Chapter Text
All Hermione could think, as the curses and jinxes flew over her head in slow motion, was that she knew it wasn’t supposed to end like this.
It wasn’t because she was hypervigilant or organized or incredibly prepared (which she was). It wasn’t even because she believed in fate or luck or destiny or whatever rot seers wanted to call it (because she most certainly didn’t even though there was a prophecy stuck like glue to Harry). It was because she knew, deep down in her bones, as if she had lived it many times before, that she and Harry and Ron made it out of the Ministry together. Alive.
Scenarios, like dreams, flipped through her brain of how they all made it out. Sometimes they simply walked out the front doors, polyjuice still working, the Ministry none the wiser. Sometimes they floo-ed out in the nick of time. Sometimes, worst case scenario, they were harmed (she even thought about the morbid possibility of accidentally splinching Harry or Ron in her quick attempts to apparate out of reach), but always, always, all three of them made it out alive and together.
So Hermione had been surprised when it became clear that it wasn’t going to happen like that.
The polyjuice potion had stopped working sooner than their mission had allowed for, and knowing full well that Harry was a hundred times, no, a thousand times more important than she was, Hermione had pushed him towards the entrance (“Run,” she’d hissed) and, being the reckless Gryffindor she was, she had shouted and drawn all the attention towards herself. And then she ran away from Harry and Ron.
It had been enough commotion to take all unwanted Snatcher and Auror attention from her friends (she wished she could have looked back to make sure they got out, but she didn’t). She had raced through stairs and halls, on and off elevators, until she was desperately turned around until, by chance, she found herself in the small atrium room with many doors. It was the entrance to the Department of Mysteries. It was too much of a coincidence and made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and the purple scar across her chest to burn anew. But there was nothing else to do. Picking a door at random, a wrong choice as it turned out, she had slipped in and locked it from within.
She had found herself in an amphitheater with a dais in the center. And on it was the Veil, the thin, tattered fabric billowing in a nonexistent breeze. She’d been cursed and unconscious before Harry and the others had made it to this room over a year ago, but she knew of the Veil from Harry’s recounting of Sirius’s death.
The door behind her shook with the impact of hexes and she raced across the amphitheater towards the other side of the room, but there were no other exits. The door blasted open spewing shards of wood and stone across the amphitheater. Hermione hoisted herself onto the dais, behind a broken stone pillar.
“Stupify!” She yelled, aiming at a wizard running through the doorway. She hit him square in the chest, but he was immediately followed by another, angrier wizard.
She fired stunners and jellyleg jinxes at all the Snatchers and Aurors closing in on her. There were too many of them, though, and she knew that her resistance was ultimately doomed. She’d never been the best dueler. She cast the strongest protego she could, but the force of all the curses scooted her further and further back towards the Veil looming behind her.
The curses flew over her in slow motion and she knew this was her end, as unexpected as it was.
Sweat dripped off her nose and splattered on the stone beneath her. The sulfurous stench of some unnamable hex wafted through her protego and stung her eyes.
“Alive! We need her alive! We can get Potter if we have her!” An Auror yelled from below. A few of the wizards switched to simple expelliarmuses and stupifies, but many of them continued to cast nasty smelling purple and red curses in her direction. The air stank of battle magic, an acridness that burned her nose and eyes.
We need her alive. If she was captured, alive, then Harry would be doomed to an early death. She couldn’t let them get to Harry. He would drop everything, including Dumbledore’s horcrux mission, to save her. She couldn’t let that happen. She was not nearly as important as defeating Voldemort.
This was a war and there were always going to be casualties. She just never thought she’d be one of them.
Regret welled in her chest as her protego waned under the intensity of the curses. She was never going to see Ron or Harry, Crookshanks or her family ever again. She would never again smell the first blooms of lilac or the musty pages of an old book in her hands. Never again feel the rush of magic sparkling under her fingertips.
She gritted her teeth and, before she could change her mind, dropped the protego.
All it took was one curse and a stumble backwards as wizards yelled desperately from below.
The Veil opened itself around her, welcoming her in, as she fell into its cool depths. Curses and hexes wound through the air, crackling and splitting the air like glass. Shards of reality broke around her and fell with her into the endless depths of the Veil.
But instead of falling and, well, dying, space twisted and Hermione fell right back out of the Veil.
