Timeless

damnedscribblingwoman
Summary:
Hermione would like to think that she was old enough and mature
enough to have a handle on her temper, only clearly she didn't, because
it was 1991 and she was eleven. Again. Over a stupid slur and Pansy
Parkinson being her predictably spiteful self.

Notes:
 For KittyAugust (KittyAug).
Written for kittyaugust, for the Harry Potter Threesomes Gift Exchange.

This was my first time writing femslash and my first time writing a
threesome, and it was certainly an interesting challenge! I hope you
enjoy the story, kitty :) It was good fun to write.

Thank you Savannah for all your hard work and for all the patience.

Thank you also to my beta Cali, for kicking my ass over my first draft and
making me start over. Any remaining mistakes are my own.

Chapter 1: The Club

Chapter Text

Pansy Parkinson and Hermione Granger had never got along. Not as little
girls at Hogwarts, not as young women in a world gone up in flames, and
not even after the war, when the whole wizarding community had
collectively decided to just pretend the past few years had never
happened and that they all lived in a brave new world in which old
prejudices were gone and old enmities forgotten. One did not remark on
people's blood status (not where one could be overhead, at any rate),
one did not look down on the lower classes (or not openly, if one could
help it), and one never, ever mentioned the war.

But even the new status quo — which had produced such strange visions
as Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter being civil, even friendly, to one
another — had not been enough to bring about anything but icy, barely-
civil civility between Pansy Parkinson and Hermione Granger. It was all
very well for Draco to play nice after the whole Death Mark debacle, but
Pansy had not been that much of a fool and she saw no profit in sucking
up to the aggravating, pretentious, know-it-all Muggle-born who fancied
herself a war hero.
Had Hermione been asked for her opinion on Pansy, it was unlikely to
have been any more flattering, so it was fortunate that they did not tend
to run in the same circles.

When Pansy saw her in the crowded club, it was more than a little
unexpected — and not just because it was a Muggle club (surely the
odds of finding a Muggle-born in a Muggle club had to be higher than
those of finding a pure-blood, let alone two), but also because it was not
the sort of place where one would expect to find someone who until very
recently had been very publicly involved with Ronald Weasley.

Pansy had pushed her way to the bar, flushed and out of breath. She
tried to get the bartender's attention, grinning when Daphne pressed her
body against hers and kissed the side of her neck. She turned towards
her, the need for water forgotten as she kissed the other woman, letting
her hands follow the curves of her body and around her back, pulling her
closer against her.

The world was made of flashing lights and loud music and Daphne's
warm lips and soft body and clever hands, and just then Pansy needed
nothing else. A tap on her shoulder got her attention and she pulled
back, turning towards the impatient bartender and yelling her request for
two bottles of water, just managing to make herself heard. When the
sound dimmed around her, she didn't need to see Daphne discreetly
putting her wand away.

"Let's get out of here," Daphne whispered in her ear before nibbling on
it, letting her hands do the job of persuading Pansy. And Pansy, who
didn't need much in the way of persuasion, was about to agree when her
gaze fell on the woman leaning against the bar a few feet away. Feeling
her girlfriend tense up, Daphne pulled back and followed the direction of
her gaze, immediately spotting Hermione.

"What is she doing here?"

Pansy chuckled. "What do you think?" The Gryffindor looked awkward

and ill at ease, making stilted conversation over the loud music with a
woman whose only redeeming quality seemed to be her immunity to
Granger's pathetic lack of game. Pansy's smile widened as an idea
crossed her mind. "Daph," she started.

"Don't even think about it."

She pouted, her hands on Daphne's hips, her fingers trailing the skin just
above the waist of her jeans. "It's my turn to choose," she pointed out.

"Yes, but I have veto power."

"But why not?" She let just the hint of a whine into her voice, leaning
forward and kissing Daphne's neck, feeling more than hearing her laugh.
"It would be fun."

"Because you're bent on mischief."

That's why it would be fun.

She turned Daphne so they were both looking at Granger and wrapped
her arms around her waist, hooking her head over her shoulder. "Just
think about it," she said, her voice soft and low, almost a purr. "How
many people can say they've slept with a war hero?" Far too many,
really. War heroes were a dime a dozen these days.

"There's a special kind of hell for people who pick on baby lesbians."

She huffed a laugh. "Who's picking on anyone? I'm the very soul of
charity. That girl is wound so tight she might just sprain something. It
would be a kindness, really."

"Panse…"

"Come on. Aren't you a little tempted?" And it was tempting. Hermione
had certainly filled out in all the right places, and Pansy was not so much
a snob that she was blind, but that was nothing to the dark glee she felt
at the thought of stripping away the carefully-kept control of that
insufferable, self-important upstart, make her come apart under her, get
her to moan her name…

Not the noblest of reasons to sleep with someone, perhaps, but it wasn't
as if Hermione Granger would ever have suspected her of anything
resembling nobility.

Daphne cocked her head back and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. "Even if
you can convince me," she said, and Pansy took it as tacit agreement,
"you'll never convince her."

"You give me too little credit."

A quick wave of her wand was all it took for Granger's friend to find
herself with a sudden urge to depart without so much as another word or
glance at her companion. Hermione looked after her with a stricken
expression that suddenly turned to alarm when Pansy and Daphne got
close enough for her to be in the radius of Daphne's sound-dampening
spell.
The witch — who had hardly been relaxed before — visibly stiffened, and
while Pansy could not see it, she had no doubt Hermione's hand was
hovering just above the place where she kept her wand. What did the
little fool think? That they'd attack her in a place packed with Muggles?
Gryffindors were always so melodramatic.

"Small world, Granger." Pansy leaned against the bar, next to the witch,
standing just a little too close.

"What are you doing here?"

Daphne's smirk spoke volumes about what she thought Pansy's chances
were, which was almost insulting. Daphne should know by now that what
Pansy wanted, Pansy got.

"Same thing you are, really," she said. Daphne nestled against her, and
Pansy draped an arm around her shoulders. "Dancing, drinking…" She
reached out to Hermione and tucked a curl behind her hair, adding,
"Looking for company." The woman started slightly, turning three
different shades of red. In anyone else it would have been endearing.

"You have company," she pointed out, trying to cover her

embarrassment with a frown.

"The more the merrier," Daphne said, and then, because despite popular
opinion she really was the evil one in their relationship, she turned
Pansy's face towards her and kissed her — a languid, hot, utterly
shameless kiss. When Daphne pulled back, her grin had a wicked edge to
it and Hermione was looking even more flustered, something Pansy
wouldn't have thought possible. She also looked ready to bolt, which
meant she wouldn't. Gryffindors were nothing if not predictable.

Pansy got the attention of one of the bartenders, a short brunette with a
nose ring, and ordered three shots of tequila, which made Hermione go
from embarrassed to suspicious in two seconds flat.

"What in Merlin's name are you doing, Parkinson?"

"Buying you a drink."

"Why are you buying me a drink?"

"Peace offering." She did no try for contrition — it had never been a good
look on her. She smiled instead, a smile that was all sharp edges and
barely-disguised amusement. It was a challenge poorly-disguised as a
smile, and Hermione reacted exactly as Pansy expected her to, by
reaching for the shot glass closest to her without breaking eye contact
and throwing it back, making a face at the taste. Daphne chuckled next
to her, and Pansy smirked. Gryffindors.

Hermione was really smart. She was really smart and she knew when
she was being played. She knew and it should have mattered, only
clearly it didn't, because she was in the middle of the crowded dance
floor, dancing with Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass, and if
someone had told fifteen-year-old Hermione that that was something
that was going to happen, that that was something in her future, she
would have called them an idiot. Only now it seemed that she was the
idiot, because she was the one dancing with Pansy Parkinson and
Daphne Greengrass.
And she'd love to blame it on the three shots of tequila, or the however-
many beers she'd had before that, but while she was drunk enough that
she was dancing with Pansy-Pure-Bloods-Should-Rule-The-World-
Parkinson and Daphne-What-Is-A-Muggle-Born-Greengrass, she was also
drunk enough to be painfully honest with herself. And she honest-to-god
wasn't hating this turn of events. She should be — she was painfully
aware of that — but she wasn't. She didn't hate the way their bodies
brushed against hers; she didn't hate the small, casual touches. When
Pansy buried a hand in her hair and pulled her in for a kiss, she certainly
did not hate that.

The whole world was moving just at the edge of her vision, moving
bodies flashing in and out of the existence with the strobe lights, and
Hermione felt light-headed and slightly adrift, grounded only by the solid
pressure of the women on either side of her.

Daphne pressed against her back, a soft, stable presence, her lips warm
where they followed the curve of her neck, sending shivers down her
spine, and when she nibbled on the soft skin where her neck met her
shoulder, Hermione practically purred into Pansy's mouth, and it was a
good thing everything around them was so incredibly loud,
because that certainly would have been embarrassing. And then Daphne
tugged on her hair, and Hermione tilted her head back, finding her
mouth with hers, and she was lost to what was or wasn't embarrassing,
neither knowing nor caring to find out.

And there was a part of her who bristled at the very notion of being
there, in the middle of that dance floor, making out with Pansy Parkinson
and Daphne Greengrass — a part of her who remembered only too well
the sneers and the scorn and the snide remarks, who did not forget the
little girl who'd shed angry tears over the cutting words thrown at her by
them and people like them. But a different part of her remembered too
the woman who'd stood by herself earlier in the evening — unsure,
uncertain and lost — and who'd been only too glad to reach out to
someone familiar, even if that happened to be them.

And then, of course, there was the part of her who could barely string
two coherent thoughts together anymore, whose whole world had
dwarfed to the way their bodies felt against hers, to the way their lips
and tongues and hands felt on her, and to the realisation that giving in
was as easy as breathing.

When Pansy tugged on her arm and led the way back to the bar,
Hermione looked over her shoulder and reached back to grab Daphne's
hand. She was faintly aware of the noise dimming around them — the
result of either Pansy's or Daphne's magic — and wondered briefly
whether the Muggle bartender was also aware of it when Pansy leaned in
to order three B-52s.

Letting go of Hermione's hand, Daphne looped her arms around Pansy's

waist and yelled at the bartender to forget about the shots and just bring
them three waters. Pansy pouted, turning to face Daphne, who laughed
at her despondent expression before kissing her. The kiss started out
soft and teasing before growing increasingly heated, and Hermione felt a
sharp pang of something she refused to identify as jealousy, because she
wasn't that much of a fool. Not yet. Not ever.

