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Chapter Text

1st September, 1991

The Castle stood silent, its classrooms and corridors clean and freshly aired. Suits of armour stood gleaming against stone walls, silver sentinels standing guard, waiting until the day they were called. A hushed anticipation settled in those waiting spaces. Waiting for new magic, new children to teach and mould into the future of Wizarding Society.

The autumn winds had already begun their blustery show, the sound of it travelling through the ancient stone walls like a hungry groan. Hogwarts let itself be buffeted, holding itself in wait for what was to come.  

They streamed in slowly, their chatter filling the corridors with a hive-like buzz, their heels clicking against the stone floors, the rustle and swish of their robes, and the occasional trill of laughter as they gathered, settled, and turned to watch the first-years being led into the Great Hall.

Harry Potter, they whispered, watching the half-starved boy nearly tripping over his robes as he gawked at the enchanted ceiling. The whispers died then grew again as the boy took his place at Gryffindor table. It was to be expected, some older students leaned in to say. The word legacy is thrown out like a cast-aside gardening glove.

Eleven-year-old Hermione Granger sits at the Gryffindor table, an island apart, uncomfortable and wrong-footed amongst these children, most of whom have grown up knowing magic their whole lives. She has no name of note, no previous connections in this new world. She stays glued to the boy from the train who lost his toad, but he is painfully shy and unaccustomed to her boldness. Briefly, her eyes meet the Potter boy's. He seems as lost as she does, though he is surrounded by admirers, while she sits waiting for someone, anyone, to speak to her.

She looks at Harry Potter's green eyes, and Hermione feels a sharp homesickness, a stark loneliness that makes her feel both much older and much younger than her eleven years. She wants her mother, with her scarred hands and her loving smile. She thinks of the letter she discovered on the train, in her father's tight scrawl, tucked in between her school robes to be discovered later. You are our greatest accomplishment, her father had written. And I am so proud of the girl you are now and the bright young woman you will become. Her father knew she would need some piece of home to cling to this first night away. This first step into a new life, into something beautiful and full of possibility.

So why did she, at eleven, look into those emerald eyes and feel the jaws of a trap snapping closed?

October 1998

She missed the quiet of the New Forest, where she had at least had happy memories of her vibrant, charismatic father and her gentle and loving mum. They'd had a camping holiday there when she was a child, after one of her mother's bouts of melancholy. Hermione could remember watching the sun rise, folding into her mother's embrace, her chubby little fingertips tracing the strange scars on her mother's wrist.

Here, on the rocky outcropping of the Yorkshire Moors, there are no fond familial recollections to soften the wild loneliness, and there is no escaping the sound of the driving rain. While the tent remains in its bubble of protection, the rain can't touch it, but there is nothing Hermione can do short of a silencing charm to muffle the roar of water hitting stone. It's like having the telly on full volume, but all it shows is static. She feels it in the back of her teeth, the incessant pressure of sound.

Harry drops into the chair in front of her, his sullen, brooding mask firmly in place. Hermione stiffens, seeing the silver gleam of the locket at his breast. She tucks away the treasure in her hand, her mother’s old student identification card from her time at Oxford. It's the only bit of sentiment she has allowed herself, this piece of her past, of the Grangers who are no more. A letter from her father, tucked into her trunk her first year at Hogwarts, and this photo of her mum, whose smile is soft and slightly befuddled. She never talked about her time at Oxford, and now she never would. She lingers most nights on her mum's photo, missing them both so much it felt as if a part of her had been cruelly excised.

"You look just like her," Harry says, eyeing the laminated card before she can tuck it into her pocket.

She really never knows which Harry she's going to get these days, so she keeps her voice calm, neutral.

"Thanks, but Mum's much prettier. Tea?"

His eyes don't follow her, and she allows herself a moment of relief, knowing he's just Harry this time.

It had been only days since Ron left. Days of weeping in fear for her friends, one who was navigating a dangerous and hostile world on his own, the other who was slowly losing himself to the bauble around his neck. The scar on his forehead blazes red these days, and Harry, bearing the pain of his scar and the insidious pull of the horcrux, has become strange, almost alien. The hours she carries the locket are no longer enough to restore him to his usual, wonderful self. Harry's kindness and care, his patience and wit, are all eclipsed by this sulking, brooding, and occasionally calculating creature.

And last night, as she was donning her soft layers for warmth and comfort (that still allowed her to run at a moment's notice), Hermione thought that she caught him…staring at her.

She thought for a moment those green eyes turned red.

She can't be sure of what she saw. She remembers the secret she's been carrying in her beaded bag, stolen from Dumbledore's office when she took the Horcrux books. She didn't dare tell Harry or Ron. It’s her emergency exit, the last escape pod from the exploding starship that is the HMS Horcrux. 

Green and red. Green and red, like Christmas. It was probably just a trick of the light, exhaustion messing with her eyes, she tells herself, and almost believes it. 

It is only a few days later that things change between them. The rain had eased from a punishing roar to a far more domesticated patter, cut through with the sounds of birdsong and wind rustling the pine boughs. The whole tent smelled of wet earth and cold nights, the lingering scent of tea and the instant porridge they'd had for breakfast.

Back at Hogwarts, she used to tease Harry that he was a guided comfort-seeking missile, always ready to be petted and spoilt. She realises that that needy boy has become a needy man, one she does not always recognise. In the moments when he is himself, when he is her Harry, there is always a head leaning on her shoulder, or in her lap as it is now. His dark hair an inkspill across her thighs. She is sliding her fingers through his hair, soothing, careful to avoid the red-puckered scar.

"I think I'm going to die, Hermione," he says out of nowhere. Her hands pause for only a breath before resuming the soothing slide of pale fingers through black hair.

"And so you shall, someday, Harry. But not any time soon. We will get through this war, and you will do all the things you dreamed you couldn't do before… Quidditch, Ginny, all those things you put aside for this. And when you've done all the brash young things, you'll get married and have a family of your own. You'll pass on your father's cloak and you'll send your children to Hogwarts and life will be simple and quiet and good, because you've earned that, Harry."

"Do you really think so?"

"I do."

