and whenever they were - very angry indeed.

And the youngest one was pretty irate as it was.

"Are you coming or not?"

Hermione looked up from her position hiding behind a statue to see her former self, half in and half out of the door to the Room of Requirement. She remembered the conversation she was having at the time, mouthed out the words as they came next.

"Harry told us to stay here."

"And since when do we do what Harry tells us, Ron?" Hermione asked. "There's a war going on and we need to do something, we need to help. I'm not sitting around waiting, so I'll ask you again ... are you coming or not?"

"Talk some sense into her, Nev," Ron was begging. "Make her see that we should stay put."

"I'm actually with her," Neville disagreed, causing Hermione to whoop in triumph. "This is the time to fight, and Harry can't win this on his own. We all need to chip in."

"Well said," Hermione beamed.

"And how, exactly, do you intend to chip in?" Ron went on, unmoved. "Harry has to find the you-know-what. Until he does, you know we can't do anything."

"When Harry does find the thing, and we both know he will, we have to be ready to help destroy it," Hermione pointed out. "We should make use of Hogwarts to try and find a way."

"What are you two talking about?" Neville demanded. "What does Harry have to destroy?"

"Never you mind," Hermione and Ron chorused in unison. The current Hermione felt herself retch, as she saw a once-familiar fondness cross her eyes at the timing.

"Why all the secrecy?" Neville asked, bitterly. "We should be on the same side here."

"We are," Hermione pacified. "But we have good reasons for our privacy, Neville. I'm sorry, but you're just going to have to trust us."

"If it was anyone else, I'd tell you to shove that evasiveness. But as it's you two ..."

"Thanks, Nev," Hermione beamed.

"Hmm. I still say you have more secrets than old Slytherin's Chamber, but I'll let it go."

"Hermione! That's it!" Ron suddenly cried from inside the room.

"What is?" Hermione frowned.

"That's how we help Harry!" Ron went on. "That's what we can do."

"I still don't get it, so please explain it to me."

"What is it that destroys the you-know-what's? Which is the only you-know-what killing juice that we've found so far?"

"Basilisk Venom," Hermione reminded him. "But what ... oh!"

"Yes, oh!" Ron crowed triumphantly. "And if I'm right, there should be an abundance of it in the Chamber."

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's go."

The current Hermione knew that for the next couple of minutes there would be a furore in the Room of Requirement. There would attempts by Molly to stop them leaving, then they had to convince Neville and Ginny to stay put. The arguments would rage long enough to allow Hermione to hurry away and take up her ambush spot, in the darkness of a certain disused girls' bathroom on the Second Floor. She made it there quickly and crouched down to wait.

And she didn't have to wait long.

"Hermione, don't be silly," Hermione heard Ron saying. "There's no-one about. The castle is deserted."

"It doesn't matter," came the reply. "It is still a girls' bathroom. Just give me ten seconds to check that it's empty."

And ten seconds was more than enough time for Hermione to strike at herself.

"Petrificus totalus!"

Hermione whispered the spell as her younger self came near. Her arms immediately snapped to her sides, her legs went stiff and she began to topple forwards. Hermione darted out and grabbed herself before she fell. This was totally bizarre. Hermione looked at herself, into her own eyes, seeing shock and utter confusion residing there ... and she immediately understood Law One of Time-Turning.

For this was enough to make anyone lose their minds.

"I'm sorry, you'll understand all this later," Hermione whispered to her stunned, petrified self, as she dragged the younger version into the cubicle. "You'll understand, I promise ... and you'll thank me. Or I'll thank me. Oh my, this is mind-blowing."

"Hermione? What's taking so long?" Ron hissed from the corridor. "Are you having a piss in there or something?"

"Classy as always," Hermione snapped, opening the bathroom door as she snapped shut the buttons on the jacket she'd just stolen from her younger self. She only hoped Ron wouldn't notice that she was now wearing gym leggings instead of the jeans her younger self was.

He didn't.

"It's a fair question," Ron grumbled. "Ten seconds you said. That was more like thirty."

"Hardly," Hermione scoffed. "Anyway, forget about that. We're here now. Suppose we'd better jump through there."

She jerked her head at the opening in the line of sinks that was the portal to the underground realm where the Chamber of Secrets was located.

"Handy, really, that they never closed this up," Ron quipped. "It's almost like they knew it would be needed by us again."

"It's more likely that Dumbledore kept it open to allow further study of the Chamber and it's secrets," Hermione replied in a lofty voice.

"Or ... it could have been that," Ron accepted grumpily. "Couldn't just let me have that one, could you?"

"If you'd been right, I might have," Hermione told him sniffily. "Now, do you want to go first or shall I?"

"Ladies loo, ladies first!" Ron smirked.

"How chilvarous," Hermione scoffeed with a shake of her head. Then she lowered herself into the cool and dark of the pipe. She retched at the slime clinging to the sides, at the dank smell which creeped up into her nostrils. "Did you and Harry really slide down this?"

"Yep," Ron grinned. "And you never got to experience this particular joyous aspect of adventuring with Harry, cos you went and got yourself Petrified and everything ... so you can enjoy it now!"

"You're such a wart," Hermione frowned. Then she took a breath and pushed herself into the pipe as hard as she could.

