Work Text:
MCDONALD’S, SOMEWHERE, SOMETIME
The first thing Hermione notices: Time is dressed in a three-piece that looks far more expensive than anything the Blacks could have ever afforded.
Not even all the gold in Gringotts' could buy that vest and silk tie. At least it looks like silk, but it is threaded with slivers of gold and obsidian, maybe diamond, impossibly thin strands that wink at her obnoxiously. She's not sure. They are in a McDonald's chain and her fingers have gone sticky with grease. See, she just finished a large serving of chips and a Big Mac. She is still starving because the last time she ate a full meal was three months ago and the said meal was half a can of beans, the other half shared with Blaise who promptly died the following week after a skirmish with some Death Eaters.
Time sits across from her, propping his elbow on the sad table, and squints at her. He looks a lot like Sirius Black, Theodore Nott, but more attractive and also less memorable, kind of faint. Like a barely-developed film shot for a modeling gig.
Hermione glances at the lightbulb above them. Flickering, an ugly shade of fluorescent blue. Glances back at Time. His skin is glowing like he'd just been on a beach trip. Tanned. She shakes her head.
"Can you," he gestures weirdly. Gold tendrils follow his hand, a shadow of some sort, though closer to an echo, or something weird. Time is weird, she realizes. "Repeat that? What do you need?"
Hermione needs another Big Mac.
And Tom Riddle to die.
"I am here because I need to kill Tom Riddle," she repeats. Damn, she really needs more chips.
Time arches a brow. "And you had to go messing with me to do so?"
"Everyone's dead. I can't kill him alone."
He nods understandingly. "Not when he's, you know, with his freak wand and noseless face and his sna—"
"Yes."
“And you will kill him in the pre-snake, freak wand, noseless face era?”
She nods.
"Alright," Time digs into his immaculate, bespoke, probably 20-figure-worth suit for a little neon pink notepad. "I'll have to take your fare."
"Fare?"
"Surely you know this isn't free," he sounds scandalized.
"Um, I don't know what I can gi—"
"Oh, you have plenty. Scars, names, memories, past, whatever. Your mind is nice, too."
Hermione inhales.
Bears down and reminds herself that she needs to kill Tom Riddle. She needs to kill Voldemort because everyone is fucking dead and she needs everyone to not die, for the sake of her sanity. And conscience. She hopes to change that. Somehow.
(Hope is, unfortunately, still alive. Hermione doubts she’d be reckless enough to make a deal with a freakishly pretty Not So Man Wearing a Three-Piece Who Also Keeps a Neon Pink Notepad she’d conjured with her golden, time-traveling loafers without enough hope to drown her.
Hermione has never been selfish.
Has always lived her life according to people’s expectations of her, like yes, she’s the brains of the Golden Trio, the one-third, walking dictionary and encyclopedia, mushroom chef, etcetera etcetera.
So, yes. There is hope enough to give herself up.)
"You'll bring me to Tom Riddle, as a baby, in front of the orphanage," Hermione says slowly, staring Time down. "And I will give you my scar. Any."
Time pouts. "Just one?"
"Fine, two. And you’ll give me more chips.”
Time snaps his fingers. Instead of chips, a quarter pounder materializes on the table. She scowls at him, and she wishes she can be just a little bit upset that she didn’t get chips, but hey. Wanting is a luxury she hasn’t had for in a while.
She grabs the burger and stuffs it inside her bra.
"Alright, that’s a deal," he beams at her. "But I can't promise you'll find Tom Riddle. I only handle time, you see. Places are a bit too much for me."
"Wh—"
KOWLOON TONG, BRITISH HONG KONG, 1934
Hermione is not in front of the Wool's Orphanage. Not at all. She doubts she's even in the same fucking continent.
"Fuck," she exhales.
She ends up in a street of smoke and buildings lined with Chinese symbols. Fucking Time. She keeps herself to the side, patting desperately over herself to find the scars she'd lost.
