Chapter 4
Hermione landed with a thud. Landed… why had her mind come to the word ‘landed’ first? That would imply she had been airborne at some point, but she hadn’t left the ground, had she?
She tried to open her eyes. Everything was bright. Too bright. Her head was pounding and she could hear her heartbeat thudding.
Breathe, she told herself, breathe, you probably just bent down too quickly, or hit your head, or maybe both.
She tried to recall the last few minutes but it was like trying to swim through mud. She had seen the circle of stones, and then she had heard the buzzing. No, it was the other way around. She had heard the buzzing first and then seen the stone circle, right?
Hermione tried to open her eyes again. There, it wasn’t quite as bright now. She could make out some shapes like trees and clouds. She tried to sit up. Her head spun but she managed it without losing her stomach.
Looking around, Hermione was still inside the stone circle. Her satchel was still strung over her shoulder and upon inspection, it was still mostly full. She was only missing the newest ingredients she had put right on top of the bag, of course it had to be the dittany though, she thought angrily. Her wand was thankfully still in her back pocket where she had placed it before her search. She moved to push herself into a standing position and that's when she noticed it. The diamond from her engagement ring was gone. She frantically searched the ground, panicking about what Ron would think about the missing stone so soon after their fight.
Sitting back on her feet, Hermione took a deep breath and took another look at her surroundings. Had that tree been the same size a moment ago? Where was the dittany patch she had just harvested from? Even the sun looked like it wasn’t really in the correct position for the time of day she thought it should be. Had she really been knocked out that long?
She couldn’t have been; Ron knew her typical harvesting spots and even though she had strayed a bit further than usual he still would’ve been able to find her. Unless he didn’t care to. Unless he hadn’t bothered to come find her at all.
Hermione stood up and spun on the spot to apparate back to the edge of Hogsmeade. Nothing happened. Her heart rate spiked, that couldn’t be right. She spun again and felt a small tug of magic and then… nothing. Pulling out her wand she attempted a simple wingardium leviosa on a nearby pebble; it remained stationary.
Now she was really beginning to panic. Typically Hermione was fairly level-headed but being without magic was a surefire way to get her heart racing. She tried spell after spell and received nothing more than a few sparks from the tip of her wand.
That has to be a good sign, right? Hermione thought to herself, my magic isn’t entirely gone, it’s just diminished. She ran through every cause of magical failure and memory loss she could think of. Nothing significant had happened to her that she could remember, so her best guess was some kind of head trauma that could potentially account for both symptoms.
I need to get back to Hogwarts, Poppy will know what to do. She repeated this to herself like a mantra as she began walking in what she believed to be the right direction.
She had only walked a couple hundred yards when she thought she heard noises in the distance. Hermione stood still for a moment, and then altered her course toward the noise instead. She figured that anyone out this far was probably doing something similar to her anyway, foraging for ingredients or hunting for beasts. Maybe they would be willing to side-along apparate her back to Hogsmeade.
Her pace slowed as she got closer, what could possibly be making those metallic noises? It sounded like a toddler banging pots and pans with, well, more pots and pans. She was in a wooded area now, and the noises were getting louder. She could see a large clearing coming up ahead where the source of the noise was certainly coming from. There was a large bush along the edge of the clearing through which she could see hints of red and blue and green, and flashes of movement. Hermione hid herself in the dense shrub and peered through the branches.
What she saw left her speechless.
Men. Hundreds if not thousands of men. The clearing was massive and it was full of men wearing kilts, men wearing military uniforms, men on horses, men fighting with swords, knives, maces, axes, and every other weapon under the sun. There were battle cries coming from every corner of the field, there was blood everywhere, there were bodies on top of bodies; Hermione had never been more horrified.
Suddenly something caught her eye. The sun came out from behind a cloud and it was like it was shining for him and him only. He had white blonde hair that was blinding in the sunlight. He was dressed in Scottish highlander battle gear, with a green patterned tunic and kilt.
But it wasn’t even the way he looked that caught her attention, it was the way he moved. He had a longsword in one hand and a massive shield on the other. This warrior knew when to duck without seeing behind him, he knew when to strike without a second thought. It was almost like watching a dance, it might even have been called graceful. From her distance she could still see the giant, bright green emerald that was set into the hilt of the sword and the silver carving of a snake on his shield. Her very first, immediate thought was that he looked exactly what she had always imagined Salazar Slytherin might have looked like.
As that ridiculous thought occurred to her she watched the soldier make an impressively savage kill followed immediately by an equally impressive block from an incoming sword. There should have been no way he could have seen the man coming from behind him, it was almost like he had an extra sense, or an extra pair of eyes, it was almost like… magic.
Hermione peered closer at the warrior and she was almost positive she could see his eyes, eyes that were clouded over with a milky white shine. She knew it, someone was cursing this man. He did have an extra pair of eyes, just not on himself. He had an extra pair of eyes somewhere on this battlefield, watching his back and executing without mercy.
But why? This was clearly a muggle battle, there were no other signs of magic here other than the soldier’s milky eyes. She still hadn’t found the caster of the curse but she knew they had to be somewhere close by. Would they help her? Was it worth the risk? Who was this man and why was he fighting in a muggle war? The longer she watched the more questions she had.
Suddenly Hermione felt her wand grow warm in her back pocket. Jumping slightly, she pulled it out. Sparks flew out of the tip and while she was excited, she hurried to hide it under her jumper so no one would notice her. After a moment the wand calmed down and she attempted another wingardium leviosa, on a twig this time. The twig jumped into the air and floated there for a moment until Hermione broke the connection.
