(no subject)
Title: The Consequence of Curiosity
Author: xellas
Rating: PG
Summary: Messing around with time travel can be dangerous in more ways than Hermione understands.
Credits: Many, many thanks to pre_raphaelite1 for her incredible beta. Any errors remaining are mine, most likely the result of a last-minute tweak or several.
Disclaimer: The characters and the universe aren't mine, but leik if you don't pay me, I'm like going to have to get a job or something and I'll never update, evah!!1
Notes: Hermione-centric. Written for the femgenficathon I'm afraid I interpreted my quotation a bit strangely: 1. There was never a place for her in the ranks of the terrible, slow army of the cautious. She ran ahead, where there were no paths.--Dorothy Parker
My apologies for my extreme lateness.
The Consequence of Curiosity
Sixth year had been over for almost two weeks and it was official: Hogwarts would not be opening as normal next term. All of the goals Hermione had been working so hard to reach no longer existed. There would be no N.E.W.T.s, at least not right away, no career training. Next year, there would be no Head Girl.
She hadn't dared return to her parents' house, not even for the summer. If she were to see them, to visit, to hug them and tell them how much she appreciated them… She was one of Harry Potter's best friends, and Muggle-born besides. She might as well cast the Dark Mark over the house herself.
Her parents had no idea how bad things really had become in the wizarding world, or how very much in the middle of it all Hermione was, and she couldn't bring herself to tell them.
This left her without a clear path ahead, while the path behind her had been erased. It would be dark soon, and there would be no stars that could help her plot her course. And Hermione was a witch who had always known where she had come from and where she was going.
Perhaps this was the reason the item that lurked in the sock drawer in her room at the Weasleys' house was so very much more on her mind than it ever had been before.
Bill and Fleur had been married as soon as he had been released form the hospital. At Fleur's insistence, the newlyweds had gotten their own apartment, so Hermione and Ginny no longer had to share a room. Hermione had privacy, something previously unheard-of at the Weasley's house.
The free space and quiet were wonderful, and Hermione reveled in them, but she also found that they gave her too much time to think, to wonder about her secret prize and to feel guilty in turns.
The guilt could have been easily taken care of by confessing to her friends, telling them the truth. But that would be admitting too much, and the boys wouldn't understand. It wasn't as though they had worn a Time Turner for an entire year. It wasn't as though they had used one illegally to save two lives - at least, they couldn't have without her.
"The thing is," she had whispered to Crookshanks as she tucked the item safely inside silk bustier she'd worn to the Yule ball, "not all of the Ministry's Time Turners were destroyed in the battle at the end of Fifth year."
Crookshanks had purred acknowledgement, a short rasp that almost sounded like a cough.
Hermione told him about how she had found it lying in a corner of the floor, where by some miracle it had rolled intact when every other one had shattered. She had absently picked it up and tucked it into her pocket for safekeeping. It was only a reflex, learned when she was still a third year who had sworn to McGonagall not to let any harm come to the beautiful object.
And every day, the urge to take it out and use it became harder to resist. Not because she wanted to go back into the past. No, for the most part she was very glad to have the past safely behind her. But…but…
While doing a little extra reading for fun, she had learned something interesting. If one were to take a golden Time Turner and cast a Substantive Charm upon it to anchor it down and protect it from paradox, and then cast a very powerful, very complicated Reversus spell on it… Well, it was just possible that if the Time Turner didn't blow up, one would end up with a device that was capable of putting Trelawney out of a job for good.
If the Reversus spell was successful, the Time Turner would change from gold to platinum and its sand from diamond powder to crushed moldavite. And instead of taking a witch or wizard backward in time one hour for every turn…instead, the user would go forward. One turn would measure out approximately one month, rather than one hour, however, because the future wasn't as firm an option as the past and the same level of accuracy just wasn't possible.
Still.
