Chapter Text
Voldemort won the war.
He had found out about the wedding at the Weasleys, and given the choice between securing a symbol of control by taking the ministry or eliminating the strongest members of the resistance by descending in full strength on them at their most unguarded? Voldemort was intelligent enough to make the right choice.
He broke the wards just as Bill and Fleur kissed, the soft swell of magic around them as their magic entangled shattering in a screech of glass and screams. Hermione had watched in horror as Ron was killed right in front of her in a flash of green light, as Luna died shielding her father’s body from a blasting curse her shield wasn’t strong enough to stop, as Harry’s polyjuice twisted away from him, his hand closing around his wand as he turned to face Voldemort. His body falling was the last thing she remembered before everything faded into a blur of being.
She knew what must have happened next. Viktor had saved her as she tried to duel Voldemort and the remaining death eaters to a standstill. He had barrelled into her at full speed, whisking her away to Bulgaria in a swirl of apparition before the purple curse from the snarling face of Lucius Malfoy would have removed her head.
That wasn’t to say that the Death Eaters had escaped unscathed. She had killed Bellatrix. She had killed Dolohov. She had killed-
It wasn’t enough. It hadn’t been enough. It could never be enough.
Voldemort won the war in one afternoon of butchery.
That was the short of it.
A single brutal fight and a pile of bodies which occasionally still haunted her dreams.
The long of it was a bit harder to live through.
Hermione spent three years hating every time she saw Britain mentioned in a newspaper. A country she had grown up in. A country that she loved. A country which had fallen back toward facism at the whims of a muggle-raised child cursed to something beyond sociopathy by his mother’s desperate and despicable actions.
Through it all, Viktor supported her.
A place to live. Food to eat. Books to read. Safety from those that would kill her.
“Do you need job?” he asked, his brow furrowed, “to be happy with life?”
Hermione clenched her jaw, to try and stop the tears falling. “I have work to do,” she replied, “because Voldemort is still alive.”
Viktor looked at her, clearly concerned, but nodded slowly. Nothing more was said. A room was prepared. The library was opened to her. She buried herself in her books, in her magic, in her purpose .
Voldemort had won the war, but Hermione would not let him survive his victory whilst she still drew breath.
But armed with nothing more than the word ‘horcrux’ and the knowledge that it was the foulest of magic, Hermione knew that she had work to do.
You could almost follow the trajectory of Britain’s collapse through following the career of one Dolores Umbridge. First, she was chair of the Muggle-born Registration Committees. Then, as they started to run out of Muggle-borns to chase down, she became the Minister for Work. Pruning the undesirables. Werewolves. Hags. Those with ancestry from magical beings. Disappeared into camps, where their ‘talents’ could be used effectively.
No one came back from the camps. Not one in the three years Hermione spent trying and failing to find out what the word ‘horcrux’ meant and how it was linked to the survival of Voldemort. The three years Hermione spent trying to work out whether the prophecy meant that this was it. That now that Harry was dead, Voldemort truly was immortal.
No one came back from the camps. Yet still most people - most countries - turned a blind eye to what was going on in Britain if no violence came across the channel. Niemöller had a point, Hermione thought. It was depressing that the lessons learnt in the 20th Century had been so easily forgotten.
“Viktor, tell me how I can pay you back,” Hermione said over breakfast one day, long into her stay with him, exasperated at the man’s refusal to accept even the slightest amount of gratitude from her, “or tell me how I can help with-”
“I am Quidditch player. International super star. Best seeker in world.” Viktor said, his brow furrowed again. “I think you not understand.”
“I don’t understand what ?”
“I have many house,” Viktor said, “and it no problem that you have bedroom for one of them.”
“That’s not the point, Viktor. I want to-”
“You are kill Voldemort. That is payment.”
Hermione stared at him in disbelief. That wasn’t-
“What?” Viktor asked. “You are clever woman. You are strong woman. I believe in you.”
And then he’d left, clearly satisfied that they’d talked about it and found a solution that worked for everyone.
