Reading Time: 86 Minutes

Title: Hoping The Next Carries Your Name
Series: The Infinite Loop Of Love And Good Intentions
Series Order: 3
Author: Indygodusk
Fandom: Harry Potter
Genre: Angst, Drama, Family, Future Fic / Post-Canon, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Relationship, Time Travel
Relationship(s): Gen, Harry Potter/Hermione Granger (pre-relationship)
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Major Character Death, Violence-Graphic, Violence-Domestic. Bullying, Suicide, Child Abuse-implied, Murder, Adultery, Weasley Bashing
Word Count: 44,437
Summary: “Please, Mum,” Hugo begged. “Come with me and stop it from happening. I have to see it stopped or I’ll never be able to rest. I can’t live with the guilt. I can’t.”
Artist: Drake

---

---

Chapter 6:

∞⌛∞

∞2020, July 03—Ron Weasley’s Work Flat∞

~Hermione Granger (25)~

Standing outside her ex-husband Ron’s work flat, Hermione took a deep breath and braced herself for unpleasantness. Hugo had insisted on keeping the necklace, so he’d been the one driving their travel. She didn’t like not being in control, but Hugo was struggling and she was trying to give him grace right now to avoid an emotional meltdown. She knew the signs from her almost two-year-old.

She was also focusing on his trauma to avoid thinking about her own feelings on hearing that Ron had murdered her, even if by accident in a fit of temper.

Hopefully, they’d landed at the right time and place. “If this timeline still exists,” she couldn’t help but say, “we’ll find out soon enough when we see older me and younger you coming up the sidewalk. Remember to stick to the plan.” Even if it had been slapdash and hastily concocted. “We go upstairs, hide in the stairwell, and stop our other selves from entering the flat by making everyone think there’s a fire. When Ron and his little girlfriend go running out into the hall, they’ll be discovered and everyone will survive with only a bit of humiliation and heartbreak. All right?”

“Right,” Hugo said, voice rough as he stared up at the building.

Hermione cast a Disillusionment Charm over them both before they went inside the glass doors of the building. No one was in the lobby to notice the oddity of the doors seemingly opening by themselves. Going up the stairwell, they came out onto the upper floor where Ron’s flat was located. Hugo was jittery, shifting from side to side and crossing and uncrossing his arms, though she could mostly only hear and not see it except for blurs, as he was disillusioned. He unlatched the necklace and started jingling it in his hands. The sound was annoying and distracting. She was doing her best not to snap at him, but he was rapidly getting on her last nerve. She wasn’t looking forward to seeing Ron in the middle of cheating on her with some floozy. So far it had been out of sight and she’d have preferred to keep it that way.

Going out into the hall, Hermione examined the stairwell door, trying to figure out how best to prop it open without being too obvious for her older self. A sound down the hall caught her attention. Glancing over her shoulder, she noticed that the door to Ron’s flat was already hanging open. Uneasy, her fingers slipped off the stairwell door and it slammed closed, making her jump. Before she could calm down, the sound of childish wailing and sobbing drifted out of Ron’s open door.

“Oh no,” Hugo whispered.

Hermione’s stomach lurched in realization. She tried to back up and her back hit the handle of the door, bruising her spine. Not taking her eye off the flat’s now ominous doorway, her hand reached out to the side, fumbling for Hugo’s robes. “It’s too late. We should go.”

Not listening, Hugo pulled free of her hold and stumbled forward. “Hugo, no! It’s already too late!” she whisper-shouted, but it was too late because Hugo wasn’t thinking rationally. He was already rushing forward, shaking off Hermione’s lunge as she tried to grab his arm and pull him to a stop.

Glancing past him, Hermione was surprised to see the veiled woman at the end of the hallway standing beneath a high sunny window. She held so still that Hermione had overlooked her until now, plus the beams of sunlight were so bright they made her seem almost translucent. She stood with her back against the wall and her hands wrapped tightly around her middle, casting a strange double shadow down the length of the hallway, almost like there were two ladies in gauzy dresses standing there, though only one shadow wore a hat. The shadow’s head turned to follow Hugo as he stumbled through Ron’s door and tilted forward yearningly, though in the end the veiled woman neither called out nor moved to follow him.

Lungs tight and stomach sour, Hermione jerked her eyes away from the veiled woman and followed Hugo into the flat, quickening her steps to try and catch up with him before they were discovered. There was nothing he could do. What was he thinking? Catching the rebounding door before it hit her in the face, she rushed through the entryway and around the corner, banging hard into Hugo and having to grab at him to keep from falling when he abruptly stopped. Her startled cry was hopefully lost in the wailing of the children next to the—the body. Just because they were disillusioned didn’t mean they couldn’t be caught.

As Hermione’s eyes instinctively jerked away from the disturbing scene, Hugo collapsed onto the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. Hermione, who had been leaning against his back, found herself falling again. She grabbed forcefully at his shoulder to stay on her feet, making Hugo’s hand swing forward and open, flinging the Egyptian necklace across the floor. Becoming visible, the gold Egyptian necklace skittered over the floorboards, past a spill of milk next to a grocery sack, and into the lake of red blood, sliding to a stop when it tangled with the glass shards and broken rose stems next to the familiar body that she’d never seen look more foreign. Hermione went tense, fearing discovery, but neither of the crying teens kneeling next to the body seemed to notice the necklace’s arrival. Understandably, they were distracted.

A teenage girl with red hair who must be her Rose wiped her face roughly with the slightly cleaner heels of her blood-stained hands. She clenched her teeth and visibly swallowed back sobs as she climbed shakily to her feet. “C’mon.” Grabbing her wailing younger brother by the arm, she roughly dragged him to his feet and forcefully away from the body, shoving him around the big orange couch and into the living room.

“We need to—to—” Rose’s eyes darted around, looking lost and desperate. Hugo sobbed louder. “Shut up, Hugo!” Rose snapped, focusing on her brother. Hands on his shoulders, she slammed him up against the wall and placed a hand over his mouth. He wasn’t smaller than her, but he didn’t offer up any resistance. “Stop crying and shut up so I can think!” Hugo cried harder, making Rose’s fingers over his mouth bow and flex with every sob. “Shut up!” she yelled.

Rose glared at him for another moment before her angry expression crumpled into agony. “I know, I know, I’m sorry,” she sniffled. She collapsed forward, moving her hand off his mouth to brace herself against the wall over his shoulder, huddling against him. It was hard to clearly see the children with Ron’s big ugly orange couch in the way. Hermione found herself drifting forward, drawn by their obvious pain and wishing she could fix it.

Eyes wet, Rose pressed her forehead against the crying Hugo’s. He only looked a little younger than the one who’d collapsed in the entryway. “I’m sorry, but I have to think. I need to-to-” turning her head to look at the fireplace, Rose straightened and lunged forward, snatching up the tin on the mantle. “The Floo! Uncle Harry will know what to do. He’ll fix it,” Rose said desperately.

Opening the Floo powder, Rose took a quivering little breath and grabbed a handful instead of a pinch to throw into the fire, making the flames turn green and roar up higher than her head. “Head Auror’s Office, Ministry of Magic. Uncle Harry. Harry Potter!” she called.

Blinking out of her stupor at hearing Harry’s name, Hermione glanced over her shoulder at Hugo as he whispered, “No, not again, please,” his voice broke. “Please no. I don’t want to see any more of this.” He put his hands over his face and hunched over, hiding.

Lips trembling at seeing him so hurt, Hermione looked away, but the other side of the room was just as bad. Sliding down the wall in the living room, Hugo’s younger self stopped sobbing and looked like he was going into shock and shutting down. His eyes looked bruised, his lips purple, and his freckles stood out on his skin like pencil shavings on white paper. He had his arms wrapped around himself and was rocking back and forth, staring blankly into space as he mouthed silent pleas and denials. Scarlet blood smeared across his arms and chest, and had soaked into his trousers.

“Rose?” Harry’s voice came out of the open Floo. “Rose, I’m here. It’s Uncle Harry. What’s wrong? Where are you?”

Hermione looked down and gulped. Seeing her body on the ground looking so injured and broken was wrong wrong WRONG. Was she already dead or was there still a chance to save herself? If she wanted to help, she had to be brave. She was going to have to touch the body to find out.

Rose hiccuped by the Floo, sounding like she was crying. “We’re at Dad’s work flat. Please, Uncle Harry, help. Fix it. You have to help, please. Dad went and, he, he—” she broke into sobs, her words turning unintelligible.

Trying to stay detached, Hermione knelt next to the body, feeling warm, tacky blood soak unpleasantly into her trousers. It made her shiver, teeth clattering. The side of her throat and one cheek were cut open, exposing layers of pale pink and white tissue coated in red but not actively bleeding. Below that on the body’s chest lay the golden Egyptian necklace, the shine of the metal dulled by splatters of blood that also left dark patches on the gauzy burgundy summer dress. The drenched fabric clung to the curves of her body. There was so much blood, too much blood.

Hermione’s vision wavered as her gorge rose. Remembering Hugo at her back and the children on the other side of the couch, she forced herself to be strong and swallowed hard, trying not to puke, scream, or pass out. Before she could talk herself out of it, she reached out and forced herself to check the pulse on the opposite, intact side of the throat.

As soon as she touched the body, energy bit her fingers and zapped up her arm, making the sickle-shaped curse scar on the back of her shoulder jolt and throb sharply. For a split second, she was nowhere and everywhere. Her soul was nowhere and everywhere. All she could see was black and red. Then she was too young and standing in Duat again with Thoth’s hand on her shoulder, which morphed into being too old standing at home with her teenage children after trying on the necklace and feeling a foreign power bite at her finger, twisting into something else too big for mortal minds to comprehend. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, disoriented, terrified.

Yet when she opened her eyes again, she was once more behind the ugly orange couch, kneeling next to the body and surrounded by blood spatters, glass shards, and broken rose stems.

The skin beneath her fingers still felt warm, but despite her hopes, she didn’t find any signs of life—no breathing and no heartbeat. No life. Hermione Weasley was dead.

It shouldn’t be such a surprise, but Hermione was still having trouble accepting the evidence before her eyes. The older Hermione on the ground was only 40. Her kids hadn’t even graduated Hogwarts yet. There was so much she’d never had the chance to accomplish, so many unmet aspirations and dreams and broken promises, but there was no time left to her. She was dead.

Feeling shocky and overwhelmed, Hermione yanked her fingers away and shoved herself back from the body, almost falling over. She kept her hands hovering in midair, not wanting to touch anything with what felt like dirty hands. Breath quivering in her throat, she fought to stay calm, but she had to get away from here. Now.

“Stand back, Rose, I’m coming through.” Harry’s voice came through the Floo on the other side of the couch. She wished he was coming for her, but that was an older Harry than hers back home and this one was coming for the body cooling on the floor.

Oh no, Harry was going to be devastated. She’d promised to never leave him, promised to always return for him and her bookmark. It wasn’t fair. Harry didn’t deserve this. That was one more promise broken. Her chest felt tight from repressing tears.

“Wait, Potter!” a distant male voice said from inside the Floo.

She needed to stop waiting around and leave. This wasn’t her time. Hermione wanted to go home, but to do that she needed the necklace. Breathing rapidly, she looked around and finally found it still on the floor down by the body’s feet—the necklace Hugo had stolen from her. Not the necklace worn by the body. Her future body. Who was dead. Killed by her cheating husband. Supposedly accidentally.

Gorge rising, Hermione swallowed hard and tried to breathe shallowly through her nose. The carnal house stench was revolting. She wasn’t going to last much longer, but once she started throwing up she didn’t know if she could stop. Being discovered would make an awful situation even worse.

Lips clamped tight, she bent and dug her hand through the debris to pick up the necklace. In her rush she wasn’t careful. She paid for it, slicing her hand open on both sides. A broken, thorny rose stem scratched a jagged lightning bolt shape into the side of her pinky even as a shard of sunset-colored glass sliced a crescent moon into the fleshy base of her thumb.

Fat drops of her bright red blood slid down her palm, over the chain of the necklace, and spattered onto the floor, mingling with the older, darker blood already there. Instead of hurting, the cuts went cold. A shard of ice traveled up her arm and stabbed into the curse scar on her shoulder—the one shaped like a crescent moon with a lightning bolt handle. Hermione gritted her teeth to keep from keening in pain. She probably wasn’t lucky enough for the parallel shapes to be mere coincidence.

As if in answer, the magic in her core surged up and out through her body without warning, tingling from her toes to her earlobes and making her gritted teeth ache sharply. On the other side of the couch she could hear Harry talking to the children. It was a distant thing through the roaring of magic in her ears.

Everything had gone wrong. Time to retreat. Past time. The veiled woman with her strange new double shadow appeared at the edge of Hermione’s vision, watching from the doorway. Pivoting hard and fast, scared, Hermione tried to rush back to her Hugo and get them away. She could see the pendants on the necklace clenched in her bleeding fist fly up parallel to the floor with the force of her spin.

