It seems to happen in slow motion.
A shove.
Her foot slipping through the unknown potion - potions? - puddled on the floor.
The time turner falling from her pocket and shattering on the floor.
The shards biting into her wrist as she lands hard on the ground.
A swirl of golden magic enveloping her before everything goes dark.
Hermione wakes at St. Mungo's to Harry pacing the short span of her private room. She croaks his name.
Harry spins on his heel so fast he nearly trips over her bed, relief seeping into him so quickly he actually sinks to the floor.
Hermione sits up gingerly, peering over the edge of the bed at him. “Harry?”
Harry's eyes gleam wetly behind his glasses as he looks up at her. “The healers didn't know if you were going to wake up.”
She holds out a hand and he takes it, scrambling up without actually putting any of his weight on her, and settling on the edge of the bed.
“You've been out for almost two days.”
“Shite… where’s Ron?”
“Ron’s grabbing a cuppa down the hall with Lavender. Er… she’s one of your healers.”
Hemione rolls her eyes. “Lavender and I are fine, Harry. Ron and I are fine. We’re all adults. Now, what happened?”
Harry runs his free hand, the one not still clutching hers, through his hair and shrugs somewhat sheepishly. “What do you remember?”
Hermione frowns. “One of the Auror teams asked for a consultation from an Unspeakable at a raid scene. There was… something about new potions. Ingredients no one recognized. Some of the vials had crashed and broken…” her frown deepens. “Someone shoved me.”
Harry stiffens.
Hermione continues. “There was a time turner in my pocket. It broke.” She flips the hand she's clinging to Harry with, brows drawing together at the new, goldish tinted scar on her wrist. “I sliced my wrist on it.” She tilts her wrist back and forth, grudgingly admiring the shimmer of the infinity-like mark.
Harry blows out a tense breath. “There was some kind of backlash of magic. The back up team found everyone passed out after the team you were with didn't check in. The puddle of muddled potions you landed in was gone, the casing of the broken time turner was still lying next to you. Everyone else woke up on scene. Except you. We don't… no one knows what you landed in was or where it went. Or what happened to the rest of the time turner. The healers can't get any definitive diagnostic spell results off you. It's… everything is wonky.”
Hermione's first instinct is to panic, to ask questions and demand answers. Something holds her back. She closes her eyes and takes internal stock. She reaches for her magic and almost reels back. She has a sudden, innate knowledge of what happened, and it terrifies her.
It takes two days and countless frustrated healers— their diagnostic spells continuously coming back “wonky,” as Harry so eloquently put it, due to an unreadable magical signature swirling around her core—before St. Mungo’s releases her with careful admonishments to return immediately if she has any symptoms, good or bad.
She is on forced leave for a minimum of two weeks as the Aurors and her fellow Unspeakables comb through the remaining potions and ingredients from the raid, trying to make heads or tails of everything.
Hermione, being who she is, dives into research mode, regardless of the innate understanding she has had of her new existence since waking. She shamelessly bullies Harry into bringing her copies of every inventory list, report, and interview log. She raids the library at Grimmauld Place, sweet talks McGonagall into allowing her into the library at Hogwarts, and owls Draco—they'd forged a tentative polite acquaintance, if not an actual bit of a friendship, when they’d both returned for Eighth year—to ask for access to the library at the Manor.
At the end of it all, Harry finds Hermione sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace in Grimmauld Place's library, wand stuck through a haphazard bun atop her head, ink stain on her chin, surrounded by parchment full of scribbled notes, and open books.
He leans against the doorframe, smiling fondly down at her. It’s an old, familiar expression from their school days and nights spent in the Gryffindor Common Room pouring over their assignments. “You've figured it out, haven't you?”
Hermione looks up slowly, not bothering to hide the mixed emotions she knows have to be swirling through her eyes and across her face. “In a manner.”
Harry quirks a brow.
Hermione closes her eyes and hangs her head. “I've known since I woke up,” she admits quietly, “but I've been… it's a bit terrifying to accept. The research was… familiar. Comforting.”
Harry moves into the library, gingerly stepping over her piles, and seats himself on a nearby ottoman. “‘Mione?”
Hermione keeps her eyes closed, briefly debating sharing with her best friend, but it's too big, too much, to process herself. She opens her eyes. “I'm… my magic is… my core was altered. I'm… I still haven't figured out how to explain it, but… I'm a sort of… conduit for time.”
Harry blinks slowly. “And that means what, exactly?”
