Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE
“ In order to rise from its own ashes, a phoenix first must burn. ”
— Octavia E. Butler
_______________________
May 1998
Harry Potter is dead.
The battle around the courtyard is alive and teeming. Spells expelled in every direction of varying greens and reds blinked in Hermione’s peripheral. Her own wand extended among the fray, an expelliarmus shooting from her mouth as a masked Death Eater careened from her left. He’s disarmed and tossed away in the same second.
Hermione released a shuddering breath. She wavered on her feet—overwhelmed by her surroundings and the disjointed insides.
Harry Potter is dead.
Panting, she ran and bowed behind one of the incredible arches bracketing the courtyard.
Months ago it belonged as part of a beautiful structure, framing the entrance to Hogwarts. The intricacy of the architecture long since made and imbued with a history of magic in its foundations. Hermione had spent many afternoons lingering in the courtyard, sitting between the archways as time meandered past her without care. Now it’s all been reduced to nothing more than protruding rubble.
Fumes of debris rose into her mouth, she coughed it away, leaning around the arch to observe the scene before her. A vision rife with magic and the coppery scent of blood and anguish. She couldn’t decipher anything among the blur of bodies, the glare of magic tearing through her sight, causing her to flinch at every turn. She’s long since abandoned trying to decipher who belonged to the Order and who didn’t; everything has become a threat, she can’t take the risk of anybody coming too close. Stray hexes are tossed every few seconds between body and body. None too clean. All too petrifying for her liking.
Harry Potter is dead.
The war is not yet won.
Somewhere among the rubble, Hermione knew her best friend’s body laid. Buried among the strife and throes of war, just as he’s been since he was a child. Throughout the entirety of his short, short life.
Harry was born into war; pushed from the cradle onto the frontlines. Hermione has witnessed it shape him, live in him for all these years. There was not an inch of him that wasn’t unfairly affected by it. They were all touched by war’s unfathomable brutality, but Harry—he was the one who knew it best. He was the one who’d been fighting it his entire life, the one who was supposed to lead them, the one who didn’t know how but tried so very hard to do so anyway.
He wanted to protect them so earnestly he made his way into the Forbidden Forest, the weight of the world on his shoulders and nobody to hold his hand.
He wanted to save them so badly that he did what nobody else would.
War had become his reason to live and now it’s the reason he’s dead.
Hermione’s best friend is dead.
And she’s all alone.
She swallowed down the burn in her throat, burying down the grievous corruption before it could take hold. She’s already cried enough in the past few hours, already fought with tears staining her cheeks like declarations. Of loss—of war.
There’s just so much fighting.
She doesn’t know when it will end.
The courtyard has become a growing mass grave. The cobblestone is ruffled, pits of it exploded from rogue spells; blood dribbled between stone, around corpses collapsed into the ground, never to move again. Hermione could smell the blood in the air, taste it along with magic—she never knew she could find the presence of magic so poisonous. Yet it’s clogging up her throat. She’s attempting to inhale through her nose so she doesn’t have to taste it, but it isn’t enough.
Somewhere in there, Ron is fighting. Hermione lost him just after Voldemort displayed Harry’s body, announcing his death, because all hell broke loose from that moment. The second they learned their Saviour was gone.
Her best friend —dead.
If Hermione could just find Ron then perhaps…perhaps not all would be lost. They had to salvage this. There was no other way. If they didn’t salvage this then—her throat burned—Harry died for nothing.
It can’t be for nothing. Not for nothing.
Inhaling shakily, Hermione leaned around the arch and took one long look at the fray. Noticing nothing more than black robes and Hogwarts uniforms. Many which belonged to faces she didn’t dare linger on too long. Lavender’s face still loitered in the back of her mind, warring with the image Hermione used to have of her. One she couldn’t reconcile just yet.
The doors to Hogwarts were blown open. A sliver of its interior revealed another layer to the battle she hasn’t seen yet. Ron could be there.
With that in mind, Hermione ran.
