Chapter 1
The first time Ginny noticed was at dinner. After the final battle, the first few months had been hectic. Between rebuilding Hogwarts physically, and rebuilding the Ministry logistically, between all the hospital visits for the living, and the funerals for the dead, her whole family had been kept beyond busy with helping everyone. Still, her mother insisted that everyone gather at least once a week for Sunday night dinners, and no one was willing to argue with Molly Weasley on that point.
It started, of all things, with the pepper. Ginny had been sitting next to Hermione, the two of them talking, and on Hermione's other side, Harry was likewise deep in conversation with Ron. Hermione had reached down for a bite of food while Ginny was mid sentence, and had grimaced slightly. Without even a moment's hesitation, Harry had reached out in front of him, grabbed the pepper and passed it back to Hermione, who reached behind her to accept it and season her food while still listening to Ginny's story.
When Hermione began speaking, Ginny contemplated what she had just witnessed. None of it was unusual, except for the fact that Harry and Hermione had been facing away from each other; there was no way Harry could have seen her face to realize she wanted anything to flavor her food, let alone what, and Hermione had said nothing to let him know what it was she was looking for. Ginny had noticed the two of them had been much more in sync since the end of the war, and had been a lot better at anticipating each other's needs. However, this was a step beyond what she had seen before – it was something beyond the reach of reality without the involvement of magic.
After dinner was over, everyone had spread out through the ground floor to relax. Ginny had stayed in the kitchen to help her mom with the dishes, and Harry had stayed as well. He had finally worn Molly down into accepting his help with cooking and cleaning after meals, by insisting it wasn't fair for her to have to do all the work in the kitchen, and that he couldn't be both a guest in their home and therefore immune from chores, and also part of the family. She had reluctantly accepted at the suggestion that Harry might worry that he was not family. As she finished drying the last plate, Ginny walked back into the living room. Hermione and Ron had been deep in conversation, sitting in two of the armchairs over in the corner, but when she walked in, Hermione looked up at her, and quickly excused herself.
“Hey Ginny,” she said, approaching the younger girl, and hesitated for a moment.
“Can we talk?” Ginny asked, and Hermione nodded.
“Let's take a walk outside,” Hermione said, and they headed to the front door. Ginny paused to grab a jacket, as Hermione held the door for her.
The sun was hanging low in the sky, and the late summer heat was beginning to dissipate. Ginny shivered slightly despite the canvas jacket she was wearing, while Hermione didn't seem to notice the cold at all beneath just the grey henley she was wearing. They started walking in silence towards the ward boundary behind the orchard, Hermione's boots making a quiet crunching on the pebbles of the path to the edge of the property.
“What's going on, Hermione?” Ginny finally worked up the nerve to ask. “There's clearly something happening between you and Harry.”
“I thought you noticed something when we were talking at dinner. What was it?” Hermione asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.
“He passed you the pepper,” Ginny said, and before she could finish explaining, Hermione was already nodding along.
“And I didn't ask for it. Of course. Well, we were planning on telling you soon anyway, it's just ...” and Hermione trailed off for a moment. “It's difficult to explain. Both what happened to us, and also how. And also because of the history we all have.”
By that time, they had reached the edge of the property line, and started walking clockwise along the edge of the grass, long habit from the war keeping them just inside the wards.
“The fact is that, well, that we're ...” and again Hermione paused, seeming to search for the right words. “Well, we're soul bonded.”
“You're soul bonded?!” Ginny was barely able to restrain herself from shrieking, only the necessity of trying to keep their conversation private muting the volume of her words.
“Oh no, Ginny -” Hermione began, but didn't have a chance to finish before she got cut off.
“When? Wha – How? When?” Ginny spitballed her questions so fast Hermione didn't have a chance to even begin to respond. “Those are supposed to be extremely rare, how did -”
Hermione finally cut Ginny off, chopping her arm in front of her before folding her arms across her chest, finally shivering slightly in her long sleeved shirt – either from the growing chill in the air, or from the topic of their conversation, Ginny couldn't tell.
“Whatever you're thinking, it's not like that at all, Ginny,” Hermione stated. “I – oh blast it, if I start from when the bond actually happened, it won't make any sense, I'll be telling it all out of order. Let me start at the beginning, Ginny, and please, just wait until you hear the whole story before you come to any conclusions.”