He was silent for a moment, his expression pondering. Hermione couldn't say why, but it felt like a mask he'd slipped on, so convinced of his own inevitable demise that he was merely playing along for her sake.

"There is just one problem with that scenario," he said after several silent minutes.

"And what's that?"

"It wouldn't be Ginny."

Her hands stilled, shocked by what he was saying. "What do you mean, Harry?"

Harry sat up, turning himself so that they sat cross-legged, knees touching, eyes intensely on one another. 

"I mean, that after breaking up with Ginny, I started to…notice some things."

Hermione's brows rose as she waited for him to elaborate. "What kind of things?"

"Well…don't you think it's weird that she looks like my mum?"

A disbelieving laugh shot out of her. She had given some thought to Harry's Oedipal tendencies. He'd always seemed uncomfortable around Ginny, or unnerved by her, until that disaster at the Department of Mysteries. Sirius falling through the veil, the literal death of the father—or in this case, father figure- seemed to open some door marked Danger: Tragic Irony in Harry's mind.

If that was no longer the case, Hermione wouldn't be sorry. Not because she disliked Ginny…she didn't particularly love Ron's sister, but she thought Harry, well, Harry deserved more. The Weasleys were loving, loud, and plentiful, but they could be rather short-sighted. Prejudiced. Mean.

Just look at what had become of their trio; the hateful words Ron had spouted still sat in her ears like malignancy.

"It's not that there's anything wrong with Ginny, I suppose," he ploughs ahead while she's still thinking. "She's fit and clever, but she's …I don't know…fluffy? Like everything I liked about her is just air."

"Don't let Ron hear you say that," she says without thinking. Harry scoffs and mutters "Fuck Ron" under his breath. Hermione can't even be too angry about that, not after the things Ron said.

"Well," Hermione said, blinking at Harry. "It doesn't have to be Ginny. You don't even have to end up with a witch if you don't want to. Or anyone, really!" She tittered, feeling strangely nervous. Why was he staring at her like that?

"Hermione." His voice was gentle, even soft, but his fingers were hard as they cupped her chin, slowly moving her head to look into his eyes. Her heart thrummed wildly at the touch. Danger. The thought flitted and danced across her thoughts, though if asked, she could not say what kind of danger she was in. 

"I might be an idiot sometimes," Harry continued, his voice husky. "But I'm not a fool. I see who's sitting beside me. I see who's been beside me every bloody day since I set foot on that train."

Her heart stuttered. He was saying all the words she'd ever wanted him to say. But they sounded…off, somehow. Not forced but certainly rehearsed.

"Harry, I…"

He leaned forward, pressing his face to the side of her face, cheek to cheek. She'd always wanted this, too. This simple, loving gesture she'd seen her parents act out so many times. It felt like a knife in her heart. His breath tickled her ear.

"Do you love me, Hermione?

"Of course I do, Harry, but—"

He cuts her off by pressing his lips to hers, hot, but sweetly patient, waiting for her to catch up. For a breath, she is frozen in suspended animation as she tries to wrap her mind around the strangeness and rightness of Harry's mouth on hers. It unfreezes her, moving the moment forward, as her tongue glides over his. He tastes of the last of the fruit she'd scavenged weeks ago, an apple, clean and bright and bitter. Forbidden fruit. 

When the kiss ends, she is surprised but not upset to find his body hovering over hers, caging her in between his long, whipcord arms. She lies back, curls spilling over the threadbare rug that still smells faintly of cat. His eyes are dark and hard and very green as he looks down at her, studying her, choosing her. His fingers trace rune patterns on her breastbone as she looks up at him, wide-eyed and wondering.

"Do you want this, Hermione?" His voice shakes, and it is there that he seems the most himself, more Harry than he's been in weeks.

She swallows hard, her eyes coming to rest on the silver locket hanging like a lodestone around his neck.

"Take that thing off first," she whispers.

Later, while Harry slumbers fitfully beside her, her fingers will trace those same rune patterns where his had only hours ago. Gebo, gift. Wunjo. Joy. Nauthiz. Need. And Fehu, which commonly meant wealth, abundance, fertility. 

Hermione ignores the pattering rain and hears Professor Babbling in third year, pointing her wand at the rune drawn on the blackboard. Fehu. The first in the alphabet. In the old ways, it referred to cattle or livestock. Lids heavy, Hermione feels herself being drawn down into sleep. Her last thought before drifting off is to wonder when Harry (who never took Babbling's class) had learned the Elder Futhark.

He had felt chilled all his life.

The long years of sleeping in (the orphanage), the cramped cupboard, with only a mattress and a thin blanket, had conditioned him to withstand the cold. He'd acclimated to Hogwarts, with its high ceilings, stone floors, and drafty corridors, quicker than Ron, who was used to the cosy, familial enclosure of the Burrow. Ron might have grown up poor, but he'd never gone cold, never truly hungered the way Harry had, all those nights shivering in the dark with nothing to fill his belly but more dark and wishes.

Until the first time with Hermione, he'd never known what it really felt like to be warm, full, and safe.

At first, it angered him, this change he'd felt inside himself. He felt softer, duller. He missed the sharpness the cold and hunger had brought him. The tingle of numbness in his hands and fingers. The rumble of his vacant belly.

But then he'd felt her heat, her care, her love, and he had known for the first time in (decades) years what it was to have a home. He’d thought he’d found it before, in Hogwarts, in Sirius, in Dumbledore. Safety, warmth, love…but those havens had all been transitory. Hogwarts had become hostile territory, Sirius and Dumbledore both foiled by their own recklessness. The curse of being a Gryffindor, he supposed. 

But Hermione, he realised, had never wavered. He’d always had the things he’d sought his whole life in her. She was his shelter, but so much more than that. She was companionship, protection, and power…Godric, her power. The way their magic had swirled around them as they gave themselves to each other for the first time. He (they) had never felt so whole. 

And when he woke up to the sound of her moving about the tent, preparing tea and what little they had for breakfast, he felt the cold and hunger settle back into his bones.

Merlin, it hurt, the absence of that light.

He wondered absently if Lily had felt it, in the moments between James' death and her own, the cold vacancy where love once lived.

