In the Turning

When they gave Hermione her Time-Turner again, she knew they were losing the war.

She could have attempted optimism, at the start of the battles; she could stick to determination, even so grim as things became; but when Dumbledore, still carrying the silent feline body of McGonagall, took Hermione aside and pressed something gold and glittering into her hand, she knew they were hanging by chances as slim as the chain that held her hourglass.

"Some things cannot be changed," he whispered. "I hold... too much proof of that. But go. Right what you can. Damage what you can." His eyes were bright, and too, too sharp. "You know what must be done."

Hermione, feeling ill, looped the chain around her neck.

Time spun forwards, backwards, sideways for her, looping dizzily as she set to work. She rescued some few wizards; she recovered the dead; she discovered once, then twelve times over, how they'd mustered enough wizards for one barely-successful skirmish against the Death Eaters. Her own voice rang out around her in a sickening rush of Crucios, screaming at herself for her own crime, forcing her to count how many times she was doomed to repeat it.

Spinning on and on, the hourglass showed her what she'd already seen: battles won and lost, partners already buried. She delivered messages to those about to die, found them later and hid their weapons to be recovered later, before they could be stolen off the field. She saw, from a hundred angles or more, the deaths of her friends. She saw herself sobbing over Ron, then spun the glass and met him again, three hours before, at the moment she planted the potion capsule that would erupt under the hands of the Death Eater who hauled him away for some obscene ritual.

She watched perhaps a thousand times how that man screamed as he died.

Damage what you can, she heard, over and over, as the timelines kinked and knotted, as she dodged her own specter as much as those of the enemy, as she plotted and planned and tried to remember when she was, where she was going, what on earth she could do.

But then McGonagall -- still alive at this moment, ready to transform and sneak away into what would turn out to be a trap, and Hermione wanted to stop her, but she couldn't she hasn't she can't -- pulled her aside and whispered the story of a capture Hermione simply couldn't bear. She felt something inside her finally unravel, and ran.

She had no idea of how far she'd gone until it was clear her feet remembered, regardless of whether her mind did, where the house had been. There wasn't anything now but scattered timbers; there hadn't been anything significant here for years, not since he'd left it after their sixth year. But it had been a safe place to go, once. Before.

When she saw it again, she knew what she had to do.

Hermione choked back a heartbroken sound, then lifted the hourglass to spin it over and over, faster and faster, until the world blurred in frantic reverse. She collapsed nearly a decade earlier, worn and sick and too delirious to notice when a concerned voice called for her, and steady, strong hands lifted her up, carrying her into the house.

---

"Ah, you're awake," she heard. "I was beginning to worry. Here, wait -- steady--"

Hermione had sat up too quickly. The blankets, worn but soft, slid halfway to the floor and covered the feet of the man who was holding her upright, steadying her as she tried not to vomit. For a long while she just sat still, breathing in deep gulps of air. Eventually the nausea of the temporal dislocation faded. Hermione realized she'd sagged against his shoulder, while his arm curled around hers.

"Just breathe," he said.

She remembered that voice. Quiet, gentle, firm -- the tone of a professor, still, for he was not so far out of Hogwarts, not really. Some corner of her mind, permanently sensible and detached no matter how chaotic things were, did the math. If she'd spun as she thought, it would be a few months after he'd resigned from school....

"Do you want to sit up," he asked, "or lie back again?"

She thought about it. "Sit up, I think."

Her voice was rough and oddly broken to her own ears -- certainly much older than the one he'd have known. He made no signs of recognizing it, or her, as he calmly plumped the pillows against the headboard and helped her settle against them. But when she did, it was impossible not to look up at his careworn but much, much younger face, and whisper, "Remus."

He looked troubled that she'd said it. He closed his eyes, but was calm again when they opened. "Yes." He cleared his throat. "What should I call you?"

Her one-handed grip on the blankets tightened at the careful phrasing. "Do you know who I am?"