She didn’t feel particularly brave nor did she feel equipped. Actually, it was like sinking deeper into quicksand the further she got. Like the farther she delved, the harder it would be to drag herself back out again. Like she wouldn’t be able to anyway, because battle was gruelling. It worked you to the bone and brushed away your sodden ashes, proud of a job well done. Battle wasn’t meant to be walked through—it was supposed to hurt.
Her chest hurt about halfway to the doors. It seized completely when a Death Eater stumbled into her way, their wand extended.
She threw up her own. “Expelliarmus!”
“Crucio!”
Magic cut toward her the second she threw herself to the left. Hermione suffered a light sting to her jaw, where the spell just curved and didn’t waste a second before raising her wand again.
“Stupefy!”
The Death Eater deflected. Hermione panted, skidding to a stop before she careened into them.
“Crucio!” They yelled; the red spell spiralling toward her. She threw up a shield, gasping while the Death Eater grunted again—an array of curses this time. “Crucio! Levicorpus! Diffindo!”
Hermione blocked all but the last. The curse was too strong and dove for her with abominable intent. It caught her in the head, sending it snapping backwards on her shoulders. Pain unravelled down her spine, rippling through her neck. Hermione clamped her mouth down on the sound instinctively climbing her throat because the pain was dismantling. For a second, she forgot where she was.
Vaguely, she heard the beginnings of another curse from the Death Eater, and her mind clicked into action.
“Reducto!” She screamed; a section of broken turret exploded beside them, sending brick and debris into the Death Eater’s face. Hermione continued, desperate, “Stupefy! Incarcerous!”
A horrible dizziness snaked through her head. Intense enough for her to stumble unsteadily forward, searching for the fallen Death Eater now at her feet, disarmed. Their mask was missing to reveal the unflinching face of a man. His eyes so deep and dark, Hermione knew there was no return.
So, she turned and kept moving.
Always moving. She had to keep moving.
Something wet dribbled from her right temple, hot and thick. She smelt the blood before she felt it, one shaky hand smearing it across her cheek. A product of the diffindo no doubt. She regarded the blood under trembling fingers, her stomach rolling.
It was nothing compared to the ground she walked on.
Hermione ran into Hogwarts’ foyer, narrowly tripping over the fallen entrance doors on the ground. She dropped her bloody hand and whipped her gaze around the space.
People were fighting. Their cries and sounds of battle permeated the air like clouding smoke. Hermione couldn’t determine where it ended or began, couldn’t even think to decipher the familiar drawl of Ron she knew so well. Not among this mess. She couldn’t find an inch of her able to think clearly because she’s so undone.
She tried to settle herself, to find reason. Flicking her unsteady gaze from person to person, panicking as she saw glimpses of green magic—smears of torturous red.
Somewhere in the distance, Voldemort’s laughter sailed above the chaos. A warning tune. An insidious melody of triumph reaching its greedy tongue over to eat her whole if she let it.
She’s alone and she needs to find someone.
“Ron!” Hermione yelled, clambering over the doors. “Ron!”
Abandoning all reason, she sprinted up the staircase. Half-heartedly casting a shield charm at her back while she ascended, her heart pounding harder than it should.
The first floor, she found, was as devolved as the ground floor. Hermione accidentally tripped on a fallen portrait as she swung through the corridors, shooting as many spells as she could at anyone she encountered. Fuelled by a teeming desperation she could never explain, Hermione ran. She ran and she ran until she got to the third floor. Until one of the staircases she’d just mounted shuddered a mighty sound and began to crumble beneath her. She had to jump backwards onto steady ground as half of the staircase fell.
Only able to watch, Hermione gaped at the space it left behind.
Years of history, of her history being broken down before her. The castle is falling apart and she doesn’t know how to stop it. For once, she doesn’t have the answers.
Ron —she needed him.
Stifling her tremble, Hermione blearily pushed from the wall and began scoping out this level of the castle.
Up here the fight had thinned, somewhat. The corridors were sparsely filled, Hermione had the opportunity to catch her breath through some before encountering actual trouble. And trouble it was.
She just breached the corner of another corridor when a curse came for her, brutal and deafening.
“Avada Kedavra!”
Dropping to the ground, she yanked out her wand, “Stupefy!”
