This Will Not Stand
The brightest witch of her age, Hermione Granger is officially an Unspeakable, the youngest in a century.
Her work restoring the Time Turners that were destroyed in the war had brought her to the attention of the Department of Mysteries. The fact that she had succeeded, with no Ministry resources, guaranteed her role as an Unspeakable in the Department.
When first presented with the position, she was eager, intrigued. Having been to the Department of Mysteries to rescue Sirius, she probably knows more about it than most. She knows that there is a Thought Chamber where they study the nature of thought. And a Time Chamber, where her Time Turners now reside. A Love Chamber whose door, according to Dumbledore, always remains locked. A Death Chamber with a Veil that changed everything.
But what she doesn’t know is what an Unspeakable does, and with the job offer her need to know it all rose to the surface. To finally know more about the Department of Mysteries where she and five other teens battled for their lives. To understand the Death Chamber where Sirius lost his. To learn even more about time than her independent research taught her.
She’d eagerly accepted the position. And was promptly told that while she’d touch on some of the other areas of study in the Department, she’d be focused on the study of Love.
Hermione had nodded at her superiors while pushing down her disappointment. While she’s seen first hand what the power of a Mother’s Love did for Harry, the general idea of Love sounded like rubbish. A childhood fairytale where ‘True Loves’ Kiss’ saves the day and pink hearts float through the air.
But she’s been with the Department for some time now, and for once, she readily admits she was wrong. Love is quite possibly the most mysterious branch of magic and is extremely difficult to comprehend.
And so today, like every other day, she dutifully runs through her tasks for the day, starting with the large fountain in the center of the room. Perching on the edge, she tests the strength of the love potion flowing down its marble passages.
In years past, an Unspeakable would ingest the love potion while a colleague observed the effects and jotted the results. What they found is that you cannot duplicate Love, only infatuation. So they no longer use the love potion for experimentation, rendering it a thankless and pointless job. But today it’s on the list the Department gave her, and so she completes the task with minimal grumbling.
Moving away from the fountain, Hermione stands in the soft glow of the Wall of Love and inadvertently sighs. She looks quickly around, but she is alone in the chamber. Her eyes drift back to the shelves lining the wall. This is where the true study of Love begins and the uninspired name does not do justice to the amazing feat before her.
She has seen a lot of amazing things since joining the Wizarding World. Dark Lords and chocolate frogs. She herself studied the old Magics, devoured every fascinating resource in her efforts to recreate the Time Turners. But this…
On the wall sits row upon row of small glass orbs, each about the size of a Snitch. Within each sphere are two distinct lights—the essences of the couples who are critical to their study. Couples whose love is so strong that syphoning a bit off won't affect them. Couples who have the power to shape time, space, and history with the force of their emotions.
Their essences flow around each other, an ebb and flow of light, shining against the black marble of the room. And yes, they’re beautiful. But powerful things are dangerous. Motives are not always pure, and endings are not always happy. After all, Severus Snape had loved Lily Evans once.
And so, when she works with the orbs, Hermione treats them with the reverence and caution they merit.
First, she always familiarizes herself with the file. It would not do to forget important details that could affect the entire study. She then selects an orb and pours the essences into a device similar to a Pensive. Unlike a traditional Pensive, which plays a copy of a memory for the user, this device acts like a Portkey. One dip of the finger pulls the Unspeakable to the couple’s location.
From there it’s a simple matter of Disillusionment or polyjuice and falling back on one’s training. Unspeakables in their department are able to perform Legilimency, see relationship bonds, as well as accurately discern strong, unspoken emotions.
It is not an exact practice; if the Unspeakable arrives at the couple's side and has missed an important event—a wedding, a baby, a first kiss—then they must use a Time Turner to backtrack and observe. It’s Hermione’s favorite part of the job. But she is not willing to rush the necessary procedures beforehand, so she tears her eyes away from the wall and begins the laborious process of matching each orb to the nameplate underneath it.
This shouldn’t be necessary, but some of her more thoughtless counterparts are careless with the couples. And Unspeakable Thomas was here last.
One would think that with those garish black, square-framed glasses Unspeakable Thomas would be able to see well enough to place the orbs in the correct location. But one would be wrong. So Hermione has to check.
She frowns as she arrives at Logan Echolls and Veronica Mars. Their orb is missing. With a shrug, she begins to search the Chamber.
