Chapter Text
Act I, Chapter 1: The Turn of Fate
May 1998 – The War Is Over, but the Price Was Too High
The ruins of Hogwarts smelled of ash and regret.
Smoke still curled lazily through shattered corridors. Stone walls stood fractured, bleeding dust in quiet surrender to the violence they'd witnessed. The sky above was an ugly grey, smudged with the soot of spells and sacrifice.
And at the center of the carnage, beneath the shattered arch of the Great Hall, Harry Potter lay still.
Hermione knelt beside him, her knees pressing into gravel and blood-soaked earth. His glasses, cracked at the bridge, hung askew on his face. One lens was missing. His wand snapped, barely clinging to itself, rested inches from his open hand, as if he’d dropped it mid-spell.
The faint scar on his forehead was faded now, almost invisible.
He wasn’t supposed to die.
Her breath caught. She reached out, fingers brushing the frayed edge of his cloak, a cloak that had once made him vanish. Now it only made the truth clearer: Harry Potter was gone. No magic left to shield him. No second chances.
The weight in her chest pressed harder, until it felt like her ribs would splinter.
She didn’t cry.
She couldn’t.
The air shifted behind her.
A soft hand settled on her shoulder. “Hermione,” came Luna’s voice, low and lilting, yet far away. “You can’t stay here. He wouldn’t want you to.”
Hermione didn’t move.
Then another touch—firmer. Ginny knelt beside her. She said nothing, her face streaked with soot and silent grief. Her hand found Hermione’s wrist and squeezed.
The world swayed. Magic twisted.
May 1998 | Tonks’ Safehouse
Hermione’s boots hit worn wood with a dull thud. Her breath came in short gasps, throat raw. The warmth of the room should have comforted her, but it felt distant, like she was seeing it all through someone else’s eyes.
They were back.
The dim interior of Tonks’ safehouse flickered in low firelight, casting long shadows on battered faces. Kingsley sat like a statue, his jaw locked, exhaustion carved into every line. Hestia Jones stood beside the hearth, blood-stained sleeves stiff where they had dried. Bill Weasley leaned against the far wall, arms folded, face tight with grief and a reluctant sense of duty.
In the corner, Andromeda Tonks sat in a rocking chair, her hair loose around her face, cradling a wailing Teddy in her arms. The baby’s cries pierced the air—sharp, shrill, full of life and confusion. He didn’t know what had been lost. He shouldn’t have to.
Hermione staggered forward, blinking away the ash and tears clouding her vision.
And then she saw him.
Ron.
Leaning in the doorway like a portrait from a memory she no longer trusted. Same red hair, same haunted eyes. But when their gazes locked, there was no warmth. No comfort. Just cold blame.
“You knew the Horcruxes,” he said.
His voice was sandpaper—hoarse, cracked, cruel. “You led him to death.”
Time fractured.
Hermione stopped breathing.
The room tensed. Even Teddy’s cries faltered for a beat, as if the world was holding its breath.
Hermione stared at him. Her fingers shook. The image of Harry’s cracked glasses flared behind her eyes, his lifeless body sprawled across stone—too still, too quiet.
She tried to step away.
Then something inside her snapped.
She spun.
“ You bastard, ” she spat, her voice shaking with fury. “You absolute coward. How dare you?”
Ron stiffened. “What—?”
“You walked away!” Her voice rang off the walls. “You left! In the middle of winter, with no food, no plan, no Harry ! You left us with nothing but silence!”
“I came back! ”
“You left because it was hard!” she screamed, voice ragged. “Because the locket whispered things you didn’t want to hear! You left when we were scared and starving and falling apart!”
Ron’s face darkened. “And what about you? You knew everything, didn’t you? You always know everything! You’re supposed to be the smart one—the one with the answers!”
“I’m not a goddamn oracle! ” she shouted. “You think I wanted this? You think I haven’t played it over a thousand times in my head already? Wondering what I missed? What I should’ve seen? What I could’ve said?”
Ron didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His throat worked uselessly, the rage faltering beneath a wave of helpless grief.
“I tried to save him,” Hermione whispered, voice trembling. “I gave everything. I made my parents forget my existence. I starved. I was tortured, branded, and violated. And it still wasn’t enough.”
Silence swallowed the room like fog.
Then, unexpectedly, the rocking chair creaked. Andromeda rose.
Her steps were slow, measured. She passed Kingsley, who bowed his head, and paused in the center of the room. Teddy fussed in her arms, little fists batting at her robes.
She looked at them all—Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Bill—then let her eyes rest on Hermione with something between sorrow and admiration.
“You were seventeen,” Andromeda said softly.
