Veneficium

Tuesday, June 2nd 1998

Not a single muscle moved as she counted the seconds, ensuring Dolohov would not return to finish her off. The courtyard was plunged in silence, stifling and thick, until her ears, left unsupervised, filled it with an imaginary din: a horrid ringing that throbbed and drilled through her senses.

"Miss Granger?" Professor Flitwick’s voice finally broke the spell, a whisper so faint that she nearly jumped. She had forgotten he was there, his presence almost lost in her taut concentration. "It’s alright, he didn’t catch us," he murmured as if his words alone might calm the feral beat of her heart.

Her muscles softened, her relief fragile and laced with lingering dread, and Hermione took a tentative step toward him, the movement soothing. "Had he lingered a second longer, I’d have cursed him myself."

Flitwick gave a tight-lipped smile, his tone dry but sincere. "Funny how things turned out—so was I." He paused, and she managed a tiny, shaky laugh, her steps as hesitant as her voice. It was a surreal feeling, walking when she couldn't even see her own feet beneath the disillusionment spell. "Come now. There’s nothing left for us here. There’s no safe route to the Staircase Tower, not without risking being spotted." He sounded firm, cautious. "I don’t like our odds."

They turned quickly and slipped back toward the forest, weaving their way along the familiar but menacing shadows. She had imagined this mission might take her back inside the castle walls—back to the very place where her life had twisted in unthinkable ways. Perhaps it was a blessing they hadn’t gone inside, though the detour left a bitter ache of disappointment she couldn’t fully shake. Trusting Professor Flitwick’s judgment, she stayed silent as they walked, their hurried steps merging into the dense undergrowth until they reached the shelter of the trees at the forest's edge. Here, far enough away from the peering eyes of anyone on the lookout up in the castle’s towers, beneath the thick canopy, the disillusionment spell faded, and she could see her mud-splattered boots again. 

She cast a look around but couldn’t spot Hagrid among the dense foliage. Gathering her nerve, she sidled closer to the small professor beside her. "Professor… I was wondering…" she started softly.

A tired but knowing chuckle slipped from Flitwick. “Ah, I figured sooner or later you’d find your voice, Miss Granger. If this is about Kingsley, I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything other than that he has found what he has been searching for until now,” he said grimly as they kept walking further into the thick forest. “ I trust he’ll tell everyone as soon as he is prepared for the responsibility.” 

She blinked, her heart stammering again, and her body jumped a tad as a bird started singing in the branches right above her head. He had found it? Her mind buzzed with questions, curiosity and worry pushing each other back and forth. But what did this discovery mean? "What responsibility, Professor? I… I don’t understand." 

He stopped beside a broad tree trunk, leaning against it as he turned to face her. In the dappled light, Hermione caught a glimpse of something she had never noticed before: the deep creases beneath his eyes, faint stubble grazing his chin, and a weariness that seemed to weigh him down like an invisible anchor. Beneath his age-worn, dulled blue eyes, the energy she had always known was still there but dimmed—haunted, even. "All in due time, Miss Granger," he replied softly, his voice shaded with sorrow. "All in due time."

A stillness settled between them, the unspoken worry pressing on her. She tried to focus, swallowing her questions as she nodded, her thoughts churning as they began their trek back. “Should we wait for Hagrid…?”

“No, no — I think I remember the way back well enough. We’ll find him along the way, I’m certain.” 

It wasn’t long before they caught sight of Hagrid’s hulking figure, just ahead on the narrow footpath winding through the darkened forest. They filled him in on what they’d overheard, though their words felt heavy with unsaid things. A lazy goodbye later, Hermione took Flitwick’s arm, and with a final glance toward where she guessed Hogwarts lay, they disapparated back to their safehouse. 

oOo

As they gathered in the lounge room later that night, after Hermione and Fleur had taken care to fill and board up all the fireplaces scattered around the townhouse, the atmosphere was morose, and not even a hearty dinner had offered any consolation. Earlier they had sent letters to the few people they knew of to warn them of the Death Eaters’ plan, the two women writing in silence at the dining table; she hadn’t bothered to share what little she had found out about Kingsley during the mission. 

