1947
The world felt wrong. Hermione’s mind spun as she stood alone in the strange, silent darkness, struggling to process the enormity of her situation. Her breath came in shallow gasps as she desperately tried to ground herself, to understand where—when—she had ended up.
For a long moment, all she could hear was the blood rushing in her ears, the frantic beating of her heart, but as the quiet of the world around her pressed in, she started to notice more subtle things—things she hadn’t registered at first. The air was... different. It smelled faintly of coal smoke, dust, and something sharp, unfamiliar. There was a heaviness in it, a sense of something left behind, but also something new and unfinished.
She shook herself out of the stupor, gathering her thoughts with every ounce of will she could muster. The time-turner... the experiment. She had intended to push the boundaries of time, to test an untested prototype—but this? This was something else entirely. She had never imagined this would happen. She had been prepared for a small jump—a few hours, a day at most. The calculations had all been in order. But the raw force of the pull she had felt when the time-turner had activated—it had been unlike anything she’d experienced before. And now, she stood at the mercy of time itself, utterly untethered.
With a deep, shuddering breath, Hermione looked around her. The surrounding space had been so dark, so silent, but now—now the world slowly began to take form.
A hazy light seeped from the edges of her vision, illuminating the first signs of her surroundings. She was standing in the middle of what seemed to be a street, though it was eerily empty. She had expected the streets of London to be bustling with people, even late in the evening, but there was nothing. No chatter of pedestrians, no rumbling of carriages or distant engines. The cobblestones beneath her feet felt cold and worn, as if they’d been walked upon for generations. And the buildings surrounding her... were not the gleaming modern ones she was used to.
The world felt wrong. Hermione’s mind spun as she stood alone in the strange, silent darkness, struggling to comprehend the enormity of her situation. The time-turner had malfunctioned, that much was clear, but the overwhelming sense of disorientation clung to her like a second skin. Her breath came in shallow gasps, chest tightening as she desperately fought to ground herself. She had to think, logically. How could this be happening? Where—when—had she ended up?
For what felt like an eternity, all she could hear was the pounding of her heart, the rush of blood in her ears. Her mind swam in panic, bouncing from one chaotic thought to the next. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She had expected a simple temporal displacement—a quick hop forward or backward in time. A day, maybe a few hours. But this? This was wrong. The hum of magic around her—once so familiar, so steady—felt utterly foreign, as if she was no longer tethered to the time she knew. The air was charged with an energy she couldn’t identify, one that set her skin on edge.
It was then she noticed it—the subtle differences that slowly began to sink in. The air itself felt heavy, thick with dust and soot. There was a pungent, acrid scent of coal smoke lingering in the atmosphere, mingling with a more organic odor she couldn’t quite place, something faintly bitter but oddly sharp. It was the smell of an industrial age just beginning to take shape, the scent of a world still bruised from war and on the cusp of an uncertain future. The air felt like it was carrying the weight of untold histories—of things not yet written, things about to unfold.
She closed her eyes for a moment, inhaling deeply in an attempt to steady herself. It didn’t help. She felt a strange heaviness, as if the very air around her was pushing against her, the atmosphere of this world oppressively dense. She wasn’t sure if it was the remnants of the war, or the sheer weight of time itself pressing down on her. All she knew was that she needed to focus.
Where am I?
Hermione forced herself to move. The silence pressed in on her, and the stillness of her surroundings made her feel small, exposed. She hesitated, trying to bring her mind back into focus. This couldn’t be right. She had meant to be in the present. Had she gone back further than expected? But the calculations had been perfect. The runes had aligned with precision. And yet… here she was, stranded in an unknown past, unsure of how far back she’d gone.
She squinted into the dim light, watching as hazy glows began to bleed into her vision, soft and flickering, like the faint glow of old lanterns. Slowly, the world took shape around her.
At first, it was small things—details that didn’t quite fit. The cobblestones under her boots were cold and worn, each stone chipped with age. The road, though clearly a thoroughfare at one point, had fallen into disrepair. It was far from the smooth, clean streets of London she knew. Instead, the road was uneven, the stones unevenly scattered in places, with patches of grass growing through cracks in the stonework. The stones had been walked upon for generations, but not in the way they would be today. The lack of modern traffic, the absence of any sounds that indicated the busy life she expected, sent an instinctive shiver down her spine.
She took a step forward, her boots clacking sharply against the cobblestones, the sound bouncing unnaturally in the empty street. Her footsteps seemed to echo into the silence, the only noise in a world that felt too still. There was no hum of magic from passing wizards, no distant chatter of Muggles going about their business, nothing. It was as though the city had been abandoned, as if the life of the world had been siphoned away.
She felt a pang of realization, sharp and cold. This was not her time.
The realization hit her like a cold wave. The world around her was utterly unfamiliar, foreign, but unmistakably old. A heavy, unsettling silence hung in the air, broken only by the distant sound of wind rattling through the bare trees and the occasional creak of old wood in the buildings around her. Hermione’s heart raced as she struggled to process the magnitude of the situation. She had not just been displaced in time, but thrown into a moment that she had only read about in textbooks and historical accounts. This was not the London she knew.