Hermione wasn’t sure that it worked for her. Not really. But what other choice did she have? She couldn’t even step outside, lest Bulgaria decide that they wanted to abandon their neutrality and join sides with the rapidly growing threat of Magical Great Britain.
Because bit by bit, the rest of it was coming.
Umbridge became Minister for Magic. Or, as the position was now called, the Minister for Magical Authority. Because armed with mind control, mind reading, instantaneous travel, and the ability to perfectly duplicate the physical body of another being…
The muggles hadn’t lasted long. Though given the ability to control everyone that might be problematic , Hermione knew that most of the muggles hadn’t even realised that their country had been taken over by a hostile force. That the nuclear crisis in Edinburgh wasn’t the result of a mismanaged power plant, but a deliberate attempt by magicals to begin clearing entire regions of the country. That the rise in disappearances was connected to brutal terrorism and warfare.
How many of them knew that there was a British government in exile, Hermione wondered.
How many muggles knew that under the surface of the ocean of peace, a silent war raged onward as a madman with delusions of immortality enacted his vicious visions on virtually all who breathed within his borders.
But day by day, Hermione charted out what the course of the war to retake her homeland should be. And month by month, she found herself looking further and further beyond the walls of the house that Viktor was so kindly sharing with her. She gathered information. She tried to find others who had escaped Britain. She planned her revenge. Unending planning. Inch after inch of her careful cursive carving cruel cantrips into the parchment as she lost herself to fantasies of violence.
What could she do really, she thought on the bad days, given that they had lost the war?
Viktor’s faith in her was unshakeable.
Hermione’s faith in herself was not.
But, some times, on the bad days, Viktor made her believe that she should have faith in herself, and she didn’t know what to think of that.
A new pattern was established. A new normal. A light glimmering deep in the depths of the tunnel she had been plunged into by a wedding long ago.
And then suddenly, everything changed for Viktor, and everything changed for the rest of Europe. The war had come to them, and they were not ready for Voldemort’s madness in their home.
On the first day of the new war, Viktor's father was brutally murdered in the streets by a man in a silver mask with a tattoo curling around his wrist. Viktor’s father was brutally murdered in front of him. Cut down by a man who spared Viktor only because he liked quidditch more than he liked murder. A man whose voice Hermione knew, and whose voice Viktor knew she knew.
“I want his name,” Viktor said to her, his eyes dark, “and I want to know where he lives.”
“Viktor-”
“Your friends died for your cause because they were foolish enough to think that they were safe,” he said. “I know my limits. I have no intention of joining them. Give me a name and an address.”
He dropped a vial with a memory on the library table and stalked out the room.
For a moment, Hermione could see the future ahead of her. She could see a future where she did as he asked. Where he would come home to her and ask for another name and another address - because when wouldn't there be another name and another address for her to find? - until one day he wouldn't come home to her.
She put her quill down, and for the first time since she arrived at his door, she picked up her wand. Then she cursed him in the back with a Body-Bind and told him she wasn’t going to let him die like that.
Their training was brutal, once she convinced him to do it, but their training was essential. Bulgaria was neutral no longer, and Quidditch was cancelled until one side or the other won out. Somewhere between turning her reading into wandwork, somewhere between learning that Viktor's reflexes and aggression made him a perfect match for her implacable defence, somewhere between the seventh body and the twelfth dead body with a silver mask she vanished with a twist of her wand, she realised she was falling in love.
She was twenty-something.
He was older, but not that much older.
She thought about it for a week, and then pushed him down on the couch and straddled his lap.
Ron had died before she got to live a life with him. She would make sure that Viktor did not. That this life she was creating for them now was a life that she would have no regrets for.
And then, her heart open to him, she told him her secrets. Their secrets. Voldemort and the prophecy. Voldemort and the Horcruxes. Her suspicion - her unending fear - that Harry had been one of them. That she had seen him die not once but twice at the Battle of Ottery St Catchpole. That they'd had a chance , and now-
“You are alive,” Viktor told her, his arms wrapped around her as they lay naked in her bed, “and that means there will always be a chance.”