Hermione had happened to have a Time Turner handy, and she hadn't been able to resist testing the process the very first evening at the Weasleys'. It had worked - her Time Turner was now platinum and not gold. She had so far managed to avoid using it, but her resistance was wearing very thin.
"Tell me again why it is such a dangerous and awful thing to do, mucking around with the timeline?" Hermione would ask Crookshanks during the small hours of the night, when temptation would strike the hardest.
Crookshanks hissed every time she asked, and Hermione was a little unnerved that apparently even her cat understood the complexities of nonlinear time well enough to know better.
Almost two weeks had gone by since the end of Hermione's sixth year at Hogwarts. Thirteen nights, through most of which she hadn't been able to sleep. Harry would be joining them soon, and Hermione and Ron would follow wherever Harry's path led them. One more day, and then Hermione's time would run out, her freedom expire.
She knew her own weaknesses. She knew that while she meant well, sometimes she failed to see things that were right in front of her. She also knew that it wasn't fair of her to be jealous of the results other girls got from spending hours in front of the mirror when she couldn't be bothered. And everyone knew that Hermione had a tendency to show off her knowledge - but really, what was the point in keeping it all to herself? She sought information to assuage her intense curiosity about everything. Curiosity was supposed to be a virtue, but it did, occasionally, land her in a little trouble. She winced as she remembered attempting to scry into the boys' showers and being caught by McGonagall; fortunately, no one, not even Ron or Harry, had ever suspected she'd been the one to lose so many house points.
Her value to Harry lay in her knowledge. It was in the spells she'd memorized tirelessly and in the magical theory that had given her the 'whys'. She had been driven to read every book she could lay her hands upon, but it was still entirely possible that whatever spell would be needed to destroy the horcruxes, it would be one she hadn't ever even heard of. There were just too many spells, and she was only one person.
But if she could take just one tiny peek into the future, there was so much to be gained. And where was the harm? No one would see her; she would steal Harry's cloak to make sure. Just little bit of historical research concerning the outcome of the final battle, and she could make sure they had the right weapons at hand to win. As long as no one saw her, she should be fine. And she couldn't interfere with history, because the history would still be in her own future, which wasn't set. She was a witch; she refused to allow a pesky little thing like paradox to stand in her way.
It only made sense that there would be much more room for change in the future. After all, if the future were as clear as that, then prophecies would make sense and would not be phrased like riddles and only understood after the fact.
* * * * *
Late that night, unable to sleep, Hermione went to the kitchen to look for some tea and instead found Molly Weasley, sobbing.
"I'm sorry dear," Molly said with a sniff, trying to get herself back under control, "I just can't seem to help it sometimes. Mothers can't help but worry, and Arthur just sent an Owl…"
There was only one thing that could mean. "Who was it?" Hermione asked, although a small part of her did not want to know, a part that wanted to think that if she didn't hear it, it wouldn't be true.
"The Gudgeons," Molly answered quietly. "All of them." Unspoken, but plain on Molly's face, was the fear that one of her children would be next.
Hermione's lips set in a thin line. As much as she wanted to, she could not promise Molly that her family would stay safe and they both knew it. At that moment, Hermione finally accepted what was perhaps inevitable. She would use her Time Turner. She wasn't going to let anyone die if there was anything she could do about it.
* * * * *
Once her stomach settled from the journey, Hermione realized that she was standing in the center of the Weasley’s very crowded living room. She was very glad she'd waited for Harry's arrival. She hadn't told either Harry or Ron a thing, but Harry's Invisibility cloak kept her well concealed, and he'd never even know that it was missing. Even the cloak, however, only could do so much; it was a minor miracle no one had bumped into her already.
She wove very, very carefully through the crowd to a small, dilapidated cabinet that lurked disreputably in a dark corner of the living room. It wasn’t around in Hermione’s own time, which if everything had worked correctly was fourteen months prior, and she couldn’t help but wonder who had brought it into the Weasley’s home and why. Still, it afforded the perfect answer to her trouble. Carefully, she climbed up on top of the wobbly thing.