“I'm not entirely sure, but I… if I've figured it out correctly…” she takes a deep breath, knowing how ridiculous it's going to sound. “I think I can time travel. But instead of a time being the fixed point, I'm the fixed point?”
They're both silent for several long moments. Hermione sees the exact moment Harry comes to the same conclusion she has. The hesitant hope in his eyes nearly breaks her. “You can change the past.”
“We sure about this?” Ron asks dubiously. “I mean… messing with time…”
“We’ve done it before,” Harry reminds him.
“Not like this, mate.”
“If I’m right,” Hermione starts, tone careful.
Ron snorts. “When aren’t you?”
Hermione barely resists the urge to stick out her tongue. “If I’m right, I can stop Voldemort’s rise to power.”
She can practically see the wheels turning in Ron’s head, ever the strategist. “Why not go even further back, stop the noseless git from bein’ born?”
Hermione shrugs self-consciously and blows out a breath. “This is all theory. I…”
“She wants to go to a time she knows. At least by proxy,” Harry explains.
Ron nods. “Wanna know who you can trust.” He sighs. “Be careful, ‘Mione.”
Mysterious thing, time. Powerful. And, when meddled with, dangerous.
Dumbledore's warning echoes through Hermione's mind, despite the fact that she's already determined not to heed it. She offers a shaky smile and a surer nod to Harry before she closes her eyes and taps into the golden shroud of magic around her core, letting it drag her into the maelstrom.
The full moon shines bright above the familiar trees of the Forbidden Forest when she opens her eyes. She hears a melancholy howl nearby and holds her breath. Moony bursts into the clearing, Padfoot nipping playfully at his heels and Prongs bounding in behind them. A mere fraction of a second passes before they're all staring at her, frozen in shock. A dangerous glint enters Moony’s eye and Hermione quickly shifts into her Animagus form, flapping her dark wings and launching into the air, flying a tight circle around the trio before landing lightly on Padfoot’s back, tapping her beak to the back of his head playfully before soaring back into the air and leading them on a merry chase until the dawn light peaks along the horizon. She drops low and takes a meandering path back toward the Shrieking Shack.
She perches high and waits until Moony shifts back into Remus before shifting back herself. She winces at the sight of his injuries and wandlessly casts an Accio for her bag and wand from where she dropped them in the woods earlier.
“No Peter tonight?” She asks lightly as James and Sirius shift back and she digs through her trusty beaded bag for a thermos of tea, bar of chocolate, and healing salve. She takes a bite of the chocolate and sip of the tea before offering them to Remus. He accepts both and nods a bit warily when she holds up the salve.
Hermione crouches on the floor next to him, stumbling a bit and belatedly realizing she's back in her younger body. She barely contains a wince, lamenting how much of this new magic she still doesn't understand. She subtly checks her arm as she wraps a blanket from her bag around Remus’ shoulders, noting that Mudblood is still violently etched into her flesh, before she starts casting cleaning charms and gently applying the salve to his various wounds.
“Who the bloody hell are you?” James demands.
Hermione spares him enough of a glance to smirk. “In about 30 years, I'll be your son's best friend.”
Hermione finishes treating Remus’ wounds in the ensuing silence. She tugs the blanket more tightly around him and casts a warming charm before turning and settling with her back against the wall next to him, smiling gently when slumps against her shoulder.
“Whoever you are, can we keep you?” Remus half slurs.
“Moony?” Sirius crouches in front of them, a worried tinge in his voice.
Hermione is grateful his attention is on Remus. Of all the scenarios she prepared herself for traveling into the past, the possibility of immediate, visceral attraction to the younger version of her best friend's godfather was not on the list. She doesn't mask her reaction well. James, the bastard, smirks at her knowingly when she tears her gaze away. She blushes furiously.
“I'm good, Sirius,” Remus reassures him, “don't know what's in the tea or that salve, but I feel leagues better than I usually do after a full moon.”
Sirius drops all the way to ground, turning an appraising glance on Hermione as Remus dozes off against her shoulder.
Above them, James sighs. “We should get him to Madame Pomfrey.”
Hermione shakes her head without breaking her gaze from Sirius. “Just let him rest. The salve was developed with werewolves in mind. It'll do more for him than Madame Pomfrey can, but he still needs to rest.”
James looks suspicious, but shrugs and pulls up a chair. “My son’s best friend, you say?”
Hermione yawns. “Can we wait until Remus wakes up?”