The smooth, unblemished skin over her stomach and chest. Ah. Department of Mysteries and Doloh—
Hermione frowns. She knows something's supposed to be there, in her mind, she was with Harry and the rest of the DA bursting into the Ministry, and then: plain white. White, empty space, extending everywhere, beyond her reach.
Forcibly ripped. She imagines herself in the expanse of her mind and touches the fragments of her memories with a gentle finger, the tapestry of it brutally torn apart. She runs her hands over the skin again, ignoring the strange looks everyone is sending her way and feels the missing line on her knee. The one she lost as a kid, jumping off a swing and—
White.
The price of Time.
Before she goes into an existential crisis, someone bumps into her. A tall woman, long limbs, and the saddest eyes she'd ever seen. Her black hair is pinned into a bun at the top of her head.
"Hullo," the stranger greets her. London accent.
Well, what the fuck.
"Hi."
"What did you lose?" she asks her casually. Like she's asking about the fucking weather.
Hermione doesn't answer, only stares at her tiredly.
"I'm Eileen," the woman introduces herself. "I like traveling."
"Are you from here?"
Eileen turns back to her, eyes glimmering with sadness and the kind of exhaustion Hermione knows intimately, but mischief shines through. She digs under her collar and Hermione immediately fists her wand, ready to whip it out.
It's impressive, gilded in white-gold, its sands a gleaming red, like blood. More dangerous than the one she'd used back in Third Year.
But only a Time-Turner, all the same.
"No."
And then she leaves.
Hermione allows herself a moment of frustration. She throws a small tantrum and grabs the quarter pounder she had squeezed into her bra. She takes a huge bite, and in between a mouthful, she screams. Hermione clicks her golden loafers, and then she's gone.
A STREET CORNER, UPPER WEST SIDE, NEW YORK, NY, 1925
She is running out of things to give.
Time is a horrible fucking lover to have. Hermione is in a constant state of loss, and though she knows everyone is destined to this end, after all, bound to the laws of entropy and decay, she still finds it unfair that she has to cut away slivers of herself each time she attempts to save the world.
At least, the one she knew.
Doesn’t know if it still exists, but at this point, she’s running purely on principles. So it’s the principle of it. She’s invested too much to back out now and she has no choice but to kill Tom Riddle. Hermione is fairly sure Time is half in love with her, only for the fact that she’s given so much of herself to him. Practically everything he asks of her.
It shattered her, once.
A dozen, thousand, more than, jumps ago. Each sacrifice hurts a little less than the other.
She’s given up another memory. One of her lasts, with the boy she spent her childhood with, the one with glasses and the thunderbolt scar, dancing in a tent. She supposes she should miss it, but it is only another memory given away.
Now, her mind is more white space than anything else.
Hermione is continuously losing herself. She no longer looks back and grieves about what she’s lost. If anything, she is only disappointed how she's still so deeply unfulfilled, despite the years.
She inhales, flipping the collar of her black coat against her cheeks. No one notices a girl in black, much less one with matted brown hair and a glare that makes everyone look away. Across from her, a large Coca-Cola sign gleams red. How pretty.
"Ysobel," someone calls out. Even in the bustle of the city, Hermione can make out the sound of her slip-on heels on concrete. She smells of cigarette smoke and hairspray, black hair twirled into tight curls around her neck.
Hermione grins.
"Eileen."
The best thing about Eileen, perhaps, is how acutely reflected in her Hermione feels. She is so skinny now, even though she eats a lot more. Her bones rattle in her hollow skin every time she walks, but even she is not so bad as Eileen, with her freakishly long arms and knobbly joints, like a marionette.
"What'd you lose this time?"
Hermione shrugs. "Nothing important."
Eileen smiles. "And you still need to kill Tom Riddle?"
"Always."
Hermione scoots a little closer to Eileen, her fingers skimming the thin fabric of her flapper skirt, delicate as a kiss. They are standing on a street in New York City. On her tongue she can still taste remnants of that cream puff she ate just minutes before. Maybe she loses herself always. Maybe each time she goes back to Time and clicks her golden heels, she's lost.