Now that she wasn't at risk of being discovered, she looked around. There was a great deal to see; about half of the wizards and witches Hermione knew were crammed into the room. Despite the fact that the space had obviously been magically expanded to accommodate so many people, it wasn't enough, and subdued apologies cut into quiet conversations as people bumped into one another.
It was unusually hot, too. Hermione could feel sweat trickling down her back and fervently wished that she weren't wrapped inside a cloak from head to foot. Wasn't anyone paying attention to the housekeeping charms?
There was a strange energy in the crowd, a carefully muted excitement. It reminded her of the Christmas masses she'd attended as a child, before her family had moved to London. Try as they might to remain respectfully serious and pay attention, everyone knew the real holiday would begin as soon as the sermon was over.
Tonks entered the room, tripping over something - whether her own feet, or the carpet Hermione couldn't have said - and caught Kingsley's arm for support.
"She was so young… Did you know tomorrow would have been her birthday?" Tonks was saying sadly.
They walked past so quickly that Hermione couldn’t quite catch Kingsley’s reply. It didn’t matter; she had heard enough. A lump of ice settled in the pit of her stomach. It looked like the future was going to consist of far too many funerals, too.
She squashed the part of her mind that wondered whether the Time Turner had sent her forward the exact number of months specified. It probably hadn't, and even if it had, Hermione was far from the only young woman with a September birthday.
Too many people were talking to pick out more than a few stray words out of the tangle. Most of them didn't make any sense, but then Hermione heard someone, possibly Dean from the sound of his voice, say, "I've heard Ron is blaming Harry for the whole thing."
It was time to leave, before she heard something she shouldn't. Hermione was sensible enough to recognize that. She was just pulling the Time Turner out from her shirt, careful to keep herself fully covered by the Invisibility Cloak, when the conversation in the room died out suddenly. Everyone was looking at the doorway. Instinctively, Hermione looked too, and the Time Turner slipped from her suddenly weak grasp.
Harry Potter looked exhausted, his face grave. He did not stop to speak with or to even look at anyone directly as he walked into the centre of the room. His face and eyes were harder than the Harry she knew, and there was a streak of premature grey in his hair. So much had changed in one year.
"Yesterday, we celebrated. It was the right thing to do. Voldemort-" and here several people in the audience flinched, which set off a round of very nervous giggling, "is irreversibly dead and his soul destroyed beyond any means of recovery."
At this, there was a short, uncertain attempt at applause, which ended quickly and with a sense of relief when Harry began to speak again. "Today, we remember the woman whose sacrifice made this victory possible. Your children will grow up safely, without the terror of the Dark Mark, thanks to Hermione Granger."
The world shifted, bleached itself out in a wash of bright white. Her heart raced and her throat was dry and she wanted more than anything to run far, far away as quickly as she could. She was going to die. Not eventually, not as the next adventure in a well-ordered life, but early, abruptly, violently. She wasn't even going to live to see her nineteenth birthday. It was impossible to believe, and she continued to listen, waiting for her future self to come striding into the room and give everyone a good talking-to for their nonsense.
"Hermione was the quickest, the brightest, and the best. She leapt in front of me, and just as Voldemort cast Avada Kedavra, she cast her own spell, sacrificing her life for mine."
Harry opened his robes and there, angry and red against his skin, was a fresh wound, one that Hermione could tell at a glance would leave Harry with yet another scar, almost identical to the one on his forehead.
An angry buzzing grew in Hermione's ears, and she realized she was shaking her head back and forth so quickly that it was a miracle she hadn't passed out. She did her best to tune out the sound of Harry extolling her virtues in the background, reaching once more for the Time Turner, which had slipped from her trembling grasp. She groped blindly for her wand, pointed it at the Time Turner, and whispered: "Finite Incantatem."