She doesn't tell them everything. She tells them about the prophecy. She tells James about his and Lily's death. She tells them about Harry being raised, and abused, by the Dursleys. She tells them about Sirius going to Azkaban, about his escape, and about his death. She tells them about Remus’ ostracization, about gradually finding people who accept him, about his son, about his son being made an orphan. She tells them about Horcruxes. She tells them about months on the run. She tells Sirius about Regulus. She tells them about Peter's betrayal.
She doesn't tell them about Harry being a Horcrux. She doesn't tell them about the Basilisk in the bowels of the school (but she does sneak away to kill the cursed beast and collect an obscene amount of venom). She doesn't tell them about Dumbledore's manipulations. She doesn't tell them about Snape. She doesn't tell them about the Hallows.
She tells them about the accident that led to her ability to jump through time at will. “We won the war,” she concludes quietly, “but we lost so much. Too much.”
She tells Dumbledore even less.
They don't tell Peter anything. Part of Hermione wants to believe he can be saved. The realist in her knows he's too weak. The other three Marauders have the grace to look a bit ashamed about it, but don't argue with her.
Dumbledore introduces her as having received home tutoring up until her final year, and she's sorted into Gryffindor. It feels fitting in a way she wasn't sure it did in her first year. There are whispers and rumors about the way she slots so seamlessly into the notoriously tight-knit Marauders, right up until the day she hexes Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix Black in the middle of the Great Hall.
Lucius runs into her hard enough to knock her to the ground, too engrossed in his conversation with Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange, and too used to people scurrying out of his way, to bother minding his surroundings. He sneers down his nose at her. “Watch your step, you filthy little Mudblood.”
Hermione's temper snaps and she casts a silent, wandless jelly legs jinx before she even fully realizes her intent to do so. “Why don't you watch yours, you insufferable prat?!” Hermione snarls as Sirius materializes at her side, helping her to her feet as Lucius tries, and fails, several times to stand from his ungainly heap on the floor.
“Alright, pet?” Sirius asks, even as he laughs at Lucius.
Hermione rubs ruefully at her rear end. “Pretty sure I bruised my arse.”
Sirius waggles his brows lasciviously. “I could kiss it better.”
Bellatrix wrinkles her nose. “That’s low even for you, Sirius.”
Hermione throws a bat bogey hex at the other witch before Sirius can even open his mouth to retort.
Hermione shoves his shoulder lightly as he leads her toward the Gryffindor tables, but doesn't try to shake off the protective arm, shaking with barely concealed rage, wrapped around her waist. She smiles gently when he transfigures his tie into a cushion before gallantly (i.e. dramatically) handing her into her seat and leans into him easily when he wraps an arm around her shoulders as he seats himself next to her.
“I'm fine, Sirius,” she whispers, turning her face into his shoulder.
“He deserves worse than a jinx,” Sirius mutters, a sharp edge to his voice, as his free hand gently grasps her forearm, where her scars are hidden beneath the sleeves of her robes. “So does she.”
Hermione silently curls more tightly into his side, knowing she's the only thing keeping Sirius from storming back across the Hall to curse Malfoy and his cousin, and stubbornly ignoring Dumbledore frowning at her from the head table.
James drops onto the bench across from them. “And what did the esteemed Malfoy Heir do to upset our darling Madame Carrion?”
Hermione scowls. “I'm not a bloody crow.”
Hermione pulls strings from the shadows. She befriends Regulus in the library and quietly promises him that his brother is a safe place to land.
She strikes up an odd, slightly antagonistic friendship with Severus that convinces Lily to give him a chance at reconciliation.
Peter gradually drifts away throughout their Seventh year. They let him. By the time they reach the winter hols, the Marauders map greets its handlers, “Messrs Moony, Padfoot, Prongs, & Carrion are proud to present…”
By the time they graduate, Hermione has carefully warded boxes in her ever present beaded bag containing Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem (found in the Room of Requirement after an arduous 3 day search by the Marauders), Salazar Slytherin's locket (retrieved by Regulus, at his insistence, with Sirius’ aid), Helga Hufflepuff's cup (retrieved by Rabastan Lestrange who, shockingly, had a rather deep-seated hatred for the Dark Lord), Marvolo Gaunt's ring (stolen from Tom Riddle’s dorm, while he was in the shower, by Hermione and a quick time jump), and Tom Riddle's diary (helpfully stolen from the Malfoy’s library by Snape).
Hermione and Sirius sprawl on a couch in his townhouse— an inheritance from an uncle that hadn't disowned him— slightly drunk the night after they graduate. Only two days from a full moon, Remus had begged off to bed early, Regulus was up in his room reading, and James was out with Lily.