It doesn't scare her, though.
Eileen always finds her. Cabs whip past them, leaving exhaust in their wake. But Hermione feels a soft hand sliding into hers and chokes on that, instead.
A RANDOM HOTEL IN GINZA, TOKYO, JAPAN, 1982
"Oh, darling.”
“I look halfway to death, don’t I?”
“More than halfway. You should lie down.”
“There’s space?”
“Always enough for us, Ysobel.”
“I have to go, though.”
“So soon?”
“Yes.”
“But I missed you.”
“Eileen.”
“Hm?”
“You should call me Hermione.”
“What?”
“My true name. It’s Hermione Granger. Not Ysobel.”
“...”
“I just passed by to let you know. In case I lose it. Keep it for me.”
"... Alright."
"See you sometime, Eileen."
MAGICAL ARCHITECTURE SECTION, HOGWARTS LIBRARY, SCOTLAND, 1944
If asked, the reason Hermione doesn’t kill Tom immediately is not for a lack of effort, but because he looks oddly like Time. She has hope enough to be reckless but that, too, has dwindled down. She will not kill Time, Christ and Merlin above.
He has the same curls, the deep shine of his hair, and the cheekbones that can flay her open. The shoulders that fill out pressed suits into broad planes. It’s the clothes, ultimately, that give Tom away. Time has his made of gold and silk and other fabrics much more expensive, like the universe distilled into human currency, unimaginable. Tom is wearing a suit dry-cleaned twice over. Nonetheless, the similarity made Hermione pause when she first arrived, her wand raised halfway. Under the orange candlelight of Hogwarts, Tom was less surreal and more human.
Which is ironic, because Hermione’s also convinced Tom Riddle isn’t human.
Anyway, point is, Hermione still tries to kill Tom Riddle.
Sometimes they’re civil. They read together in the library and he glances at her, long enough for her heart to jump to her throat, and insults her. It goes something like this:
“Please stop looking into my mind. You will find nothing there.”
“It’s loud. Stop obsessing over me.”
“I’m not. I just think about killing you all the time.”
“Why do you keep on reading? You’ve gone through fifteen books and I’ve seen none of them at all.”
“Mind your own fucking business, Riddle.”
(She’ll never admit it, but that one hurt her. She misses reading. Misses having thoughts in her head again. Misses having to learn again. But her mind is white empty space, save for her singular purpose of killing Tom Riddle, and her thoughts of Eileen. Everything she knows about magic is simply is, like muscle memory. She knows the spell to kill, but will never know anything more, even though she really wants to learn about magical architecture and build her own magical castle somewhere in Amsterdam.
It flatters her, though.
Tom Riddle’s attention.
And the fact that he wants to kill her too. He’s not the only one that can read minds, thank you very much.)
Now, they are in the library again, in her favorite (and most bittersweet) section, and Hermione has a knife against his throat. The chair she’d been sitting on had been overturned, the table between them obliterated into bits with a silent, exploding spell she’d invented through sheer muscle memory. She is pinning him to the ground with all of her weight, her hips over his, and she has the edge of her blade pressing against his Adam’s apple.
Tom Riddle is hard.
She can feel him through her thin knickers. He smiles at her and swallows heavily, the motion of it pushing his throat even harder against her knife and the skin turns white under the pressure. She doesn’t cut. Hermione looks at him carefully, deciding.
“Go on,” Tom taunts her. “Kill me.”
He knows she won’t.
She only sits back, moves her hips. Triumphs in the split-second weakness in Tom’s eyes, that unmistakeable dilation, the desire that clouds his normally sharp gaze. Hermione grins at him, grinds a little harder, her smile turning smug when Tom fights back a groan.
She can make him want.
That’s power enough for her.
WEST WING, THIRD FLOOR, HOGWARTS, SCOTLAND, 1945
The first time she draws blood from him is not from a knife or a punch or a kiss.