* * * * *
Traveling backwards in time felt somewhat like having all of one's bones removed and then being sucked down a drain. Normally, one was only traveling a few hours backward, and the perceived time it took to make the trip was much too short to cause any real ill effects. Fourteen months, however, so soon after a nasty shock, was more than Hermione's system could handle. When Hermione made it safely back to her room in the Burrow, the first thing she did was become very, very ill.
She cleaned the mess while Crookshanks looked on, his unblinking gaze filled with reproof. As soon as she was finished, Hermione reached for the closest book. Crookshanks curled up in his normal place beside her studying materials, batting at a quill with much less spirit than usual, but otherwise perfectly in accordance with their habit. There's GOT to be a way, she thought grimly, flipping through the pages. I won't let Voldemort kill me.
* * * * *
Twelve months later, Hermione walked out of Gringott's, having made her final, official arrangements. She had found her own path and was not afraid to follow it, even knowing where it might lead.
She didn't want to die, she really didn't, but she hadn't stayed in the future long enough to get any clear idea of the circumstances surrounding her own death, and she couldn't make herself face another trip forward. At least, when (if, not when, she corrected herself, but it was mostly reflex) it happened, she knew that she would be giving her life for something truly important.
Hermione had been wise enough to use what would probably be her last year well. She had stopped being childish and had simply walked up to Ron and told him how she felt. They had shared some wonderful times and a deep love. Whenever Ron had started to talk about the future, she had put him off, saying they were too young, even though it had caused her a pang every time she had done so.
She had not told anyone except Crookshanks about her glimpse into the future, although once or twice she had been sorely tempted. Remembering the fear on Molly's face the night the Gudgeons had died, however, had been enough to help Hermione keep her silence. This burden was hers to carry alone; she couldn't bear to make the people she loved suffer.
Instead, she had calmed herself by writing letters, which the goblins at Gringott's had just sworn to deliver to everyone in the (their words) 'unfortunate event of her early and unexpected demise'.
She had done her best, and now all she had left to do was the hardest thing...to wait.
Author: xellas
Rating: PG
Summary: Messing around with time travel can be dangerous in more ways than Hermione understands.
Credits: Many, many thanks to pre_raphaelite1 for her incredible beta. Any errors remaining are mine, most likely the result of a last-minute tweak or several.
Disclaimer: The characters and the universe aren't mine, but leik if you don't pay me, I'm like going to have to get a job or something and I'll never update, evah!!1
Notes: Hermione-centric. Written for the femgenficathon I'm afraid I interpreted my quotation a bit strangely: 1. There was never a place for her in the ranks of the terrible, slow army of the cautious. She ran ahead, where there were no paths.--Dorothy Parker
My apologies for my extreme lateness.
The Consequence of Curiosity
Sixth year had been over for almost two weeks and it was official: Hogwarts would not be opening as normal next term. All of the goals Hermione had been working so hard to reach no longer existed. There would be no N.E.W.T.s, at least not right away, no career training. Next year, there would be no Head Girl.
She hadn't dared return to her parents' house, not even for the summer. If she were to see them, to visit, to hug them and tell them how much she appreciated them… She was one of Harry Potter's best friends, and Muggle-born besides. She might as well cast the Dark Mark over the house herself.
Her parents had no idea how bad things really had become in the wizarding world, or how very much in the middle of it all Hermione was, and she couldn't bring herself to tell them.
This left her without a clear path ahead, while the path behind her had been erased. It would be dark soon, and there would be no stars that could help her plot her course. And Hermione was a witch who had always known where she had come from and where she was going.
Perhaps this was the reason the item that lurked in the sock drawer in her room at the Weasleys' house was so very much more on her mind than it ever had been before.
Bill and Fleur had been married as soon as he had been released form the hospital. At Fleur's insistence, the newlyweds had gotten their own apartment, so Hermione and Ginny no longer had to share a room. Hermione had privacy, something previously unheard-of at the Weasley's house.
