Stealing a Velvet Sun

I'm living on shattered faith
The kind that likes to restrict your breath

Drain the Blood - The Distillers

 October 14th, 1973

The Cave near Hogsmeade

Hermione’s nerves were frayed, her patience thin as she wrestled with a mix of furious emotion. She immediately shook Pansy off her arm the moment their feet touched the ground and began to cast a series of protective enchantments over the entrance of the cave. She would be a fool to break the habit—even here and now in relative safety—when she was going to bring down Voldemort through whatever means necessary.

Better paranoid than dead. 

Is it, though? Her mind betrayed, dragging up whispers of a valid question.

The silence between them was tense and uncertain, a thread waiting to snap, and she couldn’t decide whether to regret the split-second decision that didn’t allow her to leave Pansy there in the street. Choosing the lesser evil was all she seemed to do these days, poking pinholes through dead ends. Her nature demanded it.

Nothing was funny, but she laughed anyway, not caring about the way it made her look unhinged. Everything was absurd and she hated it with every fibre of her soul. Life was and had been curveballs galore, but this was unprecedented, a new form of cruel comedy. It apparently was not awful enough to embark on this desperate mission into the past alone. Another obstacle, in the form of Pansy Parkinson, had to be thrown into her path.

She recalled the way Pansy had clutched onto her wand, radiating paranoia and fear, and her later disbelief despite being shown the newspaper—she hadn’t meant to time travel. Hermione’s head throbbed with yet another stream of unanswered questions. 

Worse yet, she knew this was not rock bottom. It was an inherent fact of the situation, and she no longer had the energy for optimism, resigning instead to settle fully into the nest of her reality. She didn’t know if it would be better this way, to focus solely on the cold, unemotional truths, but she knew it couldn’t be worse. The eight shrunken boards in her beaded bag were already physical proof that having the puzzle laid out in plain print would be enough to get her through the longer days she saw ahead; the only things that mattered were on those boards. 

The protective enchantments were in place and her laughter had petered out to emptiness, carving her hollow. The view from the cave was not spectacular, but she felt obligated to just look if only to find a second of peace.

“Are you quite finished?” Pansy asked mildly from behind.

This was unfamiliar territory. They weren’t in school where one could only go so far before intervention from rules and structure forced a ceasefire. But that was the point, wasn’t it? They weren’t in school anymore, and they had seen too much.

(Surely, the Death Eaters would have no sympathy for those who were passive nonparticipants, and a family as prominent as the Parkinsons wouldn’t have been spared after the Battle of Hogwarts.) 

She breathed in deeply, forcing away the momentary flare of irritation, and turned to meet her gaze evenly. “I have dittany in my bag. Do you want some for your hands?”

Pansy nodded stiffly and held out her hand for the tiny vial Hermione summoned. “Thank you,” she said, the two words sounding as though they’d been dragged, kicking and screaming, from her throat.

She shrugged, not willing to insinuate that Pansy was at all welcome, and sat down, letting her feet dangle over the edge of the cave entrance. “I meant what I said earlier. You don’t belong here, and more importantly, you don’t mean to be here.”

Pansy snorted and tossed the vial of dittany back to her. “Think fast.”

She turned and caught it clumsily, dropping it back into her bag and ignoring the brief look of confusion flitting across the other woman’s face. The charms were enough to relieve the pain of her own burns, and she didn’t care about the eventual scarring. Reminders were important.

“And I’ll repeat what I said earlier. You do? ” 

“Don’t deflect.” Hermione turned to face her fully, drawing a leg up onto the edge.

“You didn’t ask me a question.”

They stared hard at each other before Pansy smiled, a brittle and tired looking thing. “Not as thick as you think I am, eh?” 

“I don’t think—” 

“Don’t lie.” Pansy rolled her eyes. “I know what everyone thinks of me.” 

“And you don’t seem to care.”

“No.” The smile was back with a hint of familiar viciousness.

Hermione exhaled and got to her feet, conjuring up two chairs to the middle of the space before collapsing into one of them. She gestured impatiently at the chair across from her until Pansy moved to sit as well—albeit with more grace. 

“How did you get here?”

“You’re a terrible interrogator, Granger. The straightforward approach only works with the weak or stupid, and I would like to think we’ve established I’m neither.” 

Hermione crossed her arms and raised a brow. “How did you get here?”

“Mipsie, my house-elf, if you’re just burning to know.” Pansy sighed loudly and bulldozed over her attempt to interject. “Why does it even matter? If you recall, the chances of me getting back died next to a rubbish bin.” 

“How would a house-elf send someone back in time? Their magic is powerful but…” she trailed off.

“World’s greatest mystery.” 