But maybe it was as good a time as any to make a hasty retreat. She'd
come, she'd seen, she'd made ill-advised, alcohol-fuelled decisions. Veni,
vidi… What was Latin for ill-advised?

Hermione glanced around and took an hesitant step in the general

direction of what might or might not be the exit, but there was no time
like the present to find out, because her presence had clearly become
superfluous, and it was just as well, really. She had made plenty of bad
life choices for one evening so the smart thing to do was clearly to—

A hand on her arm halted her half-hearted escape attempt, and

Hermione forgot to be smart as Pansy pulled her back towards them. She
sighed contently as she kissed her, all thoughts of exits and common
sense and better life choices gone. And after all, it hadn't been her
smarts landing her in Gryffindor House so much as her ability to make
reckless, misguided decisions at the slightest provocation. Fred and
George would be proud.

Just as the thought crossed her mind, she was hit by the realisation that
Fred and George couldn't be anything at all. Not anymore. Not ever
again. Hermione froze as the club disappeared around her, replaced by
stone walls and bouncing curses, and the smell of smoke and charred
flesh. Grotesque figures flashed in and out of the existence, and people
were screaming and running and dying in hallways and stairwells and
classrooms — broken bodies that would never be put back together
again.

A warm hand cupped her face, bringing her back to the present. "You
still with us, Granger?" Pansy was frowning slightly, her thumb brushing
over her skin.

Hermione forced herself to smile, forced her body to relax. "Sorry, just
spaced out for a second there." She was fine. It was fine. The war was
over. It was all over. And she was fine. She was absolutely fine.

A mischievous smile spread across Pansy's face. "How about we move

this party elsewhere?"

But Daphne was still frowning, a troubled expression on her face as she
ran a hand over Hermione's hair.

"How about we call it a night instead?" she said. "We all had a lot to
drink."

Part of Hermione warmed at the tone of concern, and part of her couldn't
help but feel a sharp sting of rejection, something she wasn't even going
to analyse, because what the hell. She made herself smile, the sort of
smile that came so naturally to Pansy — easy and charming, a little
cocky, a little sharp — and wrapped her free arm around Daphne's waist.

"Are you protecting my virtue, Greengrass?"

Daphne's smile was soft and friendly and a little amused. "You're
extremely drunk, Granger."

Slytherins looking out for Gryffindors. It really was a brave new world.

"I'm not that drunk," she said, closing the space between them and
kissing her, soft and sweet and enticing. And part of her knew she wasn't
enough to tempt Daphne Greengrass, and part of her thought Daphne
Greengrass should be so lucky, because she was Hermione Granger, and
Muggle-born or not, she was totally a catch. And part of her recognised
that she really was that drunk. Drunk enough to think this was a good
idea, and sober enough to know it wasn't, and enough of a fool not to
care either way.

When Daphne kissed her back, all the loud voices vying for Hermione's
attention inside her head went quiet.

Chapter Text
Chapter 2: The Ministry
Hermione was an idiot. Smartest witch of her age, sure. But an idiot,
nonetheless. She was an idiot who made poor life choices and shouldn't
be allowed out in the world where bad life choices could be made. And
dating Ron had been bad enough. There was no conceivable reason why
she should have felt the need to top that by sleeping with Pansy
Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass.

And yet.

And if she was going to sleep with two (!) pure-bloods who had never
said a civil word to her in six years at Hogwarts or in any of the time
since, or whose loyalties had been sketchy at best during the war,
couldn't she at least have picked someone she didn't have to see on a
daily basis?

All three of them worked at the Ministry (because every other wizard
seemed to. Someone should really look into that), but Hermione hadn't
really noticed them much before. The Ministry was a big place, and they
all worked in different departments: Hermione was a curse-breaker with
the Auror Office, Pansy worked as a special assistant to the Chief
Warlock of the Wizengamot, and Daphne worked in the Department of
Mysteries, doing… Actually, Hermione wasn't sure what Daphne did. The
Department of Mysteries lived up to its name, and no one seemed to be
entirely sure what Unspeakables did, except that it was probably best
not to ask too many questions. Something about jars full of brains.

They all worked there, and Hermione had never had much cause to
notice them beyond a brief, "I wonder who Parkinson is terrorising these
days." Daphne hadn't even merited that much thought, mostly because
she hadn't spent nearly as much time as Pansy during their formative
years being a complete nightmare to anyone she deemed inferior to
herself — and on Pansy's Scale of Social Solecisms, being a middle-class,
Muggle-born Gryffindor was probably pretty close to the bottom. Hell, it
probably was the bottom.

Hermione did notice them now, however, and she really wish she didn't.
It was difficult to say what rankled most. Daphne's complete indifference
or Pansy's knowing smirk. Whatever. Hermione didn't care. She could do
casual sex as well as the next idiot who went around sleeping with
completely inappropriate people. Really.

And if Parkinson gave her one more smug grin, she was going to find
herself on the receiving end of an Unforgivable.

Because they worked in different departments, they normally only saw

each other in passing in the lobby or in the lifts, but the universe hated
Hermione, so it only took a few days for her to find herself in a
conference room with both of them. Because of course she did.
A team of Aurors had located what had once been a Death Eater
stronghold. It was empty now, save for a ridiculously and needlessly
intricate web of curses, hexes and jinxes that protected what the Auror
Office could only speculate was a large — and no doubt dangerous —
collection of dark artifacts. The whole thing was a death trap — both too
dangerous to dismantle and too dangerous to let be — and had it been
up to Hermione, she would have set the whole thing on fire. It was not up
to her, however.

The Ministry was only too happy to employ the Golden Trio, but it was
one thing to parade them where important people could see them and a
very different one to take seriously the opinions of "kids barely out of
school". Never mind the fact that they had fought a four-year war and
orchestrated the downfall of the most dangerous wizard that had ever
lived. It was peace time now, and war symbols were meant to be seen
and not heard.

No, she wasn't bitter.

The conference room was packed. Sitting around the table were the
heads of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, of the
Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes and of the
Department of Mysteries, as well as the Minister for Magic himself and
the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. Standing behind them were
numerous Aurors, Unspeakables, curse-breakers, clerks and all manner
of specialists — a solid ninety per cent of which were "kids barely out of
school" who were expected to put their neck on the line for whatever
crackpot plan the Ministry came up with in their quest to add to their
precious collection of dangerous magical artifacts. (No other Magical
Ministry had such a great collection. Theirs was the best collection. Suck
on that, Hungary.)

Nope. Not bitter at all.

One day Hermione was going to be Minister for Magic and there would
be a charming little bonfire with the contents of the Ministry vaults. She
could wait. She had a ten-year plan. A ten-year plan she was currently
focusing on right now, because it was either that or hexing the crap out
of Parkinson, whose amused smirk was getting really old and who really
needed to stop looking at Hermione as if she'd seen her naked. Which
she had, but that was entirely besides the point. And if she thought for a
moment that she could get under her skin, she was sorely mistaken. The
day was yet to come when Hermione Granger could be rattled by the
likes of—

"Granger, are we boring you?"

The harsh tone of Arnold Peasegood, Head of the Auror Office, startled
her out of her musings. "Sir, no, sir. Sorry, sir."

"The list, girl." He snapped his fingers and held out a hand expectantly.
Hermione handed him the scroll, keeping her face carefully blank.

Peasegood opened the scroll on the table. "These are the people on the
task force. If your name is on the list, you are to report to the Auror
Office at zero nine-hundred tomorrow. Abbott, Granger, Hopkins,
McDougal, Mcmillan, Potter, Thomas, Turpin and Weasley."

Pansy was no longer smiling.

"Arnie, I can't help but notice that's not the list we agreed on." Sarah
Croaker was a plump witch in her forties, who looked more like
someone's favourite aunt than the head of a department that kept a
collection of pickled brains.

"The Auror Office made some changes, Sally."

"The Auror Office does not pick and choose within my department," she
said pleasantly. "No offence to Turpin, here. She's smart as a whip and a
credit to the department, but I want Greengrass on this."

"Unspeakable Greengrass does not have the security clearance." There

were no former Slytherins on the list, nor any pure-bloods who hadn't
fought in the war — and on the right side of it. No one whose loyalties
could be considered suspect.

Daphne met Hermione's gaze — something like hurt flashing across her
face — and then looked away, her expression a blank mask that gave
away nothing.

Pansy was openly fuming.

"Everyone who works for me has been thoroughly vetted, and I resent—"

"Unspeakable Croaker," the Minister interrupted. "The Auror Office has

final say on any security-related matters."

Sarah Croaker looked thoughtfully at Kingsley Shacklebolt for a few

seconds, and then smiled — an open, charming, utterly terrifying smile.
The smile of someone who had access to an army of disembodied brains.

"As you say, Minister," she agreed cheerfully, and if Hermione were
Kingsley, she'd sleep with an eye open from now on.
The meeting wrapped up not long after that. They had their instructions;
there was little else to be said. As people filed out of the conference
room, Hermione glanced after Daphne's receding form, something like
guilt churning in her stomach. And it was ridiculous to feel guilty. She
followed orders, like everyone there. And she didn't owe Daphne a thing.
And what's more, if more members of the ruling pure-blood families had
bothered to take a stand against the tyrant bent on wiping out half the
wizarding population and ruling over the other half, maybe they'd be
looked at with less suspicion now. She really couldn't be blamed for—

Pansy walked out of the room behind her, knocking into her in passing
and giving her a murderous look before following after Daphne.

"Hermione, you coming?" Harry looked at her, expectantly. "We need to

go over the protocols."

"Yeah, I'll just—" Hermione glanced from Harry back to the the other end
of the corridor, where Pansy had just disappeared, and back to Harry. "I'll
meet you guys there. There's something I need to take care of."

And without giving him time to object, she took off after Pansy and
Daphne, because she was just as capable of making bad decisions sober
as she was drunk.

She had lost sight of both of them, but it didn't take a genius to know
where Daphne would have headed, and it wasn't long before Hermione
caught sight of Pansy's purple robes. When the witch ducked into one of
the side entrances to the Department of Mysteries, Hermione followed,
not once thinking that was a bad idea. She had been friends with Harry
and Ron for so long that her perception of good and bad ideas was a
little skewed.

She had only been in the Department of Mysteries the one time — a
night she had tried very hard to forget — but she didn't recognise most
of the rooms and corridors she walked through. The place was like a
maze — an eerily silent and deserted maze — and Hermione would have
lost her way if it weren't for the occasional glimpse of Pansy or the sound
of the odd door being open.