The spell missed by a few feet and Rodolphus Lestrange smirked down at her, his wand pointed at her chest. Hermione on her knees, utterly unable to move and shaking.
“Mudblood,” he greeted, tone indefinitely pleased. “Come to die?”
Her chest seized under the impression of his wand. The tip still burnt with recently used dark magic, singing Hermione’s jumper with residual sparks. She realised she must have looked terrified. She was, but she didn’t want him to know. Desperately tried to force away the watering of her eyes and the swelling in her throat. All too powerful to ignore in the face of the wand, one that’s going to kill her.
Is this how Harry felt?
Hermione wondered if he was as terrified to die as she is.
Rodolphus grinned at her, all mangled edges and shorn up delight. He pushed his wand into her chest, her breath hitching as he began, “Avada—”
“Stupefy!”
At once, Rodolphus and his wand launched from view, so far to the left that he smacked his head into the wall and collapsed to the ground in a heap.
Hermione choked on a sob, falling to her shaking hands. Her stomach heaving on the taste of the curse he’d been about to utter. Because she’d felt it, hot against her sternum. The first lick of the killing curse brewing at the edge of his wand, eager and prepared to take her apart. It had been so close she’d nearly—it would only have taken another second and she would have…
Gasping, Hermione closed her eyes, pained.
Is this how Harry felt?
“Hermione!”
Ron.
Wrenching open her eyes, Hermione shoved up from the ground. At the end of the corridor, stood dirty and haggard with his wand at his side was…it was Ron.
His face immediately softened at the sight of her. “Hermione.”
“Ron,” she choked, scrambling to her feet.
This— he —was right. Together they could fix this. Together they could figure out how to fight this as they have done for all these years. Always together. Hermione, Ron and…
Her throat closed up, swallowing down words she couldn’t say any longer.
Just them. It’d have to be them.
Ron’s looking at her like he’s finally found peace. Like she’s the answer he’s been looking for. That brilliant flaming hair of his is defiant and gleaming and familiar and Hermione’s starting toward him when everything changes.
Because all at once, there’s a flash behind his back and Hermione’s mind catalogued the moment in frighteningly slow glimpses.
Ron isn’t smiling anymore.
Ron falls to the ground.
Ron is dead.
Someone is screaming. A harsh, guttural scream that made Hermione’s throat feel raw and sheared.
Hermione blinked through tears—uncertain as to when they got there. She barely managed to bring her gaze away from Ron on the ground to the person behind him. The one who shot the curse.
Their wand is still extended, sparking with promise.
She’s burning.
“Stupefy!”
The Death Eater is expelled away, far down the corridor. Hermione’s wand is in her hand, outstretched. She doesn’t remember casting the spell, or even attempting to.
She’s burning. Her head is full of ash and smoke.
How is she still standing?
Harry. Ron. Harry. Ron. Harry. Ron.
It’s always been the three of them. A trio. A family. They faced things together. They were always together.
Then, why is she the only one still standing?
Hermione shuddered, choking while everything in her burned up: withering. “Ron.”
On the ground, he’s laying down. Outstretched like he would be in his bed at the Burrow—he almost looked like he could be sleeping.
Only his hair is infused with smoke and dirt. His complexion a dire pale, smattered with discoloured bruises and smears of dirt. And his eyes—a periwinkle blue—are open. Open and unseeing and vacant of their usual life, their usual determination she’s come to know so well.
The smoke in her head is toxic. It’s searing the image of him behind her eyelids, the sight of his eyes and his stillness and the precise angle of his jaw, leaving his mouth open as if he’d been preparing to say something when he was alive—
Another sound filled the air. A sharp, cutting thing—like a sudden grasp for oxygen, for normalcy.
Distantly, Hermione knew it was her.
She’s burning. She’s nothing but ash. Nothing but remnants of what once was.
Harry. Ron. Harry. Ron. Harry. Ron.
Dead. They’re dead.
Standing listlessly like one of Hogwarts’ ghosts, Hermione tried to compartmentalise this. As she did with most aspects of life, she attempted to sift through it logically in her brain so she could move forward. Break it down into its simpler terms so she could understand and then move on. Because that’s what she needed to do—she knew distantly. She knew she needed to move. To keep moving because that’s how they survived.
