Timeless
Time breaks down your mind and body,
Don’t you let it touch your soul - Timeless, Taylor Swift
June 18, 1998 - POV Hermione Granger
Harry, Hermione, Ron, Luna, Ginny, and Neville raced backwards, away from the death eaters now approaching them. They had been tricked, Hermione thought to herself. So stupid! I should’ve known. They ran back to the door that led them into the Hall of Prophecy and Luna, who was at the back of the group when they entered, held the heavy door open as the others raced past her. Once everyone had made it out, she slammed it shut and shouted, “Colloportus!”
Even with the door locked behind them, they only had a few minutes until the death eaters would catch up with them again. “What do we do now?” asked Neville who was handling the situation surprisingly well, all things considered.
Hermione went to answer but Ginny got there first, “We split up. Boys, you go through that door.” She said, pointing to the farthest door from where they were standing, “Luna, Hermione, and I will go through a different one.” She had never seen the redhead so sure of herself. The fourth year gryffindor had really come into herself after getting over her crush on Harry.
A loud bang sounded from behind the door and the boy ran in the direction Ginny had pointed to. They heard a woman scream “Bombarda Maxima” and the door blasted into bits. The girls ran the opposite direction of the boys, followed closely by deatheaters. “Where to next, Gin?” Hermione yelled.
“I hadn’t thought that part out,” she admitted. “I was just worried about getting Harry to safety.” Maybe her crush was not as far gone as Hermione originally thought.
“That door!” Luna said decidedly, “That’s where we’re meant to be. I can feel it.” With no time to argue, all three girls changed course for the room Luna had pointed to, following the blonde with complete trust.
When they entered they were basked in light that seemed to dance around the room. The entire room was completely covered with clocks, large and small, grandfather and carriage, hanging in spaces between the bookcases or standing on desks ranging the length of the room, so that a busy, relentless ticking filled the place like thousands of minuscule, marching footsteps. Still racing to get away from the death eaters, Hermione noticed a large crystal bell jar at the far end of the room that seemed to be the source of the light. It seemed to hold a hummingbird that was rapidly running through its life cycle on a loop. She then noticed that the shelves on either side of her held not books, but time turners, some like the one she used in third year but some had different colors and shapes that looked experimental.
Forgetting the battle around her, Hermione reached out to grab one of the weirder looking ones when she felt a blast hit her from behind. Both of the fourth years next to her were hit with her and the force of the blast knocked them all in different directions. Hermione hit the shelf that she was standing next to with Luna hitting the one directly across from her. Ginny, on the other hand, did not hit a shelf but the bell jar at the back of the room that held the hummingbird. The three death eaters that had followed them into the room were continuing to throw spells at them as they tried to grab their wands and stand back up.
Suddenly, a wayward spell hit one of the bookshelves and they both came down on top of the three girls, who sat there wandless and defenseless. The sound of glass shattering and sand falling filled her ears as Hermione looked to the girls who were going to die with her. Withtears in her eyes she grabbed hold of Luna’s who grabbed Ginny the same way as the bookshelves full of time turners came down on the three girls and shattered the crystal bell jar.
***
Hermione awoke to a bright light shining in her face and four faces looming over her. A woman with long blonde hair pulled back presumably to keep out of her eyes, a man with short, dark brown hair, and two aurors she had never seen before but were wearing the uniform.
“Oh look! The brunette one is waking up!” exclaimed the woman.
“Hush, we don't want to scare them, Euphemia.” The man whispered back.
“What should we do with them?” Euphemia asked one of the aurors.
“I don’t know.” The auror responded, “We should contact Dumbledore. They're probably his. You and Fleamont should stay here until they’re all fully awake.”
“Are you sure? This one can’t be older than eleven.” How rude! Hermione thought. She knew she was short for her age but surely not enough to look eleven.
Hermione watched as the two aurors left and picked her head up to look around. She still seemed to be in the department of mysteries’ time room, but there were no death eaters and the whole place seemed completely repaired. Something warm moved in her hand, she startled for a second before realizing it was Luna. Luna! She thought. Hermione immediately sat up straighter and looked at the girl whose arm she was clutching, only able to see her hair. She was still knocked out but Hermione could see her start to wake. She then looked to the other side of the blonde and saw Ginny, now awake, staring back at her.
She wasn’t able to get a good look at her friend before the blonde women started to speak again and both girls rushed to look for their wands, letting go of Luna in the process. She looked all around her but she couldn’t find it anywhere and from the looks of it Ginny couldn’t find hers either. Panicking, she remembered that their wands had been dropped before they passed out. Had they been taken? Did the death eaters or aurors take them? Who were these people? Were they death eaters too?
“You’ll be fine, sweetheart. I know you probably have a lot of questions you need answering, and I promise we will answer them for you, but first you need to tell us your names.” Euphemia asked, calmly.
“I’m Hermione, the redhead is Ginny, and the blonde still unconscious is Luna,” Hermione answered, matter-of-factly. She was taken aback by how much like her in first year she sounded like.
“Who are you? Why are you here? Oh Merlin, What day is it? How long were we out?” The questions flowed out of her as her nerves continued to grow. She soon began hyperventilating and flinched when Euphemia went to comfort her.
Instead, Ginny crawled over towards her and began to rub her back. She turned to look up at her friend before her eyes grew wide and she scuttled away from her. Looking back at her friend she saw not the fifteen year old girl who walked in the room with her, but a much younger looking Ginny, one younger than when she first met her.
She rushed over to Luna’s sleeping body, ignoring Euphemia’s insistence she slow down, and moved her hair so she could see her face. Just like Ginny, the unconscious Luna Lovegood was a very young preteen.
Her next move was to find a reflective surface. Slowing her pace so as to not completely freak out Euphemia and Fleamont, who was still in the room despite his silence, she padded over to the crystal bell jar, firmly intact now holding a hummingbird of a different color, and looked at herself in the glass. As she stared at her own reflection she realized why Euphemia had thought she was eleven earlier. She was the spitting image of her eleven year old self, bushy hair and buck teeth to boot.
Thoroughly freaked out, she ran back to Ginny and screamed, “We’re eleven again!”
Ginny nodded before responding, “What are we going to do?”
“Alright, alright, settle down you girls or you’ll wake your friend up. She has to wake up naturally or she could have some serious damage. To answer your questions, Hermione: My name is Euphemia Potter and this is my husband Fleamont,” He had moved to stand behind his wife and gave the girls a short wave, “I’m the one who found you girls in here and called the aurors and my husband. I’m an Unspeakable here at the Ministry of Magic and I work in the Department of Mysteries. I’m going to assume all three of you are witches by how unfazed you are at all of this information. Today’s date is the first of August, 1971, in case you have some memory loss, and you couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a few hours, seeing as though I was the first person in here this morning and this room was checked off at 10 o’clock last night.”
Hermione let out a sigh of relief before circling back to her second to last statement. “Oh Godric! What date did you say it was again?”
“The 1st of August, 1971.” Fleamont responded.
“No, no, no, It’s the 18th of June, 1996. Right Gin?” Ginny nodded fervently to Hermione confirming her suspicions.
“Gin, I think something is really wrong.” Hermione stated softly. And with revelation in her eyes, Ginny fainted.