Harry thought he'd always meant to be cold, thought it made him stronger. But when he'd finally fallen asleep with his forehead pressing into her back, her heat sinking slowly into him, he'd never felt more powerful.

For he has power the Dark Lord knows not.

Dumbledore, the doddering old fool that he was, had told Harry many times what he suspected this power might be. Harry, even at his most naive, had never fully bought into the fairy tale that this power was something so nebulous and foreign as love.

What did he know about love?

But now, watching as she brought him a cup of tea, eyes tired but smile genuine, Harry wondered if the old fool had been onto something.

"Mudblood."

He's fucking her when he says it, deep and slow as she writhes, helpless in his thrall. The word slips from his lips, smooth and sweet as a nectarine.

It hits her like a frozen snowball to the face. To hear that word, in Harry's voice, while he is inside her body.

She recoils instantly, hand flying, fingers clawed. Red lines bloom across his jaw in her wake. Harry (not Harry) throws his head back and moans.

Her fingers are fast and strong; they grab Harry's neck and wrench him forward, pulling the Horcrux off his neck and tossing it to the other side of the tent.

Harry is shocked, pale, red oozes from between tight fingers where he clutches his jaw. She can't actually look at him, can't let herself see the ribs that are starting to show, can't let herself see that he's still hard and red and glistening from her body. 

"Hermione, I—"

"I know, Harry," she says behind clenched teeth, pulling on her jumper, anything to cover her nakedness. The zipper makes a cold line down her bare skin, right over the sensitive scar from Dolohov's curse. She pulls on her knickers and gathers the weeping man into her arms.

"That wasn't me," he is almost choking with the force of his fear. He sounds young and small and so very afraid. The boy in the cupboard, who rarely got to see the light.

"I know." She kisses the unruly black locks. "The sooner we neutralise that Horcrux, the better."

"I'm so sorry, Hermione."

"Shh, Harry. I know."

"Why is this happening to me? To us? Why did Dumbledore leave me with all of this…this shit?"

"I wish I knew."

But part of her thinks she does know. It's been months since they started this relationship. She's had time to observe, time to let her formidable intellect collect, compile, and compare her observations, and what she finds makes her blood run cold.

She's known since the first moment she saw that locket, that embodiment of virulence, that it resonated with Harry differently than it had for her and Ron. Ron had quickly fallen victim to his own insecurities, his own jealousy and entitlement. The first time she'd slipped the chain over her neck, her thoughts had become fuzzy, indistinct. Her mind moved more slowly, missed connections, and lost the thread of her conversations.

But Harry had always been different. The locket made him harder, colder, more prone to violent tempers–not that Harry's temper had ever been gentle. There was something inside of Harry that was drawn to the mysterious power and ruthless intelligence in Slytherin's locket.

You know it isn't a what but a who. 

She remembers the golden secret waiting in her bag, tucked away in a hidden pocket she'd sewn into the lining and layered with about a dozen cushioning charms. She would do anything not to leave Harry. But if she loses him to the thing taking root inside of him, she knows she won't have a choice. Hermione shut down the thought before it could fully form. Stupid to think of it so close to him. Reckless.

They had to destroy the Horcrux, one way or another, before she lost him forever.

"Do you think they'll be in there, Harry?"

She nods her head towards the small cemetery tucked neatly beside the church in Godric's Hollow.

Harry shrugs. "Dunno. Probably."

Hermione shivered. It had nothing to do with the weather. A deep sense of foreboding fell like a cloak upon her shoulders.

She sat in the tent, watching the rise and fall of his breath. His brow furrowed even in his unconscious state, blood still seeping from his wounds, painting red poppies on white bandages. Her arse had gone numb hours ago, there in the frozen heart of the Forest of Dean. At least she had chosen this well, this pristine sanctuary.

How fucked up was it that he looked more like himself, more like the Harry she knew and loved, the Harry she would die for, as he lay unconscious?

Godric's Hollow hadn't just been a bad idea; it had been an unmitigated disaster right from the beginning. She was supposed to be the smart one, the one who planned for everything. How could she have let this happen? She had known from the moment she'd seen the flash of red in his irises, staring at the ruins of Potter Cottage, that Harry was not in control.

And then there had been the snake dressed in the husk of a witch, not something she ever could have predicted or prepared for. Hermione had stumbled upon the skinless, half-regurgitated corpse while Harry and Nagini were having their little parseltete-a-tete. She had not been able to register what she was seeing at first, a shapeless lump of meat? But then she had noticed things like fingers and ribcage, and the horror of it all had descended on her like the great portcullis of Hogwarts slamming home.

She hadn't even thought. She'd just moved, her only thought in that moment had been to get to Harry, Harry needs you.

She wondered if he'd think so when he woke.

If he woke up.

If he did, there were two new scars to add to his extensive collection. One puncture, roughly the width of her pinkie finger, and next to it a long, jagged tear where the snake's tooth had torn through Harry's flesh as she cast bombarda on its hide.

Harry’s screams still echoed in her thoughts, clutching his head while blood poured from the wounds in his arm, screaming, "he's coming! He's here!"

He'd been her Harry then, trying to warn her, to get her away, fighting the compulsions of locket, snake, and Riddle to get her to safety.

She'd never been so terrified in her life. Even now, hours later, her hands still trembled, the dread undiluted by the passage of hours.

If he would only wake up.

The hours ticked by, the world outside muffled and muted by the falling snow. It was Christmas Day, and all she wanted was for Harry to wake up, to take her hand, to tell her she'd done right. 

Comforts had been few and far between since the day they'd infiltrated the ministry. Not even the solace they found in each other had offered much comfort of late. His cheek still bore scars from her fingernails. She'd offered to heal them with Essence of Dittany, but he had insisted she save it "for when it's really needed" and that he "wanted the reminder."

But she couldn't say if the reminder was for him or for her.

His touch had gone from comforting to constraining. From passionate to possessive. Most days, Hermione felt like she'd been sliced in two, one half belonging to her Harry, the other to this creature her Harry had become.

On the thin cot, someone was stirring back to life. 

Chapter Text

Everything looked different after Godric's Hollow.

He'd felt the snake, its fangs sinking into his flesh, poisoning and tearing, but he'd been unable to move, lost to the blinding pain of his scar.

