Chapter One
Temper and Time
A hundred little scarlet dragons erupted and roared and spewed golden and sparkly flames into the air, before the shrieks and shouts came, and then there was laughter, as Fred and George received a jinx from their newest sister-in-law; they cowered on the grass of the Burrow’s garden, what seemed to be like a hundred turtledoves cooing and letting fly over their heads.
“Hermione! This isn’t nice”blech!” cried Fred, gagging on dove-poo.
“That will teach you not to give a fright to over-emotional brides, not when they’re leaving for their honeymoon and are currently hugging their parents and in-laws!” Hermione shouted back, though she was smiling, tears glistening in her eyes. She turned to hug her mother, Ginny (who was bent over double, convulsed, holding on to Harry) and then Molly again. After they had squeezed each other enough, only then did she turn to banish the doves, and scourgified her twin brothers-in-law.
After fastidiously dusting their white tailcoats, they flew at her, to Ron’s consternation. “Mum! They’re touching Hermione! Get off, you gits”We’re off, then, before they do anything worse.” Ron looked green.
Hermione just smiled at her husband, easing his nerves. He smiled back. They only sensed Molly herding away the twins, who looked like they’d jump on either of newly-weds again. Ron brought out an ancient giant key, their wedding present from Ernie Macmillan and his fiancée Hannah Abbott.
“You ready?” Ron whispered.
“Are you ready? You’re not fainting on me, are you?” Hermione laughed, trying to rub color into Ron’s cheeks with her hands. Harry was sniggering.
“Shut up, Harry,” Ron snapped, not looking away from those warm brown eyes.
A second later, they both disappeared from the Burrow, whisked away by the portkey. Even as the world seemed to whirl and swirl about them, their wedding clothes a blur, they never lost sight of each other’s eyes, nor lost hold of each other’s hands.
When it was over, their feet landed steadily on soft moss, and they looked up to see, beyond the foliage of the little copse of trees in which they have arrived, a charming little chateau, its gray stone reflecting the sunset, so that it glowed rose and gold instead. Like a castle from a fairy tale, Hermione thought, knowing how cliché that was, and not caring a thing. She sighed blissfully.
“Wow. All ours for the time being. Ernie deserves some firewhiskey when I see him again.”
He spoke low, as if afraid of stirring the delicate magic the landscape before them held. And then he turned to his bride, her eyes doing that trick of sparkling again, which made him wonder if she had put diamonds there. He had never seen anyone so beautiful. He couldn’t believe that as she stood there”gazing around in her inquisitive way, same old Hermione”she was his wife. His.
To make it real, to make it sweet, he bent down and kissed her.
“…are very sorry for disturbing you, and we sincerely beg your forgiveness for this untimely intrusion. It’s just it is very urgent that you come to the meeting. We have done all we could but have now come to the point when we could no longer proceed without you. The sponsor, Ron, he wants you here, and would not hear of excuses, even when we told him you have just gotten married. He says you can return in a jiffy, as he’s on a second honeymoon with his own wife as well””
“Oh f”Merlin, Hermione!”
“What is that Howler talking about?” Hermione hissed, stunning it venomously.
Ron was still cursing under his breath, wrenching open the letter that preceded the Howler. Everything that the Howler had announced so far had been hastily written in the letter, plus another begging pardon from their coach for sending the Howler in the first place, for fear of his silent letter being ignored.
“I have to go, Hermione.”
”What?”
The temperature in the brocaded room dropped considerably, in spite of the roaring fire the house-elves had maintained in the cavernous fireplace.
“This is from my coach. The team sponsor wants my opinion about the new beaters we’re replacing Fred and George with, since they paid to ditch their contract.”
“You can do that when we return from our trip.” They were spending a week here in Ernie’s family’s old estate in Cornwall, and then they would go to Italy, to visit Rome and Venice, and then they were off to Palawan in the Philippines, one of the most beautiful beaches and reefs in the world. Just a month. Can’t they leave them both alone for just one month?
