Even the Stars Can Be Moved

It turned out that centaurs were much more fascinating creatures than Hermione had ever given them credit for being. Of course she remembered covering centaurs in Hagrid's class, researching their physiology and society as a matter of course. She knew they had refined what she considered more scientific ways of deducing the future, that their culture was consumed with time and the perception thereof, because they were unique among all animals in that they had different species of time perception among them. There were those for whom time went very slow, and who were the most analytic of the tribe, and those for whom time went fast, and even a tribe for whom time went backwards. Still, those born with these perceptions were minorities within the whole of centaurs. The greatest part of them had roughly humanlike perceptions of time, and it had become their job, in the case of the Forbidden Forest, to watch over and serve the others, and deal with all things human. The unique time perceptions were like thumbs to the centaurs; it allowed them to do things humans couldn't conceive of.

But this was all old hat to Hermione. What turned out to be very interesting to her were what their wise men had to say about time. She had been going through their writings, owing to the highly theoretical nature of them. The time was ripe for theory, since theory concerned the nature of time itself. Theory always came in handy at the beginnings of things. And Hermione needed to see if it would be possible to go back to before Ron died, or if that would be throwing her mission to fate to do with as it pleased. What was interesting to Hermione was an argument that had occurred between the great centaur scientist Arucio and the mystic Grell. Arucio maintained that as time was tethered to the movements of the stars, and as the stars had but single, predictable movements, so was time a single, predictable movement. Time was a singular entity; no two versions of it could exist, so it wasn't possible to change what had already happened, and the effect one had on the future was debatable. Grell, however, pointed out that magic (which the centaurs did not posses) proved an exception for many natural laws, and said that it was possible to change what had already happened, just as it was possible to change a cat into a teacup. Arucio maintained that magical laws, while an exception to natural laws, were still laws unto themselves. Even magic had limits.

That told Hermione nothing, of course, on how magical laws would apply to time travel. She felt herself to be in a suspended state of mourning. She wasn't sure if she should grieve. It might be possible to prevent herself from having to grieve at all. She couldn't drive away that last expression on Ron's face, or Harry's indiscernible figure in the crowd. But, in another sense, they were merely tucked away, waiting for her to come and sway things back to their balance.

A few days into her arrival at the second Hogwarts, Hermione came across the one-eyed witch who had proved so useless that night of the battle. The battle of Hogwarts, she was already calling it, even though it had started in Hogsmeade And her mind, still running around the rotary her studies had made, threw her into all the possible versions of how that night might have ended up had the witch let them through. Would it have been better to arrive in Hogsmeade? At least they would have had a place to retreat to. They might have prevented things from getting out of hand. Or they all would have died, and she would never have come back to put things right. The path that she had walked on to make it here was a narrow one, she realized. As unlucky as she had been, she had still been lucky. Remembering the curses hurled around her, and the one that broke through from Draco, she knew there was no way to deny it..

But it would be a long damn time before she'd be able to do anything, or know anything, and it wasn't fair that by doing a bit of time travel, she'd lost sight of the outcome. She should at least have the knowledge that she had definitely achieved her goal. It made her want to break something.

The one-eyed witch was the only one there to bear the brunt of her frustration. She aimed her wand at the statue and cried: "Reducto!" The statue shattered. In a very satisfying fashion. She blew air out through her lips, pointed her wand, and muttered a mending spell. Then she broke it again. It was very satisfying again. "Reducto!...Reparo!...Reducto!...Reparo!" She was starting to be satisfied by the rhythm the magic made, when she heard someone's throat clear behind her. She turned. Tom Riddle was leaning against a wall behind her, inspecting his fingernails. It seemed he had been there for some time.

"What- what are you doing there?" she asked before she thought to wait for him to speak.

"I might ask you the same question. In fact, some might say I have more reason to ask than you. What exactly are you doing so methodically destroying school property?"

"Well," she couldn't help but point out, "I wasn't only destroying it." She pointed at the statue, which was now whole.

"Yes, but still."