Harry opened his eyes, feeling better than he had in years. 

The pain in his head was gone. No ache, not even the echo of an ache. He could feel the horcrux's dark magic humming from its confines in Hermione's beaded bag, but the magic no longer felt oily and repugnant. It felt cool, soothing, home.

He knew something was different. He knew he was different. He felt…strangely settled, the jagged, fractured pieces of Harry Potter that had never quite fit together now seamless and smooth. He knew he was not entirely Harry. That whatever empty spaces had been before (he is small and afraid and the door won't open he is trapped under the stairs mattress soiled, would mother's hands have soothed him? would father have tucked him in?) were now filled by the presence that had been there his whole life, lurking always at the back of his mind, sneering at the little boy screaming to be let out of the cupboard.

Tom Riddle. Horcrux. It was inside of him, a part of him.

What was left of Harry Potter, then? There was a lingering sense of exhaustion, of gratitude and love for the witch who'd given up everything. Was this love? Love implied selflessness. He was never that.

He was no longer Harry Potter. Nor was he Tom Riddle. He did not have the ambition that Riddle had. He had no desire to rule the world, wizarding or otherwise.

Not Harry. Not Tom. He was someone new, some bastard hybrid of the two.

His eyes found Hermione, dozing lightly in the chair beside him, a book still open on her lap.

If he were to have a crusade, it would be her. Hermione. She'd saved him, had kept him alive through sheer determination, watching over him as his body recovered. He felt his lips curl into a cold smile. He'd never had anyone, anything, that was so completely his. She'd given him her body, her mind, her determination, her family, her everything. He knew she was becoming afraid of Harry, fearful of what he might do, who he might become.

And he knew about the secrets she carried in that little purple bag of hers. The golden necklace, waiting for him to show his cards. As she sleeps, he adjusts the dials. 1991 to 1990, 1990 to 1989, and so on until the dials can no longer move, frozen at the year 1977. Harry liked the thought of existing at the same time as his parents and their friends, however briefly.

There was one thing he was sure of. He couldn't let her run. She was his. His anchor, his ballast, his comfort and his hope. That she could look at him with fear in her heart and stay…she was brave and bold as any Lion, but clever and subtle as a Snake. They were more alike than even they'd suspected, two puzzle pieces that only lay flush against the other.

He wanted her. Wanted to keep her with him always, a dragon hoarding its treasure.

He watched her sleeping, noting the purple shadows under her eyes, the frail, almost skeletal shape of her wrists, the jagged, bitten-down nails. She was burning herself to nothing for the sake of keeping him warm. In a way, she reminded him of Bellatrix, who had sacrificed much more than just her beauty on the altar of her devotion.

Hermione was still beautiful. The months of stress and starvation had given her pretty features new, heightened drama. She'd become fierce and hard, but fragile too. Bone china that  could cut easily as glass.

He knew she would try to escape him soon, either to find Ron or to warn the rest of the Order that Harry Potter was lost. But he wasn't. He was still in this body, in this soul, reaching desperately for the sleeping girl beside him.

And Harry, the man who wore his skin, reached along with him.

The doe appeared two days later.

They'd emerged from the tent into a frosted landscape lit by the ethereal light of the patronus. Harry had felt easier, calmer, happier since he'd woken, while Hermione seemed to get more cagey at every passing shadow. He knew he frightened her, and while it pained him to see the fear and mistrust when she looked at him, he knew that one day, perhaps soon, she would look at him with love.

He couldn't wait for the day.

They followed the doe, tiptoeing carefully through the brush under the cover of the Invisbility Cloak. Harry held Hermione's wand in a loose grip, now that his own was half-cracked open. He ignored the way her eyes kept flicking to the wand and back up to him.

The patronus led them to a frozen pond, the ice groaning under their feet.

"Right," Harry said, frowning at the gleaming length of silver trapped under the ice. The Sword of Gryffindor. One of the few methods of destroying a Horcrux.

Harry didn't feel one way or another about his Horcrux. Not anymore. Now his conundrum was Hermione. If he went into the water to retrieve the sword, he'd be putting a wand at his back. He didn't trust her not to stun him and run.

"Harry?" Her voice shook. "Are you—"

He smiled, yanking her into his arms. She gasped at the sudden movement, her body stiff as he bent down and captured her lips in a heated kiss. Not as quickly as he would have liked, he felt her melting into the kiss, her body going loose and heavy the way it did when he touched her.

"I am sorry about this, love," he said, cupping her face. She looked up, face scrunched in confusion as he held her and whispered.

"Imperio."

Her amber eyes clouded for a moment, then cleared, looking up at him with a horrible blankness. Harry didn't like it. He liked seeing her worry, her love, her fear. He licked dry lips, trying to quell the tight, queasy feeling that roiled inside of him at her empty expression. Was this guilt?

"Just sit here, love." He guided her to an overturned tree, brushed the snow away and helped her sit. She obeyed him, silent and docile.

"Just sit here unless I call for you or if you see me in distress, alright?"

She nodded without speaking, hands lying limp in her lap as Harry considered his next move.

The part of him that was still Harry Potter wanted to dive in and retrieve the sword. The part of him that was Tom Riddle also wanted the sword, for very different reasons. He wondered if the best thing to do wasn't just to leave it.

In the end, he waved Hermione's wand at the ice and muttered "diffindo."

While he was no longer affected by the Horcrux, Hermione was doubtless still feeling its effects, with no soul shard to protect her from its caustic whispers. The Horcrux would have to die if he was going to make this work.

Besides, for what he had planned, he would be far better without it.

The water was cold enough to freeze the air still held in his lungs. His bollocks practically leapt back up inside of his body at the plunge. For several agonising seconds, his body was frozen by shock, unable to move.

It was the gleam of silver that finally moved him, rubies black as blood in the pale moonlight. There was a feeling of wrongness when he lifted the pommel. The Riddle part of him retreating deep in his psyche like a testicle in freezing water.

He emerged from the ice sword-first, pulling his shivering body up onto the frozen surface, where someone was kneeling in front of Hermione. Big shoulders, a peek of red hair under a knit hat. Large, freckled hands on her upper arms, shaking her lightly.