“The sponsor also up and left his wife mid-honeymoon, looks like. I’m missing most of the season’s opening games, this is the least I could do. I am captain after all,” Ron said meekly, covering Hermione’s bare shoulder with the damask silk quilt. She recoiled from his touch with a glare.
“How revealing about your dear sponsor’s character, isn’t it? He begged to be excused from our wedding because of his second honeymoon, but now he’s left his wife for Quidditch! Damn wizards! And why did you have to let Fred and George in the team in the first place? You knew they wouldn’t stay. It’s their inventions they’re more committed to. You, of all people, should know that.”
“They were good, Hermione. They were good.”
She just sniffed, retreating as far away from him as she could in the king-size bed.
“Are you going?”
“Will you let me?”
She didn’t answer. He still had to ask that? Merlin. With another huff, she turned her back to him and burrowed deep under the covers, swallowing tears.
The birds woke her up the next morning, as well as the soft tinkle of china. She opened her eyes and looked beside her. Incredible. He had left.
“Lukin is sorry if Lukin woke you, miss. Did you sleep well?” whispered the house-elf, bowing by the dumbwaiter glittering in the early morning light seeping in through the still-drawn curtains.
“Where’s Ron?” Hermione asked, still hoping.
“Master left before dawn, miss. He said he’ll be back in a flash and to take care of you. He said he was awfully sorry, and he asked Lukin to bring you tea to make you feel better.”
“That’s pathetic. I’ll kill him when he gets back”I’m sorry, Lukin.” Hermione felt her face going warm with embarrassment for the elf. “Thank you for the tea. I’m just…well, he shouldn’t have left me, don’t you think?”
“Lukin is sorry, miss. And master did look just as furious as miss when he left a few hours ago.”
Hermione accepted the tea Lukin poured for her and sipped. Her hand shook. She replaced the delicate little cup in her side table before she broke it. Lukin looked at the floor while Hermione wiped her angry tears with the quilt.
“Miss? Lukin will leave you now. You just pull the cord there by your bed or say my name if you need me. Maybe miss would like it to take a walk in the gardens after your breakfast. And the moor is beautiful, the heather’s in bloom.”
“Yes, thank you, Lukin,” Hermione mumbled.
Harry and Ginny and Molly would flay Ron alive if she wrote to them now. She sank back down in the bed and sulked for a while. How could he!
When her stomach alerted her to the rising morning, she opened the silver domes covering her breakfast and…ate. She couldn’t help herself, the kippers looked so good, and the buns so golden and moist, the eggs so fluffy, and the fruit glinted in their sweet glaze. She only every now and then choked at the fact that she was having breakfast on her first wedded morning alone.
Her anger at Ron mounted up. It was his fault she was in this state right now and already regaining about three quarters of the weight she had tried to shed for her wedding.
Guilty and needing to shed some frustrating furious energy, she left the bed and walked along the windows, pulling open all the drapes in the enormous room by hand.
She paused at every window, because of the view. The heather were splashes of color in the vast verdure beyond the Macmillans’ tended shrubbery and trained trees. Almost without realizing it, she was dressed and out of the castle.
Some of the gardens were walled in, and most of them were still just waking up for spring. Hermione breathed in the rich smell of the earth and made her way to the conservatory, where the magical flowers’ mingled scents made her heady. She rushed back out into the fresh air with a small rueful laugh.
There was a path made by curving hedges to the gates opening out to Bodmin Moor. Hermione followed the path and came upon a great stone fountain, like that one in the Ministry’s Atrium, although this one perhaps depicted the very first Macmillans and their children. She didn’t stoop to read the names carved on the stone, because the moor beyond was too delicious to make wait any longer.
To her surprise, she saw another castle jutting out of a green hillock to the east. It might well be the Rashleigh estate. Ernie had been going on and on about how he had kept it all those years that they were practically neighbors with the Time-turner inventor, although he’d never met the man. William Rashleigh would be close to being a century old now, if he was still alive.