She needed to overcome it.
Shaking, she tried to overcome it.
Harry and Ron are her best friends.
They’re her family.
They’ve lived a life together.
They’ve fought a war together.
Harry and Ron are dead.
They’re no longer here.
But…she could still hear Harry’s voice in her head, asking her for help with Charms. She could still see Ron in the common room, bobbing his head to whatever Dean and Seamus were playing on their record player. She could still feel them holding her hands while out on the Horcrux Hunt; each desperate to remember why they’re still here, still fighting.
They’re dead.
But they can’t be.
She doesn’t know how long she’s there for. It could have been seconds or minutes. All Hermione knew was that one second she was looking at Ron’s body and the next she could hear feet approaching from behind.
And it was instinctual by that point. To spin around and have her wand aimed, a spell already brewing on her lips—
“Hermione,” Remus Lupin breathed, eyes wide, hands up at the sight of her. And he’s so real—so safe—that she wanted to sink to the floor and let him handle it all so badly. “Hermione, are you alright?”
“Remus,” she said— pleaded. “He’s…I…”
His brows furrowed. “Hermione?”
Helplessly, she moved out of the way. She knew by the collapse of his expression that he saw Ron. Yet he doesn’t pause to let this sink in. His lips thin in some imitation of withdrawal—a gruesome resignation befalling his features.. And Hermione’s torn because she wanted to be able to move, to push forward because she knew Ron and Harry would need her to. But she couldn’t—couldn’t stop remembering the precise shade of Harry’s eyes as he laughed, the dimples in Ron’s cheeks when he smiled.
Of course, he wasn’t remembering this when looking at Ron. But Hermione was and she didn’t know how to stop it.
She couldn’t stop the choked sound from climbing her throat, or the hand she slapped to her mouth to trap it. It’s sharp and gutting, and she’s bleeding pain onto the ground by the time she turned to Ron once more, shuddering at the sight of him. Dead.
He’d been holding her hand only a few hours ago.
Remus pushed forward until he had her gently by the shoulders and started to guide her away.
Perhaps after losing so many friends to this war, Remus knew death like a friend.
“Can you hear me, Hermione?” he asked, bending down to look in her eyes. “I need you to ground yourself. I need you to be with me, alright?”
“But they’re dead,” she whispered.
Her best friends are dead and she’s still here.
Nothing but ash of what they used to be.
“I know,” Remus replied, soft like he understood. “I know. But you need to keep pushing. There’s no time to wait, do you understand?”
She did. She knew she couldn’t do this—couldn’t detach or else it would cost her greatly.
Yet Hermione still shook her head, tears falling mutely down her cheeks.
“I’ve…I’ve lost them, Remus,” she cried. “What am I—how am I supposed to do this? I need—”
“As long as you have yourself then that is enough , Hermione,” he interrupted, fiercely professing what she felt to be something important. He’s battered and as sodden as she is, but his eyes flash with the determination of the soldier he’s become from this war. “You’re not completely lost just yet.”
She wished she could believe him. Truly, she wanted to lean on the wisdom of her old professor as eagerly as she used to. Hermione wanted to be comforted by such authority as she used to be as a child. Even though she’s no longer a child. Even though the people she’d been a child with are no longer living. And she’s alone without them.
But there’s never enough time in the end. She doesn’t have time to suffer the burn of the loss, she doesn’t have time to make sense of the ash she finds herself in.
She’s just burnt.
That’s all there is to war, though, isn’t it? It’s the residue of scorching fire, brought down like rain and they’re just caught within its grasp. They were all burning from the moment it began, only now it has decided to take. It has accepted Ron and Harry into its flaming folds and Hermione’s just here, just out of reach. But she could feel it—the fire war wrought—desperate to catch her, inching forth with its open mouth ready to chew her up, reducing her to ash.
Where could they go from here? How do you outrun endless fire?
Hermione doesn’t know and that’s merely another answer that’s out of reach to her.