The redheaded girl nodded her assent, and the two continued walking through the grass, heading towards the garden behind the house. After a moment to gather her thoughts, Hermione began telling the story in detail.
“I suppose, if I'm going to tell the story right, that I should start in first year. Our first year, Ginny, before you got to Hogwarts. Harry had gotten his invisibility cloak for Christmas, and decided to use it to explore the castle after dark. I didn't find out he had gotten it, let alone went exploring with it, until later – I wasn't even at Hogwarts at the time – but on his first late night excursion, he decided to check the Restricted Section for information on – oh, it doesn't even matter what it was anymore - Flamel, and the Stone. Unfortunately, the first book he picked up started shrieking and wailing when it was opened due to the wards on the Section, alerting Filch, and he had to leave right after. When he told me about the incident later, after I got back to school, it planted a seed in my mind.”
“Then, in our third year – your second – I had access to a Time Turner for most of the year. I used it to attend all of my classes, obviously, but I was also using it for other things. There just wasn't enough time in the day to do all of the studying and homework and revising I needed to do on top of attending classes, so I began Turning for that work as well. And then I was putting so many extra hours into each day, it began wearing at me, making me more irritable than normal, so I had to start Turning to get some extra sleep to balance out the ratio of how much time I was spending awake. And, well, I borrowed Harry's cloak for most of the year – at first so that I could do some work in the Library without anyone noticing there were two of me there, then as my schedule got more and more away from normal hours, to sleep in the Dorm during the day without the other girls noticing I was in bed at odd hours while everyone else was heading out to class, and to start studying in the Library after curfew. And that, finally, was when I started using his cloak and the Time Turner to start peeking in the Restricted Section. I had already been in there the year before – technically, no one had ever revoked the unlimited pass that Lockhart had given me, so the wards never triggered when I was reading in there after hours."
"I wasn't able to learn most of the spells I found, but it was a major development for me. All of the magic we were being taught in classes was, hmm, easy," Hermione said, gesturing negation with her hand to counteract the words she uttered. "I don't mean to brag - but learning the spells that we were supposed to be just wasn't a challenge, intellectually. Sure, my physical coordination sometimes needed extra practice, especially when I was younger, with the more complicated motions, and there were plenty of spells I just didn't have the energy to cast ahead of when we were supposed to learn them. But the memorization, and learning? That part I never had any problems with. In those nights, I found books on magical theory, spellcrafting, and the philosophy behind magic. All topics that I not only craved to learn about, but that were more engaging for me. On top of that, the spells in the Restricted Section ..."
Hermione hesitated for a moment before continuing. "Some of them are there certainly, because they are dark magic. Some, because they are too complicated, or powerful, to let just everyone learn. Polyjuice is in the Restricted Section; it isn't inherently evil, but it's not something you want just any teenage student knowing how to make. Others were there because they were dangerous - not to those they were being used on, we all learned plenty of curses, hexes, and jinxes, after all - but to those casting them."
"Some of the more interesting and outlandish philosophy and theory books were in there too," Hermione said, and she sighed. "As I went through, I began to see common threads between books. Spells that could have interesting interactions, theories from two separate books and authors and eras of history that could combine to lead to new discoveries. So ... I began to take notes."
Ginny couldn't help the slight chuckle that came out at the older girl's dramatic way of revealing that fact.
"I know! I know, laugh at Hermione, taking notes," she said, chuckling at herself as well. "But I wrote down as much as I could, filled several books worth of notes. By the end of the year, especially after I dropped Divination, my time balance had shifted - I was spending more time in the library after curfew, under the Invisibility Cloak, taking notes, than I was anywhere else. And that includes sleeping in my bed in the dorm through the night, whilst being in the library at the same time. I was doubling, tripling up there."
Hermione reflexively checked the time as she felt rather a presence approaching her table in the library. With how much she was looping time in upon itself these days, it was important to make sure that she interacted with others in chronological order so that no one would learn about the artifact she had been entrusted with. She relaxed as she realized it was Harry sliding into the seat next to hers. He waited for her to finish what she was working on and acknowledge her presence, a fact that she was extremely grateful for. She had been working at a breakneck pace the last few days, and knowing where to pick back up when she resumed would save her precious time. As she finished noting down her current topic, she looked up at him.
