Hermione J. (![]() ![]() @ 2012-03-29 21:41:00 |
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She had been reading in her room, enjoying the fact that the temperature was cooler. Soon it would be time to eat, but she wanted to take a look around the perimeter of the compound if she could to be sure that the wards she had placed had not been disturbed. She didn't imagine they would be, but with gigantic dinosaurs walking so closely, Hermione wanted to be sure. So many others did not seem interested in the occupations assigned to them. Perhaps they thought their captors would keep them safe, but Hermione was not so foolish as that. She closed the book and set it on the bedside table, pulling her hair back and walking through the door and out through the living space. In the vastness of the stark white decorations of the room, the flash of red could not be ignored. Hermione froze for a second, that particular shade of ginger hair being one she'd memorized. There had been more than a dozen nights that she'd reclined next to the person who spouted the hair. Her fingers had woven through the locks. She'd studied the colour and contour of the hair years before she'd ever dared to touch it. But she hadn't expected it here. And not now. "Ron?" she squeaked, her heart pounding. Ron still didn’t really understand why he was here, exactly. He had been walking through the door of his flat to go grab some takeaway from the Chinese restaurant down the street one moment and the next...he was walking into some kind of hospital room. More like a muggle hospital than St. Mungo’s, though. He would have known if he has suddenly arrived at Mungo’s. Taking the journal and pin the strange man had given him, ron wandered off in the direction he had been pointed. It took him a while to figure out which room was his, but with the help of some strangely familiar in-a-way-he-couldn’t-quite-articulate faces he eventually made it. Delta block, unit three. Letting himself in, Ron threw his new things on a table and looked around his new surroundings. Though very neat, Ron could see that someone else seemed to be living in this unit. So. Roommate. He could handle that. He did it for seven years, after all. And technically for the last 12 months or so as well, but cohabiting a space with your girlfriend wasn’t exactly the same as living with four other boys. Suddenly swept up into worrying about how Hermione was going to react when he didn’t come back with their lunch and if there was a way to send her some kind of message, Ron hardly noticed when someone walked through the door which presumably led to another room in the unit. But then he heard her voice and then Ron was very confused. “Hermione?” he asked, his face a mixture of confusion and relief. “What’s going on? I was just going to get us lunch.” "Oh my god," she said, her features half ready to break into crying, the other half fighting the other to beam. She threw herself at Ron, throwing her arms around him and trying not to cry. "I've missed you so much, I've been so worried. I'd just been finishing my book and I was going to go to your room like I said and then I was just taken--" She let go of him, swallowing back her tears and glad to see she hadn't collapsed into mush in front of Ron. "Hang on," she said. "You were getting us lunch? But I've been gone for several days, haven't I? Haven't you and Harry wondered where I've been?" Even though it had seemed to be that others could be ripped from different times without complications if others came in from another time, Hermione had assumed that that had been a trick of the time change, but that the other world would be affected after the first batch of people were taken. "Ron," she said slowly. "What day is it?" “...Sunday?” Ron said, holding Hermione tightly as she threw herself around his neck and still keeping hold of her hand as she withdrew. He was still very confused about here he was, why Hermione seemed to have gotten here before him, and why she had just seemed like she was going to completely break down when she saw him just now, but if anyone could make this make sense to Ron, it was definitely Hermione. “Why? Should it not be Sunday?” "Sunday?" she parroted, blinking. "It was a Tuesday when I left nine days ago. I've been here all this time worrying about you. But I wasn't missing?" She eyed him carefully. What if he wasn't her Ron? Slowly Hermione let go of him. There was a mark on him, as though he'd been injured in training, something she had the urge to take her wand now to fix. Ron hadn't had that when she left. And he didn't seem to think she'd been missing, so what could that mean? "I thought you'd be going mad wondering where I was," she said, feeling a bit confused and overwhelmed. “You didn’t go anywhere,” Ron said, worry and confusion circling his brain. His arm stayed outstretched to where he had held Hermione’s hand a moment before for a split second before he let it fall back to his side. “You told me not to forget the rice pancakes for the moo shu, like, fifteen minutes ago.” “Wait- you’ve been here nine days?” he asked, the incredulity of her statement raising his voice towards the end of the sentence. “Have you been messing about with time turners again?” He was so familiar. It had to be her Ron, didn't it? The way his eyes moved and how his features moved with his expressions. There was something so comforting and right about him that made her want to trust he wasn't from another world. But if he was new to this place it would be so much to bombard him with questions. "Of course not, I haven't touched a time turner in years," Hermione said. "We broke them all when we went into