All She Could Do Was Try
30 September 2004
Hermione poked her wooden spoon at the sausages she was cooking up. They sizzled and crackled on the cooking surface as the spell she'd cast to quickly sear them went through the meat. Soon enough, they were fully aromatic and filled the kitchen with a spicy scent that lured Ron up from where he sat on the divan.
"Sausages?" he asked, munching a scone. Hermione scowled at him and said,
"You'll spoil your dinner."
"Thanks, Mum," he teased. Hermione was in no mood for playful banter. She just pulled the sausages off the skillet and Scoured it clean, cooling it down with a quick charm and putting it back in the cupboard. She scooped out some mashed potato with butter onto plates for herself and Ron, and she asked him,
"Get two Butterbeers out, will you?"
"Oh. I drank the last one before you got home from work." Ron's face darkened, and Hermione pursed her lips. She shook her head and asked,
"Did it occur to you to go buy some more?"
"No, it didn't." Ron took his plate of food and pulled a glass out of the cupboard. He filled it with water from the tap, and Hermione noticed that he hadn't gotten her a glass of water. She was suddenly very angry with him, angrier than she'd been in a long while. She reached into her pocket and felt the Time-Turner there, the shiny silver capsule that had been delivered to her office.
"So, George and I are thinking that the Hogsmeade location is a good idea," Ron was saying as he went to the dining table, "but we'll each need to make a sizeable investment up front."
"What sort of investment?" Hermione asked, and Ron gave her a weighty look.
"Fred wouldn't have hesitated."
"Fred isn't here," Hermione said, and she immediately set down her plate and touched at her forehead, whispering, "I'm sorry. That was awful."
"You're right. Fred's not here, so I'm helping run the business he started," Ron said sharply. "My brother's dead, so I'm trying to expand on what he left behind. Is that all right with you, 'Mione?"
"I said I'm sorry," Hermione said quietly. She sat down at the table with Ron and folded her hands. "I need to visit my parents again tomorrow. My mother's frightening me a bit."
Ron chomped on a bite of sausage and insisted through his chewing, "It could just be regular old memory stuff, Hermione. Old people -"
"She isn't that old, Ronald, and you know it. She hasn't got dementia. She's got short-term memory issues, and I'm quite certain it's related to the work I had to do on her mind during the war." Hermione felt her cheeks go hot as she stared at her plate. "My dad says she went into a tea shop the other day and called his mobile phone frantically asking him how she'd gotten there. She left the stove on and burned food; she got out of the shower with the water running for over an hour."
"You did what you had to do," Ron reminded her. "You protected them from Voldemort. You went and found them when the war was over. You did more advanced memory work than any Ministry Obliviator could possibly do."
"Well, something went wrong," Hermione sighed. She poked at her sausage with her fork and began murmuring names. "James and Lily Potter. Remus Lupin. Sirius Black. Nymphadora Tonks. Bathilda Bagshot. Alastor Moody. Colin Creevey. Severus Snape. Albus Dumbledore. Fred Weasley."
"Right. You're being awfully morbid, so if you'd care to explain yourself." Ron let his fork drop to his plate, and Hermione raised her eyes to him. He glared at her and tossed his hands up. "I fought in the war, too, Hermione. I've got scars just like you. I lost people, just like you. Why are we sitting here listing names?"
"Don't you sometimes wish we could make it so it never happened?" Hermione asked him. Ron scoffed. He swigged at his water and told her,
"This isn't our third year where we saved Buckbeak, Hermione. It isn't like we can go back and stop Voldemort from ever killing Harry's parents, or dividing up the wizarding world and making everybody hate each other. It isn't like we could stop the wars."
Hermione put a bite of mashed potato into her mouth and swallowed it. She stared at Ron and finally asked,
"If you could stop the wars, though, would you?"
He narrowed his eyes and said, "Yeah. Of course I would. You think I wouldn't give anything to save those people? Course I'd change it all. I'd give my life ten times over if it meant all those people you just named got to live, Hermione, but it doesn't work like that. We're the survivors. We're here, married. This life we're living is the only thing we've got. So."
He began to tuck into his food with gusto then, and Hermione just studied him. He'd asked her if she was in love with him. She'd realised that she was not, in fact, as in love with him as a wife ought to be with her husband. She was a witch who had married her best friend. Four years earlier, it had seemed like the right thing to do, after all they'd been through, to promise to spend their lives together. But they argued all the time. Sex, which was an unsuccessful attempt at creating a baby, was almost awkward between them. It certainly wasn't the steamy sort of affair one expected between married people. Hermione blinked at Ron and realised she wasn't meant to be with him. Not like this.
She thought of her mother, whose mind had been addled by the memory work Hermione had been forced to inflict upon her during the war. She thought of Molly and Arthur Weasley's unquenchable grief. She thought of Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, James and Lily Potter, Severus Snape… all dead. She thought of the students who had been slain at their own school in a mighty, terrible battle. She thought of Muggle after Muggle being murdered and reanimated into Inferi. She thought of Death Eaters terrorising the Quidditch World Cup, of the way Bill and Fleur's wedding had been sacked. She thought of the way the Ministry of Magic had fallen to forces of evil. She thought of it all, and then she thought of the Time-Turner in her pocket.
