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Hermione was enjoying her newest copy of Transfiguration Today when she was interrupted by a Jack Russell Terrier Patronus.
Hermione, come to the Burrow! We’re in trouble.
Her war intuition exploded, even though it had been almost three years. She stood, grabbing up the beaded bag that was still never far from her side, pulled her wand from its holster, then Apparated away.
The scene that met her was not what Hermione had expected at all. Most of the Weasleys — Arthur, Bill, Fred, George, and Ron — were standing in a circle around two identical red-headed young men, about Hermione’s own age. Everyone had their wands out and the two young men were standing back to back with wide eyes.
Molly was in a collapsed heap, sobbing. Arthur looked furious. The Weasley boys looked confused, but were following their father’s lead.
“What’s happening?” Hermione asked just as Harry and Ginny popped in as well.
“Who are they?” Harry demanded.
Arthur snarled when he said, “People who thought it would be funny to pretend to be Fabian and Gideon Prewett.”
“We aren’t pretending!” one of the men cried. “Mols, you have to believe us!”
She sobbed harder.
“How do we know you’re not the ones pretending?” the other asked. “You don’t look like our sister did when we visited yesterday. And I sure as hell don’t know who all these men are.”
“Fabian, you idiot, we’re in the future,” the first man told his twin. “That’s little Billy. And the twins, Fred and George, after us—”
“Stop this!” Arthur demanded. “Who are you really?”
“We told you—” Fabian began, but Arthur had lost his patience. He hit them with Incarcerous and Bill and Fred each cast an Expelliarmus on one of the men, catching their wands with ease.
Stalking forward, Arthur started yelling, “This is the nastiest bit of pranking I’ve ever seen. When we find out who you are—”
“Dad, let’s let Harry question them,” Bill suggested, a gentle hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “He’s an Auror. He’ll be better at it. He and Ron and Hermione, maybe?”
“I don’t want—” Arthur began.
“Mum needs you right now,” George pointed out and Hermione could visibly see Arthur’s anger drain, replaced by worry. He quickly went to Molly’s side and began helping her into the house.
“Why don’t we just arrest them and take them in?” Ron suggested to Harry.
Hermione couldn’t explain why, but that felt wrong. “They haven’t done anything, have they? To be arrested for? Even if it should be, it’s not illegal to pretend to be someone else in our society.”
Harry and Ron looked at her like she’d grown a second head. Ron said, “But they must be Death Eaters to pretend to be my dead uncles.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Hermione said. “What motivation would they have to do that? It hurts your Mum, but otherwise accomplishes nothing. They won’t be trusted here based on looking like your uncles and any Death Eater would know that. I would suspect a prank but your brothers are already here,” she said, indicating the Weasley twins who were still eyeing the intruders menacingly.
“They look just like Uncle Gideon and Uncle Fabian as I remember them right before they died. I saw them the day before,” Bill commented, “Just like these men are saying. It’s a mind fuck, honestly. It’s been twenty years since they died.”
The two men, tied together, were staring at them in astonishment. “Twenty years?” one of them asked. Hermione had lost track of which one it would be but something inside her whispered Gideon.
“Wait. How close to twenty years?” Hermione asked.
“What do you mean?” Harry asked.
“That’s what makes this particularly cruel,” Bill said. “And why we were all here when they showed up. Mum’s always a wreck on the day they died.”
“You’re saying it has been exactly twenty years since they died?” she asked, her heartbeat accelerating as she considered the possibilities. Her work in the Department of Mysteries centered around the Time room, though of course no one knew that but her.
“Yes,” Bill said, his eyes lighting up with academic interest. Fred and George walked over to hear what they were discussing as well, though Fred and Ron were still eyeing their captives. “You think they could be here from the past?”
“That’s crazy,” Ron said.
“It is, a bit,” Harry agreed, “but let’s hear Mione out.”
“The fact that it’s an exact number of years since they…well, I suppose there were bodies found at the time?”
“No,” Bill said, shaking his head. “It was assumed the Death Eaters disposed of them. We didn’t know what had happened for days. It was horrible.”
“If there were never any bodies, then—” She stopped, gasping as the two young men suddenly faded slightly for a moment before fading back in. “Oh Merlin,” she said. “How long since the two of you used your Time Turner?”
“We don’t have a Time Tur—” Fabian started to deny, but Gideon elbowed him in the ribs.
“We used it in the middle of a battle, to go back a few hours,” Gideon said. “But that’s… it must not be what happened. Everyone’s so much older now.”
The young man sounded both intelligent and scared, understandably so given the circumstances.
“How did you know they had a Time Turner?” Ron asked as Hermione went to Gideon and pulled the chain out from beneath his shirt to show the device.