She gasped for air, lungs burning like she had spent a minute too long underwater, and toppled to the stones beneath her. Lightning struck the ground all around the Veil and thunder boomed overhead. Rain pelted down from the nighttime sky soaking through her thin, stolen robes.
Hermione stumbled to her feet, ready for the next volley of hexes, fighting the roiling nausea in her throat.
Another jagged bolt of lightning illuminated the sky.
Hermione was alone and outside in the middle of a circle of standing stones, not in the basement of the Ministry surrounded by Aurors and Snatchers. The Veil stood proudly behind her, its curtains waving lightly despite the pouring rain.
What was going on? Where was she?
“Finite incantatum!” She twisted her wand at one of the stones. The blue jet of light crackled against the stone, but nothing changed. The standing stones, night sky, rain, and lightning remained around her.
None of this made any sense.
She was supposed to be dead and she most certainly did not believe death was a new life (especially a new life that didn’t involve not being born again). Death was death, no ifs, ands, or buts.
However, as she slid off the dais and into the muddy grass, the very real and very much not-dead sensation of nausea roiled again through her stomach as her legs gave out. She managed to crawl to the hedges outside of the standing stones before she vomited.
She collapsed onto her side and then jerked her head up, suddenly aware that the sky was lighter and that it wasn’t raining. Voices drifted up from the woods around her and Hermione pinched her arm and lightly smacked her cheeks. “Wake up. Wake up.” She shook her head and cast a quick drying spell, allowing herself to relish in the sudden warmth of dry skin and clothing. The all too real and alive feeling of warmth.
The voices were getting closer, clearly coming towards the standing stones and Veil. Casting a disillusionment charm, she buried herself further into the brambly-hedge to hide until the muggles (or Snatchers? She couldn’t be too cautious given she definitely wasn’t dead) came and went.
Three men in black tactical uniforms with large guns held before them strode into the standing stone circle. Flashlights attached to the ends of the guns illuminated the shadows of the clearing in sweeping motions. “Clear,” one of them said, making a sharp motion with his hand, allowing for two middle-aged men in crisp business suits to walk forward.
The sun was beginning to rise casting early morning light on the fog and men. The shadows of the stones cast long, finger-like shapes across the grass.
One of the suited men with cropped gray hair looked around. “Where are we? On the set of a Shakespearean play or Stone Henge or something?”
Americans?
Maybe Voldemort’s sway had reached further than they had ever expected. They knew he had made inroads on the continent, but the United States? This wasn’t good news.
The second suited man with dark, slicked back hair stared up at the Veil through squinted eyes. “No, this is quite a bit west from Stone Henge. Roberts says that this particular ruin has never been open to the public before. Brits and their enormous family estates. Lucky for us, though, since we don’t have to involve the local authorities. Avoids a pile of paperwork.”
“Huh,” said Gray-Hair, clearly not quite interested. He held up a glowing clip-board looking device in front of him. “Well, this is where the energy spike originated. Unlike anything we’ve ever read before.”
“Any electronic signatures?”
Gray-Hair shook his head as he spun on his heels, swinging the device in front of him. “The entire place is lit up. Either the energy spike is lingering or there is buried tech under our feet. Or - ” He shook the device vigorously. “ – piece of crap. It just shut down on me!”
“Great. Just peachy. I’m missing the second half of The Magic Flute for this anomaly. My wife was livid when I left the opera house for business when I’m supposed to be on vacation.” He ran a hand through his slicked back hair. “Wellington, MacDonald – stay here till we get back with better equipment. Conrad, you’re with us.”
“Yes sir.”
Hermione waited for the three men to leave and for the remaining two to walk to the other side of the Veil before she darted through the brambles, slipping and sliding down the hill away from them.
~ ~ ~
With a muffled pop, Hermione landed, and stumbled, in between two trashcans in the park next to Grimmauld Place. Maybe she was still feeling off from the Veil, but apparating had been harder than she’d expected, almost like trying to slip unseen through molasses instead of air.
“Get yourself together.” Hermione shook out her arms, took a deep breath, and centered herself, feeling the buzz of magic deep in her chest. With a tap of the wand on her head, she disillusioned herself and wove through the park to 12 Grimmauld Place where she hoped Harry and Ron would be waiting for her.