When she finally caught up with them, it was in a large, brightly-lit room
filled with hundreds upon hundreds of clocks — big clocks, small clocks,
hourglasses, sundials, even the odd digital clock. They were scattered
across desks, displayed in locked cabinets, hanging from the walls, and
there were even some hanging from the ceiling. There were also time-
turners — more than Hermione had noticed the first time she had been
in the room, and certainly more than she expected to see now,
considering the whole Ministry stock had officially been destroyed during
the Battle of the Department of Mysteries.
Daphne crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes red and puffy. "You
can't be here," she said to Pansy, her voice a little off. When she spotted
Hermione, her expression hardened. "Neither can you."

Pansy spun around, drawing her wand. "Did you lose your way,
Granger?" It was Pansy as she remembered her from Hogwarts —
haughty and disdainful, a little catty, a little vicious. "How safe do you
figure you are, all alone down here with the likes of us?"

Hermione was fairly confident Parkinson wouldn't hex her. Not on

Ministry property, anyway. Too many awkward questions.

Daphne sniffled once before looking away, the very picture of misery.

Hermione was fairly confident that if Parkinson did try to hex her, she
could probably draw fast enough to shield it.

"You don't scare me, Pansy," she said, because it was mostly true. To
Daphne, she added, "It's not a reflection on your work."

Daphne laughed, a bitter, humourless chuckle, and looked up at

Hermione.

"No. It's just a reflection on me."

And there was something about the way she said it that tugged at all the
parts of Hermione that wanted to reach out to her and make it better,
which was a ridiculous impulse that Hermione was not going to examine
too closely, because that way lay madness.

"If it were up to me—"

"Oh, do tell, Granger." Pansy's smile did not reach her eyes. "How hard
did you argue that particular point? How hard did the sanctimonious
Hermione Granger try to keep a pure-blood on that list?"

Hermione could feel herself blush and she hated that she was. She had
done nothing to be ashamed of. "Fuck you, Parkinson. There are pure-
bloods on that list."

"Sure. The right kind of pure-bloods. Dutiful little soldiers who grovelled
enough or bled enough for saint Potter."

"The bar isn't as high as that. Though we did try to weed out any who
tried to hand him over to Lord Voldemort."
The words were out before she could bite them back. Daphne flinched at
the name, but Pansy only blanched, looking for a second as if Hermione
had slapped her. And then she smiled, slow and dangerous, a picture of
natural grace and easy poise.

"Ah, but you should know I'm a reformed character now." The sharp edge
to her voice was at odds with her relaxed appearance. "I even pity fuck
the occasional Mudblood for cookie points."

Hermione did not even register drawing her wand. "Stupefy!" she yelled,
anger overriding common sense.

"Protego!"

Time slowed down and it was almost as if Hermione could see it all
happening in slow motion. Daphne yelled a warning right before
Hermione's spell hit Pansy's shield. It bounced off it and hit the closest
table, smashing it and everything on it and sending glass and wood
flying in all directions. Hermione turned her face away instinctively, and
barely had time to feel the sharp sting of glass embedding itself on her
skin before the whole world changed.

The Great Hall exploded to life around her, bright and loud and
impossible, decked in the House colours, packed full of boisterous
students. She stared at the dais, where Albus Dumbledore stood next to
the Sorting Hat, and it was all Hermione could do not to start
hyperventilating.

Chapter 3: The School

Chapter Text

No, no, no, no. This was bad. This was really, really bad. Daphne stared
around her in horror, but her mind refused to even process what she was
seeing except to recoil at the utter wrongness of it. She was faintly
aware of the fact that she was breathing too fast, but there was nothing
she could do about it, nothing she could do except freak out, because
this was really, extremely, overwhelmingly bad.

A warm hand squeezed hers and she forced herself to focus on Pansy,
except that was a mistake, because Pansy was also wrong. The whole
world was wrong, and she didn't know what to do. She didn't know what
to do, she didn't know how to fix it, and this was just really, really bad.

"Shhhh," Pansy said, moving a little closer, shielding Daphne from the
other students around them. "It's okay, baby. Just breathe. Everything's
fine."
Everything was not fine. Everything was very much not fine. And Pansy's
voice — so much higher, so much younger than it should have been —
was doing nothing to help Daphne's growing anxiety. She bit back a sob,
closing her eyes for a second, trying and failing to think of something,
anything to fix what had just happened.

McGonagall's voice cut through the haze of panic. "Granger, Hermione,"

she called.

Daphne looked frantically around until she found Hermione, who looked
so much different from the Hermione who'd stood in the Time Room only
a few seconds ago. This Hermione — small and scared and far too young
— was staring back at her with the same horror Daphne felt. Except
there was no time — there was no time for panic or to freak out, which
was kind of funny, all things considered, their problem being a lack of
time. Daphne nodded in the direction of the dais, trying to convey to
Hermione that she really needed to start moving.

"Granger, Hermione," McGonagall repeated, which hadn't happened the

first time around, and they really couldn't be messing with this. Daphne
frowned and nodded towards the dais again, and Hermione seemed to
finally get it, because she moved at long last, walking up to the stool
over which McGonagall was holding the Sorting Hat.

"Pansy, listen to me," Daphne said under her breath, knowing she didn't
have very long. "Change nothing. Everything has to happen exactly like
it did the first time around."

"But—"

"Greengrass, Daphne."

Daphne did not wait to be called again. She let go of Pansy, squared her
shoulders and forced herself to smile as she walked up to the front. The
Sorting Hat barely touched her head before it yelled, "SLYTHERIN!"

The only light in the otherwise empty classroom came from the moon
outside and from the three wands that moved every now and as if to
punctuate their owners' hushed discussion.

"This is not how time travel works!"

In a perfect world, Daphne would hex Hermione all the way to the other
side of the castle, but the world wasn't perfect and careless spell-casting
had landed them in enough trouble as it was.
"Well," she said, trying and failing to keep her voice even, "if this is not
how time travel works, then clearly we have nothing to worry about."
Pansy reached for her hand, but Daphne shook her off. She couldn't deal
with Pansy right now. She couldn't deal with either one of them right now
— it was all she could do to keep it together as it was.

Hermione glared at her for a moment — hers the round, doll-like face of
an angry, pouty eleven-year-old Daphne barely remembered — before
looking away.

"Fine," she said sheepishly. "What do we do?"

"We don't do anything. You have done enough. I'll take care of it."

"But—"

"I will deal with it, Granger. All I need you and Pansy to do is not to fuck
it up anymore than you already have. Listen to me, and listen carefully,
because this is important. You can't change anything that happened. The
smallest change could have unpredictable consequences. Disastrous
ones. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Do you?"

"I understand, Greengrass. Everything like it happened before. I get it."

"See that you do." Daphne took a deep breath, trying to shake some of
the nervous tension pressing against her chest. "Don't get caught
getting back to Gryffindor Tower."

Hermione snorted at that. "Don't worry," she said with a small smile.
"Got lots of practice." She tapped her wand once against her side,
extinguishing the light, and listened carefully at the door for a second,
before slipping out.

Daphne gave her a few minutes to get away, already fretting about their
own trip back to the dungeon. They couldn't get caught. They absolutely
could not get caught.

"Daph—"

"Let's go," she said, hoping that Filch was patrolling

elsewhere, praying that Peeves was causing mischief somewhere else.
Against all expectations, their luck held until they were safely in the
deserted Slytherin common room. Only then did Daphne allow herself to
breathe properly, feeling light-headed from sheer relief.

Pansy's hand was warm and familiar on her arm. "It's going to be fine,
baby."

Daphne slapped Pansy's hand away, suddenly unconscionably angry.

"Go to sleep, Pansy," she said only, not trusting herself to say anything
else. Sleep sounded like a good idea. If she were really lucky, her pillow
would become sentient and choke her to death.

"Will you please stop being mad at me? It was not my stupid spell."

Daphne knew Pansy well enough to know that the petulance in her tone
hid the hurt underneath, but just then she didn't care.

"You were baiting her," she said, too mad to care that her voice was too
loud. "You wanted to rile her up. Well, congratulations, you did."

"That's not—"

"Do you understand in how much trouble we are?"

"Daphne—"

"Do you? In fact, forget about us. Do you realise how much we can screw
up just by being here? The Dark Lord didn't do as much damage as we
stand to do. All because you wanted to provoke Hermione Granger. Well
done, Pansy. You've really outdone yourself this time."

And with that she turned and fled to the dormitories, before she could
say anything else. It wasn't fair. She knew it wasn't fair even as she said
it, but just then she didn't care. It was easier to be angry than to be
scared, and Daphne was terrified. She knew enough to be. One did not
mess with time. It was the first rule. It was the only rule. It was the first
thing they taught any of the Unspeakables working in the Time Room.

Time magic was dangerous. It was unpredictable. Any one small change
could and often did snowball into something that could not be predicted
or controlled. A word out of place here and suddenly they were faced
with a future in which He Who Must Not Be Named had won the war, or
they were dead, or any other number of horrible things had come to
pass. That, of course, along with the ever-present worry that they would
simply tear the fabric of time, and Merlin only knew what would happen
then. There was a reason why the use of time-turners was carefully
controlled, why time-turners themselves were crafted so that their scope
was limited.

And Daphne did not know exactly what had landed them here, what had
landed them now. She didn't know how to get them back to their own
time. She didn't know how to fix it and she had to fix it, because the
alternative did not bear thinking about. She needed… She needed things
she could never get here — access to the Department of Mysteries, to its
library, to the artifacts kept there, to the cumulative knowledge gathered
by generations of Unspeakables. She had none of that, and she could get
none of that, so it was on her to figure it out, it was on her to fix it, and
the weight of that was crushing.

She was already in bed by the time Pansy walked into the room.
Daphne's back was turned, but she could still feel her walk around, could
still tell when the other girl came to a stop by her bed.

"I'm sorry," Pansy said, her voice low and contrite.

Daphne made no reply. She shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep.
And if the tension in her shoulders or the tears falling down her face
gave away the fact that she was still awake, Pansy did not call her out on
it.

Hermione would like to think that she was old enough and mature
enough to have a handle on her temper, only clearly she didn't, because
it was 1991 and she was eleven. Again. Over a stupid slur and Pansy
Parkinson being her predictably spiteful self. And it's not as if she hadn't
been called that and worse before. Merlin, it's not as if Pansy hadn't
called her that and worse before. A smarter woman would have kept her
temper, but then a smarter woman would not have been in the
Department of Mysteries to begin with. A smarter woman wouldn't have
gone home with Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass, either.