He looked down at her other hand. Hermione did the same, then hastily turned away. The Time-Turner was safely tucked back under her shirt, but she'd managed to imprint its shape into her palm.

"I suspected," Remus said evenly, "it would be safest not to theorize."

Hermione said nothing. Through the open window beside her, she could suddenly hear birds, and the simple, musical sound startled her. Instead of replying, she merely stared outside, straining her vision for any signs of fluttering wings.

"I can make us some tea," Remus said behind her. Hermione's dry throat suddenly ached. Tea. She wanted to cry.

As a breeze blew through the branches and loosed a beam of sunlight across her lap, she could see the sweep of a robin's wings, plain and brown but utterly beautiful as the little bird took off in flight.

She turned back to Remus and managed a nod.

"Just call me Jane," she finally said.

---

They talked in fits and starts while they ate -- Hermione had to keep reconsidering her answers. Why she was there. How she was feeling. How old she was, even. She had to think about it. She'd finished an entire cucumber sandwich and thoughtfully licked the last grains from her fingers before she'd calculated her travels and settled on twenty-three. It seemed close enough.

"I'm still a bit older than you," Remus said in reply, chuckling softly. "More than, actually. But no matter." He poured the last of the tea into Hermione's cup. "I... do wish I knew what I could do to help."

Hermione looked down. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I... didn't know where else to go."

"How did you know to look for me?"

The real answer flashed through her head: A long time ago, I overheard Sirius say how he found you here -- will find you here. I knew it was your sanctuary before you went to Grimmauld Place. I knew you'd hoped to make it home again, before the war broke out. I knew you'd be here if I came back. I needed--

There was an odd moment of silence.

"A friend told me," she said eventually. "I had something to deliver. He said you'd be here." It wasn't exactly a lie.

Remus gave her a long, scrutinizing look. She tried to meet his eyes without flinching. "What would that delivery be, Miss Jane?"

She did flinch, then. She couldn't help it. "Later," she said. "Once I have enough energy to explain."

He kept staring for a moment, then got up. Hermione found herself watching him, studying the strange, practiced grace of the way he moved -- control over everything, she thought. Keeping himself in check, and never letting himself be anything less than calmly self-possessed.

Knowing what was coming, she wanted to scream, but the only evidence was that her teacup shivered a little on its saucer. Remus glanced at it before the sound echoed off into stillness.

"Would you like to walk?" he suggested. "I could do with some fresh air."

Hermione took one last sip of the tea, noting its taste, the lingering hint of cream on her tongue, then nodded. Remus helped her to her feet, then led her to the door.

It was bright outside, but getting cold; autumn, she thought, if she'd calculated correctly. While Remus talked she heard the words "September" and "things I'm going to finish around here before winter," as if he were dropping hints to confirm it. The details registered, even if she was still too overwhelmed to make sense of everything at once.

It felt fresh here, the air untainted, and the grass beneath her bare feet (she'd given her shoes to Ginny, who'd ruined hers on a mission six years from now) was so soft it almost shocked her. She was breathing more deeply, the tension easing from her shoulders. The world felt new again. It was, of course, certainly younger.

"Pardon me for guessing," Remus said, catching her attention. His voice was quiet and somewhat uneasy. "But did you come here to... recover?"

She looked at him, almost startled. He made a face and glanced straight ahead instead, toward the distant road. "You just look as if you've been unwell for a long time," he said. "And of course you'll forgive me for saying so, but that's not a leap in logic when a young woman collapses on your doorstep."

"I did need to get away," she said, rather slowly.

When she ran a hand through her hair and discovered it wasn't snarled, Remus looked at her again. "I tended to that," he said. "Cleaned your clothes as best I could, too, although it still works best the traditional way. And I'm... not sure they'd stand a full laundering."

"Not sure I would either," she said. The weary joke made him crack a smile.