Much like it always did, it had been raining outside for hours by then, the heavy droplets smashing into the windows, the wind howling outside without a stop in sight. Professor Flitwick had dosed off on the rocking chair, lulled perhaps by the soothing sound of the storm, while Bill and Fleur were giggling among themselves on the settee, the thick drapes tightly shut behind them, the only light coming from the wall sconces, dull and yellow. 

Hermione was, unsurprisingly, reading opposite them, trying very hard not to pay them any attention. Try as she might to suppress her recluse instincts and, at the very least, hang out in a public space, they did not make it easy on her. The book in her hands was boring enough that it did little to distract her mind from their amorous whispers and stolen kisses. 

Standing up to light another lamp, the door opened as Kingsley cautiously poked his head inside. “Filius?” Three pairs of eyes looked back at him, all except the one he had called for. 

“Your partner in crime is sleeping,” Hermione chuckled as her fingers clicked the lamp on, her eyes still dark. “But come in please,” she said through grilled teeth, pointing with her chin towards the couple. 

“Ah, well…” Kingsley gave a tense smile but entered nonetheless. There was a box in his hand. 

Hermione was not the only one to notice it, as Bill stood straighter, letting his wife slide down from his chest. “What’ve you got there, Kingsley? Got me a gift? You really shouldn’t have.” 

“Hardy har har, Bill, you’re killing me,” he rolled his eyes, plonking himself down next to the nest of pillows Hermione had created for herself. “It’s about as far from a gift as possible…” he muttered, his eyes locked onto the box as he twirled it in his large hands. He wore a brown vest over his white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal his muscular arms, the dusting of hair barely visible on his dark skin. “Hermione, be a dear and wake up Filius.” 

Quickly looking away towards her old Charms’ teacher, Hermione sighed and came closer to him. 

“Professor…” she said softly, gently shaking him. “Professor Flitwick.” 

He woke up, grimacing, sounding rather shocked, pushing his spectacles up back his nose. “Oh, oh — what happened?”

“I got something to tell you all,” Kingsley's loud voice came over her shoulder, and Flitwick pulled himself up in the rocking chair. 

“Confessing at last?” Fleur said, pouting, while Hermione picked up the book from where she had left it on the sofa to take her previous seat. Surely not? When she had spoken to Professor Flitwick earlier that day, he had made it seem as if it would take Kingsley another year or so until he finally told them his secret. 

The ex-Auror inclined his head at her question, slouching over his knees. “Better now that later, I figure… might as well tell you the whole story, then, no?” After everyone replied with a resounding yes, he pinched his nose. “Right, well — a few weeks ago my great uncle’s painting mentioned something in passing to me, scared that I had brought a bunch of thieves into the house to rob him dry of his greatest treasures. Naturally, I told him off, but I remembered that when I was little I had overheard a conversation about this greatest treasure and that’s what this is all about. I found it — I can only assume it does what it’s supposed to, but I can’t test it.” 

Hermione was at the edge of her seat, figuratively and literally. “Well, what is?”

“I’ll only tell you if you all promise to take it seriously,” he said, looking at each of them to see their reactions. It was clear he was quite nervous but did not relent until he made sure all of them promised aloud. “It’s two necklaces,” he carefully opened the box as if it would bite him, his fingers tracing along the jewellery, “that used to belong to my great-great-great-grandmother. It is said she used them in her old age to travel back in time to spend one a day with her mother, who had died at birth.” There was a collective gasp as Kingsley pulled out a chain of gold, embellished with small diamonds and a bright ruby pendant hanging low. 

Staring in disbelief at the necklace, Hermione’s brain ran wild with questions and doubts. Peeking over his shoulder, she saw its matching pair sitting on a bed of velvet in the box, the gems glittering ominously in the low lights. It was ridiculous, really — she must have misheard him. 