Hermione considered her for a moment, bewildered by the way she was handling her new circumstances. “Do you even want to go back?” she asked, suddenly overcome by an inappropriate curiosity about what could’ve made Pansy give up so quickly on the effort. Hadn’t she grabbed the Time-Turner because she wanted to go back?

“Like I said, why does it even matter?”

“Do you know how to answer a question?” she snapped, frustration spilling over.

“I don’t owe anyone anything, least of all you.”

“Imagine if everyone in the world operated like that,” Hermione scoffed, leaning back in her seat.

Pansy laughed with real mirth shining in her eyes.

“What?” she asked, but Pansy just shook her head.

“I think it’s my turn to be the interrogator.” She crossed her legs and leaned forward to place an elbow on her knee, resting her chin on her fist.

Hermione made a noise of disagreement. “Not until you offer me something real.”

“And to think I was starting to lose hope in your cleverness.” Something like begrudging surprise bubbled beneath her mocking tone, but Hermione waited.

***

Pansy had almost considered this to be fun, but she supposed it was inevitable that the everything aspect would seep its sourness into any singular moment, however innocuous.

“Fine,” she said, straightening her spine as her deadly calm pushed up against Granger’s static-crackle energy. “I’ve used the Cruciatus on over twenty of our classmates.”

Something akin to horror and judgment spread across Granger’s face. She had expected nothing less, and she refused to be ashamed. “Don’t ask for something real if you can’t handle it.” 

“Why did you do it?” Her tone grated on Pansy’s nerves. It was full of presumption seeking confirmation.

She tilted her head to one side. “Why do you think?”

Granger fell silent and looked away, but Pansy only placed more weight onto her unrelenting stare. Eventually, Granger met her gaze again and said, “You did it to survive.” 

She blinked, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It did after a breath.

“How do you deal with the guilt of doing terrible things to survive?” It sounded like a genuine question, but she had already fulfilled her side of the deal and wasn’t willing to give more. 

“You assume guilt haunts me at all,” she said brusquely. “Look, I’m not here to get into a moral debate, and I’m not in the business of being ungrateful to myself. We’ve all done things, Granger, and whether we continue to do them or not, the world will keep spinning until the sun inevitably explodes and takes all of the bastards with it.”

***

“You can call me Hermione, you know,” she said after a tense pause. It was not an action that implied surrender or even an extension of kinship, but this single conversation was illuminating in a way that demanded give. Offering her name simply tested the next stepping stone.

“It’s my turn to be the interrogator.” Pansy swept away her words and eased back into her previous casual poise. 

She nodded stiffly and tried her best to mimic Pansy’s unshakability, steeling herself to answer no more than beyond what was asked. 

“Why are you in 1973?” 

“I’m going to take down Voldemort and his Death Eaters.” The simple sentence sounded jarringly explicit—to the point of surrealness—and she suddenly felt a veil of disgust drape over her. She had planned in excruciating detail, had known this probable fate, and still, she feared the very idea, the barest bones of it. This inkling of cowardice needed to be stomped out but internal battles were too often eternal, tug of war with a rope made of steel. Where did it leave her when she was not sealed shut to such flaws? 

Human. Unmercifully harsh, she thought she had never hated another word more.

A sharp burst of humourless laughter came from Pansy. “Just when I thought you couldn’t get any more arrogant. Do you think yourself a god? Do you forget what people thought of Harry fucking Potter?”

Hermione flinched and felt herself go cold.

“The Chosen One,” she sneered, “and he died a boy mortal.”

“He didn’t ask for the title—” she began, nausea rising to her throat.

“He was a bloody fool for accepting it.”

“He had the courage to accept it, and he had the courage to fight, which is more than what could be said for you and your family. How dare you judge from the sidelines, how dare you judge choices you never had to make!” Her chest was heaving with fury and grief, and she desperately wanted to reach out and slap the apathetic droop off Pansy’s face.

“You’re a fucking hypocrite, Hermione.” She spat out her name like it was a damned thing, fished out of an oily, poisoned lake.

“Takes one to know one,” she hissed, honesty overriding the phrase’s association with childishness.

Pansy had the audacity to grin. “Tell me how you’ll do it. Tell me how you’ll ‘take down Voldemort and his Death Eaters.’”

“I—” Her throat felt tight. “I don’t need to prove myself to you.” Every step she had ever taken in the wizarding world, she had to defend in a way that only muggleborns would understand. Though this was not explicitly that—maybe not that at all—her fists still clenched of their own accord, a move that made Pansy smell blood in the water.

“Suicide by feigned heroism, playing a game you don’t even know the rules to. That’s a new one.”

“Call it what you want, but I’m playing to win. I’m playing for what our generation went through because of him. I’m playing for what I had to go through, what I had to sacrifice for that goddamn war. Voldemort and his followers are no less human than you or I, and I’m going to destroy them. If I die trying, I’m taking as many with me as I can.”