The street around her was a patchwork of old and faded grandeur. The buildings, though imposing in their own way, had clearly weathered years of turmoil. The once-pristine facades of the shops had been tarnished by soot and the corrosive grip of time. The cobblestones beneath her feet were worn, smoothed by centuries of foot traffic, but the mortar between them was cracked, revealing the decay beneath. She could see that some of the buildings had been damaged—perhaps during the Blitz. The memories of those harrowing years were still fresh in the minds of the survivors, and it showed in the city’s landscape.
Here and there, she could make out half-shuttered windows and scarred doorways that had once been welcoming but now stood like silent witnesses to a past filled with destruction. In fact, the air itself carried a faint, acrid scent of coal smoke, dust, and something heavier—something that spoke of fires that had long since burned out but had left behind an indelible mark on the city’s character. This was a London still trying to rebuild after the war, a city that had been bombed and scarred, now left to pick up the pieces in the aftermath. The ghostly silence of the street only deepened the sense of loss, of something precious taken and never fully recovered.
Hermione’s gaze drifted back to the buildings around her. They were older than anything she was used to, with intricate architectural flourishes—wrought-iron balconies that curled into themselves like vines, windows with delicate stone carvings framing them, and shop fronts painted in hues that had long since lost their vibrancy. Some of the buildings were still functional, but others appeared abandoned, their windows darkened with grime. She stepped closer to one of the shops, and for a brief moment, her eyes caught on a faded sign above the door.
- M. Granger, Antiquities.
Her breath caught. The sign was nearly impossible to read, the gold lettering so faded that it seemed more like a memory than a real advertisement. But the name... Granger. A strange chill ran through her, her mind flickering with thoughts of her own family. Could this be a distant relative? She didn’t have time to consider it, though—the realization of where she was, when she was, was far more pressing. It was a coincidence, she told herself. A world full of people with similar names. Nothing more to it.
Pushing the thought aside, Hermione steadied her breath and refocused. She needed to understand what had happened and how to get back, but she couldn’t make sense of anything until she figured out when exactly she had arrived. She turned slowly, absorbing more of the details around her, trying to place herself in this unfamiliar world. Her senses sharpened as she focused on the signs of the past.
The sound of footsteps interrupted her thoughts, and she froze. A group of people passed by—two men in dark suits and a woman in a heavy fur coat—carrying themselves with a quiet but confident air. Their attire was all wrong. The men were dressed in suits that were sharply cut but outdated, with their sleeves too wide and trousers too long for her time. The woman’s dress was of a dark velvet material, and she wore gloves and a wide-brimmed hat that were too elaborate for a modern setting.
Hermione’s stomach twisted. She’d seen old photographs of this style—this was the fashion of the late 1940s. The post-war era, the period after Grindelwald’s defeat but before the rise of Voldemort. She mentally counted back. The war had ended in 1945... which meant, in all likelihood, she had arrived sometime in 1947—just two years after the war, but still in a world that was recovering, rebuilding, and teetering on the edge of darkness.
1947.
Her thoughts stumbled over the weight of the realization. She knew this time. She had read the history books. She had studied the war, the rise of Voldemort, the defeat of Grindelwald. She had spent countless hours in the Department of Mysteries poring over historical documents about the magical world in this time. But that didn’t make it easier to accept the reality.
In 1947, Voldemort had not yet become the Dark Lord she knew. He was still Tom Riddle, a young man with dangerous ambition, already making a name for himself in the shadows. But in this moment, he was not the monster of history—he was simply a student, a young man at the precipice of becoming the wizard who would tear apart the wizarding world. She knew exactly who he would become, but what terrified her was how little she could do to stop it. How little power she had in this time. How little time there was to change anything.
She tightened her grip on the time-turner still in her hand. It felt heavier now, a cruel reminder of the uncertainty that surrounded her.
A soft gust of wind shifted her hair, and she stumbled forward, unsure of where to go next. Her magic—her connection to the magical world—felt wrong. She could feel it tugging at her, but it wasn’t the familiar, controlled warmth of her own power. It was unstable, flickering in and out, almost as if the very laws of magic had been distorted by her time jump. Her wand, tucked safely in her pocket, felt strange against her side, almost like it belonged to someone else. The magic in this time was thinner, not as controlled, perhaps not as refined. She would need to be careful.
Before she could regain her bearings, a distant sound caught her attention. A soft, rhythmic clinking that seemed to reverberate through the air, followed by the sound of horse-drawn carriages and the distinct hum of an old-fashioned street. Hermione’s mind raced as she realized it—there were no cars on the streets. Only horse-drawn carriages and a few bicycles. The world was still in recovery from the war, and magic was not yet fully integrated with the modern conveniences she was accustomed to.
The muggle world was in its own state of transition, and the wizarding world—still hidden, still secret—was much the same. She had arrived at a time when the wizarding world was still in the shadows, still deeply fractured and recovering from the devastation of the war. But it was also a world teetering on the edge of something far darker, something far more dangerous. A world where a single figure—Tom Riddle—was beginning his rise to power.
Hermione’s thoughts returned to him, the cold, calculating boy she had met mere moments ago. She had felt his eyes on her, sharp and predatory. She didn’t need to be told to know what he was capable of. And now, here she was—trapped in his time, alone, and powerless.
Her hand clenched around her wand as she took another steadying breath. She had to figure out where to go next. She had to stay hidden. The last thing she needed was to draw attention to herself in this strange, unsettling version of London.