“She did what with it?” Bill exclaimed, sceptical himself. “Kingsley?” 

“Time travel, yeah, you heard right,” he said, laughing, gently putting the necklace back in the box. “Her husband was a proficient alchemist, Unspeakable by profession. I do not claim to know how it was created, only that it is… I- I found his journal where he only mentions it and that it had achieved its purpose.” 

Everyone was quiet as they slowly processed the information, time slowing down to a near still, and Hermione frowned. She had never heard of another object that could move its wearer back in time other than the ministry’s hourglass necklaces… this must have been a variation of those then. Wincing as she remembered how they had all been accidentally destroyed in their fight against the Death Eaters at the Ministry’s Department of Mysteries, Hermione felt a pang of shame at having been the cause of such a loss. Kingsley’s family story must have been an exaggeration at best. 

The silence was broken as Flitwick scoffed loudly. “That’s preposterous — time travel doesn’t work further back than a few days.” 

“Time travel as you know it doesn’t,” he muttered. 

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Kingsley, time travel has been studied intensely by just about every country for millennia, nothing like this has ever been heard of,” Bill chimed in, crossing his arms. “I think I know better about this than you, no offence.” 

 Travelling for years during his years as a Curse Breaker, an extremely mentally and magically challenging career, Hermione had no doubt Bill had bumped noses with all sorts of enchanted artefacts — perhaps he had even encountered some related to humanity’s lifelong obsession with untangling the rigid boundaries that chained time. She herself had taken great interest in the subject in her third year when her life might as well have depended on her time-turner. Sirius and Buckbeak’s had. 

“You promised you’d give this a chance.” 

“No, I promised to listen to your ridiculous plan, not to this!”

As the men argued over their vastly different understandings of time travel, Hermione’s eyes couldn’t help drifting to Fleur, who had been awfully quiet this whole time, peculiar for the Frenchwoman. She had her arms folded as she leaned against the crook of the settee, her usually gentle face etched in lament, pensively observing the carpet. That was… strange, to say the least. She was used to the other woman being strongly opinionated, not diffident. 

“Look, you can listen to everything I have to say and if you don’t want to do it, then fine,” Kingsley abruptly stood up with his hands up, dropping the box at Hermione’s feet. 

“Fine!”

“Fine,” Kingsley echoed, crossing his arms as he stood straighter. “Look, people, this may sound extreme, crazy, whatever you want to call it, but — I have a plan. For the future, so to say.” 

Hermione frowned, not entirely hopeful or as trusting of his judgement as she had once been. 

“The necklaces can be activated by a ritual in order to send the wearer back in time. A specified amount of time that can be, as far as my great-great-great grandfather’s journal is to be trusted, as far back as one wishes. My plan — using an anchor here, we go back in time to fix this mess before so many die. Think of all the innocent lives that have been lost in these wars… we could save them.” 

To say her jaw dropped was an understatement. 

“That’s it, I’m out of here,” Bill exclaimed, standing up. “Whatever you think you’re doing with this is fucked up, Kingsley,” he said, pointing his finger in the ex-Auror’s chest. “Leave me out of it. Come on Fleur, let’s go to bed.” 

“I… I was-” she muttered as she took his hand, getting on her feet, her skirt all wrinkled. 

“Don’t tell me you agreed with him, honestly.”

Fleur looked like she wanted to say saying something, before scrounching her nose. “Of course not,” she said before they left. 

“Well? Do you have anything to say?” Kingsley turned towards her, looking positively done with it. 

Hermione bit her upper lip, avoiding his eyes. Usually on his side, this time she could not see how his plan was meant to help anyone, regardless of its logical impossibility. 

“I see… nice to know who I can count on,” he finished while slowly nodding, a bitter smile stretched on his face, before huffing and slamming the door on his way out. 