Hermione invents a curse derivative of a weakening hex, a particularly brutal and precise slicing curse, and another spell meant to cut through boulders. She blasts it at Tom Riddle after his rounds with charmed sparklers flying towards him.
He conjures a shield wordlessly, so she retaliates by sending him specks of dust transfigured into a sharp scalpel, and it slices right through his cheekbone.
Hermione gapes at him.
He stares at her, surprised.
It’s the first time she lands anything on him.
Blood drips languidly from the cut, trailing on his cheek, and she’s seized breathless by the urge to lick it away. Tom hears the thought in her mind.
In four quick strides, he’s in front of her, cupping her cheeks and pressing his mouth against hers.
Hermione knows what it’s like to be hungry. To consume and take and devour.
Never knew it could be like this, though.
EAST-FACING WINDOW, ASTRONOMY TOWER, HOGWARTS, SCOTLAND, 1945
“He can’t die, Eileen. It’s impossible.”
“It’s Tom Riddle.”
“I pushed him out this window. Nearly thirty meters above the ground. And he’s still alive. Is there no way I can kill him? Don’t tell me he’s immune to poison too. I’m buying mercury, Eileen, or so help me God I’m going to strangle him with my bare hands—”
“Hermione.”
“Eileen, promise me you’ll be my alibi.”
“Hermione.”
“Men aren’t supposed to fly.”
“It’s Tom Riddle, darling. You think he’s a man?”
TOM RIDDLE’S BED, HEAD BOY'S QUARTERS, HOGWARTS, SCOTLAND, 1945
Again, on sacrifice.
Hermione's thighs shudder as Eileen teases her folds with a light finger and licks every drop of slick that spills out of her. Eileen watches the swollen flesh of her cunt, the pink flush on her skin, and kisses it away.
"Easy, darling," Tom murmurs smoothly. He covers them both, the weight of his body pressing her into silk sheets. "Let her take her time."
She throws her head back, arching against both of their holds.
"—God," she moans, "Eileen, please—"
Tom shushes her, kissing her by her ear, nosing along her neck. He sucks and eats and devours her, hungry little thing, his lips selfish, carving paths down her skin that only he can know. He bites down, that monster, while Eileen suckles at the juncture of her thigh and cunt, close but not nearly enough.
"So sweet, our little girl, darling, so so sweet," she's mumbling into her cunt, pushing a slender finger in between her folds. Hermione forces an eye open, watches the brutal grin that flits across Tom's face. He takes a breast in his palm and she keens, grappling for an anchor, any, just to steady herself.
"You're so pretty like this," he says, "all ours to have." He plucks at her nipples which were hard enough to cut glass.
"N-no," Hermione grits out. "Not yours." Eileen is sucking bruises into the skin of her inner legs, soft and gentle and utterly possessive. Each mark a defiant no, a superimposition of what she is to them over her refusal. A surrender Hermione's not quite sure she's ready to make.
So maybe they'll stay for a while, maybe Hermione will vanish them the moment they finish. None of the particularities matter now when Eileen's rising up to meet her, licking into her mouth, and it's Tom's fingers taking their place in her tight, hot cunt, opening her up for him.
"Our little girl," Eileen whispers to her lips and Hermione tastes herself in their kiss. Tom's moved, somewhere, now sliding his cock across her folds, that thick, blunt head running against her clit, all wet and slippery. While she kisses Eileen back she wonders, distantly, how differently this could all have been, had she just killed him right. How hesitation leads to a complete reversal of everything she is, has been.
And then Eileen breaks apart from her, there's no rest for the wicked, he's sliding fingers in her mouth, telling her to get it wet. While she's sucking, Hermione's touching all of Eileen's smooth skin, slick with sweat. There are rough edges and jutting bones that her hands sweep over gently.
