Faking Glory
We're just left to decay
Modernity has failed us
And I'd love it if we made it
Love It If We Made It - The 1975
October 14th, 1973
Near dawn
London, England
On uneven alleyway cobblestone, Hermione materialised—ordinary molecules stitching together to form something utterly unordinary in its place. Her breath hitched, anxiety spidering through her torso and twitching in her fingertips. It had gone unacknowledged, how time travel—especially this far into the past—was near destined to fail, bound to leave them (her now) dead or in some between. There had been no need, not when all they had known was that they had to try.
And she had to try now. For them, but for herself too.
The skies were still navy and in the process of shedding the night, similar enough to the one Hermione had left. The place she landed in looked to be Muggle, and perhaps she should be grateful for it. She breathed out heavily and grasped at the beaded bag hanging from her wrist, needing to be reassured, reminded that she hadn’t been left without resources. The nostalgic weight of the Time-Turner hanging around her neck pulled her toward action.
She shouldn’t be loitering. It was still too early for most to be awake, but a quick glance around told her that the shop owners would soon begin to stir, and she looked too conspicuous—even in her transfigured outfit—to avoid questions. She tucked the Time-Turner into the collar of her shirt and cast a Disillusionment Charm on herself for the sake of caution before setting off to find a newspaper, anything to confirm the date.
There were no Snatchers here—nor anywhere—but it was still dark and lonely and so very disconcerting to not know the exact danger she was facing as she tried to find her way out onto a main street. Her grip tightened on the beaded bag, her footsteps silent; the metal of the Time-Turner remained cold on her skin, insisting she remember its inscription.
My use and value, unto you, Are gauged by what you have to do.
She had lived unnaturally before, turning each day into two (sometimes three) and studying during every conceivable minute of it. During that same horrid year, she had used this cursed device to rescue Sirius Black, and had felt so triumphant in that moment, so hopeful. In the end, she burned out and Sirius Black, in a familiar typical Gryffindor recklessness, died a mere two years later.
Use and value were two different things, one rigid and one pliable. If following the previous patterns, then she would save the wizarding world from the reign and terror of Voldemort. But what of the consequences after? Surely, something more severe than burn out and Death’s vengeance for being cheated would follow. She was reminded of her own parroted words; terrible things happened to people who tried to meddle with their past or future lives.
(But wasn’t she about to meddle, however indirectly, with the lives of millions? Would that negate the terrible things or only amplify them? God— )
It had been a factor they considered over and over again, each time coming to the conclusion that perhaps nothing could be worse than the war they failed to win. If there was, then they would face it and fight again. Maybe it was naive—a gross overestimation of their abilities—but they held onto it and onto the recklessness that hadn’t killed them yet.
***
Hermione turned a corner and felt palpable relief at seeing an exit, a yellow street lamp beacon in the road. She could hear drunken laughter in the distance, and it made her flinch at the edge of meeting modern pavement, a split-second hesitation before she stepped out into the slight breeze and began walking toward the nearest trash bin.
She peered into it, squinting in the low light, hoping to see a newspaper on top of the pile. No such luck. A thin corner was instead peeking out from behind a shrivelled banana peel. With her thumb and forefinger, she gingerly picked it up, shaking off the debris as best she could to reveal the upside down business section of The Daily Telegraph. She turned her head nearly parallel to the ground and looked at the slightly stained upper left corner.
Saturday 13 October 1973
She released the newspaper and cleansed her hands with a sanitation charm. It was the confirmation she had been hoping for, but all the same, she felt dread pool in between her ribs. The rewinded world was now awaiting her instruction to spin a revised history with bated breath, and the weight was crushing.
She forced herself to say it aloud, even as the quietest of whispers. “Defeat Voldemort, end the war.”
***
The bitterest taste came from betrayal, and Pansy was ready to cut her tongue out. Elf-bonds were meant to be sacred, near impossible to break unless through given clothes or abuse heinous enough to fray the bond—just enough for rebellion—for them to inflict harm onto their masters. But the Parkinson elves were well-treated, never struck or spat at, downright pampered with designated living quarters and beds softly lined. They lived better than all other elves in Britain; she was sure of it. And yet.