Looking up to Remus, Hermione caught sight of the underside of his jaw. Pointed sharply over her shoulder in a way that immediately put her on edge. An edge she’s been treading for months now. An edge she knew to navigate, that she knew to translate. Because it only leads to bad and she’s accustomed to recognising when something is going to take a turn.
Rightly so—because the sound of pounding footsteps reached her ears.
And right around the other end of the corridor, Hermione sucked in a sharp breath at who she saw. Someone she prayed she’d never have to face again.
“Ah, you,” Bellatrix crooned, wild and untameable as ever. Her teeth are bared into some malformation of a smile, and she’s covered in blood. At her side, Rodolphus has returned and he’s just as satisfied—but not as terrifying. The very sight of Bellatrix made Hermione go cold. “How’s the arm doing, Mudblood? Need a touch-up?”
The scar throbbed beneath her sleeve, as if calling to its maker.
Hermione’s stomach turned; sickened by the memory of Bellatrix’s weight leering over her, holding her down…the feel of cold tile at her back, spreading a vile chill down her neck while the rest of her bleeding…
Remus’ hands tightened on her shoulders, tearing her from her head.
Gasping, Hermione composed herself just as Remus began to push her behind him.
“Go.”
She frowned, puzzled, idly reaching for him again. “Remus.”
“Hermione,” he instructed, glaring unfalteringly toward Bellatrix. “Go find help.”
It’s his tone that convinced her. A wavering sort of defiance—determination—threading through his voice, tightening it into a cracking whip. Every syllable echoing tight and restrained. As if Remus has been waiting. As if he’s prepared; determined to face down Bellatrix.
She killed Sirius.
Perhaps that’s why.
A horrid cackle pushed from Bellatrix’s chest. She waved her wand, grinning as she put it under her chin. “You gonna hurt me?” she teased, cocking her head. “Big bad wolf wants to take a bite out of me, doesn’t he?”
Remus doesn’t rise to the bait. Because he’s not a dog being taunted with a treat.
He’s a wizard who’s been fighting this fight for an age.
“Go Hermione,” he said one final time.
She does.
She doesn’t know why she does.
Perhaps it’s his authority, probing her to adhere like she always has. Perhaps it’s because the sight of Ron’s body was making her feel empty. The sight of Bellatrix simultaneously making her ill. Hermione left because she couldn’t stand to be there any longer.
She wished she could have stayed.
By the time she’s down the corridor she could hear them duelling. Every grunt of Remus’ spells and every cackle of Bellatrix’s own. The sound of it is brutal because it’s savage. There isn’t a breath between spells, not even a lull in pace because neither of them are willing to falter.
Hermione stumbled into the staircase, foolishly waiting by the bannisters. Hoping…praying that Remus will…
The sounds of their duel continued for only a minute more.
A grunt echoed, quickly pursued by the sound of a body slumping to the ground.
A cackle reigned over the corridor, victorious.
Remus is dead.
She fell into the bannister, entire chest collapsing as a cry tore from her throat. She couldn’t take any more.
“Mudblood! We’re coming!”
The slithering echo of Bellatrix’s cackling wound up Hermione’s spine. It curled in such a way which had her stumbling into action, desperate to escape it. She’s flying up the stairs, cowering under the force of Bellatrix’s voice. Remembering, remembering, remembering it in her ear, at her neck over her arm…
“Aha!” Turning to the foot of the stairs, Hermione barely has time to dodge the red curse coming for her. It skimmed her ear, she heaved as she turned up the following staircase. Bellatrix’s incoming footsteps are like a shadow at her feet. “We’re coming to get you! Coming to get you,” she cackled.
Hands on her throat, wand on her chest and pain tunnelling straight to her heart.
A blade cutting into skin. Bellatrix licking the tears from her face. Blood wrapping around her wrists in ropes—
Another curse sailed past her neck. Hermione inhaled sharply, sprinting up another set of stairs.
She doesn’t know where she’s aiming to go, only that she’s running. She can feel Bellatrix on her heels. Nothing more than a bloodhound with a scent and a desire to feed. She’s nothing but teeth and hunger and Hermione wants nothing of it. She doesn’t have the energy to fight her one on one—doesn’t know if she could.