The free space and quiet were wonderful, and Hermione reveled in them, but she also found that they gave her too much time to think, to wonder about her secret prize and to feel guilty in turns.
The guilt could have been easily taken care of by confessing to her friends, telling them the truth. But that would be admitting too much, and the boys wouldn't understand. It wasn't as though they had worn a Time Turner for an entire year. It wasn't as though they had used one illegally to save two lives - at least, they couldn't have without her.
"The thing is," she had whispered to Crookshanks as she tucked the item safely inside silk bustier she'd worn to the Yule ball, "not all of the Ministry's Time Turners were destroyed in the battle at the end of Fifth year."
Crookshanks had purred acknowledgement, a short rasp that almost sounded like a cough.
Hermione told him about how she had found it lying in a corner of the floor, where by some miracle it had rolled intact when every other one had shattered. She had absently picked it up and tucked it into her pocket for safekeeping. It was only a reflex, learned when she was still a third year who had sworn to McGonagall not to let any harm come to the beautiful object.
And every day, the urge to take it out and use it became harder to resist. Not because she wanted to go back into the past. No, for the most part she was very glad to have the past safely behind her. But…but…
While doing a little extra reading for fun, she had learned something interesting. If one were to take a golden Time Turner and cast a Substantive Charm upon it to anchor it down and protect it from paradox, and then cast a very powerful, very complicated Reversus spell on it… Well, it was just possible that if the Time Turner didn't blow up, one would end up with a device that was capable of putting Trelawney out of a job for good.
If the Reversus spell was successful, the Time Turner would change from gold to platinum and its sand from diamond powder to crushed moldavite. And instead of taking a witch or wizard backward in time one hour for every turn…instead, the user would go forward. One turn would measure out approximately one month, rather than one hour, however, because the future wasn't as firm an option as the past and the same level of accuracy just wasn't possible.
Still.
Hermione had happened to have a Time Turner handy, and she hadn't been able to resist testing the process the very first evening at the Weasleys'. It had worked - her Time Turner was now platinum and not gold. She had so far managed to avoid using it, but her resistance was wearing very thin.
"Tell me again why it is such a dangerous and awful thing to do, mucking around with the timeline?" Hermione would ask Crookshanks during the small hours of the night, when temptation would strike the hardest.
Crookshanks hissed every time she asked, and Hermione was a little unnerved that apparently even her cat understood the complexities of nonlinear time well enough to know better.
Almost two weeks had gone by since the end of Hermione's sixth year at Hogwarts. Thirteen nights, through most of which she hadn't been able to sleep. Harry would be joining them soon, and Hermione and Ron would follow wherever Harry's path led them. One more day, and then Hermione's time would run out, her freedom expire.
She knew her own weaknesses. She knew that while she meant well, sometimes she failed to see things that were right in front of her. She also knew that it wasn't fair of her to be jealous of the results other girls got from spending hours in front of the mirror when she couldn't be bothered. And everyone knew that Hermione had a tendency to show off her knowledge - but really, what was the point in keeping it all to herself? She sought information to assuage her intense curiosity about everything. Curiosity was supposed to be a virtue, but it did, occasionally, land her in a little trouble. She winced as she remembered attempting to scry into the boys' showers and being caught by McGonagall; fortunately, no one, not even Ron or Harry, had ever suspected she'd been the one to lose so many house points.
Her value to Harry lay in her knowledge. It was in the spells she'd memorized tirelessly and in the magical theory that had given her the 'whys'. She had been driven to read every book she could lay her hands upon, but it was still entirely possible that whatever spell would be needed to destroy the horcruxes, it would be one she hadn't ever even heard of. There were just too many spells, and she was only one person.
But if she could take just one tiny peek into the future, there was so much to be gained. And where was the harm? No one would see her; she would steal Harry's cloak to make sure. Just little bit of historical research concerning the outcome of the final battle, and she could make sure they had the right weapons at hand to win. As long as no one saw her, she should be fine. And she couldn't interfere with history, because the history would still be in her own future, which wasn't set. She was a witch; she refused to allow a pesky little thing like paradox to stand in her way.