the Department of Mysteries." She paused. "That did happen, didn't it? And anyway, I'm going to be working in Magical Beasts. Remember? I turned down the offer for the Department of Mysteries." Ron gave Hermione a quizzical look and took a moment before he actually answered. “Of course it happened. That was a joke; I remember that we broke them.” It hadn’t entirely been a joke. Something was wrong with time if Hermione had been gone nine days and thought that she had just turned down the job offer for the Department of Mysteries. “You mean you are working in Magical Beasts.” Ron said. “Have been for a year now.” "A year?" she said quietly. She took a deep breath and moved to sit on the couch, gesturing that he ought to follow her. "I was afraid of that. Ron, this place is extremely mysterious. It's a lot to take on. I've tried making some charts and graphs to make it more understandable but I don't know that you'll much want to read those. But it seems that there are... alternative worlds. There were points of divergence and things changed. For example, there's a world where Harry's mother never existed, and someone named the same as his Aunt is a witch. Neville's parents were attacked, not Harry's. And then there's even... Well, there is a girl who has the same life story as Harry does. She and her best friends come from late 1997 and are searching for the horcruxes as well. A few others have different genders. I have been speaking to a man named Rowan Ravenclaw who claims he founded Hogwarts..." She swallowed, watching him and looking for his reaction. "I'm honestly not joking. I won't be surprised if you don't believe me, but it's very real. This vessel has traveled to three locations since I've been aboard and it seems to move through time as well." Ron tried to take all of this in. Hermione was right- he wasn’t really all that interested in seeing her charts and graphs, but knowing she had made them was so very Hermione that it made him implicitly believe the ridiculous things that she just told him. “So it’s kind of like how there are tangential and parallel universes in comic books,” Ron said, more thinking out loud than expecting Hermione to know what he was talking about. Suddenly one of the things Hermione had just said hit him full force- “Wait...there’s a world where Harry’s a bird?!” Ron couldn’t help but start to laugh thinking about what a female version of his best friend would look like. The amusement didn’t last too long and the smile slid off of his face as another thought crossed over the image of Harry in a frilly sundress and bright pink heels. “But,” he almost didn’t want to give this thought creedence by saying it out loud, but it had to be said, “we’re from the same world, right?” They had to be. But how would she even know? Did it really matter? Obviously they were in similar enough worlds that Hermione was living with him and Harry and not, like, married to Draco or something else completely vile. No. It WOULD matter. This seemed like his Hermione, but now that he thought the thought, he needed to be sure. "Yes," Hermione said, a little amused that Ron was laughing at it. "And of course she has her friends Ronnie and H[ermione] at her side." She didn't say anything else at the moment, she just let that sink in. "I think we are," she said. "The changes seem to be quite extreme. I haven't heard of any other worlds where Harry gathers the horcruxes. In most of the worlds he doesn't even exist, or Death Eaters won the wars. But everything feels similar. You know where I work, and I could have easily chosen another job with simple changes." She paused and gave him a weak smile. "There are others from the world we come from. Bill is here, he's from 2002. Fleur as well, although she comes from before she was engaged to Bill. Draco Malfoy is here from 2002. Oh! And Ginny, too. She's from 2001. So I haven't been exactly alone... And there are a number of others who appear to be from our world but all of that is overwhelming, I promise you." If Ron hadn’t stopped laughing already, hearing that there was a female version of him out here would have shut him up very quickly. “Is girl me here? What does she look like?” He shook his head to try and help focus on the important part of their conversation. “So you’re from a year ago- it’s 2000 for me, by the way,” Ron said, interjecting his thought with some establishing information for Hermione. “Fleur is from before both of us, and Bill and Ginny are from the future. Weird.” Draco didn’t factor into Ron’s circle of Important People. He didn’t at home, and he certainly didn’t right now. “Is there anyone else? Do we do anything cool two years from now?” "She is here. I haven't really spoken with her. She's a bit older than us but very pretty. I'm sure you'll be pleased." Hermione gave Ron a wry grin. "But H[ermione] isn't here. Hannah, that's the girl who's rather like Harry, said that I remind her of H[ermione] a great deal. I am curious to know what I would be like as a male, but I am not in a rush to find that out." "Is Victoire born, then?" Hermione asked. "She was born in May of 2000 she told me. She's ten years old here and friends with Teddy Lupin, who is about the same age as her. And apparently they marry as their daughter has arrived and she's in her thirties from 2055 I believe. And Harry's son is here." Hermione's smile was a little nervous. "They all call me aunt," she said. Ron snorted at Hermione’s thought that he would be pleased that he was a pretty girl. OBVIOUSLY he would be fit as a girl. But it was both nice and strange that Hermione thought so, as well. “It’s not fair that there’s girl Harry and Ron here but we don’t