It’s not always Unspeakable Thomas’ fault. Some of the orbs do like to cause trouble. Similar to how magical portraits work, the essences behave and interact like their subjects do. Even the retired orbs, couples who have since passed in the mortal world, get frisky sometimes.
Hermione, more frequently than she’d like to admit, finds herself tasked with barring Marie and Pierre Curie from sneaking into the Healing Chamber.
James Potter is fond of hiding and rolling out during quiet moments to startle the Unspeakables. Hermione can practically hear his chuckles, and his wife Lily’s eye roll, in the pulsing light.
The ones still living, like Logan and Veronica, are far worse. They are more willful than the others. Veronica, for example, has a pesky habit of exploring. And Logan indulges her whims, content to roll along, forcing Hermione to keep a closer eye on them.
Not that she minds too much. Often, Veronica guides Hermione to little oddities that she is too busy to discover on her own. Once Veronica even led her to an Unspeakable attempting to bottle the fountain’s love potion for his personal use.
Veronica’s usual blue glow burned so bright red that day that it lit the chamber, alerting Hermione. Only Logan’s cooling pink shimmer could calm her.
No, losing that particular orb is only a problem if—
Hermione’s loud gasp echoes through the chamber.
The door, the door that is to ‘ remain locked at all times,’ is open.
And of course, Hermione spies Veronica rolling through, Logan’s light hovering fondly at the back of the sphere, along for the ride.
Bollocks.
Unfortunately for Hermione, orbs are resistant to magic. She gives chase, cursing the magical world.
Why does nothing stay where you bloody put it?
Like the stairs at Hogwarts, the rooms in the Department move , and there’s no telling what’s on the other side of this door. Hermione moves faster.
Jogging through the door, she breathes a sigh of relief. They’re in the Death room. There is nothing in here but— she freezes in horror as momentum propels Veronica and Logan down the stairs into the deep stone pit that encompasses the majority of the room.
Hermione clatters down the stairs at a dead run, but there is no stopping them. The orb rolls toward the stone arch, the ethereal glow highlighting the glass, and it wobbles frantically trying to veer away. But it’s too late.
As they roll through the Veil, a flare of pink light covers the blue.
Hermione rounds the arch to see the pink light extinguished and the blue light rapidly transforming to a muted gray.
She collapses to her knees and cradles the glass in her hand, stroking the smooth, rounded surface.
This will not stand.
“Ugh!” Hermione slams into her flat, tossing her purse at the table in the entry. Crookshanks rushes out to greet her, but he heads for higher ground as she storms through the hall to flop down on the sofa.
“Crooks!”
The large ginger cat freezes and slinks back to her.
“How could the Department deny my project?”
She pops back up and begins to pace.
Crookshanks jumps to the sofa’s backrest, settling in to watch.
Hermione pauses at Crookshanks’ sigh and pins him with a narrow-eyed stare.
“Oh you would be upset too if they binned your proposal right in front of you. As if I wouldn’t keep several copies.” She scoffs and resumes her pacing.
“Look!” She waves her hand and a copy of her proposal flies from her bag, through the hall, and into the room. Crookshanks simply licks a paw at her wandless, wordless display.
Grabbing the color-coded document midair, she flips through.
After that foul, loathsome Unspeakable Thomas had flippantly admitted to opening the door to ‘air out the room,’ it had been all she could do not to Stupify him. Or slap him. And she’s not about to let the idiot ruin one of the greatest examples of Love in their collection. So she tirelessly worked on a presentation to defend her plan.
“See?” She shoves her report under Crookshanks’ nose and he gives it an obliging bump. “All I have to do is use the Time Turners, but rather than simply observe, I figure out how he died and save him. He wasn’t supposed to die, so the consequences should be minimal.”
Crooks meows at her and Hermione huffs.
“No. I know what you’re thinking, but I’ll be fine. Eloise Mintumble was a moron. She got cocky, inserted herself into the work, and her hubris got her stuck in the fifteenth century. The timeline was irrecoverably damaged.”
Not to mention the woman aged five centuries on the return trip. She lived out the remainder of her days in St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Melodies.
But Hermione is right about this. She can feel it. And she's always chosen the right path, rather than the easy one. Always.
At most she’d have to go back a week.
Crooks bobs his head and she pulls her proposal back.
She sits heavily on the sofa again and Crooks butts his head against her cheek. She reaches up to stroke his fur.
But they’d denied her. ‘Plenty of other couples,’ they’d said. They hadn’t even read the file.
Epic. Spanning years, continents, lives ruined, blood shed.
Logan and Veronica had been practically created for the study of Love, Time, and Death.
