After destroying the Hallows proves to actually be a bad idea, Hermione travels to a time where they were most conveniently stealable. There are a couple dark lords and a cellar door in her way, but she is determined to outsmart them all. Well, at l...
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It didn't hurt.
Sitting quiet in her mind, alone and forgotten, Hermione felt no pain. She'd lost. This was fair. She'd been too weak, and the weak one stays. That was the rule. The bargain. The toll to live forever. Cut out the weakest half of your soul and shove it into a silent box for eternity. Cold and isolated, she could do nothing but exist with herself.
This was not the first time.
She doubted it would be the last.
It seemed solitude was her most natural state.
If she searched, lined up her memories in a row like a baby sorting blocks, she could follow the path from effect back to cause. When and why she had done this so many times before, distantly and smeared in watercolor. Like finding a lost diary cleaning your room, thumbing through the pages, and reading about a forgotten fight with your mother that had faded with time. Amused and your childishness and hers, sure it would never happen again.
Hermione counted, slow and careful, turning each page and showing herself like reading a picture-book to a child, explaining in great detail so she would not lose her place. This was the first time. Look at the children, scared and desperate, as they run around trying to fix their friend's mistake. This was you and Draco, stealing his father's time-turner, donning those old war-torn clothes, trying to be clever, trying to blend in, going back after seven months to try and stop Harry. You failed. Turn the page. This was the second. Right after the first. You two hadn't even slept a night. The same moment, this time don't talk to Harry. Take the wand right away. You failed. Turn the page. This was the third time. Two weeks later. Now you had a plan. No longer desperate, you were sure. After the battle, Draco could talk to Harry, you sneak up behind in the Cloak, take the wand without him even noticing. You failed. Turn the page.
She had to go slow or else it would slip. There was only herself, unpained and numb here, a distraction would topple all her little blocks.
The thirteenth time Hermione thought to kill Voldemort from the crowd. A quick shot and stop the battle before it started. Harry still snapped the wand. They failed. The twenty-first time they started going back further than the battle, to them running in the woods, fighting at the Ministry, maybe there was something before they could change. Harry still snapped the wand. They failed.
The thirty-ninth time they thought to use a Horcrux. Split their souls, keep one here and go years back. You couldn't come back with a time-turner, you had to live those days yourself. But a soul could cheat the laws of time, attached to the otherside as it was. They might be able to change things, truly change time, instead of watching stage plays with a slightly different cadence but always the same beats. They went back to when Draco was sixteen, told him to confess to Dumbledore. He did, shaking and 'right freaked out' at the older, still blearily and sleep-deprived Draco. They ripped back to 1999—the months had fallen off and the year had just turned into slushy January—and saw a hundred wanted posters of Harry Potter plastered in Diagon Alley. He'd taken Azkaban tower. The New Dark Lord, they called him. Gringotts, an exploded crater where old magic in the vaults had finally ruptured like a golden volcano. Wild magic still tore the world asunder along deep, rotten cracks. They'd failed.