Remus turned and leaned his lanky frame against a tall tree stump. Hermione looked at him, seeing him very differently now than she had when she was thirteen -- and perhaps it wasn't only that but the years that had worn on him, too, that made the younger Lupin catch her attention so sharply. He wasn't conventionally handsome in any timeframe, but she was looking now at the fall of hair across his eyes, the fainter, fewer scars, and the relative ease of his stance... She considered it all, and felt herself go momentarily dumb.

When Remus opened his mouth to speak, he let her off that hook only to hang her on another.

"What is it you need?" he asked softly.

"I have... to deliver something," she repeated, feeling the weight of her intended task press on her. She tried not to let it show. "I've been working for the Order--"

She saw a look of almost suspicious shock cross his face before she remembered it hadn't reformed yet. Silently cursing herself, she corrected it -- too late -- to, "Working for Dumbledore. And I need a place to lay low for a little while. Regain my strength." She looked up at him. "I hope I could impose for just a...."

"You're welcome to it," he broke in. His expression was still concerned, although he'd put one hand on her shoulder to reassure her. "Although... I should warn you that the full moon is in three nights."

Hermione blinked at him. His expression stayed steady.

"I know you're aware of the situation," Remus said.

"You do know who I am, don't you," she said dully.

His hand moved from her shoulder to briefly touch the hourglass beneath the fabric of her shirt; he didn't say a word about it, though, except, "Anyone who's been sent by Dumbledore at this time of the month would know. And he trusts his charges."

Hermione didn't bother to say she'd sent herself. Instead she watched as he turned and went back to the house, while clutching her hand over the Time-Turner and breathing just a little too fast.

---

He had the Wolfsbane. Whatever had happened between him and Professor Snape before Remus' resignation from Hogwarts, Snape had obviously consented to leave Remus with enough potion to get by. Hermione spied the vials in the back of his bookcase while she was settling on his sofa for sleep, and made note of how many were available -- four months' worth, it seemed.

In the back of her head, she did some very quick calculating, and by the time she'd fallen asleep, she'd come to uneasy terms with her plan.

Remus woke her early, but kindly, with a light hand on her shoulder; she heard, under her own yawn, the explanation that he had to leave for work in town. She nodded sleepily and half-turned onto her side to ponder the room around her. It seemed odd thinking of ordinary jobs, but they existed, back then... back now. It paid for the tea he'd already made her. She blinked at the wisps of steam rising from the kettle.

He always had trouble keeping jobs, she suddenly remembered, and felt guilty about delaying him.

"You could have taken the bed," he suggested. "I'd be more than willing to take the couch tomorrow...."

"You'll be sore already," Hermione said, thinking of the moon. Remus gave her a sharp glance, but they both knew she was right. He sighed, just barely aloud.

"I'll give you what I have to when you're back," she said, answering his unspoken question. "There's no sense in having it on you all day."

Remus didn't seem to know what to say. He merely went to collect his things and shrugged on a coat before returning to her side, resting that same hesitant touch on her shoulder, and heading out. Hermione listened to the door click shut behind him and stayed on the sofa for a long time afterward before getting up, keeping the blanket pulled around her.

She'd never been in Remus' home, not here -- not before they all took to Grimmauld Place, which was very different. That had been the Black family home from roof to cellar. This... this was Remus, pure and simple.... Remus, before the world fell apart. As she'd never really known him. She padded off the rug and onto the bare hardwood floor, staring at what was around her: bookshelves, crowded with volumes of magic, history, creatures, and myths; a watercolor painting of the sea, unsigned; a desk, half-covered in papers. Hermione gingerly lifted a letter Remus had addressed to Kingsley Shacklebolt ("Kingsley," it said simply, "I've received your notes on the reported sightings of Sirius Black..."), and saw beneath it a faded, water-stained photograph -- one of Remus and Sirius as teenagers, arms slung around each other, waving at the camera.

Hermione watched it until Sirius turned to nuzzle against his neck, then blushed and put it down.

She could hear Remus' clock ticking across the room; the faucet in the kitchen slowly but inexorably dripped. That could have been fixed with a simple spell, she thought, but he clearly had other things on his mind. There were two books on the desk, one opened to a page about the First War. Hermione read the passage, shuddering. They knew things were starting again.