“Can we talk,” Harry quietly asked her, careful to respect the library's silence.
“Of course,” Hermione said, and, with a brief regretful glance, she placed her quill inside the page she was working on in her notebook as a temporary bookmark, and then in turn used her notebook to mark the page of the book she had been copying a spell out of, pushing it towards the center of the table, signalling to Harry that he had her full attention.
“I'm not an idiot, Hermione,” Harry said, and she felt her eyebrows furrow as she wondered why he would possibly think she thought that. “I'm not near as smart as you, but – I'm not dumb, Hermione.”
“Of course not, Harry,” She found herself reassuring him naturally, before he gestured with one hand to let him continue.
“I know something's going on,” He continued, and Hermione felt herself pale. “You've been taking three classes at the same time, and never missing any of the actual class periods for any of them apparently. You're keeping up with a higher workload than anyone else in the castle – and that's before factoring in your usual standard of quality. You're in the library at every hour – not just 'a lot', like you normally are, but always.”
Hermione quickly glanced around, making sure no one was in earshot despite the near whisper he had been speaking in.
“Harry - I - ” Hermione tried to begin a sentence repeatedly, unsure what to say, what she could say. Harry reached across the table, grabbing her hand in his, and then began to speak again.
“I know Ron has been trying to figure out what your secret is, but I haven't tried myself. Because … Well, like I said, I'm not an idiot. There's only so many things that could be the answer for how you're able to be in more than one place at a time.”
“Harry, you can't -” Hermione tried to warn him, but found the words caught in her throat. “I – I can't tell you - You can't.”
She wasn't able to utter anything more; how Professor McGonagall had vouched for her personally with the Ministry at great risk to her reputation, to both of their reputations, it had all stilled her tongue since the summer, stifling her first impulse to share what was an incredibly exciting event with her friends. Hermione found now that she couldn't say anything either way; not willing to confirm what Harry was telling her, but not able to lie to her best friend either. Luckily, it seemed that Harry somehow sensed the struggle within her, because he just smiled and continued speaking.
“I haven't asked you what's going on, because I thought if you weren't telling me, you had a good reason. I wouldn't have brought it up now, but you've been looking more and more stressed out lately. I thought it might have been because of our fight earlier, I thought it might have been because of your course load. But we made up months ago, and you dropped Divination, but you don't look like you're getting better; if anything you look more out of it now than you did at the beginning of the year. I don't know why you're not telling me whatever it is. I know … I know I haven't been the best of friends to you this year, the friend you deserve. But I'm here if you need to talk about it.”
Hermione felt herself convulse at his words. How could he think he wasn't an amazing friend to her? Despite her promises to Professor McGonagall, Hermione found she had to say something in the face of his self doubt.
“Harry, I'm not allowed to say anything. You can't know. I would have told you if I could - I would tell you everything if I could. But it's only because I'm not allowed to say anything. You're wrong – you are my best friend, the best possible friend I could ask for.”
At her final words, despite how quiet they had been speaking, the silence between them seemed deeper, more charged.
“Alright,” Harry eventually said. “But I'm here if you can talk about it. Or if you need anything.”
With those last words, he released her hand and pulled his homework out of his bag, giving her a moment to process. It was most likely the stress of how much she had been Turning time lately that had caused her to be so emotional and open with Harry. She pulled her work back in front of her, but despite opening the books, she found her mind still on the conversation they had just had. Was Harry right? Had she been getting more stressed lately? As she struggled to think back over the past week, she realized that she had lost all sense of time. She had been spending days at a time for every sunrise and set. She could cut back a little on using it so much; at this point, she didn't really need it for her school work at all, and had merely been doing personal research. She should cut back, now that she thought about it. Harry was right that she had been getting more stressed as the year went on and her usage of the Turner increased. But for now, there was still another chapter left in this book she wanted to look at. With one final glance over at Harry, she resumed her work. She was truly lucky to have a friend like him.
They reached a corner of the property, and continued their walking. Hermione's face turned pallid as she then spoke her next words.
"It was probably a good thing I didn't have access to the Turner after that year. I had become addicted to time. I'm no longer sure when my birthday technically should be, exactly - the time I spent petrified in the Hospital Wing in my second year is easy enough to calculate, but it was certainly more than cancelled out by the time that I Turned over the course of my third. I … I lost count of how many hours, how many twists I made. I became months younger at the end of second year than I would have been otherwise, only to then become even older than I would have been before anything started, and I don't know by how much. It's ... terrifying, actually."
