Turn Back Time

If I Could Turn Back Time...

She had thought at first that she had been dreaming, so had given it no mind. The shadowed figure blocking out the encroaching dawn as it leant over her, deft fingers plucking at the clasp of the chain, her hair catching in it a little as he drew it around her neck...and then soft grey light as he stole from the room and her eyelids fluttered open.

It was the lightest of pendants, really, on the finest of chains. Strange that something of such huge potential should be so insubstantial, so delicate that as she arose and readied herself for the day that she should not notice its absence. They asked her why she wore it still, if she did not intend to use it; she simply smiled and said she liked it for itself. It was quite safe, anyway; they feared she would have an accident, maybe tumble down the stairs and be thrown backwards in time, suffering a fate worse than death by falling in love with an adolescent Snape...but they did not credit her with sufficient sense and so she did not tell them that the time turner had been charmed not to turn.

"Good morning, dear!" said Mrs Weasley brightly as Hermione entered the kitchen. Fred and George were there already, sitting at one end of the long oak table with their fiery red heads together; Remus was staring into space and barely acknowledged her entrance.

She took her place opposite him. He was bereft; they all were. Sirius' death had left an aching chasm in their lives and Remus was now the only Marauder left. She didn't count Pettigrew among their ranks, she thought bitterly. None of them did.

Thundering from the staircase behind her heralded Ron's arrival. His hair stuck out at all angles from his head and he looked uncharacteristically alert for that time in the morning.

"Where's Harry?" he asked breathlessly.

"Oh, you're up, dear!" his mother muttered distractedly. "Here, come and take this pot of coffee to the table please."

"Hermione. Have you seen Harry this morning?"

"No," she shrugged. "I've only just got down here myself."

"Bugger!" Ron said under his breath, scraping out the chair beside Hermione's and pulling it back up to the table just as noisily. "Look, Hermione, I'm worried about him. He was really weird last night."

"We're all a bit shocked, Ron. It's going to take him a while, you know," she replied in an undertone. She did not want to start Mrs Weasley off again because in comforting the older woman her own tears would begin to flow once more and she wanted to keep a check on her emotions for a change. "He's going to feel it worse than any of us!" She glanced across the table at Remus who was absently rubbing his forehead with his fingers. "Well, almost any of us."

"He was on about it again last night, though. Saying he should have used the mirror, saying he could have DONE something if only he'd acted sooner! He kept saying it was all his fault, and he wished he could turn back the clock!

Remus looked up at his words and said curiously,

"Hermione, where's your pendant? Don't you wear it any more?"

She looked down at her sweater, then pulled at the neck and, rather self consciously, peered down,

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "What on earth...Oh dear!"

She remembered the dark presence in her room that she had taken for a dream, a phantom that dwelt on the cusp of wakefulness. It was no wonder she had found no sinister threat in the presence; it had been her best friend.

Minutes later they had begun a systematic search of the house, leaving no room unchecked. They called and shouted, opened dusty curtains and even lifted counterpanes to check beneath the beds.

Hermione found him at the very top of the house, in the room Sirius had been used to share with Buckbeak. The sorrowful Hippogriff raised its noble head as the shaft of light from the door illuminated the room, and she entered with a respectful bow.

"Go away!"

Harry's voice came from a far corner, and she crossed the room to his side in an instant.

"It doesn't work, Hermione! It doesn't bloody work!"

He held out the time turner to her, its fine chain spilling out from his clenched fist.

"Oh, Harry, what were you thinking?" she said, crouching beside him and pulling him into her arms.

"I - I just wanted to go back, to get it right! None of it would have happened, none of it! And - and he'd still be here! God, Hermione, how am I supposed to get through this?"

She glanced at the doorway, seeing Ron, Remus and Mrs Weasley just outside.

"With us, Harry. With all of us."