Hermione couldn't help but inspect him. It was somewhat impossible to reconcile this boy with Lord Voldemort. He was a Head Boy, for goodness' sake. Once she thought of Ron and Harry, however, she found it somewhat easier to remember. "It makes me feel better," she said finally, mainly to answer his original question, which she wasn't sure he still wanted an answer for.

He was inspecting her, now, and Hermione couldn't say it was comfortable. His eyes were rather uncanny. They seemed to have a hint of red at times, if only in the way light sometime glanced off them. "What do you need to feel better about?" he asked, quieter than his usual quiet voice. He seemed sincere. Seemed.

Hermione felt a flash of anger at the question. He wasn't going to let go of finding out about her anytime soon, and Hermione was strangely angry at the transparency of his question.

"That," she said coldly, "falls entirely outside of the parameters of this conversation." And she turned away from him and walked down the hall in the general direction of Ravenclaw.

She hadn't finished transfiguring her room to accommodate the makeshift library she'd compacted and brought with her from Hogwarts, and she needed to get at it to see if they had anything interesting about centaur theories. She walked quickly to her room, which since it was on the same floor as the secret passageway, offered her no obstacles. The next few hours she spent transfiguring her western wall to just the right size to house a quarter of her holdings, all of which were separated by alphabetical order and general category. The longest bit was a knob she had to enchant to switch one of the quarters with the others. Since the others were still compacted, one bit had to be enlarged, one compacted, and both displaced. It wasn't so much a tricky bit of magic as a longer chain of spells than she wanted to deal with. It took her another half hour to sort through the books she'd been originally looking for.

She went to dinner drained and cross, although her mood was much improved when a parcel arrived from the Daily Prophet. They mailed out evening supplements to keep the general citizenry aware of Grindenwald's movements. It was about the only news the wizards had of World War II. Still, they seemed to be a more credible organization than her old time's paper. There was an article about Alsace in it, on page eight. That convenient skirmish, Hermione remembered. The strangeness of Dumbledore's sending her not to the beginning of term, but near to a military engagement, struck her. It must have been the first military action to have occurred in France since the term started. It seemed she had been sent to this particular time for such a purpose. She noticed Dumbledore wasn't at the table anymore. He had disappeared early for the night. Suddenly, Hermione went white.

What was the implication of that, to purposely send a student back concurrently with a military engagement that was used to explain the bloody state of said student? The implication was Dumbledore knew she had come from a war, knew that Ron would die. Knew there would be a battle, and had sent her back just after the occurrence of another battle. He had known, all this time, she realized. Had he spared her the news because he hoped it wouldn't happen, or because he wanted her to go through with the plan? Still, the realization was startling. She left the Dining Hall early, the Prophet supplement under her arm.

She wandered through the halls, feeling focused on something highly abstract, something she couldn't quite make out. There was so much she needed to know. She reassured herself that she had, after all, found everything before. Although information often had an annoying habit of coming in its own time. Hermione stopped at the sight of a farmiliar series of bricks patterend into a flower. Dumbledore's office was near. On a whim, she turned towards it and knocked. The door took a few minutes to open. When Dumbledore opened it he looked tired.

"Come in, Miss-" he winked "Potter."

Despite herself, Hermone smiled.

"Is there anything specific you came to talk to me about?"

Of course. There were always specific things she wanted to talk about. "Yes."

"Would you like a spot of steamed berry juice before you begin? I have a batch on for Halloween this year, but there's plenty."

"Oh," she said, "Yes." It was, as expected, delicious. It made it easier for her to ask Dumbledore what he meant when he had talked about the time machine with her for the first time, when he suggested that the past might be changeable. There was a good chance he told her about it so she could ask him. As usual, Dumbledore was more in control of events than he appeared. It was probably the definitive factor in his power.

"It is," he said, after she had explained her conundrum to him, "an idea I harbored, when I was younger. I used to think that it was possible to change the past, that in fact it might have been changed already, and we simply don't know about it. But for the present that you are in, whether it is the present of your own time or the present of the past you go to, the present depends on its past. So in that sense, you cannot change time."

She hadn't honestly thought about that particular conundrum, and she couldn't see a hole in it but felt there must be some way to put a hole in it. Magic might still get you out of a logical rule. He had said it to her, anyway. It couldn't have been a slip. She didn't think the man was capable of slipping.