"Come on, Mione, snap out of it! What the blood hell's gotten into you?" There was an edge of desperation to his voice.

Harry no longer felt the freezing cold water. No longer felt his icy clothes sticking to his skin. His body steamed faintly in the winter air, magic arced from his fingers. The moonlight glinted off of Gryffindor rubies. He lifted the sword with ease.

"Get the fuck away from her."

He didn't need to raise his voice, didn't need to snarl the way he would have a few weeks, even a few days ago. He wasn't completely a lion anymore. Instead he spoke in a voice that was as still and as sharp as an axe hung on a wall. Patient and ready.

The intruder whipped around. The moonlight washed out his blue eyes, making them strange as they widened in fear. Harry didn't shift, didn't move. Just stood like a windbreak, dripping icy water, gleaming sword in hand.

"What's wrong with her, Harry? It's like she's been cursed!" Ron was frantic. Harry rolled his eyes.

"Nothing is wrong with her. She's perfectly fine, aren't you, love?"

Hermione's expression was empty as she repeated his words in a hollow voice. "I'm perfectly fine."

Ron stood, sputtering. "Y-you did this? Harry, how could you?"

Harry shrugged. He wasn't going to start explaining himself to Ron. Ron would never get it, had never understood either him or Hermione. He'd never understand that Harry needed her, needed her devotion like he needed air to breathe. Ron had never truly bothered to see Hermione, see how much she cared, how hard she tried. He'd never take care of her the way she needed to be taken care of. Their friendship had given him seven years' worth of evidence to support this.

"You're…you're not Harry, are you?" Ron said. He knew, of course, thanks to Ginny, that Riddle's horcruxes could entirely take over a person. He eyed the locket around Harry's throat.

"That thing…Harry, if you're in there, you know what you have to do."

He smiled now. It was Harry's smile when talking about things like Quidditch or Holidays at the Burrow. Utterly unforced and completely disarming.

He didn't need to raise his wand. With a snap of Harry's fingers, silver chains wound around Ron, pinning his arms to his sides. His wand was on the ground, just out of reach. Harry saw no need to move it. It was more exciting this way.

"Harry…" Ron's voice was full panic as he struggled against the chains binding him.

"I think we've all heard enough from you," Harry said, silencing Ron with Hermione's wand. He cast a drying charm over himself. The sensation of going from soaking wet to dry and toasty was jarring. He cast another warming charm over Hermione, who still sat docile on the overturned tree, eyes staring blankly out, hands curling like shrivelled ferns in her lap.

"Are you alright?" he asked quietly. He couldn't lift the curse from her, not with Ron there and only one wand between them. Too many variables, too many ways for all his plans to go tits up.

Hermione didn't answer, only sat still and blank and faintly trembling. Of course, she wasn't alright. He could feel the distress in her magic, could see it sparking off her skin as she tried to fight off the curse. Her expression remained horribly blank, but that couldn't be helped just yet.

He turned back to the boy, struggling against his bindings.

"You're right about one thing. I can't keep this around," he places the Horcrux gently on the ground. "It's not good for Hermione."

It's been so very long since he'd felt fear—real, genuine terror. His hands quiver with it now, the anticipation, the thrill of it all.

The boy wants to take her from us.

The parts of him that were Tom were strangely silent as Harry lifted the sword, rubies glinting bloody in the moonlight. He wondered if there would be some apparition like in the Chamber of Secrets, but nothing ever appeared. The sword sang as it arced through the air, slicing through Slytherin's locket with no resistance.

And after, he felt…nothing. No cleaving, no relief, no lingering regret.

"Harry…" the boy on the ground groaned. "Harry let us go. Let her go, please."

"She's not going anywhere," he said, and swung the sword again.

Hermione sits and watches the confrontation unfold. On the outside she is blank, placid as still waters. On the inside, she is screaming, scratching at glass walls. Harry's Imperio is far too strong, and she has never been able to resist its thrall. Her mind rockets back to fourth year and the false Moody, the way his curse paralysed her free will, the horrible, oily feeling of someone moving your body without your participation or consent. She remembers her mother in one of her rages, holding Hermione's arms hard enough to hurt, her dark eyes wild as she sobbed I can't get out. I'm in here and I can't get out!

She'd never lost the sour roiling in her gut at the thought of it.

So to have Harry use that same curse on her…a man whom she'd already entrusted with her body, a man who knew her more intimately than anyone else…she had no words for the horror of it.

She is still sitting with that glazed look when Harry destroys the Horcrux, unmoved when Ron's shouts reach her ears. She is trapped in a room, watching it all through a two-way mirror like a bad episode of Prime Suspect. She cannot escape, she cannot react, all she can do is think.

She waits to see if the destruction of the locket will have released Riddle's hold on Harry, but, as she suspected, nothing changes. It only shores up her suspicion that a piece of Riddle lived in Harry's scar, like a long-taloned parasite, feeding off of The Boy Who Lived his entire life. As the violence between the two boys (her best friends) escalates, Hermione arrives at a few deductions.

Her Harry would never have placed this curse on her. Ergo, her Harry is gone.

Tom Riddle would never have destroyed his Horcrux. Ergo, this man was not entirely Tom Riddle.

She doesn't know who this man is. Some hybrid of Harry and Riddle? Some other unknown entity? Or, is it a Harry Potter so divorced from reality as to be completely unrecognisable.

Focus, Hermione. She centres herself, tries to remember Moody/Crouch's lesson on fighting the Unforgivable.

When Harry lifts the sword, she feels the glass begin to crack.

When he drives it through Ron Weasley's chest, it shatters.

She feels no triumph, no academic pride as the world comes sharply back into focus. Sound, light, sensation all come rushing painfully back.

Harry has Ron pinned to the earth; he is crouched by Ron's head, speaking lowly in his ear. It's a hideous tableau, but it's enough of a distraction that Hermione is able to slip away unnoticed. Harry still has her wand, but she isn't focused on fighting but escaping. And remembering her bag, the little golden secret tucked inside, pre-set for the beginning of summer. She hardly pauses long enough to remember Dumbledore's warning.

Terrible things happen to wizards who meddle with time.