Quite desperately, Hermione sent portraits flinging behind her to deter the witch. Flicking her wand at whatever was in reach to block her path.
For a bit, she reckoned it worked because Bellatrix’s cackling became hindered.
Hermione panted at the seventh floor, sweat beading at her temples along with blood and dirt. She continued running if only because she didn’t know what else to do. This floor remained partially untouched, carrying a resounding silence that hammered against her chest. The silence seemed foreign considering the anarchy downstairs. Compared to the strife.
The castle is stagnant up here, unmoving like a separate entity.
Hermione sprinted through another corridor, skidding to a stop upon the sight of a great, leering gargoyle.
Dumbledore’s office.
“Cough drop! Er—acid drop,” she blurted in rapid succession, trembling. Somewhere, she heard Bellatrix laugh and the thudding in her chest increased. “Bertie botts…lemon….lemon drop— sherbet lemon!”
The gargoyle before her shuddered with unexpected force; a creature awaking from its slumber. Hermione tried not to sink to her knees as it started to move. Instead, she threw herself onto it, clutching as it painfully slowly ascended upwards. The sheer noise of it managed to smother the echoing sounds of Bellatrix drawing nearer.
But she knew the witch would find her.
It was only a matter of time.
The gargoyle came to a juddering stop. Hermione launched herself from it and barrelled through the door to Dumbledore’s office.
She didn’t waste a moment before locking the door. Blindly grabbing her wand and spelling things to barricade it; a set of shelves, a table and chair. All of the furniture she could find, she sent it colliding with the door, praying it would be enough.
There’s a pressure building in her chest. Hermione heaved as it pushed down like a hand trying to carve its way inside. She blinked back the burning of her eyes, turned on her heel and stalked over to Dumbledore’s desk as a sound emitted from her throat; quiet and desperate.
Because she’s trapped.
She has nowhere to go and nobody to go to.
Locked in here with Bellatrix on her heels, Hermione is well and truly at her end.
The pressure at her chest expanded, encompassing her veins and her heart.
The world was falling apart right in front of her and she didn't know what to do.
Because they were supposed to beat this. Her, Ron and Harry. They’d planned to end it all. They’ve done everything within their power to end this war and yet—here she is. Alone with nothing but ash in her chest, clogging up her veins and simmering in her throat. She could feel it in her bones, in her eyes and in her chest and it’s like being empty and full of lead. It’s a sensation Hermione never ever wanted to feel, but she’s made of it anyway.
A wave of something passed over her. Hermione, choking, collapsed to her right into a glass case beside the Headmaster’s desk, sliding to the ground against it.
“I’m sorry, Harry,” she whispered, chest cracking, throat swelling. “I’m so —so sorry. I..I—” A sob spiked up her chest and she slammed a hand against her mouth, fingers digging in to force it back.
She really wanted to win this.
She tried excruciatingly hard.
She’s always been trying and somehow, it has never been enough.
Perhaps there was a way she could have done things differently. Perhaps Hermione shouldn’t have waited until Harry said to start finding Horcruxes. Maybe she should have known—because that’s been her role. Hermione was the one that knew.
It’s oddly detaching, to not recognise herself anymore. To find everything she is a stranger. Because who is she if not Hermione Granger? Resident know-it-all. Harry Potter and Ron Weasley’s best friend.
She’s the one who failed to win this.
The one who failed her best friends.
Inhaling painfully, Hermione dropped her head into her hands and forced herself not to cry. Even as tears welled up in her eyes, she forced them at bay. Leaving room for the faces of Harry and Ron in her mind; the sight of them making her chest shudder.
She wished she could change this.
She wished she could do something.
As the castle groaned at the fight it carried within its bones, Hermione so earnestly wished there was something she could do to change this. To make things better.
What would she have to do to make things right?
Sunken on the ground, head between her knees, Hermione inhaled for the fifteenth time when she finally noticed the growing glow in her peripheral vision. She frowned and shifted on the floor, pausing to follow the intrusion of the vibrant blue glow.