And then everything froze like flies caught in amber.

Something unseen but powerful rushed into the room. The magical entity—she knew not what else to call it—surrounded her body and held her trapped in place and time. Hermione felt herself being judged… and found wanting. Understanding bloomed in her mind, sent from outside of herself. She was being punished, not for trying something audacious, but for failing. Hermione had failed the most important test of her life—stopping her own death and completing the bargain for her heart’s desires. She’d never found someone to go back and give Harry a trusted adult who loved him as a child.

Failure had consequences. Her fate frayed, tossed by an uncaring hand. The scales tipped. Life as she knew it, her life as it was planned to be…was over.

The remaining years of her young life had been spent so rashly. Instead of making a careful plan of attack, she’d let Hugo’s broken heart make her rush headlong into danger, just as she had with Harry and the Department of Mysteries. She was so stupid. All that was left now was protecting Hugo and mitigating the collateral damage.

She was branded a breaker of bargains. Being only 25 didn’t matter. Hermione had died at 40 before completing her third wish in the Bargain of Threes. Therefore, her soul and all Hermiones were slated for return to Duat, with time and all wishes to be unwoven back to when she was 14. Only the complexity of having more than one instance of Hermione in the room at one time gave her any wiggle room.

She desperately needed that wiggle room.

Nevertheless, she wasn’t to escape unscathed. She could feel an outside force trying to pin her down and make her submit to being punished. Inside her soul, she burned. For a split second, the cuts on the dead Hermione blinked away and Hermione felt her skin split open agonizingly instead. Gasping, she clapped a hand to her bleeding neck and face, only for the gashes to disappear and reappear on the dead body, leaving her unwounded.

Time became a staccato nightmare.

Time froze. Restarted and twisted like a dropped corkscrew, rewinding to the other Hermione entering the flat with her kids. Froze, hiccuped, and restarted with Hermione seeing naked Ron cheating with his girlfriend as she clapped a hand over the children’s eyes and turned to run. Froze and restarted with the flower vase in midair about to hit her face. Froze and fast-forwarded as she was bleeding out on the floor behind the couch. Froze. Fast-forwarded to Ron and his Mistress reappearing from the back hallway barely dressed.

Blink. Harry was in the room. Blink and a terrified-looking Harry was kneeling next to her body, pouring potions down her throat, only for them to trickle out the side of her slack mouth. Blink and Harry was bending over her body, absolutely devastated as her kids sobbed in the background. Blink and fast-forward and Harry was attacking Ron with berserker rage, breaking his nose. Blink and Harry and Ron were both unconscious and limp on the kitchen floor, covered in bloody wounds as the Aurors arrested them.

Hermione couldn’t watch anymore. She couldn’t breathe. Watching this was going to give her a heart attack and kill her body at 25 instead of 40. Yet she couldn’t escape.

Time froze and rewound, showing Rose with her hands pressed to Hermione’s neck, trying to stop the bleeding as Hugo cried hysterically in terror. Froze. Jerked back to the present with Hermione’s sliced and bleeding hand holding the swinging Egyptian necklaces in mid-air.

The veiled woman darted into the room, moving unhesitatingly to Hermione and pressing two fingers to the back of her hand—the bleeding hand holding the Egyptian necklace. The touch felt like a snake bite from teeth made of the bitterest ice. About to scream, Hermione realized that time had returned to normal. She choked the sound back.

However, the veiled woman looked like she was glitching, caught in the trap now instead of Hermione, dimming and brightening, gown shifting from dusky blue to darkest red to bone white and back. The woman’s hand moved with glacial slowness broken by rapid jerks until she was able to move her fingers underneath the veil and touch her chest. Shadows rippled from her like a stone dropped into a still pond, dimming her body and the room before everything abruptly returned to normal. Moving smoothly once again, she straightened her back, her pale gown and moonlight veil fluttering in the breeze coming in from the open door.

Breathing out a sob, Hermione fought to keep from collapsing onto the floor. Hermione had been freed, but only from the glitch, not from the consequences of her actions. She’d made a huge mistake. She shouldn’t have blindly come to the moment of her death, especially not without a better plan. They’d tipped the scales of fate in the wrong direction, pushing it out of balance and tangling the thread of her current life with that of her future death over fifteen years hence. Whatever ancient Egyptian deities or magical forces governed time travel and magical bargains, they were going to make her and Hugo pay for subverting fate (she suspected that serpent-headed Shai was getting his revenge here)—or rather they were going to make Hermione pay for it, because she’d never let her son suffer and pay for this instead if she could shield him from it and no matter that he was big instead of small.

The back of Hermione’s mind frantically recited everything she’d ever read on Egypt or time travel. This wasn’t modern British Time Turner magic. Instead of the familiar but still dangerous closed loop time travel system where you could only go back in time to the same location you currently stood at to change an event and where each hour back corresponded to a flip of the hourglass, the Egyptian method moved you through both space and time—years and even decades—based on intent, though it may or may not follow your wishes, and in service of some arbitrary justice and balance using Egyptian sensibilities and social mores so woefully out of date as to be inscrutable to Hermione. She didn’t know how else to explain it except as maddening.

The front of Hermione’s mind told the back of her mind to shut up. They were on a deadline now and the clock was ticking. When her time ran out, she was back to being dead at 14 with a dead toddler Harry, her children winked out of existence, and a dead but no longer defeated Voldemort, who might have a trick besides Horcruxes up his sleeve to escape staying dead with the rest of them, cursing the rest of the world with his destructive presence. She couldn’t let that happen, she had to fix it (somehow), but she also couldn’t abandon her son Hugo before helping him find his rest.

Sure, easy.

Feeling half-hysterical, her mind spun into wordless panic until she slapped it upside the head. She’d figure it out later. Later. Right now, the priority was getting away.

Hermione stumbled forward, her muscles feeling like wet noodles. She trembled with the need to flee, but she had to get Hugo too. Hermione took a page from Rose and forcefully dragged his limp body up by the arm and out the door.

Once in the hall, he seemed to wake up. “We can’t leave Mum dead like that,” Hugo gasped wetly, trying to resist her pull. “We haven’t fixed it yet. You were supposed to fix it. We have to save her. We have to! Please!”

“It’s too late! We will fix it, Hugo, but later.” She tightened her grip on him and lifted so he couldn’t jerk free as she forced him away down the hall, ignoring his heels scrambling for purchase to get free and go back. “This attempt has already failed. We have to leave.”

He glared at her mutinously. “But it isn’t fixed!”

“We have to leave!” She shook him roughly. “If we go now, we can come back later ON TIME or even better, EARLY, and try again, but do it better. Do it right. Okay?”

He nodded sullenly. “Fine.”

“Okay.” Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure if she could trust him. She was afraid that if she reached for the necklace, he’d change his mind again and take advantage of her distraction to escape from her, making everything worse. Things could always get worse.

Hadn’t she just proved that?

An idea popped into her head. “Do you still live in the same house I do now?”

“Yes,” Hugo said, his anger twisting into confusion. “We never moved.”

“And when did you go back to the house after this incident?”

“Go home?” He looked bewildered. “Not for days. We ended up at the Burrow for almost a week, I think, before we went back to the house to pack up our clothes and things. No one had been by because the grapes I’d left out on the counter were still there and all moldy.”

“Perfect.” Calling on her magic, Hermione Apparated them home, even if it would be a home with fifteen years of changes.

Breaking free of her hold, Hugo moved to put a chair between them. “How could you mess up like that? Why didn’t you save her?”

Head going back, Hermione huffed. “Hey! It was already too late as soon as we arrived. I’d like to remind you that you were the one in charge of when we arrived, not me. You made us late, not me.” Hugo flinched as if hit and she had to bite her tongue to keep from saying more and worse.

Breathing in and out through her nose, she tried to calm down and be the mature one. “Look, neither of us are at our best right now.” She went to rub the side of her face, only to stop and quickly drop her hand at feeling dried blood flake off of her fingers. It made her skin crawl. She desperately needed to wash.

“Why don’t you take a small rest on the couch or in your bedroom? I’ll come up with a new plan and we’ll try again.” She tried to sound confident and not like she was about to break into a million pieces.

“But we’re already late and this is wasting time and—”

“We’re time travelers,” she interrupted him firmly. “We can’t be late because we control being early. There is no wasting time, just rushing in foolishly.” She gave him a hard look. “I’m going to wash up in my room. Go rest. Raid the fridge if you want. Eat or throw out those grapes before they get moldy. As I’m taking the necklace with me, you don’t have a choice about going back before I’m done.”

Huffing and puffing, Hugo stomped up the stairs into his bedroom and slammed the door hard enough to make the picture frames rattle.

“Don’t slam the doors!” she shouted.

“Well, sorry!” Hugo shouted back, not sounding sorry at all.

Sighing, Hermione decided it wasn’t worth fighting about. She went into the kitchen and washed her hands, dabbing dittany from the medicine cabinet on her palm to close the slices from the thorns and glass, the ones echoing the shape of her curse scars. She was disappointed but not surprised when the wounds closed but left bright red curse scars like the ones on Harry’s forehead and her back. Putting the bottle away, she looked down and discovered bloodstains up and down her clothing. Skin crawling and nausea rising, she decided to go take that shower now and burn her clothes. Then she’d figure out a better plan to save them all. Somehow.

The master bedroom was familiar enough that she could find everything without any trouble. It was familiar, but not quite hers. A stack of four books sat on the nightstand on her side of the bed, which was a sleek white instead of the knotty golden pine she was used to. Half the books had homemade bookmarks she recognized as her work, though she didn’t remember making them. Uneasy, she put the books back down and left them alone, not interested in flipping through them despite never having seen them before.

Taking a shaky breath, she went to future Hermione’s closet, only recognizing a couple of her current clothing pieces at the very back of the rack. Everything else looked conservative, matronly, and shapeless. She didn’t like the styles or colors but didn’t have much choice if she wanted something clean to wear. Picking out the least objectionable, she placed it on the bed.

She grimaced as Hugo started listening to loud, raucous music in his bedroom. It wasn’t her style. Grimacing, she closed and locked the bedroom door, then went into the bathroom and locked that door behind her, too. Thankfully, distance muffled the terrible music.

Her first order of business after washing her hands was taking out the necklace and cleaning it in the sink, being careful not to tug on the central pendant while still scrubbing thoroughly until all traces of blood were gone. She dried it gently and just as carefully. Wrapping the necklace in a fresh towel, she folded the cloth so the necklace was hidden inside and placed the bundle three towels down on the towel shelf in the corner so it looked innocuous and Hugo couldn’t sneak in while she was showering and steal it again.

External tasks completed, Hermione finally turned to cleaning herself. She only got as far as taking off her socks before the shakes started, followed quickly by tears. Pressing her hands over her face, she blindly closed the toilet lid and collapsed onto it as she broke down sobbing. Hopefully, Hugo’s music was loud enough to drown out her breakdown. The events of 2020 had been awful, truly awful, even worse than she’d been bracing herself for. She was so disappointed in Ron and so sad for her kids, not to mention being disappointed and sad for herself. What a horrible, gut-wrenching end. She didn’t want to die. She especially didn’t want to die like that.

And now she had echoes of other times and deaths jumbled up in her head, crowding in from all sides to confuse her, all the way from bleeding out in Ron’s flat to bleeding out beneath a tree made of glass and fire. How special and delightful. New ways of dying could pop up into her thoughts as a memory at any time. What a gift. Not to mention the way everything on her body ached. She felt awful in every way it was possible to feel bad. Maybe her period would even start off-cycle today, just to shove it to her a little harder. After all, why not? Everything was already going wrong and what was a little more blood after you’d already knelt in a puddle of it next to your murdered body?

She’d really screwed up this time. What a failure. She hated it. It almost made her hate herself. Tugging down the still-damp hand towel from the counter, she pressed it over her mouth to muffle her sobbing.

“Oh, Hermione, please don’t cry like that,” a familiar voice said with aching empathy.

Opening her tear-blurred eyes, she looked up and found the hooded man standing inside the bathtub, half hidden by the shower curtain as he looked at her and wrung his hands. It was a strange place, but the bathroom was too small for him to be standing just anywhere. Pushing back the curtain with a rattle, he stepped out and promptly sat down on the edge of the tub to face her where she sat crying on the toilet lid. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Swallowing and focusing on breathing for a few moments until she regained control of her voice, Hermione finally responded. “I’m a failure. I died at 40, killed by my husband, and traumatized my son in the process. He’s now trying to kill himself trying to save me from dying, but hasn’t had any luck. It’s driving him mad and turning him into a ghost. Additionally, I never completed my Bargain of Threes, so all those thousands of years of service you had to do in Egypt to save me were in vain, meaning I’ve killed baby Harry and reset Voldemort’s defeat so he can win.” Folding the towel to find a dry spot, she pressed it over her wet and swollen eyes, unable to look at him for shame. “I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry,” he said earnestly, waiting for her to look up to continue. “Please trust me, that second death wasn’t your fault.” He leaned forward, hand moving as if he wanted to touch her, only to drop back onto his knee. “Your story’s not over yet, Hermione.”