Air burns in his lungs as he runs after her, the sword of Gryffindor discarded, already melting away next to Ron Weasley's body, still steaming in the frigid air. He moves like a tank in the WWII films Uncle Vernon favoured on the telly, trampling everything in his path to her. Branches whip and slice his face; he cares not, only that his purpose, his reason, is slipping away.

She wanted to hide in the past? Fine with Harry. He could hide them in such a way that no one would ever find them, would ever suspect…

It is a shame what it will mean for Hermione, but he knows it will be better this way. A new beginning.

If only he could catch her first.

He bursts into the tent, his body on fire from the run, the fight, and before that, destroying the horcrux. The newer, more cautious parts of Harry warn him to slow down, to consider, to think about what he was about to do, but Harry had never been much one for plotting or foresight. Their excursion into the Department of Mysteries, running after a great spectral dog, prompting Cedric to take the Triwizard Cup with him…historically, his track record for reckless plans was not in his favour. But Harry was certain about this plan.

Hermione didn't look up when he burst in, all breath and bravado. She was staring at something in horror. The time turner in her hand was already spinning, its dials adjusted by him days ago. Much, much, much further back than she had planned. She looked up at him in a panic.

"What have you done, Harry?" Her eyes flicked from his face to the blood now drying on his hands. Her whole body trembled as he pulled her to him, slipping a hand under the golden chain around her neck, its magic eager to admit him.

"I did what I had to do, Hermione," he said as the world fell away.

Her wand was in her hand the moment the world stopped spinning. They were still in the forest, though the tent had disappeared. Snow no longer blanketed the grounds and covered the trees. The weather was cool, but not the harsh, breath-stealing cold of December. Hermione didn't know how far back they'd gone. She knew time-turners had limitations, safeguards, but somehow this man, this creature walking around in her lover's skin, had figured out a way past them.

Harry is dead, a voice that sounded strangely like her mum spoke in her head. You know he never would have done that to Ron.

She can see it in her mind, the horror her eyes couldn't quite process in the moment. Ron's face, almost comical with surprise, as Harry plunged the Sword of Gryffindor straight through his sternum, cutting through bone and muscle like a hot knife through butter.

Her incarcerous went wide as she stumbled through the forest. Her mind, a sharp thing dulled by months of hunger, flight, and terror, dredged up an old memory of an old song her piano teacher taught her in those long afternoons after primary school. It seemed to mock her as she stumbled away from the man who'd followed her through time.

Run, rabbit

Run, rabbit

Run

Run

RUN

Her breath burned in her lungs, mild stunners arcing over her head as Harry (not Harry) gave pursuit. Her mind jangled with fear, even as the chipper song seemed to only get louder in her mind. Run, run, run.

"Hermione!" Harry (not Harry!) was shouting at her. "I'm not going to hurt you!"

Hermione tried to run faster, but she was frail, exhausted and weakened by malnutrition. The toe of her trainer caught the edge of a tree root, and then she was falling, she was falling, and there were ropes around her as Harry rolled her over with gentle hands, brushing her wild curls back from her face as she struggled.

"I swear I won't hurt you. I am sorry you saw that, but he would have taken you away from me. And you're mine, right, Hermione?"

She could not answer. The fear had completely overtaken her, paralysing. She could only tremble, watching his eyes flash green to red and back again like a pair of Christmas lights. She knew then that he wasn't entirely Riddle, which should have comforted her.

It only made it worse. Because that meant part of this was Harry, that some part of Harry was doing this to her.

Harry was dragging her up to a sitting position, propping her body up against the tree she'd tripped over. It was an Ash tree, with a wide, squat trunk and massive branches that started low to the ground. If she could only get free, it would be easy to climb, but the bindings were tight enough to make her arms tingle with pins and needles.

"I know you're afraid," he cooed, lovingly brushing her curls back from her face. "But I promise, nothing bad will happen. The opposite, in fact. I know you've been planning this for a while now, and I am sorry to spoil it. But I think we both deserve a rest. Enough of running, enough of war. I'm sick of tents and tinned beans and camp beds and always being chilled and damp. We don't have to do this anymore! Think about it," he was crooning now, his thumbs gently wiping at the tears that fell down her face. "We could be warm, comfortable, our bellies full. We could be safe."

And with that, she began to sob in earnest, because Hermione knew she did want that. She wanted to stop running, wanted to stop eating her frustrations for breakfast and her fear for dinner. She wanted to slip into a hot bath and soak until her fingertips wrinkled. The thought of fresh bread and soft, salted butter made her weep with longing. She was tired, so tired…the rabbit caught and resigned to the butcher's knife.

In her heart of hearts, she just wanted it to be over.

Harry knew her. Knew how to read her silences. She had no doubt she could feel the capitulation that made her body sag in resignation, in acceptance. The way her eyes kept that spark of defiance despite her obvious fatigue. She met his eyes with a look he'd seen a thousand times, though usually it was directed at the likes of Malfoy or Parkinson or Ron —a look that said, ' Do your worst. ' He didn't quite smile, but she could tell he was pleased.

He lifted her wand, the vinewood humming like betrayal in his hand.

"Obliviate."

Chapter Text

While snow had not yet fallen in the Forest of Dean on that unremarkable New Year's Eve, that was not the case in the Scottish Highlands.

"I've never seen such a sharp turn in the weather," Minerva McGonnagall muttered into glass of Scotch Whisky. Her companion's gaze followed hers, silver brows furrowing as the winds outside howled like a gale.

"Indeed," Albus Dumbledore muttered, fingers tightening around his own glass. "Hogwarts feels…unsettled."

He had felt it moments ago, a rippling in the wards. Not a breach, but some fundamental cosmic change.

The castle groaned, hungry.

New Years Eve, 1977

St. Mary’s Hospital

London

Her eyes opened slowly, struggling against the weighted throb in her skull. Light from the window filtered in, making the room feel less clinical. Her vision blurred; she could only make out large, indistinct shapes in her periphery.

"Don't try to sit up yet," a man's voice spoke near her. She gasped, jerking away from the sound, fear momentarily spiking through her. Her mind, still groggy, tried to identify the voice, which elicited strong feelings of trust, companionship, and the slightest thrill of something else. Excitement? Fear? She could not say. She could only blink slowly, exhausted, as she tried to focus on the man's voice.

