Chapter Text
June 6th, 1994.
“EXPECTO PATRONUM!”
A powerful scream echoed inside the Forbidden Forest, and with it a thin string of white light left Harry’s wand, gaining width and strength as it poured out. Finally, after what he felt like an eternity, the string of light took the form of a proud stag. Charging against the circle of dementors in front of him, thus achieving three things at once: Saving his unconscious godfather, one of his best friends, and his own past self from the Dementor’s Kiss. Becoming one of the youngest wizards in history to cast a full corporeal Patronus. And finally, unbeknownst to him, shattering a seal imbued deep around his magical core.
At his back, a brown bush of hair remained still, watching in awe as his oldest friend performed this feat, and witnessing an unexpected burst of light coming from Harry’s back. This was different from the Patronus she previously saw from professor Lupin, while the Patronus itself was a white stream of light moving rapidly in front of Harry’s wand, this was a red wave of light that felt wrong, escaping slowly from his body as something that shouldn’t be present. She had the instinct to run away but was able to silence it, not wanting to abandon her friend. The moment the red light reached her, she felt as if her very magic was weakened, as if her mind was being trapped by itself in a sea of questions, doubts, and fears. She wanted to say something, to ask what was going on, but as soon as she started opening her mouth the light passed her and she felt normal again. A quick glance behind made her aware that, while she suppressed her instincts regarding this wave of red light, their hippogriff friend didn’t. Buckbeak fled from the place avoiding the red wave altogether.
“W-wait we need…”. Hermione couldn’t finish her attempt at stopping the hippogriff, as she heard Harry’s heavy steps trying to stay upright, she immediately turned around and moved close, helping him regain his balance. She failed as she felt his whole bodyweight falling on her. Apparently, he blacked out due to magical exhaustion.
A short while later, neither could really tell how long, Harry woke up, finding himself resting on Hermione’s lap. Hermione looked down at him, gifting him a relieving sigh that showed how glad she was that he finally woke up. Time was running short, and she didn’t know what to do. He took a second to notice where he was resting and stood up fast with a light blush on his cheeks; he turned around to see the lagoon.
“What the heck was that?”
“I was hoping you would tell me that, it’s impressive you managed to conjure a full Patronus, but what was that red light?”
“What are you talking about? What red light?”
“Do you mean you didn’t see it? It came from you, you know?”
“I-I’m not sure what you mean, b-but I feel weird…”
Hermione looked at him sternly, trying to decide what was more urgent, for one that red wave of light, whatever it was, apparently wasn’t a conscious act from her friend, still worrying of course, but he seemed to be in good condition, also more importantly they just lost the means to complete their mission and needed to think of something fast. “I’ll explain what I saw on the way Harry, we’ve got a big problem, we need to get back to the castle quickly, are you ok?”
They got up and started walking to the castle, trusting that their past unconscious bodies would be found as last time, she could see Harry looking at himself confused, earning a puzzled look from her that he didn’t catch.
“I’m more than ok, in a way I feel stronger, and even… more lucid, like I was walking through a fog that I didn’t see and suddenly the fog is gone! Or at least… is not as dense? Does that make any sense?”
“Is probably just the adrenaline still pumping through you Harry, you did just fight off a group of a hundred dementors.” She answered, not very convinced about her own explanation. “Which reminds me, they were supposed to be further away from the grounds after the quidditch incident, when I find who is responsible for them being here, I will hex them!”
Harry chuckled in response to her veiled threats, wondering if Hermione could even harm someone on purpose, of the three of them she was without a doubt the gentlest and most patient. “I don’t think adrenaline is the answer Hermione, I mean… I know how an adrenaline rush feels like, a freaking Basilisk hunting you down or a possessed professor tend to make your body full of it, you know?”
“Language Harry! And be that as it may, I told you we have a bigger problem right now, Buckbeak is gone.”
“What!? What happened? He was supposed to be tied down! How are we going to get Sirius out of the tower now?”