If you could stop the wars, though, would you? she'd asked her husband, and Ron had replied that of course he would, that he would give his life to save the dead and to change what had happened.
Hermione pushed back her chair and excused herself quietly from the table. Her heart began to race inside her chest. She needed to act now, she thought. If she thought about this too long, she would panic and destroy the Time-Turner. If she considered what all of this meant too deeply, she would not take the actions "O.S. and friends" had begged her to take. She needed to give of herself again to save wizardkind. She needed to surrender her future to the past, to alter the course of what had happened so that the fallen could live full lives and the destruction she'd experienced would never come to pass.
"Ron?" she said, and he turned from the table to look at her. He was chewing a bite of food, and she just stared at him for a moment as she told him, "I'm not hungry. I'm going to go out and buy some Butterbeer. Anything else we need?"
"Erm… could use some more black ink, if you're out," Ron said. Hermione nodded. She picked up her black leather handbag - she'd learnt after their seventh year that keeping an Undetectable Extension Charm on her bag at all times was wise - and carried it into her bedroom. She shut the bedroom door carefully and began to move with swift, smooth motions. She opened her wardrobe and took out all of her clothes, stuffing them into the handbag. Knickers and bras, blouses, skirts, outer robes, dresses, denims, jumpers, t-shirts… she had quite a mix of Muggle and magical attire. She shoved in winter hats and cloaks. She went into the bathroom and took her toothbrush, the rest of her toiletries, and a bar of soap, and into the bag it all went. Hermione went to the bedside table drawer and opened it, feeling guilty about taking money she shared with Ron. But she would surely need money where she was going. So she took a drawstring bag that she knew held about two hundred Galleons, and she tossed it into the handbag. She cleared her throat, looked around her bedroom, and felt her eyes burn.
The traveller, she'd been told, would never, ever return forward in time. This was a One-Way Time Turner. She was doing this for the good of the wizarding community. She was doing this so that Remus Lupin and Sirius Black would be good friends with James Potter as adults. She was doing this so that Harry and Ron would meet as first-years at school and bond over Wizard's Chess instead of forging connections through trauma. She was moving through time to spare Severus Snape and Draco Malfoy from being caught in a terrible game involving the murder of Albus Dumbledore. She would be using this device so that Neville Longbottom's parents would have never been tortured into oblivion. If Hermione could go back and make just the right changes, inflict just the right shifts, perhaps the world would be different enough that some pain would be averted.
"You all right in there?" called Ron, and as he opened the bedroom door, Hermione rushed out toward him and flung her arms around him. He staggered back a step, and she whispered,
"I do love you. So much. Ron, I love you so much."
"I love you, too, 'Mione," Ron said. He pulled back, and he smelled of sausage and potato. Hermione thought to herself that she was going to immortalise him just as he was right now, eating the dinner she'd cooked him, his shirt collar open, his hair mussed. Her eyes burned, and she whispered,
"I'm going to the loo before I go get that Butterbeer. Be right back."
"All right." He looked concerned, but Hermione nodded firmly and rushed back into the bedroom. She moved into the bathroom and slammed the door shut, pressing her back against it and driving her head against the wood. She let out a shaking breath as she reached into her pocket and pulled out the silver capsule that had been sent to her by O.S. and friends. She stared at the Time-Turner in her palm for a very long while before finally dragging the delicate silver chain over her head.
Thirty-six turns. She needed to go back to 1968. She had no idea whether this Time-Turner would transport her to the exact same physical place, or whether she'd move. She pulled out her wand, knowing she needed to be prepared for anything. She looked around the bathroom and frantically tried to convince herself not to do this. She had an interview at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. She and Ron were trying to have a baby.
She was the hope to reverse the suffering she'd witnessed.
"Goodbye, Ron," she whispered, staring at the silvery Time-Turner. "Goodbye, Mum. Goodbye, Dad. Goodbye, Harry and Ginny and James. Goodbye, everybody else. I promise, I shall try to make you all very happy."
Then she flicked at the Time-Turner, and she began to count.
One…
Two…
Three...
30 September 1968
Thirty-six.
The world around Hermione stopped buzzing and whirring, and she realised her time travel had ceased. But she was still in the tiny bathroom where she'd been when she'd left. She panicked suddenly, wondering who had lived here in 1968. She stepped away from the door and slowly pulled it open. The bedroom she'd left behind looked a little different here. Its current inhabitants had a gaudy bedspread of yellow and orange, with a matching piece of art on the wall. Hermione tiptoed out into the bedroom and aimed her wand outward. She didn't hear any voices in the flat. No one was at home, it seemed.