"I've already called for the Doctors, they should be here soon. You gave us quite a fright."

Her vision focused enough to finally see the man sitting at her bedside. His hair was brown and messy, though sometimes, in the right light, it appeared black instead of brown. He had hazel eyes–for a moment, they looked very green—and a gentle smile.

"Thank goodness," he sighed with relief, though she thought that, for just a moment, he meant to say something else entirely.

"What's happened? Who are you?"

The man appeared stricken momentarily.

"They said that might happen. We were attacked—mugged at knifepoint. I got roughed up a bit, but you…they left you with some nasty cuts and a head injury, which is why you don't seem to remember your husband." His words had bite, but his smile was gentle and patient.

"What…" she swallowed. Her voice came out a breathless huff. "Who am I? Who are you?"

His face wore an expression, one of desperate patience and longing, one of joy at their survival, and the pain of being unremembered. There was tenderness and care in the soft lines of his aspect, but underneath, something harder and colder that she couldn't be sure she saw at all. He took her hand, rubbing soothing circles into her palm. The familiarity of the gesture, the certainty that their hands slotted just so many times before, had her relax, even while part of her was screaming not to. The warm intimacy of the gesture soothed and quieted that voice.

"You're Helen, and I'm Richard. We've been married for two wonderful months. We met at Oxford, where we are both studying, although after next term, we both wanted to go into dental school. You wanted Leeds, I wanted University of Manchester, so we compromised and decided to tour the Royal College of London's dentistry department. That’s why we’re in London, to tour the college. We were on our way back to our hotel when we were attacked. I know you don't remember, but…I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you."

There was a flash in her mind. A snarling face pulled back in rage.

"R-red." she whispered, then looked up at the strange man, Richard, who felt so much like home.

"What was that, love?"

"The man… the one who hurt me…did he have red hair?"

Richard's eyes widened for a moment, then relaxed, oddly blank.

"I couldn't say, love. They hit me from behind. I didn't see anything."

She nodded mutely, trying to absorb everything. Helen. Helen. My name is Helen.

It fit, but…strangely, like slipping on a shoe too narrow for comfort. She felt like sand poured into a new vessel, trying to learn its shape.

She exhaled a puff of air that might have been a laugh. "I don't feel like a dentist," she finally admitted. Richard smiled, a real, genuine smile, and it made something in her heart ache and burn. Love, she thought. She knew, somehow, that she had loved this man. That she still loved this man. The voice of caution was becoming more faint as she let herself feel comfortable in his presence.

A ring glinted on her finger. A yellow gold band topped with a beautiful emerald-cut Ruby, and beneath it, a simple gold band that was clearly not new.

"My mother's rings," he said, noticing the direction of her gaze. "I was so nervous. I thought at the time you would want a diamond, but instead you launched into a diatribe on the unethical diamond industry and swore you'd never wear one."

She couldn't help the laugh that escaped her then. It felt right. She could feel in her breast a heart that burned with the light of truth and fairness, of kindness and protection. She was glad, truthfully, to hear that she was a woman of morals and conviction.

"Your mother…?" She let the question linger like smoke between them.

"Ah, well. That was one of the things we first bonded over at Oxford. We'd both lost our parents, right out of secondary school. It's just you and me against the world."

That phrasing, so familiar and comforting, yet… it struck a sour note somewhere inside her.

"I'm sorry," she said, feeling overwhelmed. "I'm sorry, I don't remember. I'm sorry if I'm not who—"

"Hey, hey," he took both of her hands in his own. They were larger than hers, but well-shaped and roughly calloused. They felt familiar, comforting. She returned the slight pressure tentatively.

"You are exactly who you should be. No amount of memories is going to make me love you any more or less than I do at this moment. For better or worse, in sickness and in health…I'm here for all of it, love. And if your memories start to come back, well…we'll deal with that then."

Tears fell from her eyes onto their joined hands. "Thank you," she whispered, feeling overwhelmed. "For being here for me. I can't imagine how frightening this would be on my own."

There was a victorious gleam in his eyes as he leant forward, lightly bussing her cheek with warm lips.

"You never have to worry about that, Helen, my love. It's you and me forever."

Life was…strange.

Good, but strange.

Helen fell into a rhythm in this strange new life. They'd decided after the unpleasantness of the attack to apply to the dentistry school in Leeds. Richard took to dentistry surprisingly well. His clients called him a Miracle Worker, said his work was like magic.

Helen took longer to finish, having to retake many of the science and maths courses she'd forgotten since the accident. And while she didn't love dentistry as a career, it was honest, respectable, and fairly lucrative.

Nearly a year to the day after the attack, Helen nervously informed Richard that they were expecting in September. His joy was so complete she almost didn't register his complete lack of surprise at the announcement. Their daughter came into the world screaming, her little red fists balled up at the injustice of it all, her head already covered in a cap of downy brown curls.

They named her Hermione.

There were days when Helen felt her life was not entirely her own, strange moments of doubling memories when she looked at her daughter. But life was good, even if she felt that her talents were misplaced, that she should be doing more for her community. When 1981 rolled around, Richard floated the suggestion that they spend the year travelling with a Relief organisation, doing dentistry work in impoverished or war-torn countries. Helen jumped at the chance. And so they strapped Hermione into her carrier and left, travelling the world. For Helen, there was again that strange familiarity in the conditions of their travel, at times sheltering in tents instead of buildings.

But no matter how calm, how happy life got, Helen never stopped feeling the ground shifting beneath her feet. There was always within her some urgency, some secret lost along with her past. There were times, terrifying moments when she felt a weight of falsehood every time she strapped Hermione to her body, some screaming part of her telling her that her life was a lie, that her husband was damned, her child unnatural.

When these feelings came upon her, she could not articulate the horror of her thoughts. She would let Richard fold her into his arms, whisper words that were meant to comfort but did anything but.

"It's alright, love. You never have to endure that again."

Whenever Helen heard this familiar refrain, she'd assumed 'that' was the aftermath of her attack, the months of foglike confusion, the trembling hands they couldn't explain. It was years before Helen started to wonder if her husband was entirely honest with her about what came before the man with the red hair.