Feeling cold despite the blanket, Hermione turned toward the bookcase she'd looked at earlier. Standing on tiptoe -- Remus was much taller than she -- she reached for the vials of Wolfsbane, each of them carefully measured and corked off. She could restore the seals, once she'd broken them; it would be a simple matter to drain off just enough from each to have enough for her spell, and hopefully not disrupt his next transformations....

Hermione weighed her chances in one hand and a vial in the other, and finally sighed, going to the kitchen for a glass. She didn't really have any choice.

The ingredients of the spell rang in her head as she poured out the first drops of potion:

Wolfsbane, and three more herbs, and a sand grain from my hourglass....

---

When Remus returned, night had fallen, and she'd fallen asleep. It was the moonlight that woke her, shining into her eyes as he opened the door.

"Jane?" he asked softly.

Hermione stirred, pushing her hair back with one hand and covering a yawn with the other. It made her blanket slip off her shoulders, leaving her shivering in nothing more substantial than her battered t-shirt. Remus, seeing her shoulders shake, closed the door and raised his wand.

"Foveo," he chanted.

Hermione felt the air around her grow warmer, curling gentle draughts around her shoulders and slim body. She sighed, comforted and troubled by it all at once. "Sorry," she murmured. "Fell asleep..."

A sudden memory of the day made her jolt fully awake as Remus crossed the room. She cast a frantic look at herself for evidence. Her hands, though, were empty, and she'd managed to scourge the stain -- and her fifth vial was now tucked safely away.....

"Jane, are you all right?"

Hermione leaned forward on her knees, shuddering again. She didn't want to answer yes or no, or say much of anything at all, but found herself whispering something regardless: "It's just too much," she said to the floor.

Remus knelt down in front of the chair, gently clasping her hands in his. The touch, tender and undemanding as it was, made her gasp back a sob. He was being so kind, and he didn't have the faintest hint of what was wrong, or what was coming --

"I can't do this," she said, tears starting to slide down her cheeks.

One hand lifted, cupping her cheek instead and brushing the teardrop away with one thumb. "If you told me --"

"It would make things worse."

"Was afraid of that." Remus' voice was darkly wry and regretful all at once.

For a while they just sat in the darkened room, touching carefully as if they both feared they'd break each other. Hermione tilted her head down just slightly, brushing her hair across his arm; his other hand lifted to comb through the curls. No one had touched her like that since Ron, years from now and too long ago, and it broke her heart, even as she felt the differences -- longer fingers, smoother motions, a tender but curious caress at the end. Hermione finally gave in and pressed her cheek against his palm -- or meant to.

Somehow she kept turning, and it became a slow, soft kiss.

She heard Remus' indrawn breath at the touch of her lips, but otherwise there was still silence until she pulled back slightly, breathing against his skin. When he made an unidentifiable sound, she turned back toward him. She knew she'd intentionally brushed her lips across his thumb, which lingered there.

The look she received when she met his eyes made every nerve tingle. Remus' eyes were unreadable at the best of times, but now they smoldered, deep and warm and slightly dangerous. She could sense the passion there, the strength of the wolf --

--Hermione, there were three men slaughtered before another took a fire-hexed whip to--

"No," Hermione gasped aloud, shattering the intrusion of McGonagall's voice.

She shook so suddenly and desperately at the memory that Remus gripped her shoulders, looking afraid for her. She let him help her off the chair, pull her into his arms and against the length of his body... too thin, always too thin, but so was she, now, and she'd never known how warm he was....

"Ssh," he whispered. "Careful."

Furious tears were burning her eyes; she buried her face in his shoulder before he could see. Remus didn't say a word. He only pressed his cheek against her curls and held her, hands still and stable on her back, keeping her there until the tremors had passed. Only then did they wander. They slid in slow, comforting circles at first, then made longer caresses as her own hands stretched out to touch him....