“What do you mean?” She twisted the towel in her hands.

“That second death at 40 doesn’t have to be permanent. It won’t be permanent. That’s what we’ve always been fighting for, okay? You already overcame one death. You can do it again.”

“But I had your help with that,” she mumbled. “I didn’t do it on my own. I don’t know how to fix this by myself or even if I can stop it.” She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Obviously I’m not as smart as I thought I was, because somehow I became so insignificant that Ron—my husband and supposed best friend—killed me, and he didn’t even seem to care beyond making sure he wasn’t blamed for it. If I see him right now, I think I might find the motivation to use an Unforgivable Curse and that makes me feel so dirty. Also, I feel like a failure to my children, not to mention in life and marriage. What if I try to fix this and mess up again, but even worse? Like back in 1981? What if I fail and ruin everything for everybody?”

Sitting back, the hooded man steepled his hands and looked her over. “Do you want to give up? Quit?” His tone was borderline insulting.

Hermione found her shoulders going back as she snapped, “I beg your pardon, I’m Hermione Granger! I don’t give up and I don’t quit!”

His shadowed bottom lip curved into a smile as he said, “I know.”

“Right.” Hermione flushed, remembering this exact same conversation after her first death. If only she could remember that confidence without having to be goaded into it. “Thank you. For everything, both before and now. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He inclined his head and stood up. Even from a lower angle, Hermione still couldn’t see up into his shadowed hood to make out his features beyond the attractive sweep of his lower jaw. “I will always be your friend, but remember, you have other friends ready and willing to answer your call. You don’t have to do this alone.”

Hermione stood up too. It felt cramped in the bathroom. Rubbing her hands down her thighs, she took a breath and centered herself. If she wasn’t going to give up, that meant she had to keep moving forward. “I appreciate that, but—not to ruin the mood and pep talk—could you leave? And promise not to come back for a little while?” She blushed but kept her head held high, looking at where she assumed his eyes would be inside his shadowed hood. “Before we do anything else, I need to shower. Privately.”

Chuckling, he bowed his head. “Fair enough. I’ll go and stop invading your bathroom. Enjoy your shower. Use it to relax and clear your mind.” Stepping into the small shadow next to the clothes hamper, he paused and said without turning around, “You’re going to be just fine, Hermione. I guarantee it.” The sound of his voice echoed, as if said by a thousand hooded men in every age of the earth.

Then he disappeared.

Feeling more settled, Hermione turned on the shower to give the water time to warm up, a problem even in wizarding households, or at least in this one, and started stripping off her bloodstained clothing. She tossed everything into the sink and set it all on fire, turning it into ash. Keeping her mind blank, she stepped into the shower and washed herself squeaky clean. Turning off the water, she stepped out, dried off, and lotioned her skin. Unlocking the door, she went into the bedroom and got dressed. Returning the towel to the bathroom, she combed and dried her hair. Taking a deep breath, Hermione set down her brush, met her eyes in the mirror, and felt a renewed sense of purpose.

She would not give up, no matter how crazy and impossible these tasks seemed. Hermione couldn’t forget that she was strong. She had to help her baby. She would stop Ron from hurting their family and ruining everything.

One version of Hermione had died, yes, and she suspected that she might have to sacrifice another before this was all through, though if she timed this right—timed, ha! She snorted to herself at the pun, feeling slightly hysterical—she could make it so some version of Hermione would be there for the kids, even if that version ended up with an alternate history the current Hermione still needed to create through some creative uses of the necklace.

Hermione had failed once, yes, but this wasn’t over yet. She still had time to save her future self from death and complete the Bargain of Threes from her past. The veiled lady had given her that chance, helping her wiggle out of that trap. She wasn’t defeated.

However, she couldn’t do it alone. She’d learned her lesson in 1981. She needed help, someone unafraid of almost insurmountable odds, able and willing to break the world itself, and who knew how to survive even when death seemed inevitable. As helpful as the hooded man had been, only one person fit that description in her heart—Harry Potter, the boy who’d lived.

And if Hermione was also doing it for the selfish reason that she wanted and needed her best friend Harry along and didn’t want to do this impossible task alone, that was her business and not something Hugo or anyone else needed to know about.

∞⌛∞

Chapter 7:

∞⌛∞

∞2004, August 10—Harry and Ginny Potter’s House∞

~Hermione Granger (25)~

After careful consideration, Hermione decided that startling Harry with their arrival would be a very bad idea. As an active-duty Auror, he was more trigger-happy than Hermione and willing to cast things worse than a Stunner at potential intruders. To be safe, she decided to travel to his front yard and then knock on the door like a civilized person. Wanting the Harry she knew best, she aimed the necklace for the same day she’d left in 2005.

The first hiccup came just as she knocked on the door and noticed that it was still a pale yellow, not the dark red Harry had painted it in May after James thought it funny to prank visitors with a trick rug that spat a potion that turned everything it hit green, including the door. Hermione remembered laughing when Harry had described trying to clean the potion off the yellow door, only to be left with an awful puke-green spatter pattern that looked worse than the original mess. The Weasley twins had laughed too, but with a lot less sympathy. Needless to say, the dark red paint had been a huge improvement. This door was still yellow, not red.

The second hiccup came when Harry came stomping up to the door, loudly complaining the entire way. “What, you need more money and ran out of Floo powder? The door’s not locked. You could’ve just walked in instead of making me come and greet you in some twisted power trip trying to make me feel subserv—” Yanking open the door, he saw Hermione and cut himself off, flushing. He had a bottle of hard liquor in one fist, which he quickly tried to hide behind his back.

Not quick enough. Eyes narrowing, Hermione flicked her eyes between his missing hand and his eyes. Twice. Tipping back his head, Harry exhaled hard and let his arm drop back into view. “Yeah yeah, I’m not gonna drink it.” She arched one brow skeptically. “Anymore,” he clarified grumpily. “It was a momentary impulse and it passed. Look, I’m putting it away in the locked liquor cabinet.” He pulled the door wider. “Come in, make yourself comfortable, and tell me what you need and why you’re using the door instead of the Floo.” Turning on his heel, he moved to the kitchen, using his wand to open the highest cabinet and levitate the bottle of liquor inside before locking it with two different spells.

Arms crossed, he turned back to face them and leaned back against the counter. The long, lean lines of his body distracted her for a moment as Harry was dressed in nicer than usual robes and had styled his hair so it was actually tamed for once. He was also clean-shaven without a hint of scruff despite the clock saying it was dinnertime. She could just catch a hint of his cologne. It smelled really good. Leaning was a really good look on him too. Lucky Ginny.

But looking wasn’t allowed. Hermione locked that impulse down hard, stopped looking, slapped her thoughts into submission, and examined the kitchen instead. Harry did a good job keeping his sink grout clean. She had a problem with it turning orange and peeling along the back wall. She should ask him about it. Later.

Right now she needed his help fixing 2020. She hoped Harry would still be willing to help as long as she promised to get him back in time for whatever special event he’d dressed up for. She’d feel bad if she caused friction in his marriage. It already had enough troubles as is. He deserved so much better.

“Well?” Harry prompted, glancing between her and Hugo. He cocked his head and sent her a look. He must have no idea who Hugo was, not being let in on the secret of time travel yet.

His shift of position exposed the calendar on the wall over his shoulder, which showed the months of July and August without any decorative pictures. Saturday, July 31st was circled and starred with the words “Daddy’s Bday” in James’s childish scrawl. August 11th was “Mummy’s Bday.” There was a small heart on July 10th, probably for Harry and Ginny’s Wedding Anniversary, which had been scribbled out and moved with an arrow down to August 10th.

Hermione had been aiming for early June of 2005 when she’d left. Harry’s birthday wasn’t for almost 2 months and fell on a Sunday this year, not Saturday. She knew because she’d already started planning it. That calendar didn’t match 2005… which meant she’d messed up the date. Suppressing a wince, Hermione avoided looking at Hugo, trying to remember if she’d told him what date she’d been aiming for. She didn’t want to be labeled a hypocrite for being just as bad at steering as he was, especially after she’d criticized him for it.

Looking back at Harry, she noticed other subtle differences besides him being all dolled up for a date. “How old are you?” she asked abruptly, not bothering to engage her brain-to-mouth filter since this was still a Harry, even if not her most up-to-date one.

“What? Why?” He straightened. “I just turned twenty-four, remember? You hosted my party? We’re the same age until your birthday next month.”

“Okay, close enough, I guess,” she said with a sigh, ignoring his confusion as she bit the ragged edge of her thumbnail and looked around. “Where are the kids?”

Harry went stiff and gave an awkward laugh, scratching the back of his head. “At Uncle Bill’s? Didn’t I tell you tonight was my anniversary makeup dinner after Ginny missed the first one? I guess you and Ginny both forgot about it.”

“Oh no, not again,” Hermione said, distracted from her worries by the hurt Harry was failing to hide. “What happened?”

Trying and failing to look unaffected, Harry breezily answered. “Yeah, Ginny forgot to tell me until she was already in the middle of packing that she was going to take off with some girlfriends from the Harpies to celebrate her birthday weekend and catch a big game in Belgium in hopes of recruiting some new players or something. It was too late to cancel and when I offered to go with her, she repeated that it was with the Harpies, meaning girls only. Some things were said and, well, she lost her temper at me for being too critical and demanding and not reminding her about our plans way earlier, then stormed off.” Swallowing, he ran his fingers up and down the edge of the counter.

“I still let the kids go to Bill and Fleur’s as planned, even baby Lily. I didn’t want to ruin their fun with their older cousins just because…well, anyway.” He cleared his throat. “Ginny promised to make it up to me later….” Trailing off, he avoided eye contact and gave a weak smile, trying to look unaffected. “So here I am,” he spread his hands, “all dressed up with nowhere to go.”

“I’m so sorry,” Hermione said sympathetically, putting a hand on his arm and squeezing. She didn’t know what to say to help. This wasn’t new behavior, but it was still painful. It made her want to drop-kick Ginny face-first into a bog. “You do look very handsome tonight. I’m impressed by the hair. I know how much effort it takes to tame,” she said earnestly. It almost got her a smile.

Leaning against the doorframe, Hugo snorted, reminding them he was still there. “Classic Aunt Ginny. She never changes, even in my time, always putting herself first, breaking promises, blaming others, and forgetting she has a family unless she needs money or a favor, but Merlin forbid you ever try to call her on it.”

Staring at Hugo, Harry’s face did something complicated before turning into a cool mask. His voice was clipped as he said, “I don’t know which Weasley cousin you are, but that’s my wife you’re disparaging, so watch your words. You don’t know us and haven’t earned that right.”

Hermione bit her lip and quietly said, “Um, Harry?”

Crossing his arms, Hugo lifted his chin and glared back at Harry. “Look, Lily once confessed that she’d spent more birthdays and special occasions with my mum than with her own.”

Harry snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I doubt that, considering Lily’s a baby who can’t talk and has yet to reach her first birthday. Try again, kid.” Turning to Hermione impatiently, he said, “What’s going on and who is this punk?”

“He’s—”

Face going red, Hugo’s hands fisted as he spoke loudly over Hermione. “I’m your nephew Hugo from fifteen years in the future! And if you haven’t already noticed the flakiness of your wife and the unhappiness of your kids at being unwanted and constantly disappointed, you obviously need a new glasses prescription! Maybe Albus was right and you are a terrible father. Makes you a perfect couple, I guess.”

Harry flinched back as if physically struck.

“Hugo Weasley!” Hermione snapped. “That is more than enough and truly unkind. Apologize to your Uncle. Right now.” She jabbed her finger at the floor.

Looking down sullenly, Hugo crossed his arms and scuffed the toe of his trainer against the linoleum. “Sorry, Mum. Sorry, Uncle Harry.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve and looked back up at Harry, mouth twisting. “I shouldn’t have said that about you being a bad father, especially not the bit about Albus.” He sighed, his expression softening as he turned and looked out the window. “Albus only said that the once when you first reacted badly to his sorting, but I know he didn’t mean it and felt bad as soon as it came out of his mouth. Everything was fine between you soon after when you said you’d always love him no matter what and accepted him being sorted into Slytherin and becoming best friends with Scorpius Malfoy and all.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “You’re a great dad, the greatest. We all think so.” He peeked over at Harry through his lowered lashes. “Me too. Sorry.” He blushed and looked away out the window again.

Eyes wide, Harry’s mouth opened and closed. “What?” he croaked as he looked at Hermione and silently mouthed, ‘Sorted Slytherin? From the future? Best friends with Malfoy? In Slytherin?’