Hermione walked leisurely along the little dirt road, occasionally startling sheep and moorland horses grazing. They flicked their ears at her, assessed the tourist, and then went back to their occupation. Bees were also buzzing about, whizzing past in a blur of brown, like tiny Chocolate frogs intent on escape.
“Oh, nice try, Ronald Weasley, I’ll never forgive you,” Hermione muttered, glaring at the owl winging its way toward her with a rather large parcel. Hermione turned her back to it and waited. In no time, the owl landed by her feet, gently setting the square package on the ground and began hooting at her to untie it from his legs.
“What is that? You can take it right back to him, because I’m not taking it. How dare he think he can just send me something to make up for leaving me in the middle of our first night?” And she stomped off. The poor owl gave an impatient cry and followed her to the gates.
Hermione stopped there as well, because huge vehicles drove slowly past. She had only seen them in demolition sites, those trucks with heavy cannon-like balls. What on earth were they doing here?
The owl hooted again, so imploringly Hermione took pity. “Fine. I’m letting you free. But that does not mean I forgive him. This thing could rot here for all I care.” With a last hoot, the owl flew off, leaving the brown package by the foot of the wrought-iron gates. Hermione turned her eyes away from it, lest she be overcome by curiosity, and went back to the castle, her morning soured by Ron’s contemptibly inadequate stab at reconciliation, and those demolition trucks, completely out-of-place in this serene setting. Why were ugly things following her on her honeymoon? She harrumphed.
By the time lunch came and Ron still wasn’t back, Hermione had lost her fury and only wanted to cry. Lukin and the other house-elves kept themselves scarce, understanding that she will not be comforted by the comforts they could offer. They just drew her a bath and then left her alone.
It didn’t help that it rained, dimming the landscape with fog, leaving Hermione with no view to distract her from her misery.
So she sat in the drawing room, staring at the book open in her lap but not reading it. Tears still clogged her throat. She slept it off, deep in the armchair, imagining it was Ron’s arms she was snuggling in.
When she opened her eyes again, it was to the mellow light of the candelabra. It was evening, and that might be Lukin knocking to announce supper.
“Oh Merlin!” she suddenly screamed.
Lukin had only time to enter the room, alarmed, before Hermione was out of the manor and running in the downpour. Two female house-elves dithered whether to follow her with a cloak or not. Lukin made them wait, saying Mistress Hermione is the most able witch they’d ever known, she’d know what to do.
Lukin could never have been further from the truth. At that moment, Hermione had made it to the gates, her wand lit, and had snatched up the parcel from the ground, ripping off the sodden wrapper, only to give a strangled cry.
She could recognize the portrait. It was copied from a photograph taken by Ginny, of her and Ron cuddling by the lake at Hogwarts, shortly after the war. Ron was leaning against the beech tree, with her in front of him, his arms around her. But instead of their haphazard sweaters and jeans, they wore their wedding clothes: Ron in his immaculate tails, Hermione in her cream satin and silk sheath. Their faces were gilded by the sunset sparkling on the lake. And only the water was moving, teased by the slight breeze.
She could recognize the beauty and Ron’s thoughtfulness in the gift, though the paint had run. The picture had been ruined by the rain.
She couldn’t tell afterwards whether it was her tears or the rain she was swatting off her face as she ran. She just ran.
Twice, she slid on the slush as she made her way to the hillock. But she was heartened by a light in one of its lower windows. She trudged on, cradling the painting against herself, sheltering it as much as she could without ruining it further. She cursed her pride and temper. If it had been her office who called her, wouldn’t she have gone? Wouldn’t Ron have understood?
“No, he’d be furious, more furious than me,” she thought fondly.
She stopped walking. Macmillan Grange looked so far away. Had she walked that fast? She faced front again and bent down to her knees, catching her breath. With a prayer that her ungodly sprint would not be in vain, she continued toward the door of the Rashleigh estate, cursing the trucks in the shadows as she did so.
What shrubbery that remained were choked with wild honeysuckle and other weeds. Moss had crept up and made dark shapes on the mansion walls. Hermione kept her eyes on the one window where a light glowed, ignoring the others, which were dark and deep and gloomy, like eyes watching her.