I'm sorry, she wanted to say, even while she lifted her face to his. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean any of this. I just don't know what else to do....

The words were silenced before she could speak; his fingers had slipped beneath her shirt, tracing fire across her skin, and her head had tilted, her lips parted, breathing out a moan into his mouth. There was nothing else to say, then, after he'd kissed her; their bodies spoke a far simpler language than their minds, and all matters of time and tragedy melted away.

Before Hermione could think much farther than the single syllable of oh...., he'd pulled her into the bedroom, and he stopped her there with a finger to her lips before she could even say his name.

"Not another word," he told her.

She nodded, following him onto the bed. He was already pulling off his shirt, revealing the marks of his own claws; she reached out with trembling fingers to trace their paths, making him breathe harder under her touch. When she brushed across a nipple, he hissed in a breath; she looked first at his face, then below his waist, and swallowed hard at the sight of his arousal.

She waited there until his eyes opened again and he reached for her shirt, slowly pulling it over her head. Once it was discarded, he gently took her breasts in his hands, feeling the warm weight and caressing her skin until the nipples stood taut, and as sensitive as his. She was nearly moaning by the time his touch had drifted over them and toward the center, where they --

--oh, no--

-- took up the hourglass...

"Don't," she gasped.

His gaze caught hers in reply, flaring bright. She shivered as his hands let the necklace go, then she let him continue, wordlessly, as he reached around to unclasp it from her neck.

You can't free me from this, she wanted to cry -- but he'd unfastened it already, and spilled it onto the pile of her discarded clothes.

The sudden loss of the hourglass nearly paralyzed her. She shut her eyes, one hand clutching at the empty space between her breasts, until he uncurled each finger one by one and kissed them, kissed the bare, burned skin beneath (and when had that happened? How did it actually damage me?), moved up to her throat until she was moaning under the kisses and licks and small, wordless whispers.

When he pulled her down and unfastened what was left of her clothing, she made no move to stop him.

Not since -- not until-- the ones she'd lost, she hadn't done this, but her body remembered how, even while her mind was flashing through too many images of what she'd done and forgotten and revisited: under a bridge and in the barracks and thinking we were about to die, the first time at school, the last time under the stars, easy times and difficult times and too many times because there wasn't anything else to cling to--

She gasped sharply when his fingers slipped between her legs, finding the slick warmth there and stroking until her hips found a rhythm against him. She tried to push everything else from her mind but this. Everything but him --

--red hair, freckles on every inch of skin, laughter as she tried to kiss her way across every one--

He bent closer, kissing her neck and marking her skin with his teeth, not as gently as he could have. More sharply than Ron ever had.

Her eyes flew open, finally focusing in her shock -- soft brown hair, a long, lean body above hers, against hers, pressing close where his fingers had been. Her hips arched up, pressing back, until he made a low, quiet sound against her throat. It rumbled all the way through her, sparking warnings and desires all at once, and sharp awareness of what this was.

"Remus," she gasped, as his fingers gripped her hips.

She moved when he did, taking him in as he slid forward with one long, smooth thrust -- and nearly melted then and there, her body burning with the need for more, for him to go deeper, again and again. He seemed to read it in her face, in the desperate way she kissed him, and kept moving until she couldn't breathe for the need for him to fill her completely, in between every cell and into every hollowed space --

I'll take you in and keep you, she thought, arching high against him, nearly out of control. Out of time and away from all this -- just don't make me finish what I came here to do -- just burn away in me until we're one...

Her orgasm took her all at once, pulsing low and dark until she cried out. She could feel her muscles tighten around him and her hips twist up against his, but Remus' cry, following only moments later, echoed in her ears until everything else was gone.

Jane would have been easier to gasp -- all long vowels, smooth sounds, no interruptions. It wasn't the name he used.

It could have been the exhausted daze of orgasm that rendered her speechless, or maybe the way Remus had folded down against her, cradled against her heart, but either way, Hermione didn't have the heart to tell him no.