How could Mipsie have sent her here to some English Muggle high street, where she could be taken by Snatchers at any moment? With Voldemort and his Death Eaters in control, no British underrock would be safe. They were surely rounding up the rest of the treasonous, the ones proving themselves too hesitant. Her father had already paid publicly, but that couldn’t have been enough to absolve their family’s neutrality. They would need to take care of her too, and she didn’t dare believe her defector uncles would protest.
The handle of her wand peeked out from the top of her left boot, and she swiftly retrieved it, fingers clenching around the familiar piece of wood. If they were going to take her, they would only be allowed her corpse. She needed to get out of the country, go to Russia where the wizarding government had followed their Muggle equivalent and had no extradition treaty with Britain. She wouldn’t know anyone there, wouldn’t speak the language, but at least she would be able to choose what happened to her next. How she was to get to Moscow undetected, she would have to figure out on the way.
She began to walk at a brisk pace, not daring to Apparate or cast a Disillusionment Charm in case the Trace had been quietly reinstated. Her heart was pounding in her ears, jumping at every rustle of the wind or distant sound resembling voices. Her eyes darted around, behind her shoulder, and into every shadow. There was no relief in seeing that she was still alone, only the rising expectation of meeting a grim reaper.
***
Hermione froze at the sound of approaching footsteps. If she just kept very still until they passed, the edges of her silhouette were unlikely to give her away. Despite her quickened heartbeat, she breathed in slow and shallow.
Only once the long shadow came into view, she dared to shift her gaze toward the figure drawing near. Shock wasn’t the right word. She wasn’t sure there was a word strong enough to express the simultaneous drop felt in her stomach and the rise of air in her throat before a gasp loud enough to separate itself from the breeze was released.
Against every ounce of rationality and logic Hermione possessed, she could not make herself believe that the person walking toward her was anyone other than Pansy Parkinson. For the first time, her school bully was not wearing a sneer or smirk. She looked tense and frightened.
Not for the first time, however, Pansy had her wand pointed steadily at her. “You have five seconds to show yourself.”
Hearing her voice erased any lingering doubt, but her mind was stuttering. What was she doing in 1973? Why was she in 1973?
Hermione returned to opacity and mirrored Pansy’s stance, ready to fire off a Shield Charm at the slightest twitch of the other woman’s hand.
“Granger—”
“You can’t be seen like this. You don’t belong,” she blurted.
“And you do?” Pansy retorted, gesturing toward her tan bell bottoms and floral button-up shirt.
“Yes, actually.” Hermione’s hackles rose, the wording of their conversation all too similar to their past exchanges. But things were different now, and she had the upper hand here. She forced herself to calm, though her voice remained tense. “The shop owners are going to be waking up soon, so I’ll keep this quick. I don’t know how or why you’re here, but you’re not in 1998 anymore. It’s October 14th, 1973.” She reached back into the trash bin with her free hand, keeping her wand unmoved, and held up the newspaper. “Judging by the smell, this bin hasn’t been emptied in about a day, so this must be yesterday’s.”
Pansy’s eyes landed on the same date Hermione’s had just minutes before, and immediately, her head began to shake back and forth. “Why would—?” she whispered to herself before she looked at Hermione with wide eyes. “No. No, you’ve gone mad. They must’ve done something to you. Surely, you couldn’t have avoided them forever. They must’ve gotten you at some point and—how did you escape?”
Hermione warred silently with herself for a few moments before she pulled the Time-Turner from beneath her collar and said tentatively, “I came here by choice, Pansy.”
***
Her thoughts had been circling paranoia since the moment she’d stumbled in from the sudden transportation, but seeing Granger pull out what was perhaps the most dangerous instrument ever invented by wizards suddenly silenced her racing mind.
Slowly, she lowered her wand, and Granger foolishly wavered in turn. Before she could make another move, Pansy lunged forward and made a grab for the Time-Turner. Her hand closed around the cold metal. This could change everything, she thought wildly.