Thank Merlin, Hermione sighed with relief, I thought I was going to be stuck in the middle of a muggle war without magic.
Wait, a muggle war. Since when did muggles still fight like this? It had just occurred to her that in the year 2001, swords and maces were wildly old fashioned. And the kilts. Hogwarts was in bloody Scotland and she couldn’t even remember the last time she saw someone wearing a kilt, nevermind a couple hundred of them. She had been so preoccupied by that blonde warrior she hadn’t even stopped to think about the implications of what she was actually seeing in front of her.
Hermione stood hidden in the brush for what could have been hours. More bodies piled up but the blonde warrior never wavered. She didn’t think he had even been nicked by a blade yet. She had tried to cast a couple of shield charms at unsuspecting would-be victims but there was so much chaos in battle that she couldn’t be sure she was helping at all. Finally, things seemed to be coming to an end. Battle cries faltered and there was a visible separation between the sides as they each began to retreat.
She watched closely as the blonde warrior slowly lowered his weaponry. He gave his head a small shake, looked around the field at the carnage surrounding him, and seemed to withdraw into himself. He sheathed his sword and turned slowly towards the far side of the clearing. Dragging his shield behind him, the warrior slumped his way back to what Hermione could now see was a camp at the opposite edge of the forest.
She really wanted to test out if her apparition powers were back, but she didn’t want to draw attention to herself with the loud crack that happened whenever one teleported themselves. Hermione cast a disillusionment charm on herself instead, a rather strong one which she was quite pleased with. She made her way around the outskirts of the clearing, but being as large as it was it still took her nearly twenty-five minutes, and most of the still-standing soldiers had also returned to the camp by the time she reached it.
Hermione searched through the sea of ginger and dark haired muggles, clad in their various colored tartans, looking for the blonde man in the green, plaid kilt, who she was sure was going to lead her to the resident wizard on site. She had almost come to the conclusion that she’d missed him and he’d already gone back to his quarters when a voice came directly from her right.
“If ye dinnae mind, my lady, my superior would like to speak wi’ ye,” the voice spoke in a rough Scottish burr.
Hermione gasped and then quickly slapped her hand to her mouth, not that it mattered now, clearly she had been found out. “You… you see me?” she managed to stammer out as she looked up into his eyes.
They were milky white again. Or maybe the curse had not been lifted at all yet, although his body language after the battle had said otherwise to Hermione.
The soldier didn’t respond, he just gazed back at her with a blank expression on his face. Hermione was too wary of the situation to lift her disillusionment spell yet but she replied in a steady voice, “well, I suppose take me to him then.”
He turned on the spot and began walking back through the camp. Hermione followed closely behind him to avoid bumping into anyone, but she needn’t worry because all of the other men gave this particular soldier an extremely wide berth.
They waded through ramshackle tents and campfires, many of the men surrounding which were tending to injuries. The healer in Hermione yearned to help them all, to search the field for other injured men and bring them back to camp. She knew her position was delicate though and clearly they were all muggles, so there wasn’t much magical healing she could do without having to obliviate the entire camp.
They reached a tent that, on the outside, looked like any other. Hermione could feel the magic rolling off the tent though, she knew there was more to it than what met her eye. The soldier stopped just outside and turned to Hermione.
“Remove the charm, he said there is no need for hidin’ when ye’re in plain sight,” the blonde Scot said in a monotone voice. His glazed eyes seemed to look right through her, as if he wasn’t actually even aware of her presence. This had to be a very strong curse, and the only one she could think of that allowed a caster to exhibit this much control over their subjects was the Imperius curse. It was highly illegal, for obvious reasons. Why would a wizard need control over this man as a pawn in a muggle war? The questions were endless and she hoped she was about to get at least some of them answered.
Hermione lifted her wand and tapped the top of her head. She felt the cold trickle down her spine that meant the charm was lifting and she popped back into view. Satisfied, the soldier turned and pulled aside the tent flaps, standing to the side to allow Hermione in before himself.
Upon entering the tent the first thing she felt were the wards closing in around her. This place was positively dripping with them; she knew there would be no possibility of a magical escape from a place like this. Looking up, the first thing she saw made her stomach jump into her throat and her heart begin to pound. Her body instantly went into flight or fight mode and she didn’t know whether to grab her wand or turn and run. She almost tried to do both, reaching a hand behind her as she turned on the spot.
And then she was frozen. She was frozen with her hand halfway to her wand in her back pocket, one leg crossed over the other, facing away from the man before her. Hermione felt the magic grip her and force her to turn and face him. Only when she was fully turned did he release the grip he had on her and did she allow her eyes to meet his.
Lucius Malfoy. His long blonde hair and cold, metal gray eyes were the exact same as the picture that had stared out at her from the book back in Hogsmeade at her and Ron’s flat.
How was he here? He died in 1746. She had only read it a few weeks ago, she knew it was fact.
Images slammed into her mind; the way things looked different around the stone circle when she awoke, muggle men in kilts, riding horses, and fighting with ancient weaponry, the portrait of Lucius Malfoy in her muggle history textbook, and finally back to the Lucius Malfoy standing in front of her.
She had suspected it, deep down, and she thought it was absolutely irrational and impossible, but the facts were quite literally staring her in the face.
Hermione had somehow gone back in time.