For someone supposedly so smart, she certainly did a lot of dumb crap.

"You're saying it wrong," she told Ron, because that's what she had said
all those years ago, and she didn't need to have been trained as an
Unspeakable to understand the implications of their little predicament.
"It's Win-gar-dium Levi-o-sa, make the 'gar' nice and long."

"You do it, then, if you're so clever," Ron snapped, and if one of them
was going to lose it and accidentally break time, her money would have
been on him, which only went to show that pride did always go before
the fall.
Rolling her eyes, Hermione — who could produce a corporeal Patronus,
and had duelled Alecto Carrow, and Antonin Dolohov, and Bellatrix-
Freaking-Lestrange, and who knew ten different ways to break ancient
Egyptian curses — waved her wand and levitated a feather four feet up,
to Professor Flitwick's delight and everyone else's utter disgust.

Yeah, she'd been really popular those first few weeks.

It was before the troll attack in the dungeons, before she, Harry and Ron
had become friends, and Hermione had almost forgotten how lonely she
had been back then, how she had struggled to fit in, to make friends —
too blunt, and bookish, and far too fond of following rules and making
sure everyone else did too to be seen as anything but a bloody nuisance
in Gryffindor Tower.

And it was exhausting. The whole thing was exhausting. Having to watch
her every word and her every move, trying to make sure she did
everything exactly as she'd done it the first time around — every last
blunder, every last misstep — was exhausting. And who could remember
everything that far back in time? The only thing she could do was try to
get it right and hope that she didn't screw up more than she already had.

And if she were to be perfectly honest, that grated almost more than
everything else. Smartest witch of her age and she hadn't thought twice
about trying to stun someone in a room filled with unstable magical
objects. Really, well done, Hermione. Ten points to Gryffindor.

She deserved what she got and worse.

When the class ended, she made sure not to linger inside the classroom.
Everything exactly as it had been. There were things she couldn't
remember, things that hadn't survived a decade and a war and all the
things that had followed it, but she remembered this well enough.

She remembered the students filling the corridor. She remembered the
noise and the chatter and the quiet pride at having done well in class.
When Ron's words came, barbed and harsh and stinging, she
remembered those too.

"It's no wonder no one can stand her," he said to Harry. "She's a

nightmare, honestly."

She had been expecting it, she knew it was coming, but it still hit her like
a brick wall. There was nothing staged about the way she sucked in her
breath, nothing fabricated about the tears she wasn't quick enough to
conceal as she hurried past them, knocking into Harry in her haste to be
anywhere but there, and studiously avoiding looking at Pansy, who had
chosen that exact moment to walk by, because of course she had. In the
exciting life of Hermione Granger it never rained but it poured, and if her
best friends were going to comment on what an insufferable shrew she
was, it was bound to be within earshot of the person most likely to enjoy
it.

A loud crash behind her was followed by a number of loud thuds and
Ron's startled, "What the bloody hell?", but Hermione did not stop to
look. She hurried down the corridor and did not slow down until she
found herself in an empty classroom, the door banging shut behind her.

She closed her eyes, trying to get a grip. She wasn't eleven years old
anymore. She wasn't going to fall to pieces over a stupid comment made
by Ron over ten years ago. She wasn't. She refused to. The strangled sob
sounded too loud in the quiet room, and Hermione hid her face in her
hands, wretched and inconsolable and furious at herself. She didn't look
up when someone walked in. No one had followed her the first time
around.

When Hermione finally managed to get her outburst under control, Pansy
was standing a few feet away, watching her with a guarded expression.

"Done with the pity party?" she asked, handing her a pack of tissues.

And there was something absolutely bizarre about eleven-year-old Pansy

Parkinson — or any-age Pansy Parkinson, really — checking up on her,
but Hermione knew better than to point it out.

"You shouldn't have done that," she said instead, drying her eyes.

Pansy smirked, not needing to ask what that was. No one had Flipendoed
Harry and Ron the first time around, and there were only so many people
in the school who could have pulled off a non-verbal spell. Certainly only
so many students.

"My wand slipped," she said with a shrug, leaning up against the desk,
next to Hermione, their shoulders just touching.

"Why are you here, Pansy?"

Their eyes met and for a moment the only sound was that of students
walking and chatting and laughing outside. Pansy was the first one to
look away.

"I'm sorry about what I said."

Hermione did not think Pansy had ever apologised for a thing in her life.
"I'm sorry I tried to stun you."

And if either thought the other's apology was lacking, neither thought to
point it out. Pansy leaned her head on Hermione's shoulder, and
Hermione let her, looping her arm around the other girl's and leaning her
head on hers. It shouldn't be that easy — it wasn't that easy — but they
were none of them so proud nor any of them so foolish that they didn't
know that any port would do in a storm.

Chapter Text
Chapter 4: The Room of Requirement

It was the middle of the day when everything changed. One second
Pansy was half paying attention to Quirrell's stuttering his way through a
lesson on the Knockback Jinx — and she had that one covered, thank you
very much — and the next Moody was torturing a giant spider not three
feet from her, causing her to almost jump out of her skin.

"Squeamish, Miss Parkinson?" he said with a smirk, causing a number of

students — those not bothered by the casual use of Unforgivables and
not as properly terrified of Pansy as they should have been by this point
— to snigger.

"Not at all, Professor," she said, forcing herself to smile. Draco raised an
inquisitive eyebrow at her, but Pansy ignored him, turning back in her
seat to look at Daphne, who was sitting where she had sat all through
their fourth year DADA classes — one row back and to the side, next to
Millie. Back then Daphne had been one of the few Slytherins openly
bothered by Moody's little demonstration, but she looked positively
ashen now.

Pansy caught up with her outside of class, saying under the general
commotion, "I take it this is not good?"

"What? Being tossed around by the vagaries of an unknown time spell?

Whatever gave you that impression?"

Finally out of patience, Pansy grabbed Daphne's arm, bringing them both
to a halt in the middle of the crowded corridor. "Enough with the
attitude," she hissed.

Daphne glared, shaking her arm free. Before she could say anything,
however, Draco chose that precise moment to interrupt.

"Parkinson," he called, sauntering up to them. "I need a date for the Yule
Ball."
The smile Pansy gave him was a little flirty, a little cocky, partly designed
to charm him and entirely designed to bother Daphne, because she was
perfectly capable of multitasking and she really wasn't above being that
petty.

"And what am I supposed to do about that, Malfoy?" she asked as he

wrapped his arms around her, this boy she still adored even after
everything that had happened — the Dark Mark, and the war, and the
realisation that she'd really much rather be sleeping with women.

"Oh, I thought I'd grant you the honour to show up on my arm."

Pansy chuckled at that, her smile growing a little wider as he pressed

against her. "Honour, is it?"

"Great honour," he repeated before kissing her. Pansy smiled against his
lips and kissed him back. And if she put in a little more enthusiasm than
she had the first time around, that was neither here nor there.

When she pulled back, Daphne was gone.

Daphne was gone, but Hermione was standing at the end of the now
almost-deserted corridor, eyeing her with barely-concealed disapproval.

Suppressing a sigh, Pansy pushed Draco away and told him she had an
errand to run and would see him in class. Thus dismissed, he took off to
find Crabbe and Goyle, and Pansy — making sure there was no one
around to notice or care — followed Hermione into an empty classroom.

"That was very mature," the other witch pointed out the minute the door
was closed.

"Shut up," was Pansy's less than sophisticated reply. Everything exactly
as it had been was one thing, but Pansy knew perfectly well when she
was being a bitch. It's just that most of the time she didn't care.

"You need to talk to Daphne."

"Thank you for the relationship advice, Granger, but I've got it covered."

"Yeah, you're doing a brilliant job, Parkinson. Absolutely splendid."

Pansy sighed, closing her eyes for a second. "She's mad," she finally
said, because if you couldn't share your relationship woes with your
former school nemesis whom you had slept with the one time and were
now stuck back in time with, who could you share it with?
"Yeah," Hermione agreed — far too promptly and entirely too
unhelpfully. "You still need to talk to her."

Yeah, she did, and what's more, she would, but first she was going to
sulk some more, because honestly, it's not as if she'd meant for any of
this to happen. It wasn't unreasonable to shield an attack — an attack
that might not have been entirely unprovoked, but if Gryffindors lacked
impulse control, that was hardly her fault.

And a case could be made that Hermione would never have been in the
Department of Mysteries to begin with if Pansy hadn't decided to pick
her up at that stupid club, but Pansy did not remember Daphne shooting
down the idea, and she certainly did not remember her complaining
about it while moaning Hermione's name later that night.

Pansy was still going over the many ways in which this was all really
Daphne's fault when she walked into her next class — Transfiguration,
because that was just what she needed out of her day: two hours stuck
in a classroom with Minerva McGonagall.

Her indignation lasted only until she realised Daphne wasn't in class. And
Pansy couldn't be sure, she couldn't swear it — it had been so long ago
— but she didn't remember Daphne not being in class that day. She
didn't remember McGonagall's pursed lips, nor her pointed comment
about how money and status would not take them far in life if they did
not apply themselves to their studies. She certainly did not remember
McGonagall docking ten Slytherin points. Daphne had never cost them
points in her life.

When the class was finally dismissed — after what seemed like years —
Pansy ran all the way to the dungeons, but Daphne was nowhere to be
found. She tried the library next, and the Great Hall, and then the
Hospital Wing, because if Daphne was changing things — after all the
warnings, after everything she had said — there had to be a good
reason, there had to be an excellent reason, and Pansy did not even
realise how scared she'd been of what that reason might be until she
confirmed that all the beds in the Hospital Wing were empty.

She was late for Charms, but she only made it as far as the door. One
look was enough to inform her that Daphne was not in her seat, and for a
moment Pansy did not know what to do. She couldn't change anything —
that's what Daphne had said, that's what Daphne had been at pains to
stress — but Daphne wasn't there, and that was different, she was
absolutely sure that was different, and she didn't know what to do.

Before Professor Flitwick could notice her hovering in the doorway, Pansy
quietly took off, heading to the other side of the castle. She'd seen a
Weasley close to the Arithmancy classroom, and while one Weasley
looked much like another, she was pretty sure this was the right one. No
one could be unlucky all the time, not even her, and when she got there,
the door was slightly ajar — enough that she could see Hermione sitting
next to Longbottom. Making sure no one was around, Pansy waved her
wand and Hermione's quill sprang to life under its owner's startled look,
quickly scribbling a message that had Hermione frowning at the
parchment before stealing a glance towards the door. Their eyes met
and Hermione shook her head, almost imperceptibly, but Pansy was not
to be deterred by Granger's scruples.