“Thank you for joining me in the present Harry, I’m well-aware of the problem with our plan. Now, we need a new idea quick, we had less than 3 hours for the Sync and now it’s a lot less, and from that it’s probably not going to be long until the Minister takes a dementor to Sirius.”
“The what now? Sync?”
“Right, sorry, I haven’t had the chance to explain… Time travel is dangerous Harry, for a thousand reasons, you cannot change anything really, it already happened, you cannot see your past self.” She paused for a second. “Well, it actually has never been proven but it is theorized that it would be at the very least disastrous, I already told you that we can only travel back 5 hours, trying to go further puts the traveler, and time itself for that matter, at an incredible risk!”
“Hermione not that I’m not enjoying the explanation, but… the Sync?”
“If you let me finish Harry, I’m getting to that! Another reason for it being so dangerous and for which we can only do 5 hours at a time is the Sync, think of this, I’ve been using the Time-Turner all year to be able to attend my classes, meaning that at the very least I’ve ‘lived’ eight extra hours a day, sometimes more with all the homework and research I’ve been doing, that amount of time adds quick. Now, do I look older to you?”
“Hey, do you take me for Ron? I’m not about to step on that land mine of a question.” He spurted back. Before she could scold him for the joke he continued. “But I think I get what you want to say, when you get to the point in time where your past-self jumped back, your body syncs with it, leaving your body unaged but with the experience of both times, so to speak.”
Hermione stopped and looked at him impressed, fighting back the urge to leave her mouth open in surprise. “Y-yes, precisely, McGonagall explained it to me when she gave me the Time-Turner and it took me a while to understand what she meant, how did you…?”
“Told you, I feel my mind clearer, and you were right of course, we need to focus on getting another plan to get to Sirius… also, while I feel more lucid, I cannot get rid of the idea that something really wrong is going on, something else I mean, we need to sit down and think about this.”
By this time, they had gotten to the castle. “We need to find somewhere safe to think Harry, remember that nobody else should see us since they may connect the dots of us being at two places at the same time.” If they could find an empty classroom, they could get their information together a plan something to…
“Hello, Harry Potter”
A soft girly voice greeted the Gryffindor boy at their back, they both froze in surprise. Did she hear them? Was it a passing salute or was the voice still behind them? They attempted to stay very still, maybe whoever was behind them had movement-based vision?
“And hello to you too, Hermione Granger”, the voice added with a twitch of happiness in it.
No such luck.
Harry and Hermione looked back slowly, meeting the penetrating, yet warm gaze of a young girl with long silver-blonde hair. The girl was cocking her head slightly, watching them both with curiosity. They didn’t feel threatened, but at the same time they felt that this mysterious girl was looking deeper into their souls than anybody before.
“Um… Hi... errr”
“Luna, Luna Lovegood”
“Yes! I mean… of course? Or… Do you know me, Miss Lovegood?”
“Just Luna. And you are Harry Potter, everybody knows you.”
“Right… Well, my apologies Miss Lovegood, but we…”
“Just Luna”, she interrupted.
“Yes, Luna, we are sorry, but we were…”
“Looking for somewhere to hide so that nobody finds out about your Time-Turner.”
Hermione felt as she was dropped suddenly in a big ocean of horror, this was it, Professor McGonagall had told her that nobody could know about this, it was an incredible responsibility to handle one of these artifacts and she had entrusted it to her, at big risk of her own. She spent the whole year hiding the secret from her only two friends successfully, letting Harry know was one thing, he was the single person she trusted the most in the whole Magical World… Wait! Did she say the most? Even more than McGonagall or Dumbledore? Questions for later, if there was a later. She had failed to keep it secret, she would be expelled, and even Professor McGonagall would suffer for it, trusting such a dangerous artifact in a 13-year-old girl just because she wanted to study more? She’d lose her job at the very least, maybe even sent to Azkaban, was she the reason her favorite teacher would end up in prison?