She sent him a sympathetic look, mouthing back, ‘But also a great dad in the future, the greatest.’

Hugo didn’t notice the interaction as he resumed talking “You’ve always been real good to me and Mum, so much so that when I was little, I’d sometimes pretend you were my dad at the door coming to take me home instead of just James, Albus, and Lily. You were always way more dependable and nice than my dad, that’s for—” voice choking off, his face paled and his eyes went glassy. Head dropping, he stared at something on the floor that wasn’t there. Unfortunately, Hermione could now guess what that was, having seen the body herself. Jerking his head away, eyes closing, Hugo scrubbed roughly at his face, erasing the signs of tears. “Anyway.”

Moving to his side, Hermione rubbed a hand up and down his back. Hugo leaned into it for a moment before jerking away with a pained and guilty look and hunching down, as if he shouldn’t allow himself the comfort of a different version of his much missed mother. Well, Hermione wasn’t going to stand for that. No matter their age or her age, she was going to do her best to take care of her babies. She dropped a kiss on his forehead and then stepped back to give him a bit of space. He responded by relaxing a trifle and unscrunching his face. She’d take it.

“You…you really are baby Hugo?” Blinking rapidly, Harry glanced at Hermione, waiting for her nod, before stepping closer to Hugo and leaning in to examine his face. “From the future?”

“Yep, that’s me,” Hugo said sardonically, hair falling over his face, not looking up from his feet as he lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

“Yeah, it’s crazy, I know,” Hermione said with a suddenly shaky exhale. “But just hear us out, Harry. Please. We need your help.”

“Okay,” Harry said, rubbing his hands together, obviously trying to shake off his shock. “Okay, tell me all about it. We’re saving the world, I assume? Just like old times?” He sent her a crooked grin that made her stomach flip with affection despite the seriousness of the situation.

“Not quite the world,” Hermione said, unable to stop herself from smiling back and she reached out and squeezed his arm. “Just someone who means the world to my Hugo.”

The smile faded from her face and her hand fell back to her side. She couldn’t bring herself to just baldly say it was to save her future self from being murdered by Ron, even if it was the truth. She cleared her throat. “To fix that wrong, Hugo’s found a new—or rather a really old—way to time travel, but it isn’t as precise as he—as we’d like.” She took a quick breath. “There’s now also a chance that if he doesn’t get it right, he’ll turn into a ghost and get his spirit stuck in limbo like Moaning Myrtle or something even worse. I can’t let that happen.”

Hermione couldn’t help but look down at the new red curse scars on her hand. If they meant what she thought they did, then her soul was also at risk of something even worse. Her pulse kicked up a notch when she realized that the moon and lightning bolt were closer than they’d been when she first got them, like they were moving when she wasn’t looking. What would happen when the handle and blade reunited in the middle of her hand to form the sickle? Would it slice through the lifeline on her palm, cut her life short, and reap her soul? How much time did she have left?

One problem at a time, she reminded herself forcefully, shoving the worry onto the back burner as she fisted her hand and tucked it into her pocket. Hugo first.

Looking back at Harry, she refocused. “A few things have gone wrong in the process, so we need to approach the problem from a new angle. That’s where you come in. Hugo needs my help and I need your help, so here we are,” she said, clasping her hands together and trying not to come off as desperate or panicking.

Green eyes narrowing, Harry looked her up and down, the gaze so heavy it felt almost like a physical touch. “Are you really my Hermione? You don’t look like you’re from fifteen years in the future, but there’s something different about you from the woman I left napping at home with a new baby this morning. Are you a time traveler too?”

“Ten points to Gryffindor.” Tucking a curl behind her ears, she sighed. “I’m not your current Hermione, as I turn 26 in about three months. I come from June 2005 and I’m guessing this is August 2004?” She waited for his nod to continue. “I may not be the same Hermione you saw this morning, Harry, but when it comes to being your best friend? That’s still me. Always.” She took a quick breath. “I hope that’s still you too.”

Especially since the man she’d thought of as her second best friend, the father of her children, was the same man who’d cheated on her and killed her, proving himself to be no kind of friend at all. Even Malfoy was better than Ron, since Malfoy had never pretended to like or love her nor made any promises. They didn’t even compare. Malfoy had matured since school whereas Ron had morally regressed. They both made good kids, though. At least they both had that, she thought charitably, trying not to break down.

Hermione looked at Harry. “You’re my best friend in the world and I need your help, Harry. I need you.” Eyes stinging, she blinked rapidly, trying to keep her tears from falling.

“Then you have my help,” he said without hesitation as he padded close enough to feel the heat of his body stirring the air. “You have me,” he vowed, his eyes holding hers and not letting go until she gave him a nod and her tremulous smile turned into something steadier and more genuine.

Giving her arm a quick squeeze, he gave her a small smile and stepped back to lean against the counter again. “So, time travel. This sounds a bit more complicated than our trip during fourth year. I thought you couldn’t travel to the future with a Time Turner?”

“Not with a British Time Turner, no, but this one is Egyptian. That means the rules are Egyptian too. It travels in time and place. I went with Hugo and saw—well. My future,” she said awkwardly. “The one he’s trying to fix. We arrived too late for me to be of any help, and then I decided my plan had been rubbish anyway and to come back and get you to help us make it better.”

Harry nodded thoughtfully. “Alright, but I need to know as many details as possible. I notice you haven’t exactly told me what it is we’re trying to fix yet,” he added pointedly.

“We’re getting to that, but I agree that you need to know everything,” she said, shifting on her feet and looking away. “We already tried winging it and that didn’t go well, especially since we didn’t get the timing right to start with.” Hugo went small and tense as if expecting a scolding. “But that’s not anyone’s fault,” she said firmly to him. “The necklace is very hard to control and has a mind of its own. We’re all just doing the best we can with the timing and playing it by ear. We’ll keep trying until we get it right.”

Forehead wrinkling, Harry pursed his lips. “Winging it isn’t your usual style. I’m surprised at you.”

The criticism caught her off-guard and made her respond without thinking it through. “Well excuse me for being off my game, Harry,” she snapped. “I was a little distracted by my future son insisting I help him stop my future husband of almost twenty years from murdering me in front of my children and his barely legal mistress.”

“You’re not…serious. Ron?” The hands he’d braced on the counter slipped off as Harry’s head went back, eyes darting across her face to examine her expression for any hint of jokes or lies. Not finding anything but truth, the blood drained from his face, leaving him looking pale and horrified.

Looking away, Hermione winced. “I shouldn’t have said it that bluntly.” She’d been trying to ease him into it, but she’d lost that battle when she’d lost her temper.

Before she could further apologize, Harry was striding forward and yanking her into a hug, pulling her tightly to his chest with a wet gasp that she couldn’t help but echo as her eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry,” he said raggedly. “I know your relationship isn’t as good as you pretend, but I never thought, never even suspected he’d ever…. I’d do anything and everything to keep you alive. You have to know that,” he vowed shakily, burying his head into her curls. “I won’t let him. I won’t.” His arms went almost painfully tight.

Hugo started crying too, so they added him to the hug, and after that, it took a while for them all to stop shaking and calm down. Hermione and Hugo tried to tell Harry all of the details, but they keep getting overwhelmed by their emotions or talking over each other. They went through an entire roll of paper towels, as Harry didn’t keep any tissues in the kitchen.

“This isn’t working. Maybe we should all take a Calming Draught or something and try talking then,” Hermione finally said with frustration. Her eyes felt practically raw from all of the crying and rubbing.

“I have a better idea,” Harry said. “I brought a Pensieve home to review some things for work. We can use it for this instead. You put your memories in and I’ll review them objectively and come up with a plan of attack while the two of you rest.”

“That’s a great idea,” Hermione said, relieved to not have to keep talking about it.

Harry walked Hugo through how to put his memories of the many times he’d visited 2020 into the Pensieve and had Hermione add her memory too. Since the Pensieve only showed physical experiences and not mental or spiritual, it shouldn’t reveal any of her secrets about being judged and found wanting by the Egyptian Gods or how she was on the cusp of having her soul sucked back to 1981 as an oath-breaker. That was a problem for another day, one Harry didn’t need to be distracted by.

“Do you want to come with me to watch all the memories?” Harry asked hesitantly.

“No!” Hermione cleared her throat and forced her voice to come down a notch. “I mean, not really,” she said apologetically, “not unless you need me to.” She couldn’t stomach the thought of seeing her own corpse again, but she’d do it for Harry.

Hugo gave a huge yawn, making Hermione yawn too. It had been a long day. Smiling at them sympathetically, Harry shooed them away. “Nah, go rest. You know where everything is. Hugo probably does too, right?”

“Yep,” Hugo said, yawning again.

“Thanks,” Hermione said, sending Harry a crooked smile over her shoulder as she herded Hugo off to find a bed.

While Harry was in his office with the Pensieve, she got Hugo some Dreamless Sleep Potion along with a clean set of Harry’s pajamas, taking care of Hugo’s Mouth-Cleaning Spell for his teeth just like she usually did for his toddler self. Tucking Hugo under the covers in James’s bed, which was almost too small for him, she sat next to him and sang him a lullaby while petting his hair until he fell asleep. It didn’t take long. Her poor, sweet boy was knackered.

She got up to leave the room but ended up lingering in the doorway, watching him sleep. Staring at his sleep-slack face, she could finally see more of her sensitive little boy in the angry and desperate young man she’d been dealing with. His prickly stubbornness had been frustrating, but she couldn’t blame him for reacting badly to what had happened. It made her chest ache. There was no way to prepare your child to experience something like that. She loved Hugo so much, whether at almost two or a teen. He was her son and she’d save him if she could, no matter the cost to herself.

Softly closing the door, she walked down the hall, only to pause at the sound of retching. Rushing to Harry’s office, she found him bent over and throwing up in the trash can. She vanished the sick for him as soon as he seemed to be done and sat back, casting a quick Mouth-Cleaning Spell. Before she could ask if he was okay, Harry grabbed her with a sob and pulled her down into his lap, wrapping his arms around her tightly and burying his face in her neck as he rocked back and forth. “Not you, not you,” he said wretchedly as he trembled, breath hitching against her skin. “It wasn’t really you.”

Each time Hermione thought she was done with tears for the day, her eyes betrayed her and flooded again. “I’m here. I’m safe,” she told him thickly. “It wasn’t me. It won’t be me, we’ll make sure of it.” She swallowed unsteadily, allowing her vulnerability to surface because it was just the two of them. “Won’t we?” she asked in a small voice.

“I won’t let you die,” he vowed against her skin, his arms going impossibly tighter, his fingers tracing protection runes down her spine. “You’re my best friend, my best everything. I won’t let that be your fate. I’ll do everything in my power to keep you happy and safe. I swear it. I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t. We’re going to be alright,” she said, hugging him back just as tightly. “As long as we’re together, we can beat anything.”

“Even death,” he said in a voice that made the hairs on the back of her neck rise and the shadows in the room flicker strangely.

Unnerved, she still nodded. This was her Harry, after all. “Even death,” she echoed, as always, willing to follow him wherever he would go. She’d always been open about following him, but sometimes she forgot that Harry was just as willing to switch the lead and follow her too. “Together,” she said, focusing on the feel of his big warm hands sweeping up and down her back, the rhythmic stroking soothing them both and making her sleepy.

“Together,” he sighed. Tugging her up and over to the couch, both of them emotionally exhausted, he pulled her down to lay with him, their limbs entwined and clinging. It was comfort, caring, and connection.

It could’ve been romantic, but it wasn’t. Romance was a complication they’d never allowed themselves to explore. Tonight wouldn’t change that, she told herself, especially since Harry would never break his marriage vows and she’d never ask or want him to. They’d loved each other for decades without the need for romance. Safe in his arms, she fell asleep.

Hours later she woke up to the sound of Harry’s hitched breathing and damp eyes soaking the collar of her shirt where his head rested against her chest. “Harry?” she asked in a sleepy murmur, sliding her hand up the tense plane of his back. It had been years since they’d shared a bed and she’d woken to Harry crying, but she still remembered what to do—stay calm, act natural, and keep him from running off to suffer alone.

Harry stilled and then slowly relaxed. “M’fine. Just a bad dream,” he whispered.

He tried to pull back but she resisted, her heavy limbs trapping him in place. At some point he’d covered them with a blanket, turning the couch into a warm cocoon. Since she was on the outside of the couch, she sneakily tucked the edge under her hip so he couldn’t get free. “Two peas in a pod.” She smirked at her cleverness, eyes still closed.

“Hmm?” She felt him rise up on one elbow and get trapped by the blanket.

Her eyes felt too heavy to lift. “Blanket pod. Me ‘n you. Peas. Stayin’ put.” She tugged him back down, forcing his elbow to straighten.