She cuts herself with the intimacy of holding Eileen like this, so sharply. Drawing blood. One of her hands slides further down, teasing her slit, dripping wet. Marvels at the warmth of it all, enough to render her speechless. All the while Tom pushes inside her with a violent thrust of his hips.
Hermione wraps her other arm around Eileen's neck, pulling until their chests are flush against each other, space indivisible.
"You're precious, you know that," Eileen mumbles against her cheek, "my traveler. My partner. Always mine."
Hermione doesn't know what to say to that. She only moans and writhes while Eileen kisses every patch of her skin and Tom hammers into her like a starved man. She peeks through heavy-lidded eyes. His gaze is dark and demanding. The selfish glint in his eyes spills all over his cheeks and into that snarl of his mouth.
Tom fucks her like he knows she's about to leave, so Hermione fixes him with a stare and opens her mind. Utterly pointless now, of course, because all that's ever in that white space of her brain is the neverending KILL TOM RIDDLE KILL TOM RIDDLE KILL TOM RIDDLE KILL TOM RIDDLE voice there, and for the past few months she's been inclined to ignore it entirely. Even Tom stopped paying it any mind.
Thus the leaving.
But she digresses.
"Just—" Tom hisses at her, from above, with a particularly hard thrust of his hips, "give yourself up."
"We'll take care of you," Eileen croons. She tilts her head further into Hermione's space. Hermione eats hair, the thin black strands flitting inside her mouth and Hermione thinks she might choke on it, and end it all here.
In their warmth.
In this bed, in these sheets, Tom above her and Eileen by her side, all skin and nothing else.
Hermione knows they'd take care of her, if she stayed. That she won't be as cherished anywhere else than here, won't ever be as sated than now, her fingers in Eileen's dripping hole and her full to the brim with Tom.
Doesn't know how many more lives she has ahead of her. How many more years, how many more timelines, how much more to lose. All she has now is her empty mind, her name, a girl who finds her every time she loses herself, the urge to strangle Tom Riddle to death. All she has now is her silly little Time-Turner and her gold loafers, always bringing her somewhere so far even a thousand clicks of her heels can't bring her back home.
What else will she be, if she gave it up here, right now?
And then Eileen's grabbing her chin and eating her whole, a persistent pressure against her mouth, teeth against teeth. Eileen is pushing her hips harder against her fingers, the thumb circling on her clit, and Hermione feels every fucking breath punched out her lungs as Tom snaps his cock into her. Hermione grapples at the sheets and Eileen's hair and his forearms around her.
"Ah—! T-Tom, please, fuck—"
Her eyes are wide and shot with pleasure. Tom, fucking biting into his lip with a smile barely held back, slows down.
Eileen ducks her head to take one of her breasts in her mouth.
"Give it up, Hermione," Tom murmurs into her ear, one hand coming down to rub her puffy cunt, where they're still connected.
"Say you'll stay," Eileen kisses around her nipple, marking the tender flesh of her chest.
"You're ours, whether you like it or not."
A conversational truth. Something Hermione can't look away from. Not like this, pinned to the bed, seeing nothing but everything that made her jumps worthwhile.
She turns her head, right where Tom has one of his palms anchored in the space beside her, the skin of his wrist bared. Hermione can see his veins, blue lines running under delicate skin. On her other side, Eileen's neck. A pulsing, true beat, just right there.
She has sharp teeth. She can rip them both out. Have them bleed all over her mouth and teeth and paint her in them. They'll die and she'll live a free woman, with nothing but her name and her empty mind, white, white, white, and her golden loafers and her Time-Turner.
What a lonely life that would be.
Oh.
She has memories of them, too.
Tom pinches her clit. Starts to push his cock languidly back and out of her again. Slowly. Eileen is kissing her again.
God, she has lost so much to get here.
Given up so much. Time demands its price.
So she arches into their warmth. Tom is leaning his forehead against hers and Eileen has her arms around Tom and they're holding each other and Hermione is getting fucked out of her mind.
She doesn't kill them.
Doesn't know if she wants to.