---

Remus was still sleeping when Hermione slipped out from under him, and reached for the pile of her cast-off clothes. Under her jeans was the Time-Turner. In the left pocket was the vial of potion.

She tried not to think of anything except process, not the end goal, as she reached for the vial.

Moving step by isolated step, she removed the items, dressed herself, went to retrieve her wand, then returned to sit beside him. For a while that was all she did: watching the moonlight silver his skin and caress his hair. Soon, though, she realized she was wishing she could apologize for everything.

It's not your fault, she thought, as she watched him shift against the rumpled sheets. I never would have chosen this for you unless there was no other way. But you wouldn't have wanted the other....

He quieted when she touched his hand, and settled back almost peacefully. Hermione waited until she could trust her own hands to be stable before re-clasping the Time-Turner around her neck.

Once that was done, she took up the vial of potion. Floating in its center was a single golden speck, gleaming even through the liquid, chaining the magic of the hourglass to the potion. She hoped it would work. She hoped the hourglass would still work.

She wondered if she was about to destroy everything.

She put one hand to Remus' shoulder, and just like he'd done for her that morning, gently shook him awake.

"Mmh?" he murmured, disoriented. Hermione shut her eyes and tried to concentrate.

"Remus," she said. "It's time to take your potion."

Half-asleep, she thought, he might not protest that she was a few hours early for the first dose. He might forgive it as her being overprotective. He might just forget. He might -- he must -- because she couldn't bear to wait any longer --

"Oh," he mumbled, and sat up. Hermione felt her stomach clench.

"Here." She offered him the vial, and pulled at the hourglass' chain with one finger. It began, in its way for shared time travel, to lengthen.

Remus looked at the vial, made a face, and popped the cork out with his thumb. They could both smell it -- the odor was slightly different than usual, and she wondered if he'd notice, worried that he'd stop --

She tugged at the chain again.

Without hesitation, Remus tilted his head back and drank the contents of the vial in one gulp.

For a second there was no reaction. Hermione watched, waiting, and growing ever more nervous...

Then he clapped his hand to his throat and began to choke out a gasp.

Hermione threw the lengthened chain around his neck, gripped the hourglass' dial, and spun it into a blur. As time began contorting, she shouted the words that would move exactly what she wanted through time --

--the potion, not us. The contents of the potion, into Remus' body, years from now. The potion that's going to stop the wolf when we need it to most--

Remus pitched his head back and loosed a terrible sound, half-howl, half-scream. Hermione watched his body jerk as it tried to fight the potion's dislocation; she choked back her own scream at the way it was hurting him --

-- and the hourglass stopped spinning.

The spell finished with a sharp crack, nearly throwing Remus over. Hermione whipped the chain up from around his neck before he fell. He was breathing, but roughly, his hands shaking on the bed; she leaned forward, clutching at them to try to keep them still.

"Remus," she whimpered. "Remus. Please."

"What.. did you do?"

She couldn't talk. She just held on until he lurched up, wrenching his hands away from hers so sharply it hurt. Hermione accepted the pain without a word, making herself meet his eyes.

"What did you do?" he demanded again.

"It was the only way," she whispered. "We had to give it to you before you transformed, but it had to go to work when you were already a w--"

Her voice trailed off when she saw the betrayal in his eyes.

"This was the work of the Order?" He looked hollowed and haunted; the expression ripped at something in Hermione's heart. "Do you know what that is going to do to me?"

Hermione gripped her wand like it was her only defense, wanting somehow to explain before she did the last, inevitable spell. She wanted, so desperately, to be forgiven before then -- and knew it was hopeless. "I know. I'm sorry. Please...."

"I should have known. You're not -- you can't be H--"

She couldn't bear to hear him say it.

Before another word could pass, she raised her wand and shouted "Obliviate!" It rippled out into the room, striking Remus senseless and shivering every molecule of the air, effectively suspending and reordering reality.

And in those moments of disorientation while the spell wiped her from his memory, Hermione ran from the room, already spinning her hourglass. In one more blur of reality, she stepped out of time, fleeing the house and the year and everything she'd just done.