She was about to focus hard on seeing number 12, except … Hermione rubbed her eyes and looked again. Number 12 Grimmauld Place was perfectly visible in front of her, solidly situated between 11 and 13. A light was on in the window of the main floor showing a man pacing the living room, patting the back of a baby in his arms.
What was going on?
Hermione sat uneasily on a bench as the sky lightened and as the street woke up. A dump truck rolled by, emptying rubbish bins, and early starters exited their flats for work. When the decidedly not Harry or Ron occupants of 12 Grimmauld Place finally left for their day, Hermione made her move. She unlocked the front door with her wand and slipped in. And then stopped in her tracks. The entire place was light and airy with family photos lining the stairs instead of goblin heads. In the living room was the same fireplace, but over the mantle was a television.
“Finite incantatum,” Hermione mumbled. Just like at the standing stones, nothing happened. There was no magical spell to end.
Could the Ministry have taken over Headquarters in the short period of time that they were gone (and if so, how had they broken the fidelius)? And where were Ron and Harry? While Hermione personally had a backup plan for where to stay, they had never openly discussed where to go in case of discovery. With the fidelius in place, Grimmauld had felt safe.
Clearly that was a mistake. And very, very stupid of them. Why hadn’t they discussed a Plan B or even a Plan C? How was she supposed to find them again?
“Think, Hermione, think.” A patronus!
She stepped through the kitchen – complete with a muggle microwave, stove, coffee maker, and refrigerator – and out onto the back porch – also complete with a grill, lawn chairs, and a doll house. The entire place was one hundred percent convincingly muggle, far too perfect for the Ministry to pull off. It didn’t make sense.
Hermione frowned and forced herself to think of something happy instead. A bright, bubbly memory of celebrating with Ron and Harry welled in her chest. “Expecto patronum,” she whispered and a silvery otter swirled out of her wand, rushing around her. “I have a message for Harry. Tell him that Grimmauld Place is compromised, that I have escaped the Ministry, and I will be in touch soon.” The otter bounced in understanding and then zipped away.
Hermione only paused for a second longer before she used the bathroom (again, very muggle) to change out of the stolen robes and into a spare set of jeans and a purple sweater that she’d packed in her small beaded purse. Then, thinking badly about herself but desperately hungry, she filched a few apples and crisps from the kitchen and disapparated.
Several hours later, as the sun began to sink below the hillside, Hermione sat on one of the fallen standing stones. The dais where the Veil had stood that morning, was empty. A crane and small bulldozer sat precariously just outside the standing stones and several deep holes pocked the earth, clearly where the suited men had looked for some sort of buried technology.
Everything was different. Everything was gone.
Against her better judgement, but not knowing what else to do with the uneasy feeling that the Veil had deposited her on the wrong day, she had apparated from Grimmauld to just outside the grounds of Hogwarts only to find that Hogwarts was just an old, somewhat dilapidated castle that had a guided tour through the ruins every hour. Then she’d gone into London and had found the Leaky Cauldron, but it was a muggle new age shop selling tarot cards and incense. There had been no entrance to Diagon Alley in the courtyard behind it.
None of it existed anymore. No Diagon Alley. No Hogwarts. No Headquarters.
Did that also mean that the Ministry didn’t exist? What about Harry and Ron? Voldemort?
“Think. Think. Think. I’m not dead. Am I dreaming? Have I been captured and this is all some elaborate illusion?” She pinched the skin on her wrist and smarted at the pain.
Harry had told her about what she had missed at the Department of Mysteries, while being eaten from the inside by Dolohov’s purple curse. Sirius had fallen through the Veil and had died. The Veil had lived in the Department of Mysteries for who knew how many centuries, all but forgotten by the magical community. Hermione had done some research, though she had never told Harry, and had read many ancient Celtic tales. There was even a theory (proposed by a debatably mad scholar in the 1800s) that the Ministry had been built up around the Veil, instead of the Veil being moved into the Ministry.
The consensus, however, between the scholars and ancient legends was that nobody ever reemerged from the Veil after entering it. Thus, it was an entrance into death and why it was called the Veil, the thin fabric between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
But if no one had ever reemerged to say where the Veil actually led, then there was no real proof that the Veil led to death and not, instead …
No. It wasn’t possible.