"Our fourth and fifth years, we were really just too focused on the tasks at hand to really do any independent research. First keeping Harry alive through the tournament, and then skirting around Umbridge to run the DA and to find all the information we needed for it ate up all our time. For both of us. But although I was too busy to do any other personal research, we still came across things that were, hmm, useful but not applicable. Advanced shield variants that had various advantages and drawbacks, but weren't worth teaching because they were edge cases. Dozens of curses and hexes, that we had never seen before, that wouldn't be widely known and would therefore be harder to block - but that were much more complicated to cast. Utility spells that would prove useful when on the run or hiding out, but that wouldn't be any use in a hedge maze, or when locked in an arena with a dragon. We both are very good, were good even then, at thinking outside the box, finding uses for spells that are off-label, but the problems we faced were so narrow in scope. If Harry couldn't get past the dragon, survive underwater for an hour, survive whatever horrors they put in the maze, nothing else really mattered. A dragon is a large wall, an obstacle that must be overcome. Yes, there are some tricky ways around one to avoid them in the first place, but it is still a threat that must be honored when you have to get through one."
"When we were running the DA, we had to teach to the tests - OWLs, mostly, but there were a few older students there that were working on their NEWTs, if you remember. Those spells formed the core of our curriculum, and after that, any time we had left over for teaching was focused on rounding out everyone's knowledge. We had to find spells that everyone could learn, and the easier the better, as it would mean both that the younger students would have a chance to learn them, and also that we could fit more lessons in. We also tried to focus on large, salient threats that we knew were waiting out there - the Patronus Charm was a priority for us, for instance, since we knew the Dementors would involve themselves in the war at some point. We couldn't afford to waste weeks learning esoteric spells that would only see niche use, or that represented marginal upgrades over more generic ones. Due to the unevenness of education at Hogwarts when it came to Defense, we had to make sure that students of all age groups, and with different Professors for each year, had a common general knowledge base. Something that would carry them through their exams - and more importantly, leave them well rounded enough that they could survive what we both knew was coming."
Hermione flipped through the book in front of her frantically. Normally one to read carefully, she instead sped through page after page, barely taking in a vague sense of what she was looking at before moving on. She preferred to read carefully; never skipping ahead, reading entire sections, chapters, at a time. However, she was on a deadline. Harry had only a week left before he had to compete in the Second Task, and she needed to find a spell to help him breathe underwater. She had already torn through three books, in just this study session alone, and wanted to get through both this current book she was reading on hydromancy and at least one more before she had to leave for class. While other students were revising their essays due today, she was taking advantage of the one hour break between classes to push a little farther ahead with her research, try to find a way to keep her best friend alive.
Well, she corrected herself, not her research; their research. She flicked her eyes up briefly, only sparing a moment from her skimming, to look at Harry sitting across from her. He was also pouring his all into this Tournament. While getting him to do his work early wasn't easy, it also wasn't the all consuming struggle that dealing with Ron's lackadaisical attitude towards homework constituted. However, he had stepped up in a big way, and was putting just as many hours into this project as she was. Considering the only purpose of her current library time was to keep him alive, she would have hoped he would be as enthusiastic as her, but he wasn't just present, he was really trying, putting in actual effort. It simultaneously made her heart swell with pride at his pushing his boundaries and academic ability, and tear her hair out with frustration at how much better he could do in their usual daily work if he would put the same effort in.
A spell to purify water for drinking. A spell to conjure water. A spell to make water clearer for better visibility. A spell to change the color of water.
None of these were what she needed. Wait. That second to last one, improving visibility underwater. It wasn't the solution to their most pressing problem, finding a way for Harry to breathe underwater and not drown, but it might just come in useful for navigation and, more importantly, combat underwater. After the First Task, she was assuming that anything involved with this Tournament was going to involve deadly peril.
Quickly glancing up at the clock, and evaluating how much time she still had left in their break period against how much she had already processed, and still had to go, she came to a decision. Breaking out one of her notebooks, she quickly started jotting down the wand motions and incantation for the charm, in case they had free time later to teach it to Harry, once they had triaged the situation.