“I can feel you staring,” Hermione mumbles without lifting her head.
Sirius doesn't answer right away, instead untangling their legs and then shifting until he's holding himself above her on his elbows, close enough their chests are brushing. Opening her eyes, staring into the silver gray of his, she's just buzzed enough to not let herself think about why this is a bad idea.
He lowers his head until their breaths mingle. “Tell me not to and I'll stop.”
“We shouldn't.”
“Why? You came to change the past, didn't you?”
Hermione swallows thickly. “Not this. I… in my world… you met me when I was a child. Some point in the future, that will happen again.”
“So I’ll stay the bloody hell away from you until you’re grown and remember coming back and doing all this.”
“I’m your godson’s best friend.”
“So I’ll be a standoffish prick until you tell me otherwise. I’m not going to pant after a sodding child.”
“I didn’t mean you would!”
Sirius groans, dropping his weight on her and burying his face in the crook of her neck. “You drive me mad, witch.”
Hermione suppresses a shiver as his lips brush across her pulse point and laughs wetly. “I don't mean to.”
He sighs and sits up, dragging her with him until she straddles his lap. “I don't mean it badly, love.” He tugs on a curl that has escaped from her brain. “You're beautiful.” He brushes his fingers over the ink stains on her palm. “You're brilliant.” He drags his fingers along the tender skin of her wrist to her scarred forearm. “You're strong.” He drags his fingers farther up, cupping his palm over her shoulder blade and the wing tattooed over part of her shoulder, back, and arm (a Christmas gift from Sirius). “You constantly exceed expectations.” He brushes his fingers over her lips. “Even in the midst of war, you find reasons to smile and laugh, and make those around you do the same.” He glances his knuckles over the corner of her eye. “You see everything.” Finally, he tangles his fingers on her hair, mussing it further, his other hand holding her steady at her waist. “Your very existence drives me absolutely mad. In all the best of ways. And you don't even know it.”
Hermione forgets to breathe until his hand tightens in her hair. For the first time in her life, she finds herself at a loss for words. She kisses him.
Regulus finds them on the couch the next morning, tangled together under a throw barely big enough to cover them. He smirks over his tea cup. “Glad you finally resolved the sexual tension, but did you really have to do it on the bloody sofa?”
Hermione groans and burrows her face further into Sirius’ neck.
“My sofa,” he grumbles, flipping his brother off and rolling so Hermione is between him and the back of the couch, the blanket rolling with him.
“Bloody hell, Pads, it's too early to see your arse,” James sighs as he steps through the Floo. “Hold on, is that our Carrie?”
Hermione nearly growls, slitting her eyes open enough to glare at James over Sirius’ shoulder. “I am not a bloody crow! I am a raven.” A mischievous light enters her eyes and she smirks. “But on the Carrie note… there's a muggle film that came out a couple years ago you ought to see.”
“You're leaving, aren't you?” Sirius asks, quietly enough that only she can hear, holding her tightly as she holds a newly born Harry close to her chest.
Hermione closes her eyes against the onslaught of tears. “I have to make sure that all of this worked.” She chokes a bit as tightens her hold on Harry and tries to breathe through the emotions clogging her throat. “I have to exist in my time to be able to come back and exist here.”
She feels Sirius nod against the side of her head even as his arms tighten around her.
“I'll be waiting for you on the other end.”
James asks her to be their Secret Keeper the day before she goes.
She hesitates, then laughs and shrugs. “What's one more paradox?” She takes a deep breath. “Matter of fact, let's make it two. 2002. That's the year I left from, to come here. That's when I'll remember all of this. Remember all of you.”
She finds a rip in time, a wasteland that exists outside of time, and destroys the Horcruxes in her possession, leaving their smoldering remains behind before she starts skipping through her own timeline.
The day she boards the Hogwarts train for the first time (Merlin, but it's weird being back in her 12 year old body), she finds her seat in the compartment with Neville, then presses her face to the glass, nearly crying in relief when she sees Lily and James beaming, Sirius smirking over their shoulders, waving, Harry, unscarred, unabused, happy, onto the train.
She skips over a couple years, confident they still saved Buckbeak, and unconcerned about the Dementors, Sirius having never been to Azkaban in her altered timeline, and unconcerned about mostly inconsequential happenings of other years. She pops into her fourth year long enough to see Cedric Diggory win the TriWizard tournament without Voldemort’s interference this time around.
The Battle of the Department of Mysteries has her heart in her throat, but Sirius isn't alone, James is there at his back, and blocks the curse that would have sent him through The Veil.