As if sensing her terror, the girl in front of them started giggling. “Don’t be silly Hermione Granger, we are friends, I’m not going to tell on you! Now quickly follow me, I know where you need to be.” Without waiting for a response, Luna passed in between them, hands behind her back, hopping and smiling, as if taking a stroll through the park.
A look of confusion was shared between both Gryffindors, this made no sense, however at the very least they needed to stop that girl from spilling their secret, how were they going to accomplish that? They had no idea, but it started by reaching her before she stumbled upon any other living being.
Rushing behind her, wondering how she was so fast while maintaining a care-free stroll, they finally reached a corridor on the seventh floor of the castle. A place with nothing in it but an ugly old tapestry of dancing trolls.
“Here we are!”
“Miss Lov… Luna!” Harry corrected himself at the pouting look he received. “There is nothing here.”
“Oh, there is silly, you just need to ask for it, see?”
She started walking back and forth in front of the tapestry, earning confused looks from the two lions, this girl seemed out of it. Perhaps they were out of danger, who would meet this girl and believe her when she spoke about time traveling teenagers?
The next moment their hopeful reasoning came to a halt as a big metal door started materializing in front of the tapestry, Luna opened the door revealing a big room behind it. This was definitely not in the Marauder’s Map.
“What are you waiting for? Come inside Harry Potter, you too Hermione Granger.”
“Luna, if you want us to call you by your name, please do the same with us.” Hermione said.
The silver-haired girl looked at her beaming, with a big grin on her face.
“Ok!”
As they got into the room they saw a very similar decor as the Gryffindor common room, a warm fire was burning in one of the walls, and the stuffed 3-piece sofa in the middle of the room looked as cozy as any chair on their own tower.
“Luna, where are we?”
“I told you silly, you just have to ask! This is the Come and Go Room, the elves showed it to me earlier in the year, when I sneaked into the kitchens to find somewhere to sleep.”
“Wait, why were you looking in the kitchen for some place to sleep?”
“Why, because of the Nargels of course!”
“Narg- What are those, Luna?”
“Oh, you know… little creatures that pull pranks on you.”
“Ok? Luna, why did you bring us here?”
“Because here is all that you need silly, in that box.”
Hermione turned around to see a small chest in front of the sofa, they had ignored it before distracted by the sudden appearance of their common room’s doppelganger. They approached the chest and opened it to find the Marauder’s Map and Harry’s Invisibility Cloak in it.
“Of course! We can go back once more; with the Map and Cloak we can hide and find Pettigrew! If we bring him back, we don’t need Sirius to escape, we can just prove his innocence right then and there!”
“I don’t know Harry, I told you time traveling is dangerous, I’ve never heard of having three versions of oneself running around at the same time, it’s not explicitly forbidden by the instructions, but probably because nobody has been crazy enough to try it.”
“Hermione, if we don’t do this, Sirius is gone, I cannot let that happen to him.”
“It’s a bad idea Harry, we need to find another way.”
“How long until the Sync you mentioned?”
Hermione looked around the room, finding a clock in the same place as their common room, and again was filled with dread as she noticed the time.
“Less than a minute.” she said with a defeated voice.
“There is no more time to think Hermione, you said it yourself, just a few minutes before the Minister gets here.”
“I-I don’t like this Harry, but you may be right, we do need more time.”
Once again, they got together, Hermione took the chain of the Time-Turner out of her neck and enveloped both in it, balancing the artifact in front of their faces while Harry held on to the chest that Luna showed them with his left hand. He also passed his right hand behind her waist pulling them together. With a slight blush and a big sigh, Hermione got ready to turn the artifact and braced for the new jump.
“Hey guys?”
For a minute, distracted by the impending doom of Sirius and the implications of a new jump, they both forgot about Luna’s presence. They looked at her, one to thank her for her help, the other about to ask how she knew all this, when they both noticed her wand pointing at them.
“Good luck!” She said smiling. “Circumrota!”
The charm impacted the Time-Turner, flipping it faster than they could notice, and in a sudden pop, they were gone.