Her voice wasn’t judgmental. It wasn’t pitying. It was reverent. Like she was speaking a truth no one else had dared voice.
“Seventeen. Still children. Carrying the burden of a world that should’ve protected you. And we...” She glanced at Kingsley, then at the weary remnants of the Order. “We let you carry it because we were afraid. Because you were brave. Because we thought— hoped —you’d win.”
Her voice cracked, but she didn’t cry.
“You should’ve been learning how to dance, arguing over Quidditch scores. Sneaking out after curfew. Not destroying pieces of a madman’s soul.”
Hermione’s lip trembled. Ginny reached for her hand. Ron was still frozen, pale.
“You were just children,” Andromeda repeated. “And we cruelly placed our hopes on you to correct the sins of our ancestors.”
The words hung in the room like ash.
Hermione swayed slightly. She hadn’t realized she was crying until a tear slid over her cheek and caught on the hem of Harry’s torn cloak, still clutched in her hand.
“We didn’t want to be,” she whispered.
“I know,” Andromeda murmured. “But you were. And you did more than any of us ever could.”
Ron lowered his head, finally seeing her— really seeing her. All of her. The cracked brilliance. The weight she’d carried. The shattered girl beneath the title of brightest witch of her age.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice thick.
Hermione didn’t answer. Not yet. But her shoulders eased.
Andromeda stepped back into the shadows and rocked Teddy gently, his tiny hands curling into sleep.
The fire crackled softly again.
And in the quiet that followed, no one dared say another word.
The war had ended, but the silence afterward felt worse than the screams.
Outside Tonks’ safehouse, the wind rattled dead branches against the windows. Inside, the air was thick with unshed grief, the kind that settled deep in bones and refused to leave.
No one spoke.
No one slept.
Hermione sat on a creaking mattress that smelled faintly of dried nettle and ink. Her fingers were raw where she’d gripped Harry’s cloak too tightly hours before, as if she could squeeze time backward through the threads.
Beside her, Ginny sat curled in on herself. Her face was streaked with soot, her hands motionless. The Weasley fire had dimmed in her eyes.
Across the room, Luna stood barefoot on the worn wooden floor, staring through a cracked pane of glass as though listening to something distant—ancient. Her silver eyes glittered with moonlight and meaning.
Then she spoke.
“The wolf howls backwards…” she murmured, a melody beneath the words. “And the black dog carries the sun.”
Ginny looked up sharply, startled. “What?”
“What was broken must begin again,” Luna said, turning slowly. Her voice was soft, but it cut through the quiet like a blade. “The answer lies in the blood of the betrayed.”
Hermione flinched.
It was prophecy—but not a stranger’s. It was hers.
She hadn’t told anyone. Not about the theory. Not about the object buried at the bottom of her bag, protected by layers of spells and regret. The Time-Turner McGonagall had given her in sixth year—"for study," the professor had said, eyes sharp with something like hope. Hermione had promised to turn it in.
She never had.
And now it pulsed at the edge of her thoughts like a heartbeat, demanding to be used.
Luna turned her gaze to Hermione. Her voice dropped to a hush, the edges of something divine.
“You already know, don’t you?”
Hermione looked down at her lap, where her hands had curled into fists without her noticing. Her throat was dry. Her eyes burned, but no tears came.
Ginny sat up straighter beside her. “Hermione?”
Hermione lifted her head, and the air in the room seemed to shift—less girl, more force of will.
“I’m going back.”
Ginny froze. “Back where?”
“Back in time.”
She rose from the mattress, firelight catching the hollows beneath her eyes. “I can’t stop the war. I can’t stop Voldemort or save James and Lily—not without unraveling everything. Some moments are fixed. But others…” She met Ginny’s gaze, something fierce glinting in her expression. “Others are cracks in the glass.”
Ginny’s voice was barely a whisper. “What are you trying to fix?”
Hermione hesitated—then answered the only way she knew how.
“Harry should have grown up loved.”
That silenced the room more completely than grief ever could.
She walked to the corner and retrieved her bag, unfastening the wards with trembling hands. From within, she drew a cloth-wrapped bundle, unspooled it, and revealed the darkened Time-Turner—its golden sheen faded, its edges etched with runes that hadn’t existed in their time.
Luna gasped softly, a sound like reverence.
Ginny stepped forward. “Hermione… you can’t pretend to be yourself back then. The timelines would collapse.”
“I won’t.” Hermione looked at her, solemn. “I’ll be someone else. Someone new. Someone who can exist without tipping everything over.”
She drew in a breath.
“Rose Evans. Lily and Petunia’s American cousin.”