She laughs to herself when Harry doesn’t recognize Snape’s writing in his potions book, but gets far less swotty about it this time around, already having learned the tricks from the man himself, so long ago.
She, Ron, and Harry still end up running Seventh year, seeking out Horcruxes (decoys that Hermione had left in place of the real ones decades ago, so as not to tip their hand to the Dark Lord).
Harry doesn't go into the Forbidden Forest alone like a bloody fool. Hermione watches, nearly as proud and Frank and Alice beaming at their son, as Neville stands shoulder to shoulder with Harry, calling the Dark Lord out and candidly beheading Nagini, destroying the final Horcrux, as Harry crosses the courtyard and stands off against Voldemort.
In this timeline… in this timeline, Hermione has more years of experience than she ought, and unlike when she'd been kidnapped and tortured at Malfoy Manor, Bellatrix recognizes her this time. As soon as that recognition lights Bellatrix's eyes, Hermione throws a killing curse at the zealous witch without hesitation. She throws a wandless shield at Fred with a careless hand and uses her wand to throw a stronger shield at Remus and Tonks, breathing easier as Molly comes barreling to her boys’ aid (she had seen how fiercely Molly fought in the First War, which had led to a deeper respect for the woman in this timeline) and Sirius manages to slot in with Remus and Tonks, sending a knowing wink at her before she lets herself fade back into the time stream.
She comes back to awareness, once again in the library at Grimmauld Place.
Harry moves into the library, gingerly stepping over her piles, and seats himself on a nearby ottoman. “‘Mione?”
She blinks. “Harry?”
“Did you figure it out?”
Hermione's mind finally processes the moment and she shoots to her feet, so fast she has a moment of dizziness. She rips her cardigan off, and a sob tears from her throat at the sight of the fluttering feathers on her arm. Her sob immediately filters into hysterical laughter when her eyes trail further down to the ink on her ring finger. She closes her eyes, letting the relief and joy spread through her.
She opens her eyes again, swiping away happy tears as she takes the library in anew. Nearly every shelf, table, and desk are littered with photographs. James and Lily on the platform with Harry before he boarded the train in first year. Sirius and James at Remus' side on his wedding day. Harry and Neville as toddlers, Harry holding a little broomstick next to Neville holding a little potted plant in the gardens at Potter Manor. Sirius holding an infant Teddy at St. Mungo’s. The Order of the Phoenix, with the Marauders and the Longbottoms standing proudly at the forefront, in the Hogwarts courtyard after their victory in the final battle against Voldemort. Countless others. But a couple particular ones are missing.
“Hermione?” The worried edge in Harry's tone makes her wonder how many times he's said her name.
She holds a hand up. “Just a moment,” she chokes out. She turns, almost certain what she's going to find. Sure enough, on the mantle are the photos she's looking for. The Marauders— James, Sirius, and Remus— their arms thrown around each other on graduation day. James and Lily’s wedding, Sirius and Remus on either side of the happy couple. Sirius holding Harry the day he was born. She idly notes the clever charm work, Lily's most likely, before undoing it with a deft Revelio.
Hermione appears in the graduation photo, tucked into the small gap between James and Sirius, under Sirius’ arm in the photo of James and Lily's wedding, and, in the last photo, holding baby Harry as Sirius holds her. Her memories are a strange mishmash of the timeline she came from, and the timeline that exists now - a childhood she remembers, but did not actually live, slotted alongside the horrors she grew up amongst.
“What the fuck?” Harry breathes out.
Hermione turns back toward him, baring the golden infinity symbol on her wrist. “It gave me the ability to jump through time at will. The life you know… it isn't the one you had when I grew up with you. Don't think about it too hard.”
A sound from the doorway draws her attention.
Sirius leans in the doorframe, hale, whole, and alive. He tilts his head toward her, takes in the tattoo on the shoulder bared by her camisole, and his name in runes around her ring finger. His eyes flit, briefly, to the unglamoured photos on the mantle behind her.
Finally, he smiles, broad and real and unrestrained. He pushes off from the doorframe and stalks toward her, heedless of her books and notes, reaching for her and pulling her into him as soon as she's in reach. She goes willingly. He crushes her into his chest, trembling with the emotions Hermione can feel him holding back through their bond. He buries one hand in her hair and tilts her head back enough to descend upon her, kissing her until she can't breathe, blissfully unaware of Harry gagging next to them.
He pulls back, breathing heavily, and his smile and eyes soften fondly. “Welcome home, Lady Black.”