He huffed in surprise and then gave a little laugh. “Not giving me a chance to run away?”

“Nope.” She smacked her lips and frowned, already tasting stale morning breath. “Not ‘less you needa pee. Don’ pee on me.”

Harry trembled with a suppressed laugh. “I won’t.” His head settled against her shoulder. She could feel pricklies from his face poking through her shirt. She poked him and rolled her shoulder until he shifted so she couldn’t feel the hairs, just his heavy warm jaw. That was fine.

The next few minutes passed in silence and she was almost asleep again when he whispered. “Hermione?”

“Huh?” She jerked back awake. “D’ya…need…me?” she slurred, rubbing a circle on his shoulder before her fingers fell limp again as sleep tried to suck her back down.

“Always,” his voice sounded strange but she was too sleepy to figure out why. “Nevermind. Sweet dreams.”

“Mmm?” she hummed, wordlessly asking if he wanted something more, trying and failing to wake up.

“Shh,” he whispered and petted her arm soothingly. “Shh.”

It didn’t seem urgent and she was too tired for this. She’d figure him out later.

As Hermione started to doze off again wrapped safely in Harry’s arms, she felt him slowly shifting until his face was pressed to the side of her head. He breathed in deeply and sighed before moving back, hovering above her as if memorizing her face. His wand and broom-calloused fingers gently swept her hair off her face and tucked it behind her ear before he carefully laid back down cheek to cheek. He paused again, perhaps waiting for sleepy objections, but she didn’t have any, especially not when his damp eyelashes brushed against her skin and then a tear slid down his nose, across her cheek, and into her hair. Breath hitching, he moved again, lifting up and sliding down, pressing his face to her throat and then stealthily sliding his mouth up to rest below the hinge of her jaw and snuggling in for the duration, his sensitive lips perfectly placed to feel the healthy throb of her heartbeat through the night—proof of life and hopefully a ward against his nightmares.

She tilted her head back to make it easier for him to fit. Harry froze. She gently cupped her hand around the nape of his neck in benediction. After several more seconds Harry stopped fighting and went boneless, his mouth still connected to her heartbeat. Hermione’s lips curved up. Sliding into sleep like that was seamless between one Harry-filled breath and the next.

∞⌛∞

Chapter 8:

∞⌛∞

∞2004, August 11—Harry and Ginny Potter’s House∞

~Harry Potter (24)~

Drying the last of the breakfast dishes, Harry’s eyes drifted to Hermione and clung. Again. He was having trouble keeping himself from obsessively staring at her, his brain demanding constant proof of life. Every time he walked past during their planning session, he had to reach out and touch her. He was a mess, but whatever it took to get that horror show from the pensieve out of his head. When she’d gone to the bathroom earlier and shut the door after sending him a sweet little smile, he’d had to hide from Hugo so he could clutch at the bookmark in his pocket to keep from hyperventilating while she was out of sight.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, he also missed his children desperately and wanted to run over to Bill’s and check on them to make sure they were all okay, even though he wasn’t supposed to pick them up until after lunch. He ached to give each precious little face a smacking kiss on the cheek and a long hug, filling his arms to overflowing with all three of his little treasures. However, he couldn’t because that would just cause more problems when Bill asked where Ginny was and which Weasley family Hugo belonged to. Plus Harry would want to take the kids back with him as soon as he saw them and that would make stopping Hermione’s death and Hugo’s madness exponentially more difficult with three babies in tow. He also wanted to go and gather up little Hugo and Rose, kiss their little fingers and toes, plop them down with his three, and promise them all that he’d protect their fragile little hearts and minds and keep the bad people away, even if those bad people were their parents and grandparents. Hell, they could all sort into Slytherin, go work at Madam Puddifoot’s Tea Shop, or even profess to hate Quidditch and he would still love and support them no matter what.

Harry was being ridiculous. He kept telling himself to calm down, but unfortunately, his brain wasn’t listening. Luckily for everyone, Harry had lots of experience with rising to a challenge, even when he was an emotional mess. He just had to keep pretending his hardest for Hermione and Hugo that he was sane and coping.

He was mostly coping.

His sanity was in question, but that was nothing new. As far as he was concerned, he deserved a pass after his parents were murdered in front of him as a toddler, growing up with the Dursleys, having Voldemort in his head during his formative years, being twisted up in knots by Dumbledore, dying again at the Final Battle, and being married to Ginny Weasley and the son-in-law of Molly Weasley for five years.

Hermione’s memories had been bad enough, but Hugo’s had rewritten everything he’d thought he’d known about Ron Weasley’s character. He felt like he should be surprised that he’d almost cast an Unforgivable Curse at Ron…but he wasn’t. Part of him was even disappointed that future Harry had been stopped, especially since he’d been punished for it anyway. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to see Ron Weasley again without wanting to kill him. Harry knew he had some very dark places inside. He’d always suspected that he’d be lost without Hermione. This merely proved it.

He’d found time to have a private talk with the boy this morning while Hermione had been showering. What he’d learned about his future self and his family had been devastating. After what Hugo had said about how Ginny had hurt their children over and over, even selling their home and abandoning them when future Harry had been imprisoned, he didn’t think he could stay married to her. He’d thought nothing could be worse than not growing up with a mother, but maybe he’d been wrong. He didn’t think he could forgive Molly for how she’d failed his kids either. That they’d been happier living with Draco Malfoy really said something. Harry had a lot of changes to make if he wanted to be the father his children deserved and a man proud of his reflection. It was also past time to stop making excuses for the toxic people in his life and cut them loose. If he wanted to avoid his tragic future life, he was going to have to fight for a happier present.

However, that was a problem for later. First they had to prevent Hermione’s murder and save Hugo’s sanity. Harry’s first suggestion that he pop over to the future alone and secretly kill Ron before Hermione and the kids arrived had been taken as a bad joke.

He hadn’t been kidding.

Nevertheless, there was no point in bringing it up again. They had a good if different plan, they just had to execute it right. None of this going back a million times like Hugo or flailing about like Hermione after things were already over. “Let’s go over the plan one more time,” he said.

Hermione huffed. “Again? We’ve gone over the plan three times already since deciding on it during breakfast.” Hugo groaned in agreement and slumped back against the couch. She rubbed her forehead. “Harry, you’re starting to act like me when planning and I’m starting to get impatient like you. I don’t know if I like this reversal.”

“One more time,” Harry said firmly. He didn’t care if they didn’t like it. They had to get this perfect because he couldn’t survive the death of Hermione. That other Harry in the pensieve hadn’t; He’d been broken. Hugo too. Harry would do anything to ensure that memory in the Pensieve never came true, though even then thoughts of 2020 were probably going to haunt him for the rest of his life.

“To recap, we’ve agreed not to kill Ron, as it will cause too many problems for Hermione and the kids and might make them feel bad for him,” Harry said unhappily. Seeing what Ron was capable of at his worst had put a lot of things into perspective. Harry would’ve died for Ron without hesitation when they were teens, but now he wouldn’t spit on him if he was on fire (not unless he was spitting gasoline). He mourned his old friend, but had already buried him in his heart.

Harry paced by Hermione, tugging lightly on a golden brown curl and watching it bounce back. “As soon as we get there, I’ll Disillusion myself and Hugo while Hermione does herself. Then I’ll cast a Time Spell to check when we are in the series of events, since that’s our biggest wild card.” Hermione blushed an endearing pink, just as she had every time this had been mentioned during planning. She’d missed the Time Spell in all the times she’d time traveled, relying on observation and educated guesses to orient herself in time. Sometimes she was too smart for her own good.

“I’m going to be wearing a special disguise I’ve used on the job to meet with informants. Even my own wife didn’t recognize me, so it should work fine in case I need to be seen to cause a distraction.” Though Hermione was a lot more observant than Ginny, so he’d still need to be careful.

“I will be reacting fluidly based on events on the ground. Hugo, what are you doing next?” Harry prompted, glancing at him over his shoulder as he paced around Hermione’s chair, letting the back of his fingers glide down her arm in passing. He wished they didn’t have to play so much by ear, but the time travel wasn’t precise enough to plan otherwise. Thankfully his Auror training made him flexible enough to work on the fly.

Sitting up from his slouch, Hugo tucked red hair behind his ear and recited, “I’m to find the nearest fire alarm and pull it.”

“And what else?” Harry said pointedly.

Hugo heaved a dramatic, teenage sigh and rolled his eyes. “I’m not to go inside the flat no matter what. That’s not my job.”

“Good.” Harry clapped Hugo on the shoulder and turned. “Hermione?” He hated this part, but had been forced to compromise.

Hermione sat up in her seat, shoulders back and chin raised like she was still back in Hogwarts answering a question in class. It was adorable. “If future Hermione and the kids make it to the flat before you can stop them or the fire alarm goes off, I sneak into Ron’s flat while Ron’s…distracted,” she cleared her throat uncomfortably but soldiered on, “and cast Sticking Charms on the vase and anything else in the kitchen that could be turned into a projectile. I will then hide on the sidelines next to Ron’s hideous orange couch, wand at the ready to shield my other self and the children from any unexpected dangers if and when they enter the flat. After they’ve safely left or I’m confident they won’t enter after all, I will exit as well, using the following methods in order of preference: out the door, Apparition, Floo, or the necklace. If forced to use the necklace, I will return for you and Hugo as soon as possible and meet you at The Leaky Cauldron. We will all be carrying money to pay for lodging, bribes, and other emergencies, just in case.”

Harry had objected to Hermione being the one to go inside the flat, not wanting her that close to Ron or exposed to his infidelity again, but she’d insisted she could do it and stay level-headed. Harry unfortunately hadn’t been able to honestly say the same when pressed and Hugo had definitively proven that he couldn’t either. Harry had still tried to argue that he should go, but she’d stubbornly insisted that he’d be better used outside and he’d been forced to concede.

“I believe in you.” Harry slid a hand up to rest on Hermione’s shoulder, then looked back at Hugo. “We’re going to save both of you,” he promised, holding Hugo’s gaze.

Swallowing hard, Hugo nodded.

Looking down, Harry saw Hermione’s hands, hidden in her lap, anxiously pulling and winding the fabric of her shirt around her fingers. The fabric was pulled so torturously tight that a hole had formed at the hem. “Hey.” Harry moved his hand to cup the back of Hermione’s neck and squeezed gently, waiting for her to lean back into his hold trustingly and meet his eyes. “I promise, I will make this work.”

She sent him a weak smile. “I know,” she said.

“This is going to work,” he said more forcefully, shaking her gently.

Hermione blew out a long breath and then nodded decisively. “I believe you.” She squeezed his forearm and then stood up with a crooked smile. “I believe in us. Let’s go.”

∞⌛∞

∞2020, July 03—Ron Weasley’s Work Flat∞

~Harry Potter (24)~

There was nothing.

There was life.

There was future Hermione ALREADY THERE and in the middle of opening the building’s front door. They’d planned for being too late. They’d planned for being too early. However, none of their plans had included arriving at the exact same time.

So stupid and shortsighted.

Their only luck came from how future Hermione was looking over her shoulder at the Hugo behind her and hadn’t yet seen the Hugo, Harry, and younger Hermione standing straight in front of her in plain sight.

Desperate to hide, Harry tackled Hugo behind the front desk. Before he could grab Hermione and pull her in with them to safety, she ran in the opposite direction and dived into the stairwell. Harry could hear the pounding echo of her footsteps as she raced up the stairs. It was her role in the plan, but this was not the way he’d seen the plan going. He didn’t like it. At all.

Biting back a string of swears, Harry peeked around the desk. A lump formed in his throat as he watched the small family entering the room. The other Hugo was giggling and bumping hips with an older girl that had to be Rose as they playfully fought to be first through the door held by their mother. The difference between that grinning Hugo and the bitter and barely sane one behind the desk with Harry was night and day. Hermione wore the extra fifteen years very well as she gathered up her children and gracefully strode through the lobby, her gauzy burgundy dress floating around her curvy body and her golden Egyptian necklace gleaming in the sunlight coming through the windows, turning her into something holy and divine. A grocery sack dangled from her fingertips and a small, hopeful smile curved her lips as she looked up towards the ceiling.

The profane horror of what had happened to her struck Harry anew. How could Ron not value the gift of this family? How could he have destroyed something so beautiful? Someone so perfect and beautiful?

Beneath him, Hugo jerked and Harry barely managed to hang onto the boy to keep him from flinging himself at his mother. “We have to stop them,” Hugo gasped. “Have to save her!”

Recalled to his mission, Harry tightened his grip. “We will.” He barely resisted the temptation to just petrify the whole family and immediately float them back outside while he went up to deal with Ron alone, but Hugo had to see his mom be saved and she needed to learn the truth without Hugo feeling like he’d done something wrong.

Harry quietly Disillusioned both of them according to their original plan and pushed Hugo towards the far wall. “Get the fire alarm. Do your part.”