"Perhaps you change your mind," she said.

He smiled. "Yes, how interesting, I might."

She drained her cup of the berry juice. "Well, I suppose that's all there is."

"Goodnight, Miss Granger."

She left his office feeling better and worse than when she'd come in. She wandered the halls, unconsciously heading to the entrance of Gryffindor, which had a picture of a pale woman with a red nose in a black dress. It made her wonder where the fat lady was. She returned to her room and researched until she nearly fell asleep in her book. She didn't remember getting into her bed, but she got out of it in the morning. A dreamless night. All her nights had been dreamless and peaceful. Her mind probably realized she needed it. She'd slept a full eight hours, but it was a Saturday, and she only had to go to O'Bleeke's after breakfast.

The meeting was set up to go through certain arithmancy and transfiguration texts with O'Bleeke. They had just drawn up a skeleton of the time machine from sessions with Hermione's memory of it in the Penseive. It had led to a theoretical discussion that had gone on until midnight and during which Hermione learned more than in her entire second year. She hoped that Dumbledore had informed Professor O'Bleeke about her library, or else she would have explaining to do and rules to establish. It wouldn't do to let people from the past access texts from the future to excess.

When she did arrive at Professor O'Bleeke's, after a shower and breakfast and a bit of research, it turned out Dumbledore had indeed informed him.

"It is," he said reverently, "a fantastic notion, absolutely fantastic. Of course, I know our access will be limited, but the very idea is endlessly interesting. Imagine what use a Divination Professor could get out of it , really, in a case like that, it is a pity."

"Please don't get ideas, Professor," said Hermione, kindly. "They won't work out." And then it hit her. Imagine what a prize that library would be to someone who spent their time discerning the future. She hadn't even dreamed of contacting the centaurs yet; the ritual of introduction was intimidating, and she hadn't any reason to give them to talk to her. But the library was a bargaining chip straight from Heaven. She had a hard time restraining the glee that came with this information. She was bouncing on her toes and her voice was veering towards sing-songy the whole of the meeting.

When, finally, the meeting was over, the Professor positively drooling over the books he had been permitted, Hermione ran recklessly out to the southwest corner of the grounds, and streamed through the forest. The patch of pink cottontails was exactly where she remembered it. Their soft tops bounced off of her gently as she ran through them. Then there was that field of bucktooth wheat, a relatively uninteresting plant that just had to nubs at the top that resembled two front teeth. And then, she reached the edge of the unicorn patch, in plain sight of the Grasshunter Tree that marked the Time Machine's future location. She stretched out on the lawn and let the sun warm up the back of her head. It was done, a step had been put into action, and she was growing very confident that she could do it successfully. Clouds passed, shading the lawn from golden lights, which came through in passing strings. She remembered being here with Ron. Perhaps due to the presence of the unicorns, they had always been chaste here, not even holding hands. Often silent.

There was a movement in the corner of her eye and she saw two figures walking through a nearby trail. It was Tom Riddle and his friend, the Avery. The Avery boy was in between handsome and pretty. She'd heard some of the Ravenclaw girls giggling about him. He was perhaps more handsome than Tom, but he looked slighter and weaker walking next to him. There was but a hedge between herself and them, and it wasn't long before they noticed her.

"Having a doze, are we?" said the Avery, whose name was Adrian, she remembered.

Hermione flushed. "Minding out business, are we?" she called back.

"I wouldn't mind minding yours," he returned. Hermione was momentarily thrown. She had never been even slightly complemented by a Slytherin, and certainly none of them had ever... had he just flirted with her? She was unable to think of anything to do but drop her jaw.

Tom, still walking towards the school, smirked at her reaction. The bastard. "Entirely inappropriate, Adrian, really, I expect better of you." She couldn't tell whether he meant it or not. At this point, an adolescent unicorn foal, silver, had decided to wander towards the edge of the patch towards Hermione. It nuzzled at her hand, and Hermione pulled out a bit of grass for it to eat. She'd thought they'd gone, but she heard a laugh from their direction. Adrian was grinning. Tom cast a last distracted look back before disappearing into thicker foliage, Adrian behind him.