Ginny blinked. “They didn’t have—”
“No. But they could have. Distant family. A cousin from across the sea. Half-blood, quiet background, no paper trail. Old enough to go unnoticed. Close enough to matter.”
Luna nodded once, dreamily. “Yes. The blood still calls to blood. That’s how you’ll survive the crossing.”
“Exactly,” Hermione said. “It’s not just the Time-Turner. We’ll need blood magic to anchor me. To rewrite the who without destroying the when. ”
She turned toward the others, her voice steadying into purpose.
“Petunia’s blood binds me to the family line. That keeps the protection. But the new name—Evans—ties me to Lily. I’ll be of the blood, but not in the story.”
Ginny’s voice cracked. “But Hermione… how will you know what to do? Where to go?”
She hesitated—just for a second.
“Grimmauld Place.”
Ginny blinked. “You want to go there ?”
“Everything started with Sirius,” Hermione said quietly. “If he had raised Harry—if he'd survived— everything would have changed. I’ll find a way to reach him. I’ll make him see the truth before it’s too late.”
“And if he doesn’t believe you?”
Hermione’s gaze darkened.
“Then I make him believe me.”
Luna came forward and gently placed her hand over the Time-Turner.
“You carry more than time in your hands, Rose,” she said. “You carry all the might-have-beens. Be careful. The past can be greedy.”
“I will,” Hermione whispered.
But her eyes were already distant.
Not mourning.
Planning.
It had started in her sixth year.
McGonagall had summoned Hermione well past curfew. The castle had been quiet, the war still only a murmur under stone and sky. The professor’s eyes were sharper than usual, but her voice softer, as if this moment were already echoing from the future.
She handed Hermione a pouch of dark velvet.
Inside: a Time-Turner—unlike anything sanctioned by the Ministry.
The hourglass gleamed with ancient runes, shifting between Latin and something older still. The chain wasn’t gold but silver braided with midnight, humming with deep, raw time.
“They’ve locked the others away,” McGonagall had said. “This one was... exempt. If anyone has the mind—and the will—it’s you, Miss Granger.”
Hermione hadn’t understood. Not then.
But after the war, she did.
She and Ginny returned to the wreckage of Grimmauld Place, its walls breathing faint whispers of what once was—family curses, half-spoken regrets, and fire-charred furniture. The old Order archives, buried beneath the staircase behind two protection charms, still pulsed with locked-away knowledge.
They began digging.
Through crumbling ledgers, encoded scrolls, and blood-bound grimoires, they pieced together the unspoken histories of Sirius and Regulus—the power in the veins of the House of Black, twisted and old.
And from Andromeda, they heard the rest.
Sirius’ rebellion. His grief. His undying loyalty.
“He would’ve died for James,” Andromeda had said. “He would’ve died for Harry.”
That’s when Hermione made the decision.
“I’m not lying to him,” she told Ginny one night, as they sat cross-legged in front of the cracked Black family tapestry. “No riddles, no seer’s mask. If I want Sirius to trust me, I have to tell him the truth.”
Ginny blinked. “You’re going to tell him you’re from the future?”
“Yes,” Hermione said, her voice firm. “If anyone would understand what it means to fight for a better future… It’s him.”
But to blend in, she needed more than truth.
She needed a name.
Rose Evans—Lily’s and Petunia’s American cousin. An identity the past could hold onto, one the magic would accept. And to make it real, she needed blood.
Evans blood.
The search for Petunia Dursley wasn’t easy. She had vanished after the Battle of Hogwarts, slipping out of Ministry protection and into obscurity.
But Grimmauld Place remembered.
One of the Order’s old logs listed a non-magical safehouse on the coast of Ireland, used for evacuations during Voldemort’s return—code-named “Ash Hollow.” The name Petunia D. was listed there, in Lupin’s tidy script, months after the war ended.
They left the next morning.
June 1998/ Somewhere in Ireland
Ash Hollow stood on the edge of a cliffside, wrapped in sea winds and old enchantments. Ivy clawed its brickwork. The wards didn’t recognize them, but Ginny’s blood and a Black family ring forced the door open.
They found her in the kitchen.
Grey in the hair, glassy eyes, same pristine apron.
Petunia Evans Dursley froze when she saw them.
“No,” she breathed. “No, no—I’m done with your world —”
“You don’t get to be done,” Ginny said coldly, stepping forward. “Not when you hid while we fought.”
Petunia’s mouth snapped shut.
Hermione stepped beside her. Her voice didn’t waver.
“Harry’s dead,” she said. “He died fighting Voldemort so people like you could keep pretending none of it was your problem.”
Petunia flinched.
“We buried him, Petunia. We held his broken body. Because everyone assumed he would fix things.”