***
She had only felt this specific kind of pain once, in the Lestrange Vault. The Time-Turner, chain included, seemingly burst into invisible flames the moment Pansy touched it, rocketing into burning temperatures. Hermione muffled her shrieks as best she could. The sun was beginning its climb through the cloudy sky, and they would not remain unseen for much longer.
Pansy let go with a yelp, but the metal scorched on. Tears sprung into Hermione’s eyes as she scrambled to get the necklace off, her wand falling out of her hand when the pain concentrated further and became unbearable. The necklace clattered onto the sidewalk seconds later, but her fingertips were already a deep angry red. Along the back and sides of her neck, the rope chain pattern had to have been branded into her skin.
For a moment, it looked as though the Time-Turner’s apparent defense mechanism had gone dormant again, but abruptly, it collapsed into nothing but a pile of ash.
“No!” Hermione dived for her fallen wand, wincing when her tender skin came into contact, but she soldiered through the pain. The unthinkable had happened, and there were stakes bigger than anyone could ever understand. “Reparo!”
The ashes were stirred only by the breeze, making no effort to be reborn and rejoined. Hermione tried again and again, increasingly desperate when the result remained unchanged. Panic was threatening to tear open her chest.
“Nothing is going to fix it, Granger. It’s destroyed.”
She turned around sharply. “Because of you!” she shouted, tears spilling over. The pain of her burns were unwavering, and she was just so tired. What had she ever done to deserve this unrestful life? “It was the only one of its kind. If you hadn’t touched it—” Her voice cracked.
Pansy’s face was stony, betraying not even a hint of the meanness Hermione had been so used to. “It could’ve changed everything.”
“That’s what I’m here for! I can change everything, and you just—” She stabbed her wand at her before exhaling in defeat, clenching her fists, and turning away.
“You said you came here by choice, so why does it matter—”
She turned back toward her, arms held out wide as though inviting debate though her face was twisted with barely contained fury. “What if I had wanted to go back? You took that choice away from me, from both of us.”
Pansy fell silent, before she asked in a small voice, “Are we really in 1973?”
Her arms dropped. “Yes,” she snapped. “Transfigure your clothes. People are going to be awake now.”
***
Numbness had always been Pansy’s default coping mechanism, forced blocking of the things that eroded her willingness to keep moving forward, to focus on the goal. As she had often been reminded, there was going to be life after Hogwarts, a day where she would arguably be the most powerful woman in wizarding Britain, plucking every hidden string her father and his predecessors had whilst forging newer, brighter ones. She could be the one to infiltrate the Muggle mafias on the verge of collapse in America and begin their international expansion. She could be the one to place an actual Minister of Magic into their pocket. She could be the one to teeter the Parkinson family into respected notoriety, to secure their footing in government and corporate manipulation.
How sweet and sour it was to have an inevitable role in what she had learned was an unpredictable world.
With the carpet once again yanked beneath her feet, whatever combination of resentment and honour she had associated with the duty she held to her family shifted to something disturbingly blank. She had no obligation to anyone or anything here, and she could easily go off and rebuild herself into any life she desired. The idea called to her longingly, but nothing was so simple. While she did not, Voldemort still existed here in 1973, and he would again destroy everything. A brief shiver went down her spine before her mind returned to its coping numbness.
Her palm stung like a sunburn, a flash of deep pink the only evidence she had ever held onto a Time-Turner. She cast a cooling charm on her hand and let out a breath as the pain dulled considerably, replaced by a minty sensation. Granger was fumbling through her bag and doing a poor job of hiding her pained winces.
She eyed her impatiently. “For fuck’s sake, do something about those burns and just summon what you’re looking for.”
Granger stiffened, but cast a series of charms on her hands and neck before continuing to dig through her bag manually. She supposed she deserved that. When there seemed to be no sign of progress after thirty seconds, she opened her mouth, ready to give a courtesy warning before reaching out and dumping that damn beaded bag out on the ground, but before she could say a word, Granger suddenly looked up and held out her arm. “The cave near Hogsmeade, let’s go.”
Perhaps this was the grim reaper she had been expecting. It might’ve been a rash, foolish choice, but she gripped onto the other woman’s arm with a grimace anyway, figuring if Granger had intended her harm, she would have done it already.
Besides, she lived only for herself now.