“Nox,” she breathed, turning off her wandlight as she reached the immense double-doors. There was a heavy tarnished brass knocker, but before she had even raised her hand to lift it, the right leaf of the door creaked loudly open. Hermione just stopped herself from jumping out of her soaked skin.
“I saw your wandlight. Are you a witch?” came the rasp.
Hermione looked up at the tall old man, his pince-nez in danger of slipping off the end of his aristocratic nose. He stooped upon his cane, and he peered at Hermione with such blatant disconcerting wonder she had to summon all her Gryffindor sinew not to turn the opposite direction and bolt.
“Good evening, sir. I’m”I’m looking for Mr William Rashleigh, if he could be bothered?”
“Come in and out of the rain, gentle lady,” the old man bowed, and for a minute Hermione feared he’d topple right over. But he righted himself on his cane, and opened the door wider. As he did, and with many groanings from the giant hinges, torches blazed to life in the foyer, revealing the grandness of the castle to Hermione, covered though it was with perhaps centuries’ worth of dust.
The old man (was it Rashleigh himself?) steered her past the great sweeping staircase to an arch to the right. Here, the furniture was covered in bolts of white cloth. Hermione followed her host past the hulking and low and curved shapes, feeling a foreboding. The place held an air of loneliness and…neglect. Sad neglect, like a garden forgotten.
“Watchin!” the old man called, and a house-elf appeared, who squeaked in surprise at the sight of Hermione. “We have a guest. Give her a warm dressing gown and””
“Oh, no, please, I can dry myself sufficiently, thank you.” Hermione did so, waving her wand over her body. When she was done, she looked from the old man to the elf and back. “I just would like to see Mr Rashleigh. I’m Hermione Granger”Weasley. Hermione Weasley. And I wish to ask for Mr Rashleigh’s help.”
“Hermione? Your name is Hermione?” the old man asked, staring more unnervingly than ever.
“Yes,” Hermione answered wearily. No doubt he would ask next about the battle.
In that, she was mistaken. The old man just stared. “Interesting. Interesting. And with that hair…” he mumbled, shaking his head with an expression of disbelief.
“Can I offer you tea, then, Hermione?” On hearing that, the elf”Watchin”scampered off without waiting for her answer.
“Forgive me, sir, but are you Mr Rashleigh?”
“Oh, yes, pardon me. It is just, I have not talked with anyone in many years, save Watchin and myself, so you have to excuse my complete lack of knowledge in sociability.”
By now, they had descended a staircase and entered a room that looked like a room indeed. Lived in, at least, as proven by the absence of dust clouds rising on the carpet underfoot and the silence of the door when it was pushed open. Sconces and candelabra gave the room cheerful light, and the walls were lined with books and some shelves were piled with parchment rolls with golden tassels.
It wasn’t quite what Hermione had expected. But she could hear a constant ticking even as they moved through the halls and rooms, as if a hundred or a thousand clocks were just outside every wall, or comprising it.
“Sit down, my dear. Ah, here’s Watchin with the tea. Relieve Miss Hermione of her things.”
Hermione allowed the elf to take her shrug and the picture.
“I wanted to show that to you. And ask if you could help me,” Hermione said, her eyes on her tea as she raised it to her lips. Please help me.
For once, Mr Rashleigh stopped staring at her and turned his eyes to the portrait.
“A beautiful work. Is this your husband?”
“Yes. We’d just gotten married yesterday.” Was it yesterday? Her happiest day? And now, only several hours later, it was her most miserable day?
“Where is he now? Wouldn’t he be looking for you? You looked as if you were running from the devil himself, you know. I hope we don’t have another one again so soon?”
“Oh no, sir. Well, he”he got called off to work. He’s the captain of a Quidditch team, see. And well, we had a fight over his leaving. Well, I was mad. I left that picture outside after the owl delivered it...”
“I see.”