Harry glanced up at her change in routine, but, at her head shake of negation, he immediately resumed his own search. He could have been slacking off, or taking breaks, or trying to find some shortcut, but instead, he was finally matching her pace and keeping up with her. The joy that filled her at his diligence made her redouble her own efforts, eager to find a way out for him.
"Still, despite all of our focus being on other pursuits, we did come across spells that were too useful to just ignore. If we had any free time when we did, I would copy them across to the notebooks I was compiling. If we didn't, I would at least note what we found and where. Every few months, when things died down temporarily – either right after one of the Tasks in the Tournament finished or when Umbridge was regrouping to try a new approach, a few rare other times - I would take my list of book titles and page numbers and spell names, and spend whatever time I could copying as many over as possible."
"In our sixth year - Harry and I that is - Dumbledore started to teach Harry what a Horcrux was, and what Riddle specifically had likely used. As Harry learned, he shared what he was taught with me - well, and Ron, also - and I started scouring the library for anything I could find that might have more information. The Headmaster had already gone through and pulled every book he could find that referenced the topic of Horcruces out of the library, afraid someone might follow in Riddle's footsteps. When I approached him, however, he was willing to let me study those books - under close supervision, mind. With those as a starting point, I was able to learn more about the magic that went into a Horcrux - how they functioned, how to identify them. How to destroy them. I turned my time in the library to learning about magic that affects the soul more generally."
"Despite the, hmm," Hermione stalled for a moment, searching for the right word. "Interpersonal conflicts and drama that sprang up, it was a relatively quiet year. I spent a good part of sixth year working on enchanting an artifact - one of two that I've made. The second, you've already seen - my bag, the beaded one? It turns out that claudications and emboîtement are some of the harder magics to work. You can certainly buy such items without excessive difficulty - but they are crafted with basic, generic versions of the magic involved. Tents that are larger on the inside are, well, pricey, but still fairly easy to come by. However, they all function the same way. Any sort of customized or bespoke version that you might hope to obtain and you are pretty much forced to craft it yourself. The bag was exceedingly difficult work, and took me a good chunk of the summer after sixth year. But it was my first project that gave me the practical experience and confidence with those magics to even attempt it. That first project I worked on, was a book."
Again, Ginny couldn't resist herself from chuckling slightly at Hermione's predictability, and the older girl smiled along as well.
"Oh, go ahead, laugh. Of course the first thing I made was a book. But it was only practical. My collection of notebooks was starting to get excessive, and the older ones were showing significant wear. I enchanted the book I made to be durable - to resist damage and destruction, whether being ripped apart, set on fire, or just exposed to water and the elements. I made it able to hold more information than just the number of pages inside, of course. And I added in some basic divination rune work, to allow it to aide the reader in flipping to exactly the right page. As well as ... a few other tricks. If we had had half the adventures that year that we had had any other, I never would have been able to finish it in time."
"After that, the hardest part was filling it. Every spell I had noted down previously, but never found the time to copy over before went in first. Everything I had copied over into my various notebooks the previous years went in as well - all the spells that we hadn't been able to teach in the DA, all the spells that weren't going to help Harry in the Tournament, everything I had pulled from the Restricted Section during my late night excursions. All the information that I was able to get about Horcruces - whatever Dumbledore let me copy out of his private library. All the information about soul magic in general that I spent my time researching that year. And then, as the end of Spring approached, I began to truly raid the Hogwarts library. I'm not sure why - if I knew, on some instinctual, magical, level that we wouldn't be returning the next year, or if it was my own perfectionist nature. But I began to pull anything and everything in the library I could find that contained actual spells, or information even vaguely relating to our situation. I tasked Harry and Ron with combing through books for me whenever I could. In the end ... I suppose, given that we won the war, that we survived, that it was enough. At the time, however, it never felt like enough. But that year, when we got on the train, I had my magnum opus, my grand grimoire."
As she finished speaking, Hermione reached into the back pocket of her jeans and removed a book, a book that couldn't possibly have fit inside without the aid of magic. It was about twice the size of her hands in both directions, and just thick enough to have heft, and be comfortable to hold by the edge, without being so large it was unwieldy. Hermione waggled it in Ginny's direction, before returning it to her pocket, the older girl speaking as she did so.
"And that was when everything changed."