The Man-Who-Won, The Brightest Witch and Their Jaunt in Time

2. The jaunt through time!

After a particular exhausting journey through the odd portal, Harry and Hermione felt themselves getting dumped somewhere. Hermione could hear Harry groaning. Maybe due to rough landing. 'Mine was soft,' Hermione thought, 'But that maybe because I landed upon Harry. And Harry never agrees with magical transportation, other than brooms.' 

They looked around to find themselves in the same place in the Forest of Dean, but the things were very different. The Portal had disappeared, same with Ron's broken corpse and the stone jaguar. The forest also seemed younger. 

They discussed about it, and both agreed there was a chance of time related anomaly seeing a Time turner was involved. Add in powers of the hallows and phoenix feather, there was no saying where or when they would be if it was indeed time travel.

The most troubling thing in that case was the absence of their wands. Hermione's had been taken away by Ron and Harry's was absorbed inside the portal. In fact, the only things they had were their clothes and some 250 Galleons and a few Knuts and Sickles, Harry had upon his person. 

"Hermione, let's be sure if we have really travelled through time. And then get the wands for us," Harry proposed.

Hermione agreed and they apparated to an isolated apparation point in Diagon Alley. Harry exchanged a sickle for the newspaper, and their theory was confirmed. The date read 23rd January 1980.

'Fenrir Greyback terrorizes Britain! Suspected to be working for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. The Ministry puts a bounty of 25000 Galleons on his head after the monster murders a prominent member of society.' - Samantha Vance.

To read more about Fenrir Greyback, see page 5.

To read about, Morris Shafique, see page 7.

"Shit!" Harry cursed, knowing they did travel back in time.

"Harry! Language!" Hermione scolded. Noticing the expression on Harry's face she asked, "What are you thinking Harry?"

"Sigh! My p-parents. They are still alive," Harry continued noticing the frown on Hermione's face, "I-I know that you said that bad things happen to those who mess with time, b-but I couldn't just do nothing."

Hermione bit her lip and looked at Harry, "I don't think that it works like that. For us to not change the timeline, we would have to be in complete Quarantine and that is just impossible. And the moment we interact with the people present in past, we will risk the timeline branching itself to maintain the reality we really belonged to. This means the timeline, we came from will not be changed, only we will be missing from it after that moment we were absorbed by the portal and Ron already dead. Unfortunately, that seems inevitable. Adding to the fact our future selves will have no knowledge of our true identity, they will not risk losing themselves and I would go so far as to say that it isn't an actual threat of time travel, but rather a rumour spread by Department of Mysteries to discourage the civilians from doing it."

Harry looked at Hermione, his eyes wide as saucers "Y-You mean...we c-can-"

Hermione squeezed Harry's hand tightly, "Yes Harry, we can save them."

The next moment, Harry's lips were onto hers and she got to experience the best snog of her life, which continued for minutes, attracting strange looks, awws and some wolf-whistles from the crowd surrounding them. When they separated, Hermione's face was red but had a contained-dazed look on it, whereas Harry's had a goofy grin on it. 

"Let's go get our wands," Hermione said.

"To Olivander's it is," Harry said as he prepared to march Hermione there. He stopped when he felt Hermione trying to resist and looked at her, "What happened?"