---

Being Hermione, she couldn't go straight back to her starting point. She spent what felt like years in a tangle of time travel and Apparation, following Remus through time and back, making sure she hadn't thrown anything askew.

She seemed to have Obliviated him well. Nothing in the years between their meeting and the war had been disrupted. She saw him in Grimmauld Place; she saw him at the Ministry; she stood back, helpless, as he watched Sirius die. She followed through the Order meetings, through transformations, through the first battles. All was as it should be -- which meant all was wrong, but as it was written. Time, as doomed as it was, was undisturbed.

Hermione watched, and then kept going. She moved backwards, finding him in childhood -- watching the boy he'd been, the wolf that marked him, the bite that nearly killed him. She found him on the Hogwarts train, while disguised as a candy-seller. She watched him meet James, and Sirius, and Peter, while she hid from view, crouched behind a column in the stairwell. She ghosted Hogwarts for years, unseen, as she watched them throw pranks that put the Weasleys to shame. Watched the boys learn to transform for Remus' full-moon nights. Watched Sirius betray him, and then win him back. Saw final exams. Celebrations. Two boys in a tangle of limbs and desperate kisses, for one last time before adulthood and the impending war.

She watched Remus' life go by, until she reached the years she knew, and knew she had no time left. She was getting older, and knew she couldn't do anything more until the end.

Feeling travel-weary, time-weary, almost too tired to think, she left the school and found her place in a quiet field nearby, gazing into a cloudy sky as she took the hourglass in hand.

It was peaceful here, now. In her own timeline she was just about to begin school. The Boy Who Lived was a curiosity in a history book; the wizarding wars she'd read about felt far away and strange. This wasn't a battlefield. This was only possibility.

Hermione took a last breath of clean air.

"I'm sorry," she said again, and counted hourglass spins.

The world around her whirled through the years of her life -- school and war and love and dismay, all the mistakes that brought them toward the endgame, a fate they couldn't change no matter how they tried to reorder the past. She could make her changes, right what she could, damage what she could --

--but in the end all she could do was reorder death.

Time split open like a rotten fruit and dropped Hermione into the mire.

Above her, the blackened sky erupted into spellfire; something dead dropped beside her, smoldering. Hermione instinctively covered her head and stumbled forward, wand brandished before her, knowing she had to get to the tower on the hill.

She'd seen the tower whisk into existence during her time dislocation -- it had been built by the enemy, to shoot death and destruction into the valley below. No one had been able to get close enough to do any damage. Built of stone and reinforced with spells, surrounded by guards, protected with wards that would kill anyone who wasn't prepared, it was impenetrable to anyone who wasn't desperate, or crazy, or on the wrong side.

Hermione burst through the wards without a second's hesitation. And as she thought back on the betrayal on Remus' face, listening to him say she couldn't be Hermione if she'd worked that spell on him, she screamed her pain into an Unforgivable curse against every guard around the tower.... and, in a heartbreaking sort of way, proved him right with every falling corpse.

She didn't stop to think about it. She just ran headlong through the door.

She heard the snarl before she saw what was voicing it -- the snarl, and the screams, and the sounds of bloody destruction. There were three men slaughtered, she remembered McGonagall say, before another took a fire-hexed whip to him. I can't say I regret the dead Death Eaters, but I don't know if they killed him with that whip, or got him to the Tower. If he gets that far, he'll kill all the prisoners. Nothing can stop the rage in this state. They set the wolf loose to kill, and they're going to use him.

Hermione rounded the curved hallway that led into the main chamber. Beyond, she could hear screaming. She wasn't sure she wanted to know what had already happened --

But she had to complete the spell she'd cast all those years ago, in order to end it.

In the same instant she came to a stop, illuminated by the light of the full moon as it streamed through the tower windows, she snapped the Time-Turner from her neck.

"Remus!" she screamed.

The werewolf, bloody-mouthed, looked up at her with wild eyes and roared as she smashed the hourglass on the floor.