The quill moved again, and Hermione's frown deepened. She raised a
hand and told Professor Vector she was feeling unwell, and could she
please be excused. Not a minute later she was out in the corridor.

"What part of change nothing are you having trouble with?" she hissed,
moving away from the door.

"Daphne is missing. I can't find her. This didn't happen the last time."

Hermione cursed under her breath and hurried her step. "Come on," she
said, and Pansy followed. The Slytherin ended up outside Gryffindor
Tower, waiting awkwardly by the entrance while the other girl went in
search of something. When she came back, she was carrying a piece of
parchment. Without pausing to explain, Hermione led the way to a
broom cupboard. Once inside, she opened the blank parchment on top of
an upside down bucket and tapped it with her wand. "I solemnly swear
that I'm up to no good."

An intricate map of the castle spread across the parchment, complete

with markers for all its denizens — every student, every teacher, every
god-damned ghost. Even the house-elves merited small, moving
identifiers.

"How in Merlin's name—"

"Not important," Hermione said, carefully examining the map. "See if you
can find Daphne."

They looked, and looked, and looked some more, but Pansy could not
see her. Everyone was there, but she couldn't find Daphne. She could
see Snape down in the dungeons, and Dumbledore in the Headmaster's
office, and Viktor Krum doing Merlin only knew what in the library. She
could even see the Bloody Baron, who had been dead for ten centuries,
but she could not find Daphne. She wasn't there. She wasn't there and
Pansy did not know what to do, except freak out because Daphne was
missing and she could be in trouble and Pansy did not know what to do
about it, and the last time she'd seen her she'd kissed Draco — partly
because that's what had happened the first time, sure, but mostly out of
spite, and what sort of person did that make her?

"She's not here," she said, her voice strange to her own ears. "She's not
in the castle. How is it even possible? Where the hell—"

"Easy, Pansy. She's in the castle." Hermione's calm tone only served to
aggravate her further.

"She's not in the bloody castle. She's nowhere in this damn thing." She
could hear the slightly hysterical tone in her voice, but there was
absolutely nothing she could do about it. "I've looked it over ten times.
She's not here."

"It doesn't show Unplottable locations." Hermione tapped the map with
her wand and the parchment became blank again. "If we can't see her—
The Room of Requirement. Let's go."

They ran all the way up to the seventh floor, coming to a stop in the
middle of a deserted corridor. The wall ran uninterrupted from one end of
the corridor to the other, but Pansy did not question Hermione. She
remembered the room. She remembered helping break into it in their
fifth year. She remembered Dumbledore's Army, trying to get away,
none of them making it very far. All of it for a golden star from a pink bat
who'd not make it to the end of the school year. Not Pansy's smartest
move.

"What would she turn it into it?" Hermione muttered, not really a
question. "Somewhere she could work. The Room can't replicate the
Time Room, but maybe some of the research material… Some of the
instruments…"

It took almost fifteen minutes and three tries, but the door finally
appeared. Pansy did not wait to see if Hermione followed. The second
there was a doorknob, she rushed in, only to stop dead in her tracks.

Daphne did not acknowledge their presence, did not even seem to notice
them. She sat cross-legged on a magic circle in the middle of the room,
her eyes blind and unblinking, her face made alien and unfamiliar by the
deep shadows cast by the ethereal blue light of the runes that made up
the circle. Magic was crackling all around them, heavy and dense, with a
taste like metal, and Daphne's voice was strained and unnaturally deep
as it chanted unfamiliar words that made all the hairs on Pansy's arms
stand up.

Hermione moved a little closer, looking down at the sheets of parchment

scattered on the floor, but Pansy did not move from where she was
rooted in place. It had never occurred to her to wonder exactly what it
was Unspeakables did in the deep confines of the Department of
Mysteries, but she wondered now, staring at this Daphne who looked so
remote and unreachable — not quite human, not quite flesh and blood.

Daphne gasped and for a split second she looked like herself again —
young and human and breakable. The light of the circle flickered and a
grimace of pain flashed across her expression as dark, red stains spread
across her shirt sleeves. Her voice wavered for a second and then the
chanting grew in intensity and the light of the circle flared up. When
invisible hands cut deep gashes on her face and neck, she did not so
much as flinch. She didn't, but Pansy lunged forward, a startled shout on
her lips. Hermione caught her before she could reach the circle.

"Don't," she said, struggling to stop Pansy. "You can't break the circle."

"It's hurting her."

"You break it and it's going to hurt us. It's keeping the magic contained."

"Granger, if you don't let go of me this instant—"

A loud crash drowned her words and they watched in horror as Daphne
was tossed across the room like a rag doll, hitting the opposite wall and
falling to the ground unresponsive. Pansy pushed Hermione off and ran
to her girlfriend, not bothering to sidestep the fading runes.

Chapter 5: The Plan

Chapter Text

Hermione had no real aptitude for healing magic, nor any particular
liking for it. What she did have, however, was lots and lots of practice —
the natural result of a long, drawn-out war and of the six years of semi-
constant mortal danger before it. Madam Pomfrey might have done
things more neatly or more efficiently, but Hermione's quick and dirty
methods — which mostly involved huge amounts of dittany and hoping
for the best — did the trick just as well.

When Daphne opened her eyes, Pansy, who up to that point had been
doing a great job staving off a bout of hysterics, finally broke down
crying, hiding her face in her hands and calling someone — maybe
Daphne, probably Daphne, and most definitely Daphne — a fucking idiot.

The fucking idiot in question reached up to tug Pansy closer and the
witch curled down, hugging Daphne and sobbing loudly as the other girl
stroked her hair.
And Hermione — who had seen more people hurt than she could count,
who had healed open wounds and lacerations and broken bones as
curses flew over her head — Hermione started shaking, too relieved to
do anything but sit there, light-headed and overwhelmed.

She had thought the days of trying to patch people up with a band-aid
and a prayer were behind her.

A soft hand covered hers and Hermione looked down at Daphne who
smiled a soft, reassuring smile that only added to the gut-wrenching, all-
too-familiar feeling of barely-avoided disaster. Daphne squeezed her
hand, and Hermione squeezed back, blinking away tears.

"You reproduced these from memory?" she asked a while later, looking
over the sheets of parchment scattered around what had previously
been Daphne's circle and was now only a stretch of floor — empty and
unremarkable.

Daphne and Pansy were sitting on a small cluster of pillows a few feet
away, Pansy busy fussing over Daphne, while Hermione devoted her
attention to Daphne's research and studiously avoided looking at them.
There was something about that casual picture of intimacy — small
touches and entwined fingers and the look of exasperated fondness
Daphne was giving Pansy — that made her feel lonely and melancholy
and left out, and she wasn't going to examine that too closely, because
that way lay nothing but trouble.

"It's not complete." Daphne got up, despite Pansy's protests, and joined
Hermione, picking up another piece of parchment. "This one and this one
are correct, as far as I can remember. This one here has gaps. And this
one is missing things even in the original we have access to at the
Ministry. It's— It's old magic. It's something we study, but it's not really
something— It's not really something we do."

"And you still thought trying it out was a good idea?" The anger in
Pansy's tone was painfully obvious, but Daphne merely sighed.

"It was bad enough when whatever it was threw us back to our first year.
But this… It's volatile Pansy, more than I thought it was. This sort of
instability, it's— It's unnatural, it's dangerous, and I don't just mean
because of what we may or may not change. Even if we're careful, even
if we're as careful as we can possibly be — and it's impossible to do
everything just right, but even if we did — it's only a matter of time until
something snaps. We're too far from our point of origin and the spell is
too unstable. Sooner or later, something will break."
"What happens when it does?"

Daphne stared at the chart in front of her for a moment, tracing the
edges of it with her fingers. "I don't know," she said at last, her voice
almost toneless. "There's conjecture, of course. But it's academic.
Theoretical."

Which wasn't an answer, so much as an evasion. "Best case scenario?"

Hermione pressed.

Daphne sighed and looked up at Hermione. "Best case scenario, the time
stream rights itself. It removes the source of instability and adapts
around it."

"Source of instability, meaning the spell?" Pansy asked.

Daphne glanced at Pansy but did not reply, which was answer enough for
Hermione. "And worst case scenario?" she asked, because if the best
case scenario was their impending death, she really wanted to know
what the worst case scenario looked like.

"Worst case scenario, the time stream is unable to self-correct and it

starts collapsing on itself."

If they ever made it out of this, Hermione was never going anywhere
near the Department of Mysteries for as long as she lived.

They stood in silence for several moments, each busy trying to digest the
many ways in which they were screwed.

"Okay," Hermione finally said, because she had been on the receiving
end of Fiendfyre, and smashing spells, and the Cruciatus Curse, and she
refused to die over a stun. She absolutely refused. "Okay," she repeated.
"So we need a plan." And she was really good at those. She was
absolutely great at those. "We'll find what went wrong and we'll fix it,
and we'll try again."

It wasn't a plan so much as a prayer disguised as bullet points, and

Daphne did not kid herself into thinking otherwise. It rested on a bed of
conjecture and sketchy magical theory and the sort of extrapolations
that could only very generously be described as anything but reckless.

"Even if what you're suggesting were possible," Daphne said, hunting

down the package of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans that she knew
was somewhere in the chaos of books and parchment littered around
them, "no one can harness that amount of power. You try to channel
something like that, and it will kill you."

It was the sort of harebrained idea that only sleep-deprived Gryffindor

brains high on sugar could come up with — daring and desperate and
wildly ill-advised.

"No, but look," Hermione said, grabbing a tome that should Madam Pince
ever learn had been removed from the Restricted Section would have
her on a war path to rival the crusades. "We do it like a coven. We split
the strain among the three of us."

"Old school," Pansy said appreciatively, popping another bean into her
mouth, the thieving fiend.

"Three witches aren't a coven." She took the package from Pansy and
then immediately cringed when she bit into a tripe bean. "There's too
few of us to even consider—"

Hermione tutted her while stealing the Every Flavour Beans, because
apparently both her and Pansy lacked any sense of shame. "Three is
enough if we use anchors."

"What would you even use as anchors for something like this?" This
being using the school as a gigantic battery on steroids. Those had been
Hermione's exact words, and while Pansy had frowned at the concept,
Daphne knew exactly what a battery was, thank you very much, just as
she knew that trying to tap into the school's magic like that was less like
using it as a battery and more like touching a live wire.