“I know what they are.”
“Then he die.”
“I don't know where they are.”
Viktor frowned, “We find them. Then he die. This is good plan.”
“Viktor. Its going to be more complicated than that. You can't just-”
She had never seen her lover look so confused. He held a finger to her lips, silencing her gently. “Why not?”
And when Nagini fell dead at their feet, the screech of a soul dying scorching their ears, Hermione began to believe.
The goblins had fallen in line with Voldemort. But where obedience was demanded through fear and cruelty alone, rebellion could easily foment. It cost them wands, promises, and the risk of a war that they would not win should the goblins ever decide that they liked the surface more than their caves and underground cities. But it was a small price to pay for not killing every goblin between Bulgaria and London. A small price not to pay to fight from the Gringotts in Sofia to the Gringotts in London through tunnels that no human had ever seen before and which were both longer and shorter than the geography should have insisted on them being. One cup of gold, one spell of cursed flames, one tainted artefact down.
The others were easy to find. The diadem was displayed at Hogwarts. A garish display effacing the glory of Lord Voldemort and his munificence. Wasn’t he so clever, finding what had been lost to time? It sat in the Headmaster's Office. As Hermione forced the blackened flares of Fiendfyre to close around it, she felt the darkness that had settled into her former home away from home begin to lift.
The locket was wrapped around Umbridge’s neck. They removed it with her head, and watched it burn with the Ministry that their allies had come to distrust and hate.
The ring, Hermione knew, she had seen on Dumbledore's finger. The diary, she thought, was another. Harry had been dealt with by the madman himself.
Seven Horcruxes.
Seven lifelines.
And now none.
It cost them another hundred lives, but the last vestiges of blood purity were driven from British shores. Driven from European shores. Driven, Hermione hoped, from wizarding minds.
No one was sure who had cast the spell that destroyed Voldemort. It had been brutal. It had been painful. It had ripped him to pieces in front of their eyes, keeping him alive and aware until the spell imploded in on itself. Hermione had spent several years crafting it, and it was a spell that she would take the grave with her. No one needed to know that she had learnt how to twist time, to make his suffering last a lifetime that would pass in the blink of an eye. That Voldemort’s last few moments had stretched out for what would have felt like years. That she had become just as dark and dangerous and broken as-
Viktor proposed to her in front of his parents’ graves.
“I don't want children.”
She wouldn’t bring children into a world like this.
His reply was earnest, his eyes not leaving hers. “I just want you.”
She looked at the ring he was offering her. She looked at the man she loved. The man she didn't deserve. The man who knew just how dark she had become in her quest for vengeance. How many turns there had been on her path to set the world right. What she had needed to do to make sure that Voldemort was gone and would stay gone.
She looked at the man who had saved her life and believed in her to save the world.
And she placed her heart in his hands.
The world was not the same, of course. The world could never be the same. Voldemort had lost the war. But, Hermione thought, so had they. It showed in ways she didn't expect, even years on.
Viktor's Quidditch career never returned to its former glory, an injury to his back preventing him from having the flexibility needed to compete at the professional level. He said he didn't mind, but Hermione normally woke alone. She would find her husband perched in the sky above their house, looking down at the Quidditch rings his father had installed before he was even born.
Hermione’s mind was also rarely at peace. There had been lives lost. Too many lives lost, she thought. What friends did she even have left? There were those that had fought alongside them on the campaign to save the world, and a certain camaraderie that came from those battles, but they were not Harry Potter, and they could never be Harry Potter.
Harry had been her brother in all but blood. He was the family she had chosen. And he was family that she would have moved mountains for. Brought down castles for. Ripped worlds apart for.
It was the summer before what she thought might be her 30th birthday when Viktor flew in from the Quidditch pitch and stared at her face for a long moment.
“You have plan.”
“No.”
Viktor smiled, “I say you kill Voldemort. You kill Voldemort. Now I say you have plan. You have plan.”
She glared at him softly. “There is no plan.”
“I think there is plan.”
“There is no plan.”
“When you find plan, you tell me. I help.”