Growling, Hugo shook off his hands but moved as directed. Harry invisibly followed the family into the stairwell. The kids were racing ahead of their mother, making a racket that hid Harry’s footsteps.

“Slow down,” Hermione laughed as she hurried after them.

Harry was only a few steps behind her with his wand at the ready. Perhaps he was too close, as his feet hit the stairs off-rhythm and clanged separately from her footsteps, even with the noisy teenagers. Head tilting, she looked back over her shoulder with a furrowed brow.

Harry flattened himself to the wall and her eyes passed right over him. Where was Hugo with that fire alarm? He claimed he had to be part of saving her to find his rest, so why isn’t he doing his job?

Rose and other Hugo pushed through the door onto the next level and raced each other towards the door to Ron’s flat with Hugo in the lead. Harry would try to get in front of them, but Hermione was blocking his way as she exited the door into the hall and rushed after them with a sweet huff of laughter. She wouldn’t be happy for much longer, but as long as she lived to be disappointed, that was all that mattered.

Harry noticed that the door was hanging slightly open. His Hermione must already be inside. His instincts told him to trust her to neutralize Ron as a threat. He did trust her, trusted her more than anyone, but he still couldn’t just let this innocent Hermione and her kids walk into danger.

Harry couldn’t stay passive any longer.

Pausing in the stairwell doorway, Harry stripped off the Disillusionment and activated his disguise of skeezy young potions dealer Terry Sullivan with his slicked back light brown hair, white and red complexion, dark eyes, and wide nose, wearing a baggy Irish National Quidditch Team jersey over stained brown trousers and barely laced work boots. Harry slammed the door against the wall dramatically as he burst into the hallway, pretending not to see Hermione dropping her bag with a sound of breaking bottles and pivoting to face him with her arm outstretched protectively in front of her startled children, who’d frozen in the doorway to Ron’s flat. Hermione pointed her wand at him.

Good for her, he thought.

Pretending he didn’t notice her threat, Harry staggered into the hallway as if not entirely sober, making a big production of swivelling his head from side to side as he examined the numbers on the doors as he huffed and puffed, taking a deep breath. “Where are you, you cheating whore?!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “I know you’re here with that red-headed tosser! Again! You said you’d stop sleeping with that Ron Weasley bastard! You lied!”

Hermione went almost preternaturally still at hearing Ron’s name. She didn’t look like she was breathing.

“Get out here, you slut! I know you’re on this floor!” Harry shouted, turning to the first door on the left and banging on it, then the door on the right, keeping his face mostly hidden and his expressions exaggerated to keep from being recognized beneath his disguise, all the while pretending he wasn’t watching Hermione’s reaction.

Lips pressing tight, Hermione jerked into motion, turning and pushing the door to Ron’s flat open until it was flush against the wall. Harry was prepared to do something drastic to stop her from going inside, but she didn’t advance. Just looked in with wide, vulnerable eyes. There shouldn’t be anything damning to see from this angle, at least according to where Ron had been in the kitchen in the pensieve memories, but she obviously saw something because all of the color drained from her face. She flinched back and jerked her head away, eyes slamming shut as the sound of Ron’s swearing and a woman’s squeal echoed out into the hall.

“Oh hell,” she whispered raggedly.

“Mum?” Rose asked in a small voice.

Eyes popping open, Hermione’s expression twisted between agony and anger as she sucked in several rapid breaths.

“What is it?” Hugo whispered, trying to lean forward to see.

Hands darting up, Hermione twisted her fingers into the shoulders of her children’s clothes and dragged them away from the door. “Don’t look. Don’t.”

Remembering his role, Harry looked away from them and shouted. “Where are you, you cheaters? I’m gonna kill him!” It didn’t take any acting to put real emotion into that part, especially after seeing the devastated look on Hermione’s face.

“Oh no!” a female voice wailed from the open doorway. “Ronnie, how did Sean and your wife find us?” Harry had to fight not to grimace and roll his eyes at the fact that she thought he was her bloke Sean.

Harry banged on another door, now even more irritated at the situation. “Get out here!”

Just as the door under his fist started to open, the fire alarm finally went off with a loud beeping wail, filling the hall with flashing red lights.

Without another word, Hermione pulled her children to her chest and Side-Apparated them away to safety with a *bang* of displaced air.

She was saved.

Harry felt like he could’ve cheered.

Down the hall by the opposite staircase, a figure the color of yellow-stained wall paint collapsed onto the floor with a thump, turning the color of dirty carpet. The Disillusioned Hugo put his hands over his face and started to sob in relief. He must’ve snuck up after finally getting the fire alarm going.

The door in front of Harry opened to reveal an angry-looking woman more than twice his size hefting a frying pan. “What’s your problem?!” the woman behind the door snarled at him, hefting her weapon.

“Fire alarm,” Harry said in a meek voice, stepping back out of her reach just in case and keeping his wand at the ready. “You should probably get out, ma’am.”

“Oh, for the love of—” Lips pursing, the woman turned to put down the frying pan, grabbed her purse and wand, and shoved past him, turning to close and lock her door before jogging away down the staircase. She was probably one of those witches who never learned to Apparate.

Harry was more concerned with Hermione still Disillusioned in Ron’s flat and whatever was going on in there. He hurried inside the open door, only to jerk to a stop at the sight that met his eyes. Ron and the blond girl were naked and contorted into uncomfortable-looking shapes up on the orange couch in full view of the door. Threads of honey-gold webbing trapped them in place, as if they’d tripped and gotten stuck there. At the base of the couch in a small golden puddle lay an open, bear-shaped bottle of honey.

Ron’s head twisted backwards over his flabby, freckled arse. “Hey, man, this isn’t what it looks like. I promise!”

For a second, Harry’s fingertips tingled with the ardent desire to grab that lying bastard’s head and keep twisting it round and round until it popped off and bounced across the floor like a dropped quaffle.

The blond girl’s face was glued against Ron’s knee and the couch cushion, making it impossible for her to see anyone by the door. “Is that Sean? Or your wife? Whoever it is, we need help! We’re innocent strangers, of course, but we’re stuck. See?” She plucked at a golden thread behind her back, making it snap back against Ron’s thigh with a twang that had Ron jerking and hissing with pain.

“Be careful, you bint!” Ron snapped before looking back at Harry. The fire alarm wailed even louder. “Well?!” Ron demanded.

“Well, what?” he asked curtly, distracted by his search for Hermione. Something acrid and bitter that smelled like smoke drifted through the air, competing with the overpoweringly sweet scent of honey. Harry wondered if Hugo had ended up setting a real fire. He didn’t care, as long as Hermione was alright. His eyes searched the flat, but he couldn’t see where she was hiding. If she’d been hurt, Ron wasn’t escaping this room alive.

“Look, there’s a fire. Can’t you hear the alarm? I was just being a good neighbor and helping this nice young lady escape when somehow we got stuck like this.”

Harry didn’t bother responding to that bold-faced lie.

Ron huffed and tried to jerk free.

The blond girl squeaked and wiggled. “Now don’t be mad, Sean. Do you know who this is?” The blond girl sounded like a saleswoman. “Ron Weasley, that’s who. He’s famous, he is. And Ron is best friends with the Harry Potter, so get us loose and he’ll introduce you.” She sighed gustily. “I’d love to meet Harry too. We both can.” She giggled.

“Yeah, I’m famous and there’s a fire, so get us out and I’ll introduce you,” Ron said tersely.

“Harry’s even more famous than Ron here,” the girl said.

“Shut up!” Ron snapped. “We all know that already!”

A soft female snort sounded at Harry’s side just as a familiar if invisible hand slid around his waist and onto his lower back. Instantly Harry relaxed. He reached back and pressed Hermione’s fingers more firmly against his spine, silently ordering her not to let go. She obeyed, pressing closer, her body a warm and welcome weight, though her flattened palm felt strangely cold in contrast, like she was holding a pair of ice cubes. Fighting off a shiver, he made a mental note to ask her about it later.

“C’mon!” Ron said impatiently, fighting to get free of the honey net and failing, his hairy knee becoming stuck to his ear. It was an ugly sight, even if a little funny. “You have to help us out, mate.”

Taking a breath, Harry said, “No, I really don’t.” Lip curling contemptuously, Harry raised his wand and cast a transfiguration spell on the roses on the kitchen table. “But I’m a helpful guy. That’s a nice web, it’s just missing some spiders.”

“What? NO!” Ron yelped as rose red spiders with glistening, sunset-colored eyes scurried down the table legs and over to the orange couch where he was trapped. “No, no, please no!!!” Ron screamed, his words devolving into shrieks of terror as the spiders swarmed over him and the girl. They both screamed and thrashed as the spiders bit them with thorny fangs and wrapped them in leaf green spider silk. It hadn’t been Harry’s best transfiguration, but who was going to grade him? It got the job done.

Keeping Hermione safely at his back, Harry retreated with her out into the hall. Turning and pulling the door closed to delay Ron’s rescue and muffle the screams for Hermione and Hugo’s sakes, he wrapped his arm around Hermione’s invisible waist and moved to where he’d last seen Hugo. The boy was easy to find where he sat sitting on the floor, crying softly.

Harry nudged the invisible Hugo with his foot. “Hey kid, is this a real fire or a fake one?”

Sniffling, Hugo used Harry’s leg to pull himself to his feet. Hermione shifted at Harry’s back, probably reaching out an arm to hug Hugo. Tired of not seeing her, Harry cancelled Hugo’s Disillusionment spell and his own disguise. Hermione popped into view a second later.

“Hugo?” Harry prompted.

Wiping an arm over his wet face, Hugo gave a quavering sigh and then cleared his throat. “Um, so the fire alarm had a child-proof lock made to resist false alarms and pranks. The veiled lady showed up and helped me figure it out. I had to grab a trash can, stuff it with newspapers, and light that on fire under a sensor to get the alarm spell to trip, but it worked. The fire should be pretty self-contained,” Hugo said, his voice a little clogged and nose running. He wiped it with the back of his hand. “I don’t think it will burn up the building or hurt anybody.”

“Look outside,” Hermione said. “The authorities are responding to the alarm. They’ll take care of it now if it starts to spread.”

“Good,” Harry said. “Time to go.” He patted Hermione’s hip. “If you’ll do the honors?”

“We saved her, right?” Hermione abruptly asked, searching his face from up close. “We really did it?”

“Yes, we did it,” Harry said warmly, squeezing her close and reaching out to wrap an arm around Hugo and tug the boy into the embrace. “Good job, Team Time Travel. We did it.”

“We did,” Hugo said with a wet gasp as Hermione tugged at the pendants at her throat to take them away. “My memory is already starting to fuzz and not feel so cutting. We saved my mum.”

“And saved you too,” Hermione said with a slightly distracted smile just before the world flashed black and everything twisted, turned, screamed, burned.

It felt like he was dying, like he was dead.

∞⌛∞

Chapter 9:

∞⌛∞

∞2004, February 4—Harry and Ginny Potter’s House∞

~Harry Potter (24)~

There was nothing.

There was life.

Sticking the landing with magical travel was always a pain. Time-travelling Egyptian necklace travel was no different.

Except for how it was different, unnerving, and unnatural, especially in all of the ways it felt so very natural to Harry, giving him a strange sense of home and belonging in that instance of dying when traveling between one time and the next, but he wasn’t mentioning that out loud where Hermione could hear and start fretting and nagging him about it. Just no. He wasn’t doing that.

What he was doing was landing. Harry focused on that instead of the rest of it, making his knees loose and flexible, engaging his core, and keeping his arms wrapped firmly around Hermione and Hugo as they all staggered and swayed. His foot got stomped on and his arm scratched hard enough to leave a mark, but nobody fell over. He counted it as a win.

“Everyone good?” he asked, loosening his arms so everyone could step back and take stock of themselves. “Hermione? Hugo?”

“I’m good,” she said, though she had her hand down by her thigh and was opening and closing her fingers into a fist as if it was numb or something was wrong. Harry frowned. She caught his expression and sent him a small smile, patting his arm soothingly and then looking around the room.

Hugo gave him a thumbs up and looked around. “When are we, Mum? We’re in Uncle Harry’s living room, right?”

“Yes, I was aiming for the day we left, around nine in the morning, so we’d have time to decompress and say goodbye and not make Harry late picking up his kids,” Hermione said, spinning in place. “Where’s the calendar to check? Kitchen, right?” She moved towards the door.

“Or we can do the Time Spell,” Harry said with emphasis. Hermione blushed bright pink as he cast the spell. Blocky golden writing appeared in front of him in mid-air: February 4, 2004, 09:03 am.

“February!” Hermione threw up her hands. “Oh, come on!”

“It’s not August, but at least you got the morning and the year right.” Harry shrugged. “Six months early isn’t so bad.”

“You don’t have to say that. I know I screwed up.” She crossed her arms and kicked at the floor.