Upon hearing the slight creaking of the rocking chair, Hermione looked over to Professor Flitwick, who had either been so thoroughly exhausted that nothing could keep him awake, or was pretending to in order to stave off another uncomfortable conversation. Giving a long-suffering sigh, she levitated a throw blanket over him. 

Feeling the exhaustion rub up on her too, she picked up her book and went upstairs to her room, the lights shutting off on their own. 

oOo

“You be not cooking the meat enough,” the Shacklebolt’s family house elf, Amina, commented as Fleur plated a hunk of rare beef for Bill. 

The remark brought no reaction from the Frenchwoman who served some roasted potatoes on the plate, dumping a heaping of gravy over it all. The three of them were in the steaming kitchen, finishing up dinner. 

Over the past couple of days, after the big fight over Kingsley’s revelation, Hermione had started noticing strange bouts of behaviour in Fleur. Previously, whenever the elf, who had taken to bothering her specifically, was nagging her, she would lash out and argue with her. Now, Fleur was simply ignoring her. 

“I’ll take these,” Hermione offered, levitating the plates heavy with food into the dining room; she had gotten better at the spell, enough that she needn’t follow them out of the kitchen anymore. “Are you feeling alright?” 

Fleur’s brows furrowed and she responded with a shrug, her long silvery hair falling messily over her shoulders. “Yes, why wouldn’t I?” 

“You’ve been… different ever since the whole thing with Kingsley.” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Hermione,” Fleur said as she walked out of the kitchen, the elf immediately rushing to peak into the pot left bubbling on the stove. 

Casting a pitiful glance at the creature, she sighed. Maybe she was imagining and blowing things out of proportion — they were living in stressful times, to say the least. She hadn’t felt like herself in months. Much like in her case, Fleur must have been expecting more out of Kingsley and the whole affair had set her down. Her old self would have run down to Amina and tried to get her to demand higher benefits from her master, would’ve insisted that Fleur had to confess what was bothering her. 

She had had a tiresome day, joining Professor Flitwick in another scouting mission to Hogwarts. Luck had not been on their side as they had not been able to gather any information of worth, as none of the high-ranking Death Eaters had been within sight; they had hung out with Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest instead, helping him feed the herd of Thestrals. The fresh air and friendly conversation had been much welcomed. The terrifying creatures that stood as a bitter reminder of what she had lost had not been. 

Everyone was home now, hungry and tired. 

Getting up from the small table, Hermione wiped down the drips of sweat from her forehead with a rag and left the house-elf to her business. Coming out into the narrow hallway, lit only by a lone sconce, she hugged herself as a shiver travelled down her spine; she cast that aside on account of the abrupt temperature change from the steaming hot kitchen. Bill and Fleur’s voices carried over from the closed dining room. 

“She is lying, you know…” 

She didn’t dare turn around, feeling its presence again, the shadow that followed her around. The words were coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, low and quiescent, and not for the first time she thought they were merely a creation of her beleaguered mind. 

“You’re not real,” she insisted, holding her head high. Abruptly spinning around to catch a glimpse of it, she saw nothing bar for the empty hallway. 

Four pairs of eyes regard her as she dashes into the dining room, the unsaid threat of the fifth enough to leave her breathless. Taking her seat without paying anyone any attention, she picked up her fork and dug in, famished. No one bothered her. 

The minutes passed by as Hermione focused only on her dinner, her eyes only looking above after she had finished all her potatoes. It was certainly one of the most disjointed meals they had ever had. Fleur was playing with her food while Bill kept casting her chary glances, his scars sticking out like a sore thumb in the light of the chandelier, giving him an almost feral appearance. Professor Flitwick was absently eating, his gaze lost somewhere across the decanter, and Kingsley was shovelling food into his mouth at an alarming pace. 

Kingsley had become sort of an outcast after the whole affair. The laws of time were so simple and, frankly, incredibly concise that it was bizarre that Kingsley could believe otherwise; one could not safely travel back any further than five hours, and time could not be altered. Everything that one tried to change using a Time Turner had always happened. 