It only made sense that there would be much more room for change in the future. After all, if the future were as clear as that, then prophecies would make sense and would not be phrased like riddles and only understood after the fact.
* * * * *
Late that night, unable to sleep, Hermione went to the kitchen to look for some tea and instead found Molly Weasley, sobbing.
"I'm sorry dear," Molly said with a sniff, trying to get herself back under control, "I just can't seem to help it sometimes. Mothers can't help but worry, and Arthur just sent an Owl…"
There was only one thing that could mean. "Who was it?" Hermione asked, although a small part of her did not want to know, a part that wanted to think that if she didn't hear it, it wouldn't be true.
"The Gudgeons," Molly answered quietly. "All of them." Unspoken, but plain on Molly's face, was the fear that one of her children would be next.
Hermione's lips set in a thin line. As much as she wanted to, she could not promise Molly that her family would stay safe and they both knew it. At that moment, Hermione finally accepted what was perhaps inevitable. She would use her Time Turner. She wasn't going to let anyone die if there was anything she could do about it.
* * * * *
Once her stomach settled from the journey, Hermione realized that she was standing in the center of the Weasley’s very crowded living room. She was very glad she'd waited for Harry's arrival. She hadn't told either Harry or Ron a thing, but Harry's Invisibility cloak kept her well concealed, and he'd never even know that it was missing. Even the cloak, however, only could do so much; it was a minor miracle no one had bumped into her already.
She wove very, very carefully through the crowd to a small, dilapidated cabinet that lurked disreputably in a dark corner of the living room. It wasn’t around in Hermione’s own time, which if everything had worked correctly was fourteen months prior, and she couldn’t help but wonder who had brought it into the Weasley’s home and why. Still, it afforded the perfect answer to her trouble. Carefully, she climbed up on top of the wobbly thing.
Now that she wasn't at risk of being discovered, she looked around. There was a great deal to see; about half of the wizards and witches Hermione knew were crammed into the room. Despite the fact that the space had obviously been magically expanded to accommodate so many people, it wasn't enough, and subdued apologies cut into quiet conversations as people bumped into one another.
It was unusually hot, too. Hermione could feel sweat trickling down her back and fervently wished that she weren't wrapped inside a cloak from head to foot. Wasn't anyone paying attention to the housekeeping charms?
There was a strange energy in the crowd, a carefully muted excitement. It reminded her of the Christmas masses she'd attended as a child, before her family had moved to London. Try as they might to remain respectfully serious and pay attention, everyone knew the real holiday would begin as soon as the sermon was over.
Tonks entered the room, tripping over something - whether her own feet, or the carpet Hermione couldn't have said - and caught Kingsley's arm for support.
"She was so young… Did you know tomorrow would have been her birthday?" Tonks was saying sadly.
They walked past so quickly that Hermione couldn’t quite catch Kingsley’s reply. It didn’t matter; she had heard enough. A lump of ice settled in the pit of her stomach. It looked like the future was going to consist of far too many funerals, too.
She squashed the part of her mind that wondered whether the Time Turner had sent her forward the exact number of months specified. It probably hadn't, and even if it had, Hermione was far from the only young woman with a September birthday.
Too many people were talking to pick out more than a few stray words out of the tangle. Most of them didn't make any sense, but then Hermione heard someone, possibly Dean from the sound of his voice, say, "I've heard Ron is blaming Harry for the whole thing."
It was time to leave, before she heard something she shouldn't. Hermione was sensible enough to recognize that. She was just pulling the Time Turner out from her shirt, careful to keep herself fully covered by the Invisibility Cloak, when the conversation in the room died out suddenly. Everyone was looking at the doorway. Instinctively, Hermione looked too, and the Time Turner slipped from her suddenly weak grasp.