Used to her perfectionism, Harry reached out and tugged on one of her curls, flipping it over her face so she had to go cross-eyed to try to blow it off, distracting her from a guilt spiral. “Seriously, Hermione, I don’t mind. This is good. It gives me time to set things in motion.”

“Like what?” Hugo asked, swirling his fingers through the bowl of random rocks sitting on the side table. Harry’s kids liked to collect rocks and give them to Harry as gifts, getting upset if he tried to toss them back outside. Not wanting unhappy kids, he’d started collecting them in the bowl so he knew where to point to if they asked about them (which they sometimes did).

“Well to start,” Harry said slowly, pulling out the list he’d started compiling last night and adjusting it for the earlier date, “I need to have a serious talk with Ginny about the future of our relationship and her role as a mother to our children. Depending on how that goes,” he avoided looking at either of them, “I’m either signing up for marriage counseling and family therapy or filing for divorce and getting a restraining order against my mother-in-law.” Hermione made a sad, sympathetic sound, and Hugo sent him another thumbs up. Uncomfortable, Harry moved on to the next topic, not wanting to discuss it more.

“Next is neutralizing Ron. Later this year, he’s going to be arrested for illegal business dealings and smuggling. His extramarital affair is also discovered. Last time, it was mostly swept under the rug. I think it might be best if he gets charged even earlier this time and publicly faces the consequences of his actions, which would also get Hermione safely away from him earlier.” He caught a forlorn look on Hermione’s face. He hoped it was because she’d been reminded of Ron’s affair and not that she was feeling bad for the bastard.

Harry was being the bigger man and choosing public humiliation versus a private execution to get Ron out of the way, mostly because the suffering would last longer that way. However, if Ron did anything to make himself a threat to Hermione and the kids, Harry would arrange a quick and quiet accident. Hermione and Hugo were too tender-hearted and didn’t need to worry about that part. Harry would take care of it.

“Last time I caved to Molly’s nagging and Ron’s emotional blackmail over our friendship and the negative fallout for Hermione and helped Ron get community service instead of going to prison, telling the judge that I believed him when he claimed the witnesses were wrong about him and his motivations and that he’d been a victim too.”

“Are you sure they weren’t wrong? That he wasn’t tricked?” Hugo asked in a small voice as he pretended to be engrossed in organizing a handful of rocks by color, still wanting to believe in his dad, despite everything. He had his mother’s loyalty, that was for sure. Too bad Ron didn’t deserve it.

Hermione rubbed her mouth and looked away. “He admitted to me in private that he’d broken a few laws to get rich quicker, but when he realized the seriousness of the charges, he made me promise not to tell Harry and changed his tune on the witness stand. It wasn’t until the end of the trial that his affair was uncovered by Fred and Daphne, which led to our divorce. It must’ve been different in your timeline, since your poor mother stayed married to him until he killed her.” Hugo made a pained sound, and Hermione’s expression hardened. “I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, Hugo, but it’s the truth. Your father’s made a lot of mistakes over the years, and I’m done hiding from that fact.”

“I know. I get it, okay?” Hugo sounded cornered and surly as he threw the rocks back into the bowl one by one. “It’s just hard. He’s my dad. It’s hard.”

Neither Hermione nor Hugo would look at each other. Both were hurt over Ron’s actions. Harry hurt too. Feelings were complicated, though most of what he wanted to say to Hermione was best done in private. Maybe he could help out Hugo, though. Harry had a lot of very complicated feelings about the men in his life, from the dead ones like Dumbledore, Sirius, and Snape to the living ones like Arthur, Kingsley, and even Malfoy.

“Hugo, it’s okay to have complicated feelings about someone,” Harry said gently. “You don’t have to stop loving your dad, but you do need to accept that you deserve to be treated better and he’s not a very good man. Not anymore.” Though when that had changed, Harry couldn’t say. Perhaps he’d been just as willfully blind as Hugo. Perhaps they all had.

Eyes glassy, Hugo wrapped his arms around himself and nodded. “Yeah, I know he’s not,” he whispered. “You’re right.”

“Don’t let his bad actions define you, okay?” Harry moved to the boy and wrapped an arm around his shoulder in support. Hermione and fatherhood had taught him to give hugs in emotionally charged moments.

Speaking of which… “Hey, your mom is pretty awesome,” Harry shook him gently, “and so are you, kid. Focus on that, if you can. You are loved.” He pressed a kiss to the side of Hugo’s head, just like he would have when trying to comfort the toddler version. “You deserve to feel safe and loved.”

Hugo took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah, I’ll try. Thanks, Uncle Harry.” He looked up at him with a small, crooked smile and squeezed him back.

“Every version of your mother loves you, Hugo.” The veiled woman stepped out at the top of the stairs. Harry had heard about her from Hermione and Hugo. She descended gracefully, her gauzy dusty blue dress floating about her like smoke as she joined them in the living room. Her veil swayed as she walked, and for a split second when she first appeared above them, the veil shifted and Harry caught the gleam of a golden pendant on her chest. It looked familiar. A suspicion about her identity bloomed at the back of his mind, but Harry didn’t want to look at it too closely because he could almost see the bannister through her body, and he was pretty sure she was a new type of ghost, and he didn’t want to be right. He really didn’t.

“Your mother loves you very, very much,” she said, moving to stand face to face with Hermione.

Mouth falling open and eyes going wide with sudden comprehension, Hermione breathed, “Ohh…sometimes I really do miss the obvious.”

Nodding, the veiled woman reached up and took off her hat, tossing it over onto a chair and revealing the pale, worn, and weathered face of older Hermione. She was wearing the gold Egyptian necklace over her gauzy dress, a blue version of the red one worn by the Hermione they’d just saved. Harry frowned, unhappy to be proven right about her identity. Older Hermione moved to stand side-by-side with the younger version. The contrasts and similarities were unsettling.

“Are you my real mum?” Hugo asked, stepping away from Harry.

The older Hermione sent him a crooked smile. “Of course I’m your real mum,” before Hugo could rush forward and hug her like he was obviously itching to do, she added, “but I’m not the ghost of the Mum you saw your father kill.” Her words made Hugo pause and jerk back a step.

“But you are a dead Hermione,” Harry said quietly, a heavy ache in his chest. He wet his lips and, damning himself for a masochist, asked, “How much longer did you live than the one we just saved?”

Her expression stilled. “About three hours,” she said in the heavy silence, meeting his eyes and pulling him in, and for a second, she was wearing red and surrounded by falling, sun-bright shards of fire-colored glass.

Harry flinched back and blinked, and the vision disappeared. Perhaps he’d imagined it. The room looked normal. No falling glass. No reds. Just a pale imitation of older Hermione, looking like a cloudy day in pale blues and grays. Seeing her so drained of vitality felt devastating. Hermione wasn’t meant to be a ghost. Harry felt like he’d just taken a bludger to the belly and was having trouble catching his breath. “Can we- can we go back and save you? How do we save you?” He demanded, lifting his hand and letting it fall again, clenching it at his side, feeling helpless and upset.

Reaching out, she gently touched his cheek, sliding her fingers down his skin in a comforting caress. Her fingers felt chill, but not as icy as the school ghosts he was used to. “Dearest Harry, there’s no need for more heroics, but thank you. I’m already saved.” She gave him a fond look. “I’m only still here because my older children needed me.” Dropping her hand from his face, she reached back and unclasped the necklace from her throat. “But now that Rose is done and Hugo’s been saved, I can move on.”

She turned and clasped the necklace around younger Hermione’s throat on top of the necklace she was already wearing. “I don’t need this anymore. I know you’ll be here to take care of our children.”

On Hermione’s chest, the two necklaces turned blurry and boiled with shadows. A buzzing filled the room, felt in the teeth more than heard by the ears, and the air became thick and heavy and dim. Harry felt like he needed to fall to his knees. He was fighting to stay standing upright when suddenly the pressure popped. Harry staggered sideways into Hugo and the boy knocked over the bowl of colorful rocks, spilling them across the floor with a clatter.

When Harry looked back at younger Hermione, trying to catch his breath, she was wearing a single golden necklace. They’d merged. Younger Hermione touched a finger to the necklace and gulped, looking slightly overwhelmed.

“You’ll figure it out,” older Hermione told her before turning away and looking around, zeroing in on Hugo where he was crouching down and scooping up the spilled rocks. He stood and placed the bowl back on the table.

She held out her hands to him. “Come, Hugo. It’s time for all good little ghosts to move on to the other side.”

Hugo took her hands cautiously and let her pull him close. As soon as they touched, the color leached from his clothes and hair, and he began to look gray and translucent. Older Hermione was also becoming more see-through now that she was no longer wearing the necklace. They both were looking more and more like classical ghosts to Harry. He didn’t like it. It made him sad. Hermione wasn’t meant to look that way, but she had that expression on her face that said nobody was going to be able to stop her, not even him.

“How will we cross over?” Hugo asked, chewing on the corner of his lip.

Older Hermione tipped her head to the side and winked. “With a little help. Why do things the hard way when you don’t have to?” She reached out towards younger Hermione and flicked the central pendant on the Egyptian necklace with her fingernail, making it chime and sway.

The shadows flashed opaque like reverse lightning, and between one blink and the next, a menacing hooded man in a gray cloak hiding all but his lower jaw appeared. He walked out of the shadows cast by the stairs. “Hugo, how many times have I told you—” his voice thundered, only to cut off as he staggered to a stop and stared at the unveiled Hermione. Silently, his finger lifted and pointed at her.

“There you are,” she said, voice brimming with satisfaction. “And on time for once.”

Mouth opening and closing, the hooded man looked her up and down. His finger dropped. “Hermione? The veiled woman was…you? This whole time?”

“Of course.” She nodded and tipped her head to the side, looking up into the shadows of his hood. “You aged well.”

The hooded man crossed his arms, seemingly flustered. Younger Hermione looked back and forth between them, seemingly fascinated by the byplay. Hugo looked worried and protective of his mom, shuffling closer as if to put himself between the women and the hooded man. Harry could’ve told him not to bother. Something about the way the hooded man said Hermione’s name signalled to Harry that he would never hurt her.

“By the way,” older Hermione said, “this would have gone a whole lot better if you’d just told me who you were in the first place. Your plan was good, but mine was better.”

“What?” His arms dropped to his sides. “My plan was simple and elegant, focused on your happiness. This has just been chaos.” He started waving his hands. “Your charging boldly ahead almost got you killed early! We had to involve the Egyptian pantheon.” He pointed at her. “Do you have any idea of how crazy they are to deal with? We barely have anything in common except for our shared obsession with drinking tea and myths about immortal rulers.” She opened her mouth to respond, but he cut her off before she could. “But no, really, do you know what trouble you’ve caused? Do you know how many realities I’ve had to kill off and restart because of you, Hugo, and Rose?”

Reaching out, she patted him on the shoulder. Harry noticed that she looked more opaque when she touched him. He wondered what that meant.

“No, but you can tell me later.”

The hooded man huffed and subsided.

Head tilting, she smirked at him. “Look, think about the future my kids and I created with our choices and tell me it isn’t going to be better and happier for everyone involved. This way, we even get to keep the kids around. They’re more important than you or me. And—I can’t believe I’m saying this considering how it destroyed my ex-husband—but you’ve got the opposite personality problem. You’re not greedy enough, Harry Potter, especially when it comes to claiming happiness and love in your life, though I can see that death has changed you.”

On learning of the hooded man’s identity, younger Hermione choked on her spit, turning bright red and bending over as she fought for breath, hacking and coughing. Harry felt just as blindsided that this menacing man was some older, alternate self, but he had to make sure Hermione survived the shock before he could decide on how he felt about it, or what he thought about being told to be more greedy. Moving to Hermione’s side, he pounded on her back until she managed to stop coughing and start breathing again, holding her up so she didn’t fall over.

Older Hermione didn’t seem concerned for her younger counterpart’s health, continuing her lecture of the hooded Harry until he threw up his hands and conceded to whatever she’d been arguing. “Good!” she proclaimed, throwing up her hands too.

Turning back to younger Hermione just as she caught her breath and started regaining her natural skin tone again, older Hermione pointed at her. “That lecture goes for you, too. Don’t make the same mistakes that I did. Do better. Be happier. I know we both loathe the trite saying, but I’m afraid it applies here: live, laugh, love. Stop clinging to your fears and take the time to snog while you’ve still got the body to enjoy physical pleasures.”

“Mum!” Hugo yelped, pressing his hands over his face, looking horrifically embarrassed. Older Hermione tossed back her head and gave a deep, throaty laugh. It was very appealing, and Harry couldn’t help but smile at the sound, feeling charmed.

“Uncle Harry!” Hugo cried, looking at the hooded man and tugging on his robes. “I want to go to the other side before I die of embarrassment. Die again. Can I die again?” He cast a guilty look at his mum and then crowded even closer to the hooded man. “Oh, Merlin, don’t answer that. She doesn’t need that kind of ammunition. Can we please just go? Please? Give me a shove into the light, I beg you.”