Silence. Then a soft, strangled whisper.
“I didn’t ask him to.”
Hermione’s voice cracked.
“But you didn’t stop it, either. You left him in a cupboard. You made him feel unworthy of love. And yet somehow, he still fought for all of us.”
Petunia sat down hard in a chair, her breath shallow.
Hermione pulled out the ritual scroll, already soaked in anchoring runes.
“We need your blood,” she said. “To create a magical identity that ties to your family line. I’ll become Rose Evans . No one will know who I am—just that I’m related to Lily.”
Petunia looked up. Her eyes were raw, but her voice was bitter.
“Why would I help you ?”
Ginny stepped forward.
“Because it’s too late to help him. ”
A beat.
Then another.
Petunia reached for the ritual dagger with a shaking hand.
Later that night, as the wind howled across the sea, Hermione took the blood-soaked parchment, the silver-threaded Time-Turner, and a name no one remembered.
She would go back.
She would tell Sirius everything.
And this time… she would make sure Harry James Potter was loved. Before he was ever marked.
The theory was imperfect. Dangerous. But it could work.
Fixed points in time—immutable events, like James and Lily’s deaths—couldn’t be undone. But time could branch. Futures could be rewritten.
They would send Hermione back—not as herself, but reborn through ritual and bloodline.
They chose Petunia Evans’ blood—distant enough to rewrite history, close enough to anchor her.
The spell was ancient, buried in the margins of a Black family grimoire. It required sacrifice. It required belief.
And thus Rose Evans was born, her unruly mahogany curls became wavy crimson red, and her chocolate brown eyes turned lighter moss, almost a mix of Harry’s Green and her own.
The ritual was carved into the earth beneath the safehouse, runes etched with precision, candles flickering with magic that felt older than life itself.
Ginny stood beside her, eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “Do you remember what we promised?”
Hermione nodded. “That we wouldn’t do this out of guilt. Only love.”
She drew the blade.
Blood fell onto the Time-Turner. Runes glowed. The circle ignited.
Magic twisted.
Ginny’s voice cracked as the world began to pull apart: “Find him. Find Harry. Save them both.”
The last thing Hermione saw was the golden hourglass shattering into light.
November 2nd, 1981 – Somewhere in Ireland
She hit the ground hard.
Rain slammed into her like a curse—cold, merciless, drenching her to the bone before she could even breathe.
Her knees scraped across slick cobblestones, and her palms burned as she caught herself. The alley around her stank of rot, soot, and stale tobacco. Smoke curled from the chimneys above like dying thoughts.
Everything was wrong.
Her limbs felt longer, lean but still strong. Her skin hummed with untamed magic, like fire trapped just beneath the surface. Her breath came ragged and uneven—too fast, too young, too new. This body had been built for a war not yet fought.
She staggered to her feet, grabbing the brick wall beside her. It pulsed with age and cold. Something fluttered past her boots and caught against her ankle.
A newspaper.
Soaked, crumpled, plastered to the pavement.
She bent down with trembling fingers.
BLACK BETRAYS POTTERS!
MURDERS PETER PETTIGREW IN STREET DUEL!
The headline sliced into her, sharp and cold. Her throat closed. Her magic flared wildly, scorching the tips of her fingers as she tried to tear the paper in half.
“No,” she choked, shaking her head. “No, no— I’m not too late. I can’t be—”
But the date stared back at her, unforgiving.
November 2nd. One day after the Potters fell.
One day, after the Ministry declared Sirius Black a murderer.
The storm raged around her, drowning the sound of her heart shattering in her chest. Rain blurred the ink, but not fast enough. Not before she saw it:
Baby Harry was orphaned. Sirius Black taken alive—awaiting trial. Azkaban.
Hermione sank to her knees.
Not yet screaming. Not yet crying. Just shaking —with cold, fury, and the weight of everything she hadn’t stopped.
She curled over herself, forehead against stone, and let the rain pummel her spine like penance.
Then she lifted her head.
Her voice, when it came, was low. Ragged. Steeled.
“I came to save you, Sirius.”
She rose on unsteady legs. Her hands were clenched so tightly, her nails dug into her palms.
“I don’t care if the world calls you a traitor. I know who you are.”
The wind howled around her, tugging at her cloak like it wanted her to fall again.
“I swear,” she whispered, eyes burning with fire. “I’ll find a way.”
Her fingers brushed the chain beneath her collar—the Time-Turner, still warm against her skin.
She had a name now. A body that didn’t belong to history.
Rose Evans.
And she had a mission no one would believe.
Hermione Granger was gone.
But Rose?
Rose had work to do.