"I'm so glad you asked." Hermione's excited smile was enthusiastic and
infectious and stunning, and for a split second Daphne minded much less
the fact that they were all going to die. "We'll use Essence of Dragon,
Basilisk, Phoenix and Unicorn."

Daphne opened her mouth to point out all the reasons why that wouldn't
work, only to close it again. "Where would you even find a basilisk?" she
asked instead.

Hermione laughed, looking down at the book in front of her. "That really
won't be a problem."

It was a good plan, a solid plan, the sort of plan that had everything to
work except for all the parts where it could all go to hell, which made it
exactly the sort of plan Hermione was used to.
Their biggest problem at the moment was a logistic one. Daphne was
right — the spell that had landed them in the past was unstable, and it
kept tossing them back and forth. Two hours spent back in 1991 gave
way to two days in their sixth year, gave way to almost a week stuck in
April 1993. There was never telling how long they would be at any given
point in time and no way to trigger the change that they could see. And
because the Room of Requirement was subject to the passage of time as
much as anything else, if they moved forward in time all their notes and
all their research was still there, but if they moved back, it was all gone.

It was maddening and in no way improved by the fact that every time
the timeline skipped, Daphne got that same blank expression, that
trademark unflappable Unspeakable look that meant she thought this
was it, this was the skip that finally broke the universe, only showing it
would be against some sort of Unspeakable covenant whereby they were
not supposed to spook civilians about their imminent death.

So far the fabric of time and space had held.

Essence of Phoenix and Essence of Unicorn were relatively easy to get, in

that they only required them to sneak into the Headmaster's office
(without getting caught) and the Forbidden Forest (without getting
caught and/or killed). Tricky, perhaps, but not impossible, specially
considering Hermione was uniquely qualified to pull those off.

She got her hands on Essence of Phoenix in 1992, and then waited until
they had moved on from 1996 (because they'd have to rely on getting at
least that far in the timeline again to access it) and past 1991 (because
Quirrell had spent much of that year prowling around the Forbidden
Forest for unicorns with Voldemort on the back of his head) to finally get
her hands on Essence of Unicorn in the single day they spent in 1993.

Essence of Basilisk was hard, because it required a live basilisk, and

Hermione had no wish to get herself killed down in the Chamber of
Secrets trying to get it. Luckily for her (or not so luckily for her), the spell
very conveniently landed them in their second year just in time for
Hermione to get what she needed before forcing herself to look at the
damn thing's reflection and get herself petrified. Again. Because she was
a good little soldier who understood that sometimes the good of the
many outweighed the good of the one. Really.

Through all of that they went to class and did their homework and
pretended everything was fine and dandy (or as fine and dandy as things
had been at any given time, which tended to vary wildly).

They met when they could, late at night in the Room of Requirement,
when everyone else was asleep and none of them — meaning Hermione
— was busy sneaking around elsewhere with Ron and Harry. Hermione
didn't even know what sleep was anymore. She was so incredibly,
completely, absolutely tired all the time, exhausted down to her bones,
that she was always one hair's breadth away from a crying fit or a
shouting match or a nervous breakdown, only she couldn't indulge in any
of those, because that's not what had happened the first time around.

All she wanted was for them to get to the right part of their first or fourth
year so that she could get the Essence of Dragon and do the stupid spell
or die trying, which at this point was absolutely fine with Hermione, as
long as it meant she could close her eyes for more than two hours at a
time.

When they finally made it back to their fourth year, however, it was June
and the dragons were long gone.

They sat in silence in the Room of Requirement, the floor around them
covered in colourful pillows and sheets and sheets of parchment, and the
occasional half-empty box of Caramel Cobwebs and Fizzing Whizzbees
and Peppermint Toads, because while it might not look it just then, they
were all adults and if they wanted to eat their weight in sugar, that's
what they were bloody well going to do.

"We'll need a full moon," Daphne said, breaking the silence. She frowned
at the chart in front of her before checking something in the leather-
bound book next to it. "Or a new moon, but a full moon would be better.
Once we have everything, I mean."

Hermione made no reply. They'd never have everything. With their luck
they'd just keep getting tossed back and forth, skirting the couple of
weeks when there had been dragons at Hogwarts until reality was
entirely screwed up, or they were dead, or both.

And that wasn't the only thing on her mind. It wasn't even the most
pressing thing on her mind.

"In our third year," she said when she could no longer stand the what ifs
rolling around inside her head, "McGonagall got permission from the
Ministry for me to use a Time-Turner to keep up with all my classes, and
Harry, Ron and I used it to save Buckbeak and Sirius Black." For all the
good it had done Sirius down the line. "We went back three hours and
changed what happened. We changed what happened and—"

"No, you didn't." Daphne's voice was kind, but firm, and Hermione did
not look at her, because if she did she'd never be able to finish what she
wanted to say.
"No, we really did. We knew what was going to happen, so we went back
and changed it. We changed that and it was fine, so maybe if we—"

"Hermione, look at me. You didn't change it. It always happened like
that. You were able to go back and change it because you always went
back and changed it."

"That makes no sense."

Daphne's smile was soft and sad and apologetic. "Time travel doesn't
always."

They were quiet after that, and Hermione should have dropped it, except
that she couldn't. The more she tried to focus on the book in front of her,
the more her mind kept coming back to that one thought.

"Cedric Diggory is going to die tomorrow."

Not 'Voldemort is going to rise again tomorrow'. Not 'He Who Must Not
Be Named is gaining his powers back tomorrow'. It was 'Cedric Diggory is
going to die tomorrow', because in Hermione's mind that was the one
death that had opened the floodgates to all the others, as if Cedric dying
had somehow started a trend. Because Cedric had died, Sirius had died,
and then Dumbledore, and Dobby, and Tonks, and Lupin, and Moody,
and Lavender, and Colin, and McGonagall, and Luna, and the Patil twins,
and the Weasley twins, and Ginny, and all the other Weasleys except
Ron — even Molly who had treated her like a daughter, even Percy who
despite everything had died like a hero — and so many others until all
Hermione could see were corpses and coffins and graves.

"Yes," Daphne said only, in that toneless voice Unspeakables had

perfected to an art.

"Maybe we could—"

"We can't."

"But—"

"Oh, for Merlin's sake." Pansy had none of Daphne's patience, and
seldom any inclination to pretend otherwise. "We've been bending over
backwards trying to remember what we said and did every minute of
every day so we don't mess anything up, and you want to what? Save
Diggory? He isn't dying tomorrow, Hermione. He died already. He's been
dead for almost ten years, and there's no amount of Gryffindor
sentimentality that would make trying to change that a good idea."
"Better Gryffindor sentimentality, Parkinson," she said, almost relieved to
have a chance to lash out, to give expression to all the things bubbling
inside of her, "than Slytherin callousness."

"Ah, yes." Pansy smirked, getting up. "We're evil, we're vile, we're the
devil. Unlike you bastions of purity and goodness. But at least we have
enough common sense to know when to cut our losses."

"How did cutting your losses work for you after the war, Parkinson?"

"How did making reckless, half-assed decisions work for you during it?"
Her voice was sharp and cutting, like the edge of a knife. "How many
died because the great Hermione Granger was too busy being good or
heroic or brave to remember to be smart?"

Hermione didn't even realise she had drawn her wand until Daphne got
between her and Pansy.

"Alright, that's enough," Daphne said, looking from one to the other.
"This isn't helpful."

No, but then she hadn't meant it to be. Hermione wasn't sure what she
had meant it to be. Cathartic, perhaps. As if by letting go of all the bile
rising in her throat, she could stop herself from choking on it. In the end
it had only made her feel worse, and she hadn't even known that was
possible.

"Fuck you, Pansy," she said only, and turned to leave.

Chapter 6: The Spell

Chapter Text

The timeline did not change again for another day, by the end of which
Cedric Diggory was dead, He Who Must Not be Named was in full control
of his powers, and Hermione — who had become progressively quieter
and more withdrawn as the day progressed — had acquired the vacant
look of someone who had been slowly hollowed out until there was
nothing left but an empty shell that moved and talked and looked
human, but only just.

And Daphne knew she ought to feel bad about it — about Diggory, and
the Dark Lord, and all the things that would follow — but mostly she was
just relieved that Hermione hadn't done something incredibly stupid.
Cedric Diggory was dead, but they were still alive and the world was still
spinning. It was as good an outcome as could be expected.
When all the students filed out of the Great Hall — quiet and subdued,
some openly crying — Daphne looked around for Hermione, grabbing her
arm in the confusion of people, and pulling her with her towards a small
alcove, hidden by a heavy curtain.

"It was the right thing to do," she said, once they were alone.

Hermione looked towards the window, her gaze on the dark grounds
outside. "Was it?" she said, her voice low and toneless.

There was really nothing Daphne could say that would make it better, so
she didn't try. She reached out for Hermione instead, cupping her face
with her hands and turning her face towards her.

"Yes," Daphne said only, before kissing her, a soft peck on the lips
followed by another one on the cheek, followed by a soft sob Hermione
buried in her hair.

Daphne didn't really care about Cedric Diggory. She hadn't then and she
didn't now. He hadn't been someone she noticed, certainly not someone
she cared about, and his death had registered as no more than an
intellectual curiosity — the precursor to a war that had passed her
largely by. Maybe it did make her callous, but no one became an
Unspeakable who wasn't at least a little unfeeling.

She did care about this however, about the girl softly crying in her arms,
about what it did to her. She cared and that fact would have surprised all
of them — the young Daphne who had been only very vaguely aware of
the existence of Hermione Granger, and the adult Daphne who had
tasted strawberry shots on her lips, and any version of Hermione who
had ever met any of them.

The only unsurprised one among them would probably have been Pansy,
who had always claimed Daphne had a soft spot for strays.

"You need to talk to her," Daphne said without looking away from her
book.

"I don't see why." Pansy was sitting next to her, their legs touching under
the table. "If she wants to sulk like a child, that's her business."

It was early 1994 and they were working in the Great Hall under the
supervision of Professor Snape and Professor McGonagall while the
school was searched yet again for signs of Sirius Black. Neither the
Dementors nor the teachers would find a thing, of course, not on this
occasion, and not on the many that would follow, but at least it was
better than sitting through classes, and it made it easier to talk, as long
as they weren't too obvious about it and made sure to refresh their
Muffliato Charms.