She snuck as quickly as she possibly could out through the sitting room, past the kitchen where she'd cooked dinner thirty-six years in the future. Once it was obvious that no one was about, Hermione whirled hard to her right and Disapparated, focusing hard on Diagon Alley. She needed to orient herself here, she thought.
She landed hard on the cobblestones in front of Flourish and Blotts, and as Hermione looked around, she thought that the street looked remarkably similar to the Diagon Alley she'd known, except for a few storefronts that had changed ownership. Madam Malkin's signage appeared brand-new, and of course Weasley's Wizard Wheezes wasn't here. Brilliary's Scouring Services had a small office set up next to Flourish and Blotts, and Hermione knew that they'd gone out of business in the early 1990s after more people had begun to acquire House-Elves.
Suddenly it all set in. She was in a different time. She was in 1968. She'd come back in time, and she was never, ever going forward. She'd taken a One-Way Time-Turner through the decades. Hermione let out a shaking breath and pulled off the Time-Turner from around her neck. She tucked it into her pocket and put her wand away.
"Keep up, Severus; your father will be very angry if we're home late."
Hermione gasped as a weak-looking witch walked by with a scraggly-haired boy of seven or eight trailing behind her. He had been gazing into a window, but he trotted to keep up with his mother as she hustled toward the Apothecary. Severus. Severus Snape? Hermione's eyes went wide. She blinked quickly, her lips trembling as she touched at them.
"Oh, what have I done?" she whispered. She thought of Ron, of having just left him behind at the dinner table as she time travelled in the bathroom. She blinked through tears, imagining Ron and Harry and Ginny trying to desperately figure out what had happened to Hermione. She ought to have left a note, she thought suddenly and frantically. What had she been thinking, not leaving a note? How cruel and awful of her, to just vanish, to just disappear and leave them all wondering what had become of her. What the blazes was the matter with her?
"Sorry; are you all right?"
Hermione whirled and almost bumped into a red-haired witch standing before her. The witch looked an awful lot like Molly Weasley, but some of her features were just a little off. Hermione nodded.
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine," said the witch. "I'm Betsy Prewett. What are you called, dear?"
"Hermione." She suddenly remembered this witch from Bill and Fleur's wedding. This was Ron's maternal grandmother. Mrs Prewett put her hand on Hermione's shoulder and asked,
"Can I help you?"
"I'm… I'm all right. Thank you." Hermione flashed Mrs Prewett a weak little smile. "I'm going to get a room at the Leaky Cauldron. I'll be fine."
"Right." Mrs Prewett narrowed her eyes. "A room at the Leaky Cauldron. Be well, dear."
Hermione watched as Mrs Prewett walked away, and she huffed out a confused little breath. She stalked towards the Leaky Cauldron, her legs steadier than her breath or stomach. Suddenly, Hermione found herself quite grateful for the way that wizarding fashion had stagnated in ways Muggle fashion had not. She didn't look out of place here in a simple woolen skirt and blouse with an outer robe, which was what she'd worn to work at the Ministry before coming through time.
Time.
She paused inside the Leaky Cauldron, remembering all the times she'd had here with her friends, friends she would probably never see again. But she was trying to save people, she reminded herself. She was here on a mission. She was here with a goal.
Hermione got herself a table and a bowl of potato stew and a Butterbeer. She hadn't eaten with Ron before leaving her time. She asked after a room and was given a key to Room Four after an exchange of coin.
Lord Voldemort was going to be at a masquerade ball on the fifth of October, Hermione had been told, at Avery Hall. Hermione needed to be at that ball. She would need to get appropriate attire so that she could blend into the masked party, and then she would need to introduce herself to Voldemort. That thought terrified her. The idea of trying to make him like her in any way was horrifying. What would it accomplish, she wondered? How would ingratiating herself, as O.S. and friends had said, save lives?
Hermione had a sudden idea. She could worm her way into the inner circle of this emerging Lord Voldemort, still known to most as Tom Riddle. He would see into her mind with Legilimency, of course, and there was no way for her to control that. But she could pretend that she'd come here to save him. She could pretend that she was here to save him because she'd always secretly been sympathetic. She could try and convince him that she was, in fact, in favour of his victory. And she could win his trust.
It would have all been better if you'd won, she'd say to him at some point. If instead of fighting against you, I'd been able to fight for you… but being a Muggle-born, I wasn't allowed. Now I can do my part to ensure your victory. She could try and convince him to keep her secret. Perhaps he would like that - the idea of a secret time traveller who had come back in time filled with regret about having fought him.
It was complicated. It would take time. And it was very likely to fail, making Hermione's entire mission here a waste of her life. But she had no choice. She'd come back thirty-six years. All she could do now was try.
Author's Note: So, Hermione's gone back in time. And her plan seems a little… well, it seems like it might just fall apart at the seams. But it's like she says - all the can do is try. What will happen when she first encounters Voldemort at the masquerade ball? Thank you so much to those who have decided to join me on this story. I appreciate your feedback.