“You’ll be just as damned as Potter, then. You could easily get out now, go to the States or bloody Australia—”

“And do what? Start a new life? Pick up gardening?” Hermione laughed bitterly.

“Sure.” 

“No.” She shook her head and felt exhaustion seep down into her bones. “I can’t run away from this. I owe it to Harry and Ron—to myself— to put this war to rest. You know just as well as I do that peace will never exist with Voldemort alive.” 

“Tell me how you’ll do it,” Pansy said again with almost none of her previous antagonism.

***

After Granger’s third stumbled answer (deflection) to a pointed question, Pansy could no longer stand to sit through more of her presentation, feeling sick. “So what you’re telling me is that you have no idea what you’re going to do, and you’ll improvise every step of the way.”

Granger stammered and spluttered through another attempt at a retort, the same song and dance about “the timelines” and “the effects of me—us being here are unpredictable.”

“You should stop lying to yourself,” she commented.

“Everyone needs to cope,” Granger snapped. “And I’m not lying to myself—”

“Then stop talking like you are. If you don’t know, then say you don’t. I’m sick of reading between the lines.” Her arms were crossed tightly, hiding the way her right hand had clenched and dug half-moon marks into her palm. 

Granger exhaled sharply and pressed her lips together before she said with apparent restraint, “The mission is simple. Redirect the timeline, prevent as much loss as possible. The boards are as detailed as they can be—you can only know some things if you live through them—”

“‘Redirect the timeline,’” Pansy scoffed. “Just say you’re going to assassinate—”

“That’s not what I’m doing.” Naked shock coated her bloodless face. “There are other ways—”

“You’ll never ‘destroy them’ if you don’t pull from the root, and what happened to taking as many as you can if you die trying?” 

“I know what I said. You can stop repeating my words back to me.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why am I even entertaining this? It’s not like you’re going to—to help me or—” She stopped herself and stared at Pansy like she was something to solve.

But before Granger could collect another puzzle piece, she said, “I have nothing better to do.”

And wasn’t that just the truth despite all her instincts telling her to run and hide? Peace would never exist with Voldemort alive. They both knew it. 

Granger was flying by the seat of her pants. Regardless of her protests, they both knew that too. But some combination of bravery and stupidity—perhaps better known as madness—made her the only one to rebuke the very idea of defeat and willing to try. Pansy would not pretend to understand, but something terribly close to respect floated to the top of her churning sickness. 

The only thing Granger’s experiment would lead to was a painful, whimpering death, but death was the only certain thing in life. Hadn’t she seen it already in the fate of her father, in the fate of Dumbledore, in the fate of herself?

“You could easily get out now, go to the States or bloody Australia,” Granger said, half-mocking, half-serious, parroting Pansy’s earlier words.

“Point taken,” she said evenly before she met Granger’s eyes and nailed her coffin shut with pilfered mechanical words. “No. I can’t run away from this. You know just as well as I do that peace will never exist with Voldemort alive.”

***

There was no point in asking Pansy why she was suddenly on her side. She wouldn’t have been willing to answer anyway. But also, perhaps, the answer might’ve been too complicated to distil into words. They had never once exchanged a kind moment before, always angry and mean and bitter. They had been two rocks colliding, over and over, trying to crack and chip away at the other.

Hermione hated how apparent that she was the softer of the two, emotions volatile and thrumming. It left her the one with burning resentment each time, shame and embarrassment, sparked by Pansy’s bladed tongue. Even without ‘Mudblood’ ever passing through Pansy’s lips, she had worked around the word and found better, cleverer knives to hurl her way.

In this ludicrous new context of unintentionally meeting in the past, meeting as survivors of war, maybe Hermione could see that she was now not the only one covered in cracks and chips. Pansy was still stone cold and contrarian and near-impossible to read, but she was familiar enough with desperation to recognise it in someone else.

The same instinct that didn’t allow her to abandon Pansy in the street seized her now, and Hermione felt too irredeemably tired to question it further. “Fine,” she said briskly in response to her own words delivered again from Pansy’s mouth. “The banks are closed today, so we’ll have to visit tomorrow. In the meantime, we’ll need to draw up the necessary documents: passports, birth certificates, driving licences, proofs of income and residence, the usual, before we can open a bank account and figure out where we’ll live. London would be ideal—Muggle, that is, as there are far too many complications in the wizarding world to make it worth infiltrating, not to mention it’ll be easier to lay low amongst a larger population.”

“Fine.” Pansy shrugged.

Hermione was surprised by how easily she agreed, but she wasn’t going to look the gift horse in the mouth. It was about time she’d gotten a gift horse anyway. “Okay,” she said, and let out a breath.