"You're both acting like children, and I need you to get over yourselves."

Pansy and Hermione weren't talking to each other, because apparently

the three of them had been stuck back at school long enough that they
were reverting to actual teenagers. It was absurd and aggravating, and
Daphne was about ready to strangle them both.

"If you're so worried, you talk to her," Pansy said, adding in a lower voice
when McGonagall shushed her, "You're such great pals now, after all."

Daphne snorted. "Jealousy doesn't suit you, Panse. You're just bitter you
let her goad you into an argument and said more than you meant to
say."

"I said exactly as much as I meant to say, thank you very much. And
you're a fool if you think she will ever look at either one of us and see
anything but prejudiced, cowardly, treacherous snakes, however little
she cares about it after a few drinks. As far as she's concerned — as far
as any of them are concerned — any difference between us and Bellatrix
Lestrange is purely academic."

Her tone was all unconcerned nonchalance, but Daphne knew her well
enough and had known her for long enough to hear the hurt underneath.
Hooking a hand around the back of her neck, she pulled Pansy to her and
kissed her temple before letting go again, just in time for Snape to turn a
blind eye to the both of them, as Daphne knew he would.

"You like her," she said, turning her attention to her textbook and
underlining the three main causes of the Goblin Rebellions.

"I don't. Not in general and certainly not like you're suggesting."

Daphne smirked but did not press other than to say, "Talk to her."

They finally managed to get their hands on Essence of Dragon in May

1991, and Pansy was only mildly surprised to learn that the precious
Golden Trio had smuggled a dragon out of Hogwarts in their first year,
because of course they had. During the seven years she had spent at
school there had been only two things she had been entirely certain of:
the stairways always moved in the way most likely to make everyone
late for class, and Potter and Co. were always up to something that was
grounds for expulsion ten times over unless you happened to be
Dumbledore's pet Boy Wonder or one of his friends, in which case it was
grounds for house points and a pat on the back.

Not that she was bitter or anything.

It did mean, however, that Hermione finally deigned to grace the Room
of Requirement with her presence to let them know they had everything
they needed to put an end to that charming trip down memory lane and
go back to their own time.

"Good timing," Daphne said, putting the flask Hermione handed her in
the box with the other three. "Tomorrow's a full moon."

Good timing would have been several weeks and far too many time skips
ago, but Pansy would take what she could get.

They spent the better part of the night going over every last detail of the
spell until Pansy was ready to scream, not the least because while
Hermione had been off Merlin only knew where nursing her injured pride,
she and Daphne had spent long evenings working on the bloody thing,
learning it backwards and forwards. Not that Miss Perfectionism cared.

"For the tenth time, it's TEM-po-ra, not tem-PO-ra."

"Oh bite me, Granger," Pansy said, and added despite Daphne's audible
sigh, "We've been at this for three hours straight. We know it as well as
we're going to."

"We get one chance at this. If we screw it up—"

"We die, everyone dies, the universe dies. It will be bad, it will be
terrible, it will be the worst. I get it, I heard it, you've made your damn
point."

The TEM-po-ra v. tem-PO-ra debate was the highlight of the evening.

Neither the mood nor the content of the discussion improved from there.
By the time five a.m. came around and both Daphne and Hermione
agreed it was probably for the best if they all went and got some sleep,
Pansy had half a mind to mess up the spell just to spite them both and
their pathological need to try and control every last thing.

The few hours of sleep she managed to get did very little to dispel the
aggravation from the night before, and it was probably a good thing they
were going home, because if she had to spend another second playing
nice with Hermione-Freaking-Granger, she was going to stab someone
with her wand. Probably Granger. Probably repeatedly.

Her mind was busy going over the many reasons why she could not
stand the other woman (never had, never would, and Daphne could stuff
it) — a very long list in which Muggle-born did not rank nearly as high as
"insufferable know it all" — when everything changed.

One moment she was running down a staircase — late for class because
she had slept for only two hours and the universe hated her — and the
next she was in the Great Hall, the words out of her mouth before she
could recall them back:

"But he's there! Potter's there! Someone grab him!"

Pansy stared in horror at her outstretched arm, at the accusing finger

pointing at the wizard across the room.

No. No, no, no, no, no. Not this. Not this day. No.

"Thank you, Miss Parkinson." Pansy barely even heard McGonagall, her
mind too full of panic and fear and rage at the unfairness of it all. They
had everything they needed to go home. They finally had everything.
Weeks of trudging through first-year classes and third-year homework,
and the Yule Ball, and the Triwizard Tournament and Cedric Diggory, and
they could finally go home, except that they couldn't because it wasn't a
full moon and even if it had been they would never have found the time
to do the bloody spell in the middle of the chaos about to be unleashed
in the castle.

And where the hell was Hermione?

Pansy was surrounded by a sea of hostile faces — hard, belligerent,

accusing — more than one wand pointed at her, and she couldn't even
bring herself to care, because she couldn't see Hermione, and had she
been in the room the first time around? She couldn't remember. She
couldn't think and she couldn't remember, and so many of the people in
the Great Hall would be dead before the night was out — Neville
Longbottom, who was shaking his head sadly, as if personally
disappointed in Pansy; Ginny Weasley who would love nothing more than
an excuse to hex her all the way to the other side of the school. So many
other Gryffindors and Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs and even Slytherins.

A warm hand on her back nudged her forward, and Pansy moved to
follow Filch out of the room as she had all those years ago, only this was
wrong. This was all wrong.
"We can't leave without her," she whispered to Daphne who had fallen in
step beside her. "Daph—"

"Quiet," Daphne hissed, flicking her wand once to cast a silent Muffliato.
"Nothing can change. You know as well as—"

"Not this time. Not this." The Battle of Hogwarts had been a massacre.
Too many Death Eaters, too many kids playing the hero, too many flaws
in the school defences. They had been overrun in a matter of hours and
it was nothing short of a miracle that Potter had made it out alive. Pansy
had never once doubted that leaving had been the smart thing to do,
and the benefit of hindsight had done nothing to change her mind on
that score, which made what she was about to say all the more
ridiculous. "We can't leave. She'll see them all die. Again. We can't—"

"We can, and we will." Daphne's tone was iron and Pansy did not have to
look very hard to see the older Unspeakable in the face of the young girl
walking next to her. "You know the consequences of—"

"Oh for Merlin's sake." Millie gave them a funny look, but Pansy was
fairly sure she couldn't hear most of what they were saying and wouldn't
have understood it if she could. "Do you honestly think," she continued,
lowering her voice, "that Hermione is just going to stand by while
everyone she loves dies around her? Things are going to change. She is
going to change them. And get herself killed for her troubles, like as not.
She'll burn the universe to the ground before allowing this day to play
out like it did the first time, and if you think any different you haven't
been paying attention. And if we can't stop her, we might as well help
her."

Daphne swore under her breath and Pansy knew she had her. It was hard
to argue with the facts.

"We can't be seen," Daphne said. "After what happened in the Great
Hall, you'll be seen as a fair target."

"Lucky me," Pansy said just as a discreet wave of Daphne's wand caused
Filch to stand a little straighter. "So what do we do?"

"Pray." Daphne grabbed her arm and slowed down, letting the other
Slytherins walk past them. Pansy didn't know exactly what spells she
was using — non-verbal magic had always come easily to Daphne — but
she could see its effects. None of their friends spared them so much as a
glance; no one seemed to notice or care that Pansy and Daphne had
fallen behind.

Chapter 7: The Battle of Hogwarts

Chapter Text

They hurried in the opposite direction, avoiding the main staircases and
choosing instead the back passages to the upper floors, hoping that
would lower their chances of running into anyone. If they were lucky —
and they were surely overdue for some luck — most everyone would still
be in the Great Hall.

"Filch will know we haven't left," Pansy said, because that was going to
be a problem.

"Filch will tell anyone who asks that we've left with the rest of our
House."

Pansy glanced at Daphne but did not comment. There was only one spell
that would get someone to do someone else's bidding, and the fact that
her girlfriend was a little bit terrifying should not have been as hot as it
was.

They made their way to the seventh floor without incident, and into the
Room of Requirement without anyone being any the wiser.

"We need Hermione." Daphne went straight to the box where they kept
the four essences.

"What are we going to do?"

"Something daring and desperate and wildly ill-advised. She'll love it."

Pansy's Patronus was rushing out of the room before Daphne had even
finished speaking — bright and sharp and more solid than Pansy felt.
Merlin, this was such a bad idea.

Not ten minutes had passed before Hermione came bursting into the
room.

"What in Merlin's name are you two still doing here?"

"Making really bad life choices. Come here, both of you." Daphne knelt
on the floor, opening the box and picking up a small flask Pansy hadn't
seen before. "We don't have a lot of time."

"What is that?" Pansy asked.

"Felix Felicis."
"How on earth did you get Felix Felicis? If we give it to Harry—"
Hermione made to reach for it, but Daphne moved it out of reach.

"Potter will make it alive to the end of the day. That's lucky plenty. We
need this more than he does."

"What are we going to do?"

"We're going to win the Battle of Hogwarts and try not to destroy the
universe in the process."

There was no amount of Felix Felicis, no amount of luck in the world that
could make up for the fact that what they were about to do was a really,
really bad idea, but since Pansy had been the one to encourage this
lunacy, she was not about to point it out.

Daphne's plan was simple and elegant and very likely to get them all
killed either through working perfectly (and thus risking screwing up the
time stream for good) or not working at all (in which case they'd
probably end up on the receiving end of an Unforgivable, thus changing
what had happened and risking screwing up the time stream for good
anyway).

There was magic in Hogwarts that was older and more powerful than
anything even Voldemort could dream up. Magic that was not meant for
mortal hands, that no mortal could hope to control. They had been
counting on that power to get them home, and now they were counting
on it to stop the war before it even began. It was either incredibly
optimistic of them or unbelievably arrogant, and Pansy wasn't sure
which. She wasn't sure it mattered.

"The current flows both ways," Daphne said. "We'll be able to tap into
the castle's magic, and it will be able to tap into ours."

"Our magic is like a drop of water compared to—"

"That's not the important part. It will be able to tap into the Felix Felicis.
In theory."

A lot of it was theory. Not terribly sound theory, either, but they were
desperate and out of time.

"Give me your hand," Daphne said, grabbing a dagger and cutting a thin
line across her palm. Blood magic was old and dangerous and not nearly
the stupidest thing they were about to do. It would connect them all,
make sure the three of them were sharing the burden of the ritual even
though Hermione would be down in the lower floors playing the hero
while Daphne and Pansy worked from the top of the Astronomy Tower —
the highest point in the castle, right above the entrance.