Hermione listens for the voice that tells her to follow the rules, respect her superiors. But that voice was suffocated during the war. Snuffed out by gross injustices and the causal disregard for childhood innocence in favor of the ‘greater good.’ Now, there’s not even a whisper.
She has loads of time saved up. And she's not about to let a couple she's devoted so much of herself to die because some idiot is rubbish at his job.
It’s time to conduct some independent research.
Hermione flies commercial to Neptune, California.
She could have performed a simple Inter-continental Apparition with ease, but the Ministry records anyone popping out of England. The mundane approach is much harder to track. And once she arrives in the States, Hermione will be able to move freely with no one the wiser.
Not that she’s doing anything wrong, per se. They said they wouldn’t expend departmental resources on the endeavor. They did not expressly forbid her to carry out her plan. Hermoine learned the power and nuance of words at Dumbledore’s knee; she can defend her actions if pressed.
Once she lands, Hermione hides in a toilet stall at the airport and downs a bit of polyjuice, waiting as her body morphs under the loose clothing she wore specifically for this occasion.
When she feels her features settle, she opens the stall door and catches her reflection in the mirror across from her. She’s two inches taller with thin, wavy blonde hair.
If asked, she’ll say she’s an ex-girlfriend. The couple had had that ridiculous nine years of radio silence, so it is plausible. And she assumes Veronica will be too hysterical to pay her much mind, but just to be certain, Hermione takes her wand out of her pocket and slides it up into her sleeve.
Satisfied, she locks herself back in and Apparates to the funeral parlor where the paper said Logan’s wake would be held.
The plan is simple: gather the facts, figure out how Logan died, then go back to the appropriate time and repair the damage. Confident, Hermione strides through the funeral parlor doors.
Her plan begins to unravel almost immediately.
She’s dismayed to find Veronica sitting in front of the empty casket, dry-eyed and cold. Confused, Hermione stares, searching for some sign of strong emotion as she’s been taught. But she finds nothing. All she sees is a single tear running down Veronica's cheek.
That worries Hermione more than the dry eyes. Veronica is no Lavender Brown, concerned with her makeup and setting a pretty picture. Veronica is blood, and guts, and fire.
Perhaps she’s numb. Perhaps the absolute wrongness of the death has irrevocably affected her aura. By the time Hermione departed for her trip, even that dull light was gone.
Hermione drifts away from the main room and wanders the funeral parlor, listening for clues.
It seems Logan was the victim of a car bombing. That makes a sort of sense. Hermoine doesn’t have much to go by, but it stands to reason that any death caused by the Veil would be sudden and senseless. In her opinion, a bomb is a bit dramatic, but Death isn’t her area of expertise.
“He died on his wedding day, of all days.” The whisper draws her up short.
His wedding day? How is that possible? They were married weeks ago.
She follows the blonde who said it, Parker, if she remembers correctly. And the more Hermoine learns, the more confused and uneasy she becomes.
Logan had doubts? They were only married a few days ago?
Something is seriously wrong.
Leaving the funeral home, Hermione retreats to a nearby park bench and digs in her tiny handbag, reaching in up to her shoulder. Finding the file she borrowed from the Department, she pours over its contents.
“Yes! There!” she crows. “They were married three weeks ago.”
She looks up in triumph, then frowns. She should have brought Crooks with her.
Pulling out her notebook, Hermione jots down Logan and Veronica’s wedding date and time and then performs the complicated math to suss out the correct number of dial turns. Pulling out her Time Turner, she dials and lets the world reverse around her.
It stops on the date she noted as their wedding day, and Hermione walks the short distance to Keith’s house to observe the wedding once again. She remembers the small ceremony fondly.
That day, her task was to keep a close eye on Keith, with the intention of charting the changes in his health alongside the Love Veronica and Logan generated in his presence.
As predicted, while the couple said their vows—in between nervous quips and stupid grins—the healing energy of Love washed over Keith. His heart rate slowed, his nerves calmed, and the inflammation in his brain was greatly reduced.
She’d estimated an additional year of life expectancy and wondered what grandchildren would do.
But now, when she arrives at the small Craftsman, the backyard is empty. No wedding.
Peeking through a window, Hermione sees Keith tucking into a microwaved meal in front of the telly. A quick diagnostic scan shows a reduction in his general health from the standard she previously noted in the file.
This makes no sense.
Stepping back into the garden, Hermione Apparates to the small alley outside of Veronica and Logan’s apartment.