At her back, the glass case held a variety of shelves. On the very bottom one, the glow reached outwards like wispy fingers beckoning her.
Hermione’s frown deepened. “What…”
Reaching out, she drifted her fingers along the case door and opened it slowly. The action didn’t hinder the glow, and Hermione decided to push further and feel around for its origin.
The blue glow prevailed as her fingers brushed a velvet box. Inhaling sharply, Hermione reached in and pulled it out. She held it at arm’s length, the glow pulsating even more through the gaps of the box in her palm. Its surface soft, nearly drowned out by the intensity of the glowing from inside. Hermione’s never seen such power radiated from such a little thing.
The logical part of her mind, so sensible and collected, warned her this is a magical artefact stored in Dumbledore’s office. Clearly left to be untouched and stored in a container because of what it is. She most definitely shouldn’t touch it out of curiosity.
Unfortunately, Hermione is far from acting out of logic.
Swallowing down her trepidation, she skated her fingers across the lid and pried it open.
The glow magnified.
Hermione gasped at what she saw inside.
A time-turner; small and concealed among the internal velvet cushioning.
She’s vividly transported back to Third Year where she’d possessed her own time-turner. The device having imprinted itself into her palm from the sheer amount of times she used it. Traversing through time had been her biggest adventure yet, and she’d assumed herself to be so capable at the time. So informed of time-turners and their capabilities. Hermione hasn’t seen one in a long time.
This one doesn’t look like her last.
The hourglass is slightly larger, beholding grains of blue sand—sand that’s glowing with fervour, gleaming like drops of blue starlight.
Tentatively, Hermione reached in and plucked the time-turner from the box.
The outer-frame was gilded and engraved. The closer she brought it to her face, the more obvious the inscriptions etched into it became. A singular, repeated rune around the circle. Something Hermione translated within seconds due to her study of Ancient Runes.
Redemption.
She gasped at the exact moment the ground beneath her shook.
Distantly, she felt the walls shudder, expelling a reverberating noise of explosion somewhere outside the room. Succumbing to pooling dread, Hermione scrambled to her feet, eyes wide watching the door tremble on its hinges. All of the clutter she’d forced before it, jolting at the impact of magic being thrown at it.
With the noise, came Bellatrix’s rebounding stream of triumphant laughter.
Hermione’s chest bowed— she’s gotten in.
Oh god, she needed to escape.
Hermione whipped her gaze around the office, at a loss presented with nothing but trinkets and parchment.
Running to the window, she threw it open and leaned over the frame. The sheer drop below made her stomach sink to the pits of her feet. She grimaced, yanking herself back from the fall which she’d never come back from if she dared try it.
Turning her attention to the room at large, Hermione’s patience began to fray.
There was nothing for her to do. Nowhere for her to go.
She can fight but it’ll be in vain. Hermione knew how to duel but she wasn’t as competent as Bellatrix. Neither was she as capable seeing as she still could feel the pain of Bellatrix’s torture ghoulishly traipsing along her body in phantom aches.
She could fight but she’d lose.
And Hermione can’t lose anything else. She wouldn’t be able to bear it.
Trembling, her gaze fell to the floor. Every inch of her withering at the thought of being caught, at the sound of magic pounding against the office door. A tenuous thread holding together, for now.
She’s trying to focus on a way out when the glowing of the time-turner caught her eye once again.
Lifting it up, Hermione frowned as the time-turner began to spin. Flipping around in its frame with almost rigorous intent. The blue grains of sand becoming nothing but a blur; the glow a blinking hazard of panic as the magic in the device roared to astonishing life.
“No,” she whispered, stunned as familiar time-magic consumed her, rooting her to the spot. “No, no…”
It’s spinning too many times—this is dangerous. Time-turners shouldn’t spin this much…
The pounding at the office flattened into a dull sound compared to the throbbing pulse of magic cocooning her in its hold. Hermione winced, trying to pry her fingers from the time-turner. Yet it didn’t budge.
She has about one second to gasp before she’s pulled into the suction of magic.
And then she’s gone.
The ashes of her ruin, falling behind in her wake.