There was no way she was in some other version of her world. That kind of stuff didn’t exist. There was no proof that was possible. Sure, she hadn’t believed magic existed before McGonagall showed up at her door explaining all the mysterious stuff in her life. But this, this was different.
This was very different.
This wasn’t possible.
Hermione let out a frustrated, snarling scream and shot out a volley of spells into the air, lighting the sky in a series of purple and blue and red. Magpies and woodpigeons burst from the trees and hedges, flying far away from her chaotic despair. The air around her filled with static and the smell of a cloying perfume, the smell of too much magic in a non-magic place.
Let the Aurors come! And the Snatchers too! At least then she would know she was not alone. Then she would know that she was still in her world where magic and Harry and Ron existed.
She held her breath and waited. Her fingers ached from gripping her wand. The static clung to her hair but slowly the smell began to drift away into the wind and the sun sank lower and lower in the sky casting the standing stones in a golden glow.
Nothing.
No one was coming.
She was alone.
Hermione dizzily collapsed against one of the stones, breath coming faster and faster.
“Sing with me dear. Sing each word and let it ground you and focus you.” Hermione’s mother leaned over her, rubbing the tears from her reddened cheeks. “You ready?”
“Blackbird singing in the dead of night,” Hermione began to sing, calling on the ritual her mother had instilled over a decade prior. “Take these broken wings and learn to fly.” She forced her breathing to slow with the rhythm of the song. “All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise.” She could feel the pressure in her chest lessening little by little. “Blackbird sing-”
A sudden sharp rustling came from the hedgerow directly behind her. Before she could turn to see what it was, something shot out and grabbed her. A large hand covered her mouth as she was effortlessly plucked off the stone and pulled into the bushes.
Hermione grabbed at the hands and arms, scratching everywhere she could and biting down on the gloved fingers. The person seemed to feel none of it.
Where was her wand? She must have dropped it when she was grabbed. Panic, much more direct than she’d felt the entire day, stung her chest. This place wasn’t just strange, it was also very, very dangerous and she had foolishly let her guard down. Mad-Eye would be ashamed.
A scream welled in her throat as she bit down again.
“Tikhiy,” growled a low voice in her ear. “Ruhig!”
Hermione elbowed and clawed and twisted some more. She felt absolutely defenseless without her wand.
“Quiet,” growled the voice again, this time in English. “Or I will hurt you. You are not my target.”
Something hard pressed into her side and she stilled. She had spent so much of her time in the wizarding world, trying to assimilate and learn everything she could, that she had forgotten what her own people could do. Wands and spells weren’t the only things that could kill. Guns could too. And knives. And if this world had no magic …
“-from up here.”
Three men appeared from behind one of the standing stones on the other side of the circle. Two wore clean-cut navy suits and the third wore military tactical gear with a very large gun slung over his shoulders and held loosely, almost bored, in his hands. They were the same men from that morning.
“How can there have been another energy spike?” Asked the man with slicked back hair. “We removed the artifact. I thought that’s what you said the source of the energy was.”
The other man, Gray-Hair, nodded vigorously as he continued to stare at a handheld electronic device. “Yes, yes. But this new energy spike was as clear as day. Not as strong as the first, but of the same sort.”
“You’d better have this figured out. I don’t want to look like a fool in front of Stark Industries tomorrow when I show the data.”
“I’m working on it.” Gray-Hair slowly circled the standing stones coming closer and closer to where Hermione was being held. She could see her wand on the ground, too far for her to reach, but too much in the open. He was bound to see it. What if the energy spikes the man was talking about was magic? What if he took her wand?
Hermione stiffened with this new fear.
“Do not move,” the man whispered into her ear. She stiffly nodded once, which seemed to be enough for him. His steel grip on her disappeared as he slunk soundlessly to the side. As he slipped further away, she crouched low, ready to grab her wand and run away from this insanity.
The armed guard was busy with his own small glowing device and so didn’t see or hear the man come up behind him, an extension of the shadows. For a split, naïve, second Hermione thought that he would simply distract them and lead them away from her.
A knife glinted in one hand, a gun in the other. One soundless, efficient swipe and the armed guard toppled to the ground, bleeding from the throat. Two shots and both suited men were on the ground before they even knew they were in danger.
Hermione screamed.