“I used one for a year, remember?” she told him, not wanting to admit all the research she had done the last few years. “The way they’re fading in and out now, it means they’ve been in this time too long without their tether.”
“Their tether?” Harry repeated.
Bill was the one who answered. Hermione wasn’t sure how he knew so much about Time Turners, but it undoubtedly had to do with his curse breaking. “To have been pulled so far in the future, there had to have been strong magic at play.”
“What kind of magic?” Ron asked.
“Soulmates,” Gideon whispered. “I think it’s soulmate magic.”
“That’s rubbish,” said George. “We’ve done all sorts of experimenting with magic like that. Soulmates are so rare that—”
“They would have to be pulled twenty years into the future to find theirs?” Ron questioned.
They slowly faded again, disappearing a little more this time.
“Merlin, we have to figure out who or what their tether has to be so we can keep them here,” Hermione fretted.
“Why? If they go away, they won’t be our problem anymore,” Harry suggested.
Hermione glared at him. “They would be everyone’s problem. Humans aren’t meant to be out in the time continuum without an anchor. They can’t ever go backward, so they would be floating in the future, appearing at random, probably more and more frequently as they tried to connect to the tether. It would throw off our entire timeline!”
“Okay, okay. What do we do to find out?” Harry asked.
“It’s a simple spell, really,” Hermione said, though it was anything but. She saw Bill give her a skeptical look, but he didn’t say anything as she stepped up to the two young men who might actually be his long lost Uncles.
She rummaged through her little beaded bag until she found the right book, pulling it out and thumbing through the chapters until she came to the one with different diagnostics. “This will show who they have connections to and then we’ll see what needs to be done. If it’s actually a soulmate bond, they’ll just need a kiss or other sign of acceptance.”
The complex wand work took all her concentration as Hermione chanted the words to the spell. It took almost no time for a glow to appear around the three of them but it went no further.
“Rats,” she cursed. “I was sure that would work.”
“What didn’t work about it?” Fabian asked.
“Nothing. It worked perfectly,” Gideon told him, though his voice faded in a ghostly way as he spoke, his body fading as well. When he came back, he didn’t look as solid as he had before. The same thing happened to Fabian a moment later.
“Of course it didn’t,” Hermione argued, worried now that they wouldn’t figure this out in time. “I cast the spell but it only encapsulated the two of you.”
“And you,” Harry noted from behind her. “It included you, too, Mione.”
“Well of course it did. I cast the spell,” she said.
“And you’re our soulmate,” Gideon said slowly.
Fabian gasped. “Is that why I feel so drawn to you? Merlin, it’s intense.”
“That’s rubbish,” Hermione said. “I can’t have two soulmates. Especially not ones who’ve been—” She cut herself off, thinking of how incredibly drawn she had always been to time travel, how it had felt like she was searching for something in particular.
“In the time stream for so long?” Bill suggested, thinking her words were just faltering. The twins faded out again, to the point they were barely visible.
“What do I need to do?” Hermione asked Gideon, who seemed the more knowledgeable twin when it came to this. He was the one wearing the Time Turner, too.
“If you accept us, kiss us. Please, both of us. I can’t lose my brother. He’s my other half,” Gideon begged.
“I wouldn’t dream of splitting you up,” Hermione confirmed, then screwed up her courage and pushed forward, her lips pressing to Gideon’s ghostly ones.
At first, the kiss was barely there, but then his lips became more solid and Hermione almost lost her ability to think. The magic around them was strong. She could feel a breeze blow up and she wanted to keep kissing him forever.
Gideon drew his mouth away. “Save Fabian. He’s fading fast. I can feel him.”
When she looked over, his twin was indeed translucent. She kept a hand on Gideon as she circled around to Fabian’s front, drawing close. She almost couldn’t tell where his lips were, but she managed.
The moment his lips were firmly in this time, Fabian’s kiss became intense in an almost aggressive way. Hermione thought she would find that kind of kissing off-putting, but instead, it turned her on. She had a sudden urge to take these two back to her flat and have her wicked way with them.
Gideon squeezed her hand and she managed to push herself away from Fabian. “I’ll want to be included some, too,” Gideon pouted.
Hermione laughed despite herself.
“I think before we do any including,” Harry said, glaring at the two even as he began to untie them, “We’re going to have a lot of explaining to do before your family accepts you.”
Fabian sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”
“But with our love — Hermione, I think I heard? — we’ll find a way to convince them.”
“I’m convinced,” Fred declared. “Welcome back!” George echoed his sentiment.
Hermione wasn’t sure what she had just gotten herself into. But as they walked into the Burrow, a man slipped his hand into hers on each side and she knew it was all going to turn out all right.