Laughing, the hooded man ruffled Hugo’s hair affectionately and then ran his hand down the boy’s back, making him glow brighter and brighter. “Off you go, kid.”

Hugo’s expression turned to soft wonder as he looked off into the distance. “Oh, that’s not so bad, is it?” A mischievous smile grew on his face. He darted a sideways glance at his mum. “Race you there!” Hugo took two quick steps forward and dived, disappearing with a flash of light that left sparkling afterimages on the inside of Harry’s eyelids.

∞⌛∞

~Hermione Granger (25)~

Sniffling at Hugo’s passing, Hermione wiped away the wetness beneath her eyes. Teenaged Hugo had been a handful, but she was so glad he’d found happiness at the end. His smile had made everything worth it. It had been hard and scary, but she’d saved her future self and her future son with Harry’s help. She was so glad it had worked out.

Unfortunately, before she could relax and feel more than a few seconds of happy accomplishment, the hooded man, who was actually an older, super-powerful Harry, opened his mouth and ruined her moment. “Don’t forget, you still have one more unfinished promise,” he said.

“What unfinished promise?” she asked, indignantly, wiping the tears on her fingers off on the stretched-out hem of her shirt. Was it so much to ask for a minute to recover from saving her son from being the next Moaning Myrtle or Nearly Headless Nick? Really?

“Your intention behind going to 1981 in the first place?” he prompted. “You need to complete your bargain from 1981. I can’t do it for you.”

Younger Harry sent her a sharp look. “The year my parents died? Hermione, what did you do?”

“Ah, that unfinished promise,” she said, avoiding everyone’s eyes and trying to sound confident instead of panicked. Her palm ached, reminding her that the cursed symbols were now less than three fingertips apart from forming a sickle and cutting her lifeline for good, with all of the attendant problems that would unleash. She cleared her throat. “Of course I’m going to focus on that next.”

She had the necklace back from Hugo, so she once more had the means to send someone back in time to complete her bargain and fulfill her final wish. She just had to figure out who to send back to nurture child Harry. It had to be the perfect parental figure, someone loving, patient, and wise, who’d help young Harry feel valued and not alone. Harry deserved the very best. Unfortunately, no one she knew was good enough for him.

Unless she sent older Harry back to his younger self? She examined Harry through lowered lashes. That might work. Harry was a wonderful father.

The hooded man sighed and tilted his head at younger Harry. “He shouldn’t do it for you either.” He shook his head. “The good you’re trying for will be undone when he discovers the truth later. It will just make him feel more alone and bitter as an adult, because he always has to solve his problems alone. It will make his heart more vulnerable, not less.”

“What are you talking about?” Harry demanded, looking between them. “If Hermione needs help, I want to help. I’m willing to help!”

“We know, but you can’t.” The hooded man turned back to Hermione. “If it helps, once you’ve settled the Bargain, the necklace will be recalled by the Egyptian pantheon and you’ll be free, living a linear life until you die of old age after a very long and happy life. You just have to get through this first and put your fate to rest.”

“Great, no problem,” Hermione said, barely keeping her voice from trembling. The curse scars on her hand and back throbbed, reminding her of all her failures.

Older Hermione moved forward and took Hermione’s hands, squeezing them. A wash of cool energy like crisp spring water flowed between their linked hands. Turning over the hand with the two new curse scars, older Hermione pressed two fingers into the center of Hermione’s palm and then spread them apart, bullying the red symbols back to the edges of her hand and making her skin prickle with a refreshing sort of chill, like the taste of a strong breath mint.

Older Hermione patted her hand. “You know you’re good at making deadlines and acing projects, so don’t let the consequences paralyze or scare you. You can do this. Trust your instincts. You’re a good mother.”

But not a good enough mother to protect her children from the trauma of her death at Ron’s hands, and not a good enough woman or wife, or else Ron wouldn’t have cheated on her and killed her. She hadn’t even managed to keep her job because of Molly’s meddling. Hermione barely kept a bitter laugh from escaping. She didn’t know if she was good at anything right now.

“Hey, none of that,” her older self said, squeezing her arm and leaning close to whisper in her ear, “Don’t spiral. You are good enough. You are loved. We are loved. Look at Harry, two of them in one room, even, and all for us. Think of Rose and Hugo and how far they’re willing to go. They love us, and we love them. So many people love us. That’s what’s important. Leave Ron in the past.” She pressed a cool kiss to Hermione’s hair. “When I go, let me take the trauma of those deaths with me. It didn’t happen to you. Let those memories fade. It won’t happen to you. We stopped it. Give Harry a good childhood, and then go and claim your better future.”

The two Harrys were watching them with palpable care and concern. Older Hermione looked over at them and then back at Hermione, the corners of her eyes crinkling with a smile. “It’s almost enough to make me jealous. You’re going to be so happy. You got a hint before with Hugo in that distant future you saw, but your reality is going to be even better.”

She winked, patted Hermione’s shoulder, and took a step back. “I promise.” She jerked her head in the hooded man’s direction. “Even more, he promises, and you know we can trust in that. Right? You know.” Her eyes bored into Hermione’s.

Taking in a deep breath, Hermione blew it out in a long stream and nodded. She did know that. She did trust in Harry. She loved Harry and would do anything for him, including the third desire of her heart to give him an adult who loved him as he grew up.

“Do you have any advice more specific to the task at hand?” she asked hopefully. “Like what approach to take or who’d be the best person for the job?”

“Really?” Older Hermione arched her brow. “Sometimes we really do miss the obvious.” She waved her hand. “I think at this point, you should just ignore that whole Egyptian god bargain of fate angle and reframe it as a project assigned by one of our more frustrating and demanding teachers or bosses. Stop worrying about fault, who should have done what task better, or how you wanted it to turn out, and instead just focus on fixing it yourself, piece by piece.” She gave Hermione a speaking look. “At least that way you can personally make sure it’s done right and on time.”

It took a moment for Hermione to catch her meaning. Then she grimaced and nodded weakly. Hermione had missed the obvious solution. It wasn’t perfect, but it was logical. Who did she trust with Harry’s young heart more than herself?

At fourteen, she’d been too young to fulfill the Bargain for a trusted adult. Once an adult, she’d been without the means to go back in time. Now, both of those obstacles were gone.

Hermione’s older self smiled at her in commiseration. “Don’t take too long to gather the supplies you need before starting, and just like with studying, little efforts spread out over a longer time frame usually yield better results than one big push. Trust in your intelligence and competence, and go get it done. You can complain or boast about it after, hmm?”

Hermione blew out her breath. “Yeah, right. You’re right.” She nodded.

“Are you going to tell me what you’re talking about now?” Harry asked with frustration, crossing his arms and clenching his jaw.

“Don’t be mad,” Hermione said. “You’ll find out soon enough. I have to do something in the past. If it works, you’ll remember it the second I disappear. If it doesn’t, we’re both dead, and it’s a moot issue anyway.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.” He frowned, green eyes going hard.

“Well, tough. That’s the way it’s gonna be.” She crossed her arms and frowned back at him.

“You are so infuriating,” Harry said through gritted teeth.

“Time to go,” older Hermione announced, picking up her veiled hat and moving to the hooded Harry’s side, winding her arm through his. “I think Hugo’s been left free to do mischief for long enough. He and Sirius are probably bonding over their horrible taste in music.” She shuddered and glanced back at young Hermione. “For the sake of your ears, steer Hugo away from singers with green hair this time, though I know it’s a lot to ask.” She sighed and waved her fingers. “Good luck, and Harry, calm down. You’re going to like it.” Her lips twitched as if she knew a delicious secret.

“I believe in you, Hermione,” hooded Harry told young Hermione earnestly.

He looked down at the hand curled over his arm and laid a possessive hand on top of it, trapping it in place and pulling older Hermione closer into the shadow of his body. She didn’t offer any resistance, just looked into his hood with a secret, sideways smile. He stared back, focusing intently on her face. He was so focused that Hermione wasn’t sure which Hermione he was talking to when he said, “You don’t need to worry about screwing this up. After all, all we’ve ever needed was you.”

Before she could decide how to respond to that declaration, the two figures stepped forward in tandem and disappeared in a bright wash of light.

“Well, I guess that’s that,” Hermione said after a moment, trying to sound confident and fill the silence, which felt heavy but not as awkward as it probably should. She was also trying to pretend everything was fine.

“Hermione? Are you okay?” Harry asked, not buying her act for a second. “You look scared. Maybe you should tell me what’s going on.”

“You could at least let me pretend I’m okay,” she huffed.

“Do you need me to pretend that?” he asked, head tilting and a wry look in his eye.

Hermione sighed. “I’d say yes, but it’s a little too late, I suppose.” She clapped her hands. “Fine, let’s try something new and be open and honest about my feelings instead of deflecting. Why not? It’s a new day. Okay, Harry, I am scared.” She gulped in a breath. “I like to think that loyalty is rewarded and that I can protect myself and those I care for pretty well, but this experience has certainly proved me wrong. We all got to see how awful I was at protecting anybody, and we’ve both got the nightmares and the ghosts to prove it. I’m a failure.” She threw out her hands. “And now I have to do something that I absolutely can’t fail at. Failure is not an option here, Harry, but I am a failure. Of course I’m scared.’

Jaw clenching, Harry shook his head. “No, Hermione, you’re not a failure. It’s okay to be scared, but don’t say mean things about my best friend. I don’t like it, and they’re not true. You were amazing out there today. You kept the plan on track and saved both your future self and the fate of future Hugo. You saved future me, too. His life was meaningless without you in it.” His sincerity made Hermione’s face feel hot.

Harry rubbed his hands on his thighs. “Hermione, no one has ever been as loyal a friend as you are to me and no one,” he swallowed, “no one has ever protected me the way you have, not just my life, but even and especially,” he took a quick breath, “especially my heart.” Looking down, his expression turned wry and chagrined. “It’s a scarred, quivering thing that hides when it should leap and leaps when it should stay still.” Harry looked up and met her eyes with an intensity that burned, trapping her in his gaze. “Yet despite all that, it knows and trusts the touch of your hand.”

“Harry….” Heart in her throat, Hermione bit the inside of her lip, unsure how he wanted her to respond and terrified of getting it wrong. There was so much she never let herself think, much less say, around Harry. This was one of those forbidden topics. The necklace felt heavy at her throat. There wasn’t enough time for all that needed to be said between them, and this wasn’t the time or the place. Maybe it never would be the time.

Or maybe they would find the time once she returned to living a linear path.

The corners of Harry’s eyes creased as he sighed and looked away. “I realize now that I haven’t trusted my heart enough to take the risks I should have in the past for myself and the ones I most care about. I know I need to change if I don’t want to end up as miserable as that future Harry. I guess I need to be more greedy.” He gave a soft huff, his lips curving into a crooked smile as he looked back at her through his lashes. “If I’d been raised by a woman like you or been given even half the care your Hugo grew up with, I bet I’d have had the confidence to defeat Voldemort before the Triwizard Tournament in fourth year.”

Unable to keep the smile from her face at that bold claim, she shook her head. “Well, Harry, that’s what I’m hoping for too, I guess.” Reaching up, she tangled her fingers in her necklace and tugged, tired of hesitating. She was ready for this to be over so she could move on with the rest of her life. “I really hope this makes things better.”

“Are you going to tell me what you’re doing?” Harry was watching her with resignation.

She sent him a reassuring smile. “You’ll know in a few seconds, though if it makes things worse, I’m so sorry.” She let the pendant move where it would, attached the lever, and pushed, feeling the jolt echo through her bones.

Lips pursing, Harry gave her a hard look and then sighed, flicking his fingers at her. “Fine, I forgive you retroactively if it goes wrong. Thank you for trying, whatever it is you’re trying to make better that relates to me and events in 1981,” he finished pointedly.

“And thank you for being so wonderful,” Hermione said with a tremulous smile. “Best friend ever.”

“And don’t you forget it. I’ll be waiting for you to come back, Hermione,” Harry said firmly, badly hiding his fear. “We have a lot to talk about. Don’t get lost.”

Hermione gave him a snappy salute in acknowledgement. “I won’t.” She lifted her chin and kept her eyes locked on his even as the magic started to pull her away. However, she couldn’t bear to leave with his eyes looking like that. Her heart couldn’t take it. “I always come back to you, Harry, and do you know why? Because I’ve bookmarked you.”

Harry’s green eyes flared, his expression breaking wide open. Taking a ragged breath, he reached out, his lips shaping the sound of her name—Hermione.

But his fingers grasped only air as the world flashed black and everything twisted, turned, screamed, burned.

It felt like she was dying, like she was dead.

∞⌛∞

END OF PART 3

To be concluded in future installments

 

---