Hermione watched the figures retreating. Dumbledore, in her time, had stressed to her the fact that Tom was, for the most part, beloved by the Hogwarts staff, that he had been admired by the student body, that his appearance concealed very well what he was fated to become. Hermione had come prepared to see through him. And she could sense the dark undercurrent in his behavior, could see what others were obviously missing. And it was different than others she had seen, who had come to do evil. He had none of the snarkiness or overt unpleasantness of Malfoy. He was quiet, did not provoke or bully, and from what she had overheard, had bore bad treatment rather gracefully. Of course she knew this quietness spoke of a plan, a plan he might be putting into action, that would lead to far darker things than petty bullying or even the infliction of pain. Voldemort had not existed to inflict pain; the pain barely mattered. It had been a strategic tool Voldemort had used in his quest for power and control. The seeds of this, she did see in Tom. But Tom was a boy. And within a year, she would be responsible for his death, because that death bought Voldemort's death. Although she was determined to do it, she wasn't entirely sure if she was right.

*

Later, in the library, when she was looking for Gregor Tarsky's definitive book on centaur society, she wondered why she never saw Tom in the library despite the amount of time he obviously must spend there. As if to answer her thought, Tom emerged from one of the bookshelves, apparently on his way out of the library. He stopped when he saw her, and nodded.

"Miss Potter."

"Oh, hello, Mr. Riddle."

"I should apologize-"

"No, don't worry about it. I'll take it as a form of flattery."

"What?"

"Your friend," said Hermione.

"No, not that." He smiled a little. "Although perhaps I should apologize about that. Adrian is incorrigible. But I meant about earlier. I didn't mean to pry--well, obviously, I suppose I did, but I can't help being curious about you."

So he was laying it out on the table. He must have decided that she'd understood his attempts to find out what she was about. She hardly knew what to say to this. She didn't want to dismiss it, and she didn't want him to do further researches on his own.

"I mean, It's not just that I'm invested in the war. Frankly, that shielding charm of yours--when we first met--I haven't met anyone with those kind of defensive capacities, at your age anyway."

"Oh." Now she definitely didn't know what to say.

"You are the same age as the seventh years, right?"

"Yes."

"The thing is, I hadn't thought of the fact that you must have--well, don't consider this prying, but it must have been traumatic. You must have lost something. And I hadn't considered that until--well, you know. Afterwards."

For some reason, his little speech had brought her attention to him. And she couldn't restrain herself from a bit of her own impromptu research. "Do you care?"

"Excuse me?"

"Do you care, or are you just trying out another tactic?"

As good as his face was at hiding things, some pale form of shock registered on Tom's face. "No--How could-"

"The shielding charm. What happened in Alsace. My role in it, and at this school. I know they mustn't be empty bits of information to you. I know they must have some kind of use to you. You'd not be so keen to ferret out more information if they weren't useful."

His eyes were unfocused, as though he was doing a lot of quick thinking. "Why would you think I'd find such a thing useful?"

"The ambition of a Slytherin is legend, and yours stands out among them."

"Oh, and you know so much about the houses already, when you've only been here for a few weeks?"

"My father is English," she lied quickly. "I've always known about this school."

" But you haven't always known about me. What makes you think your judgements are right?"

"I've always been rather good at reading people. It's a skill I've had reason to hone."

Tom stepped closer to her. His eyes flashed dangerously. "Or perhaps you've just got the measure of me from Dumbledore."

"And if I have?"

"Perhaps he's using the wrong ruler."

Amazingly, despite the fact that she wasn't sure if this conversation would somehow compromise her, Hermione still felt calm. "Perhaps. But I'm confident that time will reveal all there is to reveal."

"Yes," said Tom, who looked suddenly as calm as she. But then a line appeared between his eyebrows, and his mouth had a slight scowl. "Well, I suppose it will..." He gave her a penetrating glance, and nodded. "Good day, Miss Potter." And as he walked away, he seemed to regain his poise, but Hermione couldn't help being struck by the fact that he'd lost a bit of it in the first place.