No one is home so she waits. She snacks on a granola bar from her bag. And waits. She drinks enough polyjuice to make Barty Crouch Jr. proud. And waits.
Determined, she waits. Just as night falls, she hears Veronica laughing in the distance. Hermione is still polyjuiced, but she Disillusions herself for good measure and then steps out into the street.
And almost vomits.
Leo ?! Where is Logan?
As the couple pass Hermione and flirt by the door, her anger spikes so violently that she inadvertently calls up a localized wind storm. She hasn’t displayed accidental magic since she was a child, and those instances never ended well.
Luckily—for Veronica—Leo leaves, but still Hermione fumes.
What in Merlin’s name is happening? Where did Leo come from? He’s supposed to be in San Diego on the verge of ending his second marriage. She’d checked.
Hermione needs to regroup.
Did Veronica have an engagement ring on her finger? What happened the night Logan proposed? She must get to the bottom of this.
Out comes the file.
She finds the proposal date and time, does the math, holds her breath, and spins.
When she emerges, it’s night again. Hermione once more reaches deep into her bag, this time pulling out the Extendable Ears. She levitates one end to the open window of Veronica and Logan’s apartment to listen.
The two human-looking ears connected by a string look disgusting but are rather effective. And necessary.
She’d popped in on Logan and Veronica once—disillusioned, of course—and...her face turns Weasley red at the memory. Fair to say, that’s an experience she won’t repeat. She’s kept the Ears on her ever since.
Flushed, Hermione focuses on the conversation above.
“ How many pockets have you searched? The pocket on the right.”
“WTC, dude.”
Hermione rolls her ‘cussing’ eyes. Stupid cussing bet.
“I think it goes something like this. Veronica—“
“Stop.”
Hermione gasps. STOP?
“ Stop. Don’t. Don’t. Please. We’re not getting married.”
Hermione stomps her foot and pulls the Ear down. She rips the Time Turner out of her blouse. She doesn’t need to check the file; she knows where she’s going. She’s visited this time and date on multiple occasions.
For research purposes, of course.
She spins the dial with a screech of frustration.
“ Did you hear something?” floats down from the open window as the world spins away.
When it stops, she’s in the same spot but the sun is shining. This is the earliest point she can think of. The day Logan came home, appearing out of the water like Neptune himself.
She crosses to the beach, remaining visible this time. She imagines leaving bodiless footprints in the sand would send the Muggles to church or therapy.
Glancing around, Hermione pauses. She is still a tall willowy blonde, but she doesn’t exactly blend. She glamours her clothing to match the skimpy attire of those around her.
The red crop top and denim shorts are adequate, but she doesn’t know what to do with the Time Turner. She can’t risk removing it. Finally, she loops it around her waist like a belly chain and tucks the hourglass into the back of her tiny shorts.
From memory, she picks a spot close enough to hear and watches the show along with a pretty African American girl.
Veronica appears, dog in tow, and Hermione’s fingers unclench. This is how it should be.
Satisfied, she turns back to Logan’s excellent entrance. “Oh, I do not mind if I do.”
“Bitch, get in line,” her friendly companion replies.
Hermione’s eyes widen. She had not meant to say that out loud. It’d just popped out of her mouth. Oh well, no harm. She blames the jet lag.
Then her jaw drops open as Veronica sidles up to them and engages in complete bizarre banter. Hermione covers her shock and joins in the conversation, barely registering what Veronica’s saying as her mind races.
This isn’t right.
According to the file—the file she wrote based on her own observations—Logan emerged and Veronica launched herself at him, dropping Pony’s leash without a care. She wrapped herself around him, and Pony, not to be ignored, nudged them joyfully, knocking the couple over.
All three rolled in the sand amongst laughing and kissing and slobber, then the couple struggled up and raced each other back to the house like randy teenagers with Pony galloping alongside.
Instead, when Logan arrives they have an awkwardly suggestive, stilted conversation for the benefit of people who don’t matter. Hermione can’t comprehend it. What changed?
She casts her gaze around, desperate to understand. Someone has been meddling. But why? How?
And then she sees it out of the corner of her eye. A flash. A momentary glimmer that she just barely catches, so quick that she wouldn’t have seen it had she not been focusing so intently.
The telltale flick of a wand. The glint of garish, black square-framed glasses. She turns her head sharply, but by then it’s gone. Disappeared as though it had never been there at all.
Hermione’s eyes narrow. And suddenly at least the how is clear.
This will not stand.