They returned from abroad when strange things began happening around their daughter. She'd wake to find a sleeping Hermione clutching the same book she knew she'd shelved the night before. A chocolate bar would appear when the child refused the treats she'd made with carob.

Richard seemed charmed, even delighted by their daughter's eccentricities, but all Helen could feel was a deep foreboding and an impending sense of loss. When Minerva McGonnagall showed up on Hermione's tenth birthday and explained the strange outbursts that seemed to follow Hermione everywhere she went, Helen took to her bed and did not emerge for several weeks. She felt everything — time, her daughter, her life as she knew it —slipping through her fingers.

The doctors told them, all those years ago at St. Mary’s Hospital, that bouts of depression were not unheard of with traumatic brain injury or memory loss. It was hardly a comfort to Helen, who felt a deep disgust for her own fears. Where is your courage? She often asked herself, and even that reproof felt like a half-finished thought.

Her husband was always solicitous when these bouts settled over her like a well-worn shawl. He covered her patients in the clinic, he got Hermione ready for school in the mornings, he brought her meals and, when she was at her lowest, bathed and fed her himself. He always seemed happy to do this, his hands both loving and possessive. She was grateful to him, even when she thought she saw a strange glimmer of crimson in his eyes.

Helen wondered how long you could live in another's skin.

Scotland—no, magic—no…that school has made their daughter strange. Secretive.

When she is home for the holidays, it is all Harry this and Ron that until Helen feels the four walls of their clean, orderly, affluent home closing in on her. An intense feeling of deja vu grips her at the sight of their daughter's red and gold scarf, at the neatly organised trunk. Helen feels some part of her, something forgotten, beating its wings uselessly against the glass, trapped forever.

As they sit for Christmas dinner, Helen notices slight changes in Hermione than the girl who got on the train in King's Cross on September first. This girl is taller, more filled out, though it would be missed by anyone who didn't know her so well. There is a curve to her shoulders that wasn't there before, as if she spends more time curled in on herself, and ink stains on her fingertips that never seem to fade—the words ghost across her mind as she observes these new changes.

Time Turner.

Helen blinks, unsure of the meaning, unsure of why these two words seem to exist outside the blank canvas that was her life before waking up in the hospital. The phrase, time turner, presses itself into her thoughts like a fork cutting through cake.

She wants to grab Hermione by her skinny arms and shake her, to scream that that place is killing her, that the world will kill them all. If only she could remember why.

Instead, she raises a brow and puts a gentle hand over those ink-stained fingers. Her touch is warm, supportive, loving, even if at times it feels wrong, wrong, wrong.

"You are being careful at school, aren't you, sweetheart?"

Hermione's eyes, amber-brown so like her own, widen momentarily. She pales, her answer stilted enough that Helen knows it's a lie.

"O-of course, mum."

"Darling, you know you can talk to your father and me about anything, even magic."

At the head of the table, Richard beams, the proud husband and father. Helen shudders. It feels like an advertisement, glossy and false. She spends the rest of the holiday silently watching her daughter; that peculiar feeling of familiarity never leaves her.

It is just another grey day in a series of increasingly dreary afternoons when it happens.

Richard Granger, who has lived in this skin long enough to sometimes forget he was not always this man, ironically forgets that this day was coming.

There had been days at first, when they found themselves in this time, when he was still a wizard hiding inside of a boy hiding inside of a Muggle. There were moments when that old daring and the even older ruthlessness hovered close at hand, waiting to be plucked up. He recalls the torment he felt in 1981, when part of him was destroyed, another part orphaned, and the seeds of his empire sat abandoned, waiting to be picked up again. Had they not been travelling the world, far from England's clammy reach, he might have been more tempted. But the man who pulled his bride through time was not the same power-hungry monster she'd been running from all along.

He'd been infected by Harry Potter, by his love for the curly-haired witch, who could no longer feel the magic that flowed through her, not after he'd bound her core and erased her memories. Sometimes he felt bad about that. But he'd kept her close, kept her safe, even when the only enemy to fight was herself.

That he hadn't predicted, the long bouts of despair, the ever-present fog of melancholy that clung to her skin like an expensive perfume, he'd been too happy, over the years, to dote upon her, to see to her every need, to be mother and father to baby Hermione when Helen could not manage. He wondered sometimes if it was the cold absence of her magic that had done this to her, if some part of her was unknowingly reaching for something that would always be out of her grasp.

It did not occur to him until he'd seen it in Hermione's hand, a familiar bit of beaded purple cloth, what was coming. But he should have known, should have remembered. He'd been too caught up in the day-to-day minutiae of being a husband and father, a dentist, to remember that some other, nearly forgotten part of him was out there wreaking havoc on two worlds, while another was vowing to fight.

Light and dark, good and evil…none could withstand mundanity.

And so he'd forgotten, in that blue sitting room with Monica (Helen) (Hermione) by his side, what he'd been doing just a moment ago? Monica smiled, looking more relaxed than he'd seen her in years, and asked if he was excited to begin this new phase of their lives.

"Can't wait to get out of this stew," Wendell said with a smile (a cheeky smile Richard Granger's daughter would have found horribly familiar, if she'd stuck around long enough to witness). He nodded towards the windows, where rain was pattering down from a slate grey sky.

"It will be so nice to see the sun again," Monica agreed, wistfully.

"Hope you packed a skimpy cozzie," he winked, nuzzling her neck. They'd been married twenty years, and she was still so beautiful.

"Wen!" she squealed, laughing. "You're a terrible man."

"Am not," he said with a grin.

Winter arrives, not gently, but with howling winds and great gusts of snow.

Somewhere deep inside the Forest of Dean, a girl sits shivering on her cot, eyes following the boy as he moves about the tent, a silver locket gleaming faintly in the lantern light.

Hidden in the Scottish Highlands, Hogwarts holds its breath. Waiting for the cycle to begin again.

On the other side of the world, Monica and Wendell Wilkins walk hand-in-hand on a sun-soaked beach. Their faces are tanned and their smiles gleam white.

Time moves hungrily on.