As if she'd set off a timebomb, and perhaps she had, the world around them quaked; memories and moments splintered off in shards, shooting sunlight and exam questions and kisses and midnight hunts and visions of the war, too many visions of the war, through the air. Remus' memories, captured in her travels and through the spell -- through the altered Wolfsbane that would force the werewolf back to human form -- glimmered in the air and then imploded into the space where the wolf, then the man, had stood.

The force of it knocked Hermione to the ground. When she staggered upright again, she saw Remus crumpled on the floor, unmoving.

She fought down her dizziness and crawled forward to take him in her arms.

"Remus?" she whispered.

He blinked at her. "The potion," he said, his voice almost too broken to understand. But she knew. He'd figured it out. "It's...."

Snape's voice snapped out in her memory, filling in his words: Of course there are theories on how to modify Wolfsbane, but most are utterly mad. If you try to force the transformation either way, you'll likely destroy the host body in the process. Besides, how could you force-feed it to the wolf in the first place?

Hermione glanced at the mess of broken time on the stone beneath them, and shut her eyes.

"I know," she whispered. "I know."

Around them, the prisoners -- who'd been put in this room with the wolf, for sport -- had staggered to their feet. She recognized faces, but only in the abstract. It didn't seem to make any difference. In her arms, Remus was slowly shuddering, in long, uncontrollable seizures of decay. She'd saved the lives of everyone around them. In the process, his was forfeit.

It's not your fault, she thought again. I never would have chosen this for you unless there was no other way. But you wouldn't have wanted the other ending. You wouldn't have wanted to wake... to know you'd done this...

Remus coughed. She held him close, reaching for her wand with the other hand. He looked so old, she thought. It seemed impossible for him to look this old.

Somewhere above them was a horrible voice: Why has the creature stopped?

"I am not," Remus whispered, "a creature."

Hermione bent over him, trying not to cry.

The quaking she thought she'd felt before was a reality now, shuddering through the floor in long, dangerous waves. Voldemort, she thought. He's going to take everything down if he can.

"Where are our wands?" someone was crying out. "We're all unarmed--"

Hermione raised her own wand. Remus looked up at her as she quietly readied herself. "I'm not going down without a fight," she said.

"I... suppose I am," he said quietly.

Hermione shook her head, shocked. "No," she told him. "Never."

Never.

You never gave up, not even when the pain was greatest. You held years of strength against the beast, and that fierce grace of yours that you never let go of, even now. You kept your loyalty to your friends. Your dedication to those who fought to take Voldemort down. You willingly served in two bloody, desperate wars, and kept loving those who needed you despite all the darkness you saw. I watched it all. You're not going down without anything.

She couldn't say it all, couldn't find her voice, but she prayed he'd understand.

As the prisoners from the Order gathered around her, one crouching down on the opposite side of Remus' shaking form, Hermione felt the earth tremble one last time, knocking dirt and gravel and dangerously sharp debris over everyone. When the temblor stopped, a low, strange sound rose up to take its place. It was the dark hum of rising magic, the knell of deadly forces amassing their strength at last.

She felt Remus shudder and moan, and knew she had to let him go before the wave broke.

"It's time," she said, her voice trembling.

He didn't move, hardly breathed, but she thought she heard the sigh of a simple, easy name: "Jane...."

Hermione took Remus' hand and whispered one small spell -- an Unforgivable in its only forgivable form, gently cast, fading from her lips and into his damaged body like a lullaby. It only took moments. The quiet words weren't heard by another soul in the room, except for the man across from her, whose hand clasped over hers when Remus went still.

They huddled together in heartbroken silence until Hermione raised her eyes to see Harry's.

"It's time," he echoed, and rose.

Hermione lingered one moment longer over memory -- dusty books and photographs, classrooms, classmates, people who loved despite despair, her life and his intertwined -- before she rose too, to meet their enemy.

And as her heel turned in the sand of her Time-Turner, she hoped she'd find her end in this too.