Harry Potter looked exhausted, his face grave. He did not stop to speak with or to even look at anyone directly as he walked into the centre of the room. His face and eyes were harder than the Harry she knew, and there was a streak of premature grey in his hair. So much had changed in one year.
"Yesterday, we celebrated. It was the right thing to do. Voldemort-" and here several people in the audience flinched, which set off a round of very nervous giggling, "is irreversibly dead and his soul destroyed beyond any means of recovery."
At this, there was a short, uncertain attempt at applause, which ended quickly and with a sense of relief when Harry began to speak again. "Today, we remember the woman whose sacrifice made this victory possible. Your children will grow up safely, without the terror of the Dark Mark, thanks to Hermione Granger."
The world shifted, bleached itself out in a wash of bright white. Her heart raced and her throat was dry and she wanted more than anything to run far, far away as quickly as she could. She was going to die. Not eventually, not as the next adventure in a well-ordered life, but early, abruptly, violently. She wasn't even going to live to see her nineteenth birthday. It was impossible to believe, and she continued to listen, waiting for her future self to come striding into the room and give everyone a good talking-to for their nonsense.
"Hermione was the quickest, the brightest, and the best. She leapt in front of me, and just as Voldemort cast Avada Kedavra, she cast her own spell, sacrificing her life for mine."
Harry opened his robes and there, angry and red against his skin, was a fresh wound, one that Hermione could tell at a glance would leave Harry with yet another scar, almost identical to the one on his forehead.
An angry buzzing grew in Hermione's ears, and she realized she was shaking her head back and forth so quickly that it was a miracle she hadn't passed out. She did her best to tune out the sound of Harry extolling her virtues in the background, reaching once more for the Time Turner, which had slipped from her trembling grasp. She groped blindly for her wand, pointed it at the Time Turner, and whispered: "Finite Incantatem."
* * * * *
Traveling backwards in time felt somewhat like having all of one's bones removed and then being sucked down a drain. Normally, one was only traveling a few hours backward, and the perceived time it took to make the trip was much too short to cause any real ill effects. Fourteen months, however, so soon after a nasty shock, was more than Hermione's system could handle. When Hermione made it safely back to her room in the Burrow, the first thing she did was become very, very ill.
She cleaned the mess while Crookshanks looked on, his unblinking gaze filled with reproof. As soon as she was finished, Hermione reached for the closest book. Crookshanks curled up in his normal place beside her studying materials, batting at a quill with much less spirit than usual, but otherwise perfectly in accordance with their habit. There's GOT to be a way, she thought grimly, flipping through the pages. I won't let Voldemort kill me.
* * * * *
Twelve months later, Hermione walked out of Gringott's, having made her final, official arrangements. She had found her own path and was not afraid to follow it, even knowing where it might lead.
She didn't want to die, she really didn't, but she hadn't stayed in the future long enough to get any clear idea of the circumstances surrounding her own death, and she couldn't make herself face another trip forward. At least, when (if, not when, she corrected herself, but it was mostly reflex) it happened, she knew that she would be giving her life for something truly important.
Hermione had been wise enough to use what would probably be her last year well. She had stopped being childish and had simply walked up to Ron and told him how she felt. They had shared some wonderful times and a deep love. Whenever Ron had started to talk about the future, she had put him off, saying they were too young, even though it had caused her a pang every time she had done so.
She had not told anyone except Crookshanks about her glimpse into the future, although once or twice she had been sorely tempted. Remembering the fear on Molly's face the night the Gudgeons had died, however, had been enough to help Hermione keep her silence. This burden was hers to carry alone; she couldn't bear to make the people she loved suffer.
Instead, she had calmed herself by writing letters, which the goblins at Gringott's had just sworn to deliver to everyone in the (their words) 'unfortunate event of her early and unexpected demise'.
She had done her best, and now all she had left to do was the hardest thing...to wait.