I mark the hours, every one, Nor have I yet outrun the Sun. My use and value, unto you, Are gauged by what you have to do.

Even after all these years, she could still perfectly recite the inscription on the Time Turner she had used in her third year. It had been a terrible mistake to ask for one, let alone be granted it. Hermione wanted nothing to do with time anymore. 

‘Think of all the innocent lives that have been lost in these wars… we could save them,’ Kingsley had said. She wanted to, she desperately wanted to save them all. But no. It was impossible. It was impossible-

“You have only me.” 

Hermione screamed as she jumped from the table, her chair toppling to the ground. It was here too. Kingsley stood up immediately, wand out, ready for a fight. Everyone was looking from her to the window and around the room, searching for the source of her disturbance — the shadows were invisible to everyone but her. 

“Hermione? What happened?” 

“Nothing!” she yelled back, grabbing her hair, her heart beating like the violent winds of a tornado, about to burst out of her chest. She stumbled around before bending down to lift the chair in its place, hands shaking. The shadow had gone as quickly as it had come. 

As she ran out of the dining room, she faintly heard Fleur calling after her, but it made no difference. She wanted to be alone, needed to. It was impertinent that she figured out what the deal was with these shadows before they brought upon her ruin. 

Running up the stairs, skipping every other step, she locked herself in her bedroom. 

“You look like you have had a run-in with a dragon,” the portrait of Nasira Shacklebolt exclaimed, clutching her pearls, at her bursting in. 

“Tell me, have you ever seen a man in this bedroom before?” 

“Your question is highly inappropriate, miss. I am under no obligation to answer, much less under that tone.” 

Brushing her wild hair out of her face, Hermione had calmed her breathing enough to advance towards the painting above the bed. What on earth was wrong with her? “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Miss Shacklebolt,” she said, raising her arms in surrender. “I just… since I came here, I mean — a man, a shadow, anything.” 

“Such as you asked me that night?” 

Remembering the night when she had been accosted in her bed by this most strangest of apparitions, Hermione nodded, carefully sitting down on the bed. “Yes… like that…”

“I have never seen anyone here that is not your friend.” 

“Hermione? There was a knock at her door. “Hermione, are you in there?” She could recognise Kingsley’s deep voice even in her dishevelled state. “Please let me in.”

Clutching her head, she cried out. “I can’t.”

“Hermione, please.”

She hated him. She hated them all. All she wanted was to be left alone to die in peace, to be reunited with her friends, her most beloved Harry and Ron. “Go away, Kingsley.” 

He knocked on the door again, before stopping. Hermione shoved herself under the blankets, the tears pouring free into the pillows. 

“I can go talk to him if you want,” Nasira said, having taken pity on her plight. 

There was no way to know for sure if actually had, but no one bothered her anymore, so she could only assume it so. Hermione hugged the pillow tightly, reminiscent of how she had been only a week prior. Would she ever be able to get over it, to move on? She wanted to, desperately! 

She wanted to be free, to eat ice cream at Fortesque’s with her friends, to travel with her family, to be eleven again, reading Hogwarts, a History for the first time. 

But time had passed and she was not eleven anymore. Was time not her greatest enemy? She wanted to conquer it, to rise victorious over it at the very end. 

Eventually, her tears calmed down and she took a deep breath, only to be taken by a wave of hiccups. 

Through the shield of the blanket, she felt a hand touch her shoulder. “It’s alright, I am here.” She knew it was it, him, the shadow; it was a childish thing to call him, but until she knew more, it would do. 

“Who are you?” she managed to say through her hiccups, not wanting to scare him away. 

He chuckled, his hand moving soothingly around. “Do you not remember me, Hermione? We used to be so close…” He felt so real, so alive. 

“No, I don’t.” She stirred under the blanket, trying to turn around, get out from under it, and see him at last. “Tell me, please.” 

When she emerged from her cocoon, he was gone.