Pansy sucked in her breath when the spell worked and Daphne and
Hermione were suddenly right there, their minds close enough to touch,
nothing between them but air. She could have closed her eyes and been
able to see them all the way across the castle, all the way across the
country.

"Merlin," Hermione whispered, and Pansy could feel the fear and
nervousness and sheer sense of wonder radiating off the witch, could
feel her prodding tentatively at the edges of their shared bond.

"It will be hard enough with three people," Daphne said, the agitation
bubbling right under her skin as clear to Pansy as if it had been her own.
"If one of us dies, the sheer amount of power will kill us all."

Odds were good they were all going to die regardless.

They shared the Felix Felicis. There was only enough that each of them
got a few drops, but it was enough. The moment Pansy drank it, all
thoughts of death and gloom fled, replaced by an unshakable belief in
their ability to achieve the impossible and make everything right. They
would make sure the castle held, make sure their side won the battle,
make sure the time stream remained stable long enough for them to pull
it off. And they would go home afterwards.

"I'll meet you guys in the tower when it's over," Hermione said, her
surety in the fact that they would all be alive at the end of the day a
bright light, loud and clear across their bond.

"Hermione," Pansy called when the other girl turned to leave, not even
questioning that it was the right move, not even pausing to think. Felix
Felicis left no room for doubts or misgivings, and Pansy had none when
she kissed Hermione — nothing but the realisation that she had wanted
to do that for weeks.

"Took you long enough," Daphne said, and Pansy could hear the
amusement in her tone, could feel her fondness, warm and bright all
around them.

It was a heady thing, that feeling deep in her gut that nothing bad could
possibly happen, nothing bad would ever happen — like jumping off a
cliff and trusting that something would catch her. It was illogical and
ridiculous and unlikely to keep her alive in the long run, but it hadn't
failed her yet.

The castle was humming in and all around her, old and magical and
powerful, like a breathing, living thing. Hermione could feel its magic
coursing through her, could feel its rage at the invaders that dared
trespass upon its halls and courtyards, puny little creatures who fancied
themselves powerful because they knew how to wave a stick.

And it should have made her feel small, it should have made her feel tiny
next to that behemoth with its ancient magic and deep foundations and
towers that reached upwards towards the sky, but it didn't. Hermione felt
untouchable, unreachable, invincible. They would carry the day if she
had to carry it herself.

Not that she would have to. Not single-handedly. No one else had drunk
the Felix Felicis, but its effects were felt throughout the castle, carried by
their spell, held in place by sheer force of will, and people were ducking
out of the way of curses that should have killed them, and hitting
masked nightmares with deadly accuracy, and becoming smarter and
faster and better.

It wasn't perfect — nothing in life was, not even magic. Many still fell to
Death Eater wands, many still broke under Death Eater curses. But
Hermione had seen the world end once before, on this day all those
many years ago, and it didn't begin to compare. A time would come to
mourn their dead — and her heart broke at the though of those whose
fate they had been unable to change — but she would make sure it
ended here. Whatever else she did, she would make sure this war ended
today.

Pansy could feel the moment the Felix Felicis started to wear off, like a
sudden chill in the air. It was subtle at first, a small hint of doubt, the
sudden realisation that even if they made it though the day, chances
were still good that they were probably screwed anyway.

When the Dark Lord walked into the school with Harry Potter's dead
body, she knew their luck had finally ran out.

Hermione's pain — shocked and sharp and overwhelming —

reverberated across their bond like movement on a spider's web, hitting
her and Daphne like a brick wall. Daphne whimpered and Pansy
squeezed her hands, trying to keep them both grounded because they
were still connected to the school, high up in the Astronomy Tower, and
they had come too far to falter now, with or without their extra luck.
"Come on, Potter," Pansy said through gritted teeth, Hermione's grief
raw and crushing in her mind. "Make your own goddamn luck."

When Harry rolled to his feet — and only Potter could be such a drama
queen as to literally rise from the dead — Pansy wasn't sure if the
overpowering sense of relief was hers, Daphne's or Hermione's.

The moment Voldemort died they had half a second to share in the
general euphoria before a wave of energy almost made them lose their
hold on the spell.

"Get up here, Hermione," Daphne said even though Hermione couldn't

hear them. She'd be able to feel Daphne's urgency, however, much like
Pansy could. And Pansy could see only too clearly what had Daphne
worried — the four essences they were using as anchors were almost
gone. There was barely anything left in the bowl that held the Essence of
Basilisk, and Essence of Dragon wasn't looking too good either.

They either did the spell now or not at all. And if they didn't drop their
hold on the school's magic before the essences ran out, that was the end
of the line for all of them.

"I'm here, I'm here." Hermione barged in, her clothes filthy, her hair a
wild mass of curls. Daphne dropped one of Pansy's hands and Hermione
joined them in the circle.

"The moon is waning," Pansy pointed out, as if there was anything they
could do about it.

"Yeah," Daphne agreed. A small squeeze of her hand was all the warning
she got before Daphne started the ritual, her voice loud and clear in the
stillness around them. And after the insanity of the day they had just
lived through, this was almost relaxing — the familiar pacing of a spell
they had gone over time and time again until Pansy could chant it in her
sleep, every word rolling off her tongue effortlessly.

And then Essence of Basilisk ran out and the extra burst of energy tore
through them like dry kindle catching fire. Pansy almost let go, the pain
sharp and blinding and punishing, but Daphne's grip on her and
Hermione was like iron and it only took the witch a second to adjust, to
ease the strain on both of them. Pansy would have admired the sort of
skill required to do that, if only she hadn't been so painfully aware of the
fact that Essence of Dragon was on its last legs, and Daphne would not
be able to do it a second time.

The empty bowl burst, shards flying everywhere, and that could not be a
good sign except that suddenly everything stood still, broken fragments
hovering in mid-air. They just stood there for a second and then flew
back the other way, stitching themselves together again, as if time was
being rewound.

And this had to mean something. It had to be a sign that they were on
the right track. They only needed to hold on a little bit longer. They were
so close! So close.

When the four bowls burst at the same time, Pansy only had half a
second to feel something akin to shock before the world went dark.

Chapter 8: Epilogue
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text

Hermione stood across the street from the house, a soft drizzle caressing
her skin and playing havoc with her hair. It was late, around dinner time.
The lights on the street were already on, casting dark shadows on the
buildings. The amount of passers-by had slowed down to a trickle of
people who rushed past her without so much as a glance, in a hurry to
get home and out of the rain.

The house was just an ordinary house — white, two-storey, with potted
plants in one of the windowsills. Hermione wondered briefly which of
them cared for those. There was something incongruous about the idea
of Pansy Parkinson gardening, for all that she was named after a flower.

Hermione was stalling.

This was ridiculous. The great Hermione Granger, war hero twice over,
rooted in place at the thought of ringing a doorbell. Some hero.

She wasn't sure what it said about her, that it took liquid luck or large
amounts of alcohol for her to make a move. Bravery indeed.

They had been back in the present for two days and she hadn't seen
either Pansy or Daphne in almost that long. They had technically only
been gone two minutes, but that had been enough to ring some pretty
big alarm bells up and down the Ministry, and teams of Unspeakables
had interviewed all three of them separately, going over everything that
had happened, making sure they gave a thorough and detailed account
of everything that had happened — dates, places, things they had
changed, big and small.
When they had finally let her go, Hermione had felt no small amount of
relief. None of the Unspeakables had looked terribly impressed at their
"reckless disregard for the laws of time, put in place for very good
reasons and by far smarter and wiser minds than yours, Miss Granger,"
and she had half-expected her brain to end up floating around in a jar
somewhere, deep in the Department of Mysteries.

Her relief had been short-lived, however, because no sooner had she got
out of one interrogation, she had run straight into another. Harry and
Ron were waiting for her outside, and Hermione would have blown them
off — because she was exhausted, and her nerves were shot, and she
badly needed her bed — except that Ginny was right there, alive and
well and looking at her.

So she had gone with them, and told her story, and burst into tears at
the sight of Molly Weasley bringing her a cup of tea.

There were many people who had not made it despite their best efforts
— Fred, Tonks, Lupin, many others — but Hermione did not dwell on
those. She was grateful for the ones who had made it. She would be
grateful for that for as long as she lived.

"I'm sorry," Ron said when she was done telling her story. "Can we go
back to the part where you slept with Pansy Parkinson and Daphne
Greengrass? 'Cause I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one."

Ginny let out a snort of laughter, and Harry threw a cushion at his head,
and Hermione rolled her eyes at all three of them, a smile tugging at the
corners of her mouth. Merlin, it was good to be home.

That had been the night before, and today she had spent the better part
of the day fussing and fidgeting and going crazy, because apparently
unless she was in mortal peril she did not know what to do with herself.
And it wasn't even that. She had been there before — the adrenaline
crash, the struggle to make herself climb down from that state where her
fight or flight response was constantly on. It wasn't that.

It was the fact that they were back and she had barely had the time to
say two words to Pansy and Daphne, and she didn't know where the
three of them were, if anywhere. She didn't know what that thing
between them was, or if it even existed anywhere but inside her own
head, and part of her didn't even want to find out for sure, in case she
didn't like the answer.

But not knowing was driving her crazy.

And that's how she had ended up outside their home that rainy evening,
nervous and awkward and frozen in place. Just standing there. Like a
stalker. A creepy, creepy stalker.

"Get a grip, Hermione," she muttered under her breath. All the things
she'd been through, and this was what scared her? A little rejection
wouldn't kill her. Might sting a little, but she'd live.

She forced her legs to cooperate, crossed the street and rang the
doorbell before she had time to think better of it. The thirty seconds it
took for someone to come to the door were more than enough time for
her to regret ever coming here, realise she should at least have been
wearing something more flattering, and what the devil had she even
been thinking, standing in the rain for so long? Her hair did not need any
more incentives to rebel than it already had.

Merlin, she was pathetic.

When Daphne opened the door, the startled look she gave her was
enough for Hermione to start regretting several of her life choices, and
this one in particular, but then relief spread across Daphne's face and
she smiled.

"Thank god," she said, pulling Hermione in for a hug tight enough to
hurt, and Hermione wasn't worried anymore.

Pansy was standing on the other end of the corridor, a fond smile on her
lips.

"Took you long enough, Granger."

Notes:
Hope you enjoyed it :) Thanks for reading!