Of course, Hermione had experienced this before, when she had done this the first time around, and she remembered the exchange with Ron all too well. She also remembered what he was about to say when he emerged from the pipe this time, and she wanted to be prepared to answer slightly differently than she had originally.

"That wasn't any better than when we came here with Lockhart," Ron bitched, standing up to brush the grime from himself. "What a fraud he was."

"Yes, he did turn out to be a bit of joke," Hermione agreed.

"You still fancied him, though."

"Excuse me, I did not fancy him!" Hermione protested.

"Excuse me, but you did," Ron teased. "I remember you circling all his classes with little hearts."

"Why would you remember something like that?" Hermione asked as they began to walk.

"Um, because it was the first time any of us had showed an interest in someone, you know, in that way," Ron muttered, looking away bashfully.

"Well, I am a bit older," Hermione sniffed. "And girls develop quicker than boys, especially you two boys!"

"Hey! That's unfair," Ron grinned, guiltily. "Ok, maybe it isn't. But was he the first person you fancied, your first crush?"

Originally, Hermione had answered yes to this question, then pushed Ron on why he was so interested, fishing for a declaration of his feelings. That had led to an awkward, semi-flirtatious exchange between them, the latest in a string of them that they'd been having. But Hermione knew now that she had arrived at the point where she had to put a firm stop to all that, to change history ... or was it to correct it?

"No, actually, he wasn't," Hermione replied, looking straight ahead. "I'd done that deed already."

Ron looked over. "Really? Who with?"

There was real hope in Ron's voice then and Hermione felt genuinely sorry that she wasn't going to give him the answer he was looking for.

"I don't think I can tell you that."

"Because it was Harry?"

Ron sighed heavily and Hermione stopped in her shock to look at him. She'd always wondered how this conversation with Ron would play out, but now that she was in it she felt surprised and unsure about how to proceed.

"What makes you say that?" Hermione stuttered.

"Because you'd tell me if it was anyone else," Ron mumbled, toeing the ground with his shoe. "And who else would it have been if it was before Lockhart? We only ever really spent time with each other, and you and I never got on even half as well as you and Harry back then. So it was, wasn't it? I'm right ... it was Harry you fancied first?"

Hermione closed her eyes and wondered at her own blindness. Was it really that plain, that obvious? That if someone, even Ron, had to guess who Hermione cared for the most they would immediately land on Harry? She mused over how many people might come to the same conclusion about her where Harry and secret crushes were concerned.

There seemed no point anymore in denying a truth that she had come to covet so fiercely over the past few months.

"Yes, okay, it was," Hermione confessed. Ron nodded in disappointment and they started walking again.

"And you still do, don't you? It's never gone away, has it?" Ron pressed. "You still do like him? I mean, like him, like him."

Hermione stopped again and turned fully to face Ron. "Now what in the world makes you say that?"

"I can just tell," Ron murmured. "The way you two have been since I ... well, you know, came back ... you just seem closer than before. And you were already closer than most couples I know to start with."

"I don't know that I agree with that!" Hermione replied, slightly flustered.

"Well, you are, if you didn't know," Ron went on. "Not really much hope for anyone to get between you. I don't think anyone's got much chance of being closer to your hearts than the other of you. I was sort of hoping ... after all that stuff last year between us ... that I might ..."

"Ron, please don't say what you're about to," Hermione cut across, as gently as she could. "I love you, I hope you know that. But I see you as a brother, and I love you like a sister does. I'm sorry ... I didn't mean to give you the wrong impression of anything else. A curse on me if I have."

"Harry said the same about you, you know ... that he sees you as a sister," Ron smiled weakly. "But I knew he was just saying that, to pacify me. He's good like that, Harry. Self-sacrificing to the last. I'm a big boy though, you know ... I can take a bit of bad news."

"What bad news?"

"That you and Harry are going out. That you're a couple now," Ron grimaced, bracingly. "So you can tell me, I wont mind. Well I will, a bit, but if it had to be anyone I suppose I'm okay that it's Harry. I'll get over it fine, in a year or two."

"We aren't ... Harry and I, we ..." Hermione began, then she checked herself. In three months time the situation would have changed immeasurably, so she thought she might as well future-proof Ron against the disclosure. It would make things easier in the long-run. "What I mean to say is, we haven't formalised anything yet. We have to survive Voldemort - stop wincing, please, we're about to try and kill the man, Ron! - and then we'll face up to what has changed between us properly. We've agreed to leave everything till then. We're actually planning a trip to Australia once all this is over just for the purpose of that ... 

"But yes, I am ... eternally ... his."

"Australia? Oh ... to get your parents back," Ron nodded as he understood. "Makes sense. Just promise me that you'll tell me first, once you are all official and everything. Best friends should be first in on good news, after all."

Hermione stepped close and gave Ron a sisterly-tender kiss on the cheek. "I swear we will ... on the life of our first born, I swear it."

Ron grinned up playfully. "Then I'll be silent on this forever. I'm happy for you, I really am. I'll just have to fall for someone who likes me back next time!"

"I'm sure you will!" Hermione chuckled.

"So ... have you given him a name yet, this first born?"

Hermione smiled over as they walked on towards the Chamber of Secrets. "Actually, we're sort of hoping that our first will be a her ..."

And Nature wept with joy.