“There is no plan,” she hissed at him, “so stop saying there is one.”
He huffed in amusement at her, before vanishing into the depths of their house. It was a Thursday, and that meant that he was going to one of the magical schools to teach Quidditch. Beauxbatons, she thought, though she wasn't sure. How odd it was, she thought wryly, that space was so easy for Magic to transcend but that time was-
Her thoughts ground to a halt.
Was it that simple?
Viktor smirked at her over dinner, “I said you have plan.”
“Shut up.”
Hermione knew that there was only one way to navigate through time that allowed you to actually make changes. That once you had seen time, it was something you could not change yourself. That you would inexorably be dragged through the twists and turns of what had already happened until you ended up where you had already and always been. If Hermione wished to change time, rather than just loop time, then she would need a ritual, and she would need a sacrifice.
She fingered her wand nervously as she paced in the towering stacks of texts that Viktor had arranged for her to borrow from libraries and families across Europe. Books and scrolls so old that she had needed to learn six ancient languages and four middle languages just to be able to put them in a context that made sense. How many languages did she even speak now, she wondered idly, as she tried to avoid thinking about what was written in front of her. About what the Arithmancy had told her. About what she was about to do.
“Will it hurt them?”
She looked at her husband, swallowing hard. “Does that matter? There are billions of people living on this planet. Billions of lives that-”
“Does that matter?”
All rituals had sacrifice. Something you needed to give up. Something you had to throw into the realms of magic to clear a way through to your goals.
The numbers were clear.
The cost of going back twenty years to do it all different would be the lives and souls of every human living in this timeline.
It wasn’t like this timeline would just inexorably continue onward without her. She would destroy it as she left it. It would be torn to shreds.
Was that worth it?
And what did it say about her that she thought that having Ronald Weasley and Harry Potter and Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom and-
“I come with you,” Viktor announced abruptly, a week before the equinox.
She smiled at him fondly. She had hoped that he would, when she offered him the choice. Hoped that he would stand by her side and help her again. Fight her war again. Change her world again. She didn’t know what it would do to her heart to have ripped his soul apart to have her chance to do that. He might have understood his choice, if that had been what he chose. She would not. It was good that she didn’t have to make the choice between Viktor Krum and-
“I play Quidditch.”
Her brain stuttered for a second. “Sorry?”
“I play Quidditch.”
“What about-”
“You are save the world,” Viktor said, clearly confused, “so I am play Quidditch.”
“But-”
“And Harry play Quidditch too.”
“Quidditch?!”
Viktor looked at her, clearly confused, “We get old bodies, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will not be injured.” Viktor nodded decisively. “I play Quidditch.”
That was not the plan that Hermione had in mind, but then she hadn’t exactly made a plan. Her plan had got precisely as far as going back in time and then she was going to work out the rest when she got there.
That was, clearly, not the best way to go about it.
And, she realised, if Viktor wanted to play Quidditch once they had dealt with Tom Marvolo Riddle then who was she to stop him? She loved him, and he loved Quidditch, and she would not change that for the world.
Which, given the ritual they were about to use-
Hermione had spent every waking moment loving magic since the first day she learnt how to read the books her parents artfully left around the house for her to find. Hermione had spent every waking moment of her teenage years breathing magic, speaking magic, feeling magic coarse through her veins and her soul and her being.
But there was magic, and there was magic, and this ritual was the kind of magic which Hermione did not love. This ritual was the kind of magic that all sensible witches and wizards feared, and Hermione Granger was clever enough to know that she was a very, very, very sensible witch.
That was why she had been made a Gryffindor. Because she was a sensible witch, and that meant that she had to be brave.
The first words that passed her lips slipped into the air easily. The second repetition burst out of her into air that smelt like smoke. By the fourth, the air was sticky. By the ninth and final time she spoke, magic was straining at the walls and the roof and the floor and everything except the two of them stood naked in the circle.
For a moment she was everything and nothing and something in-between, and then there was blissful silence and oblivion and a sense of warmth and family and togetherness and-
Something snapped .