get to see guy Hermione,” he said. “Like, a week ago?” Ron said, trying to remember the date his first niece came into the world. “She’s ten here? And Fleur comes from when she and Bill aren’t even married? Maybe I should take a look at your graphs.” This was going to take a while to get sorted. He didn’t even want to get into the great grandniece situation with Victoire & Teddy’s daughter. Victoire and Teddy. Married. Ron mentally shrugged. Teddy was basically an honorary Weasley already- why not marry into the family? And Harry has a son. Ron wanted to ask if Hermione knew if he and Ginny stayed together, but everything kind of went fuzzy and his ears started ringing with her next sentence. “...oh.” Ron said, the slightly dumbstruck look appearing and then fading from his face. “Well, I mean, I guess that makes sense. Us getting married. I mean, unless you go and hook up with Charlie or something behind my back and that’s why you’re Aunt Hermione.” It was a joke, but it didn’t feel funny. “Please say you don’t marry Charlie.” Hermione felt sad that she had missed Victoire coming into the world. It would have been such an exciting time. Even though she wasn't married to Ron it would have been like welcoming a child into her own family. She didn't have siblings so Ron's were the closest she'd ever get, besides Harry being like her brother. "Yes, ten. And they'll be yours for the looking whenever you'd like." She laughed weakly at his joke about Charlie and shook her head. "I'm not interested in Charlie at all," she said. "Not in the slightest. I don't think you need to worry about that. Besides, Victoire said I marry you. And Bill knows we're engaged. He made jokes about it and said your name quite clearly." For the first time since they'd embraced she reached for Ron's hand and squeezed it, suddenly feeling a bit overwhelmed. It had been confusing enough for her to learn her future, but only doubly so now that Ron was here and hearing of it as well. It made her wonder how much of it could be her free will now, and what would happen if either of them changed their minds. Ron took Hermione’s hand and held it tightly for a moment before moving down the couch so he was sitting directly next to the woman it suddenly felt like it had been ages since he’d seen, even though in reality she had told him not to put on mismatched socks as he got dressed just a few hours before. He pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her. “Obviously I feel about you two years from now how I did this morning.” He pulled back slightly. “I mean, not like I’m about to propose, like, tomorrow or anything, but I could see it happening, you know, later.” He pulled her back to him. “I kind of screwed that up,” he said to her hair. She leaned into his embrace with a heavy sigh, taking a deep breath and relishing the closeness and comfort he could offer her. It did feel just as it had when he'd done it from her world. So it had to be her Ron. Hermione wrapped her arms around him. Things had been tense in July of 1999. She'd even wondered what would happen to them, wondered if they could make it or if it'd just been settling for both of them. She'd been afraid that they were unhappier than any of the people around could say. But somehow in this moment her fears were diminishing. Ron, a year from now, still wanted to be with her enough to marry her. "It's all right," Hermione said. "I understand what you mean. And apparently you make it happen." She paused and sat up. "Or you did. Perhaps you won't now. Time travel is so tricky, it's extremely difficult to understand. I don't know what is going to change in our world because of this. I keep watching Susan, Victoire and Albus and waiting to see if something changes about them because I exist in this confusing place." Ron groaned and rolled his eyes. “Hermione, don’t try to sabotage something which technically hasn’t happened yet. I’m probably going to almost screw this up loads of times for the both of us, so let’s just leave our future...in the future and just be happy that we’re not rooming with Malfoy or some evil version of each other or something.” Also sitting up, ron turned and put his hands on Hermione’s shoulders. “I am happy that I am here with you,” he said, direct and matter-of-fact before kissing her on the nose. "I'm not trying to sabotage anything. I just don't understand how all of this works and I think it's a possibility we ought to be prepared for. That's all. But I am happy you're with me. Although you don't need to talk so disparaging about Draco Malfoy. I told you he isn't so bad anymore. He's been a bit annoying but it seems I offended him in the future and that's why he's so displeased with me. I know you'll probably always hate him but do give him the benefit of the doubt, won't you?" She smiled and leaned forward, kissing him on the lips in return. He barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes when Hermione told him that Malfoy ‘wasn’t so bad anymore’. Even if he was too cowardly to stick with the Death Eaters during the final attack on Hogwarts he was still a git in Ron’s mind. But Hermione had offended him? Why didn’t Ron know about this? Maybe it was further in the future than he was in terms of Hermione’s timeline. Ugh, he was going to have to study those charts of hers, wasn’t he? “Fine,” he finally said, only looking sulky for a moment. “My point is, I’m here, and you’re here, together and we should just try to take this one very bizarre day at at time,” he said, finishing his thought from before after their kiss. “Oh, I thought I heard someone say something about dinosaurs as I came down here. What’s up with that?” |