After several moments of staring at her, he got up from his chair and took a battered black book from one of the shelves. He perused it for so long Hermione feared he must have forgotten she was there. She kept quiet, though, and ate when Watchin set the table with dinner. All through it, Mr Rashleigh stayed by the shelf, his silver brows knit in concentration, reading.
It seemed Watchin knew better than to disturb his master, because when Hermione opened her mouth to speak, intending to voice her intention to leave, the elf frantically shushed her, waving his little fingers between his lips.
Hermione bit her lip and stayed in her seat.
Just when she was nodding off to sleep, she heard him.
“It is feasible, yes. We could do it,” he was whispering to himself.
Yes, there were two Mr Rashleighs in the room now, identical from the balding pate down to the odd buttons on their roquelaures.
“Mr Rashleigh?” Hermione called tentatively, testing if she was really awake.
They both turned around. The other one came to her in three long strides in which he didn’t use his cane. It stood abandoned by the stack of shelves. His gray eyes blazed”with malice or joy, Hermione couldn’t tell. His smile made even more lines appear on his face.
“My dear, what is one picture worth?” he asked breathlessly.
“A”a lot, I suppose.” Hermione stood up. She didn’t like the way he towered over her. He had also taken hold of her hand. Hermione didn’t desist, but held her wand ready inside her pocket with her free hand, and kept her eyes between the two Rashleighs. “I know Ron will be very hurt if he knew I ruined this picture he commissioned for me. It might ruin our whole life, it will haunt me. Please help me, sir. I need to just go back and Impervius it or something””
“Well said!” He bared his crooked old teeth in another overenthusiastic smile. He studied her face again and then began pulling her by her wrist.
“Where are you taking me?” Hermione asked, trying and failing to stand her ground from the old man, who seemed to have lost all feebleness all of a sudden. She turned to look at the other Rashleigh just in time to see him disappear, having turned a little golden hourglass tied around his neck.
The Rashleigh holding her, meanwhile, lifted one of the heavy tomes lying horizontal on the shelves. Suddenly, the room grew dark. But before Hermione had time to say ‘Lumos’, torches blazed around them again, illuminating a wholly different room, this one capacious and lofty, free of bookshelves and any clutter, save for one giant hourglass, its contents fluid fire, suspended in a giant ring of gold and platinum glinting in the flickering light of the torches and the silvery glow from the moon through the giant glass cinquefoil overhead.
“When you destroyed the many Time-turners in the Ministry stock”what, five years ago, was it?”they informed me. They wanted to make more, but I declined. I told them I don’t have any time-turners left myself, but I lied. I have this.” Here, he plucked the time-turner he had on under his collar and showed it to Hermione.
“Oh, well, can I borrow it, then, sir?”
“No. You will use this one.” He pointed to the giant hourglass. Hermione’s jaw dropped.
“Do you know how hard it is to restore a painting? Oh, a torn canvas and broken frame is simple enough, but the paints, the colors, the oils, the very life of the picture, once diluted, is a puzzle with many lost pieces,” Mr Rashleigh said. Hermione stared at him. He stood suddenly straight and he was leaping around the giant hourglass, adjusting and tweaking and twisting knobs, as if he was twenty.
“I’m very lonely, Hermione. I have long wished to change all that.”
“I’ve seen the trucks and all those equipment outside. Are you going to destroy this castle and live somewhere else?”
“Destroy this castle!” He paused in his ministrations on the hourglass and really scared Hermione with his expression. His eyes looked as if they were preparing to leave his head. “What do you mean?”
“The”the trucks outside. Demolition equipment.”
He fell silent. “I didn’t see them, nor hear them. That blasted portrait!”
“Sir, please. I will leave now if I am bothering you. Please forget the””
“No, no, it’s not you. You will understand presently. Sit down.”
There was no place to sit, there was only the chair attached to the circle around the hourglass. Hermione lowered herself in its edge, ready to leap up in the least threat.
“You have experience with Time-travel, my dear?”
“I’m in the records; I used one in my third year, to help me go to my extra classes””
“Perfect. I am old, Hermione, will you do me a favor?”