"I'm yours," she breathes out, clearly. She is flushed everywhere and she can't breathe because Tom is unrelenting in his pace, and Eileen is looking at her with a weight that feels timeless. Their eyes are both shining with satisfaction. Demonic glints of yes, I will ruin you, we will ruin you, a Promise, a Truth, you have nothing to worry about, we will not abandon—
They both press their mouths to her skin, greedy, hungry monsters, taking and taking and taking.
For once, she's selfish enough to surrender. Flesh freely given, pleasure a hundredfold.
For the night, she's theirs.
Hermione will wake up tomorrow morning and wonder if it was worth it. She'll be terrified to have lost another part of herself, the absence of a voice in her head screaming bloody murder at her. She'll be more horrified at the sluggish, slow peace that fills her veins afterward, like that sugary feel of relief after a nightmare, knowing that Eileen is on her left and Tom on her right.
She will wake up.
She will leave.
Tomorrow is tomorrow. She knows the value of time. Right now Hermione closes her eyes, whispers both of their names like a prayer, Eileen, Tom, please(—please forgive me I'm sorry I'm sorry I cannot stay—), and crashes.
Skin to skin, no existence much more immediate than this and them, together.
She falls apart in their arms.
Regret a thousandfold.
MCDONALD’S, SOMEWHERE, SOMETIME
Time is wearing a bright orange tuxedo.
“I preferred Burger King,” she says as a greeting.
He waves her off. “Budget issues.”
Hermione stares at him but otherwise says nothing else because he already has her order on the table. She settles into her side of the booth and pushes the tray of chips towards him. After spending nearly a year with Tom Riddle, she’d learned some manners.
“Did you finally kill him this time?” he asks her, as he always does. His eyes are bright with mischief and excitement, stupid Time.
“No,” Hermione shakes her head. “I couldn’t.”
Time beams at her. Of course, he’d be happy, that memory-mind-scars hoarding prick. Hermione thinks he might be part-dragon, with all of his hoarding tendencies.
“So you’re jumping again?”
She nods.
“You have new scars?”
She waves her hand dismissively. Hermione has new scars. It’s the first time she gets new ones, deep enough to matter to her. No one takes Tom Riddle and Eileen Prince as lovers without getting wounded one way or another.
Time leans across the table to pluck the Oreo McFlurry from her side. She glares at him.
“What’re you giving me then?” he asks her, plastic spoon still dangling from his lips. Where the fuck does the ice cream even go?
Hermione shrugs.
“Them, I suppose.”
A RETAIL STORE, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, 2010
Hermione needs to go back to her dorm. She still has that neuroscience paper to finish, another application to fill out for the research labs at Amherst, a statement to write for the TA position she's going for. She just needs her shift here over.
Right before she signs out, the bell chimes.
She groans. Then plasters on a smile.
"Hello, I'm Hermione, welcome to Dean's Specialty Stationery and Goods. How can I help you?"
A woman, possibly a decade older than her, gapes. Hermione winces inwardly at the deep purple bruises under her eyes, the paleness of her skin. Her eyes are sullen and her cheekbones, though high and angled, only give her a gaunt look. Beside her, a tall man with his dark hair pushed back. There are silver strands curling at his temples. Strongest jaw she's ever seen in her entire life, and his eyes are assessing her. Roaming over her the way she scans slides in the lab, over and over again.
She frowns.
"Do you need anything?" Hermione repeats.
"What's your name?" The man asks. Oddly enough she feels compelled to say the truth.
"Hermione Granger, sir. Are you looking for something to give your daughter?" She gestures to the table of frilly pink paper and tapes.
"You don't know us." The woman says sadly. She dips her head and long, black hair covers her.
"No," Hermione says. But slowly she cocks her head, carefully, and flexes her fist. Skin pulled taut over her knuckles. Something deep in her comes alight, setting itself on fire. Her stomach growls.
For the first time, Hermione wants.
"I feel like I should, though."
The man offers her his hand.