He had become more and more agitated; his hobnails hammered the stone floor with a frantic rhythm as he marched back and forth before Hermione, who just raised her eyebrows at him kindly, not committing herself with words.
Rashleigh gave her a wan smile and waved his wand, conjuring a portrait, which propped itself against the hourglass’ round frame.
“I wish to discover this portrait’s significance. I feel in my bones that it is the key to my happiness. Before I die, I want to see the face of this woman, whether it is tender or mocking. I spend almost all of my time now up at the garret where she resides, just looking at her face and willing it to reveal itself.”
Hermione stared. It was a Muggle painting. The picture was still only tacked to the canvas frame, but it was beautiful, if it weren’t for its wickedly splotched state. The face looked like it had been splashed with alcohol or kerosene; the paint had dripped and was almost completely dissolved, but the woman’s dress and body had intricate detail and movement as she sat in the grass”a loving work, that much was obvious. But why was it destroyed? Perhaps because it was done by a Muggle? Were the Rashleighs snobs?
At that moment, another Rashleigh appeared beside them. This time, Hermione did shriek. The tension had gone to her nerves. Both old men apologized profusely.
“What now?” the original Rashleigh asked the other.
“The journal, how could you forget to give it to her, idiot?”
“Mr Rashleigh,” Hermione said weakly, clutching her chest. “Don’t you think this is overdoing it a bit? Do you always travel this much?”
“Well, I’m old anyway, and I know about my tinkering, so I don’t mind my other selves. Still, I could only travel so far. There are still many things I would have loved to undo or do, but couldn’t. Time is a fickle friend, after all.”
“But you could do it for me, Hermione,” the other Rashleigh said, before disappearing again with a turn of his pendant.
Here, Hermione stood from the chair and drew her wand.
Mr Rashleigh looked almost childishly petulant. “My dear, this portrait for your portrait, aren’t we equals?”
“But”alright, when was this portrait destroyed? What should I do?” She sat back down. Darn Ron and that owl and her! Darn her!
Mr Rashleigh’s face lightened again, the smile returned; though Hermione wished otherwise, he looked slightly insane in that smile. Still, she had her wand. She should do well. She could do a lot so that she won’t be seen.
The old man had conjured another object, this time a large book bound in black leather, which he placed in Hermione’s lap. It was heavy, and it smelled very old.
“You’ll need that. As we were kindly reminded awhile ago. Thank you so much, my dear.” Mr Rashleigh looked up from what he was tinkering with on the other side of the hourglass to smile at Hermione.
“How much time am I going to cross?”
“The time of the journal and the portrait, this is why they are there by you. Three turns should do it.”
Hermione took a deep breath, all nerves and fear when she first heard those words eight years ago returning to her. “Three turns." She swallowed. "And this giant time-turner has how much time in one turn? And why are its contents different?”
Mr Rashleigh looked at the swirling red mass at the bottom bulb, his expression unreadable, but unpleasant, as if he was surveying something dear to him, but dreadful. “Isn’t time like flames? It is both friend and foe. One choice, one deed, right or wrong, could turn it from one to the other or vice-versa. Not a very eloquent way to put it, but there you are. In vain I have tried to perfect it. But it would not do. This is not a time-turner, but a Century-Crosser, though it only has ninety years in one turn instead of a round one hundred.”
Hermione jumped up. But it was only her imagination, or perhaps the sensation of having been turned back, bodily, through that much time.
The hourglass had already turned.
And in the great old ballroom of the Rashleigh Manor, Hermione Granger-Weasley had already disappeared.
Author’s Note: I didn’t know if Jan’s (MagicalMaeve) ‘Bodmin Moor’ is fictional or not, so I checked it on Encarta, and discovered it very real in Cornwall. I don’t know either whether Ernie is from there, but please allow me that one license. As well as for this really big one of attributing the Time-turner to William Rashleigh. I did look around, but no name of a wizard or a witch had been appended to this little trinket.
Thank you for reading! Tell me if I did well or not. ^_^