38) Punxsutawney revisited

JKR really opened up a can o'worms with the time turners. It practically begs us to rewrite the series however we want… I have made up the astronomy out of whole cloth.

~~~~~ begin story ~~~~~

The first time it happened, he was only tossed back a single day.

"And let me guess, Foster tried to tell you that you could not have conjured the fish because of the implications of Gamp's law and you asked about serpensortia, shutting his dumb arse up?"

Harry had been suffering from intense déjà vu all day. He'd felt like he was reliving the day, and it was beyond weird.

Hermione, meanwhile, looked at her best friend with consternation.

"How did you know that?"

"Would you believe that my seer talents have finally kicked in?"

"Absolutely not. Harry," she paused and looked him dead in the eye, "is something going on?"

"Well, I woke up this morning, convinced it was Friday-eve," he began and paused. It was just too weird.

"Yes," she prompted. "I remember telling you it was wishful thinking and that you should be grateful it happened on a Wednesday, not a Monday."

"Yeah, but shite kept re-happening. I almost got street-baptized when I went out to grab a muggle paper before popping to work."

"It's London. There always puddles and taxis who love to splash pedestrians."

"Yeah, but I knew it was coming, so I paused, and the splash happened right in front of me. The bloke behind me grumbled that I stopped mid-sidewalk, pushed around me, and he got soaked for his rudeness."

"Karma." Hermione waved her hand, excusing it away. "What else?"

"I knew that McClaggan would corner me in my shop, trying to get me to endorse his team. The cannons have to be completely nuts to have him as keeper. There was no avoiding that conversation, by the way, but I knew his arguments before he made them."

"Ronald still gripes – even to me – about the fact that the Cannons have him on roster. Cormac's arguments are completely predictable. But it is more indication. Do you recall any time sands? They're relatively stable outside the enchanted glass."

"Enchanter here, Hermione. I know there wasn't a turner involved. I made twelve of them for your department last year. I'm very familiar with them at this point."

"You didn't owe them free work because of what happened back in school," Hermione huffed, thinking she needed a cup of tea if she was going to deal with a WPS (weird Potter situation).

Harry shrugged. "Enchanters with mage-level power are few and far between. I didn't mind doing it. They let me borrow some books in return. It was a fair exchange."

"Back to your repeating day." She paused as Kreacher put hot tea in front of her. She thanked the elf and looked at her housemate. "Did you hear 'I Got You Babe' as you woke?"

The reference to the movie they had watched together at one point in the past – and discussed as to how hellish it would have been if those time sands had trapped anyone in the DOM when they broke them all back in fifth year – put Harry's mind exactly where he didn't want to go.

"Funny. As it's June, not February, when the Americans celebrate that meteorological rodent, I hope it's just a weird déjà vu thing and not Harry Potter luck kicking in. I mean, it could be some sort of precognitive sight or something right?"

"Why are you asking me?" Hermione asked, sipping the piping-hot brew. "You stuck with that class a lot longer than I did."

"Because you know everything." His statement was so matter-of-fact. There was no winging, no sarcasm. It was the truth as Harry believed it to be, and Hermione was once again humbled that Harry, her very talented, intuitive, and intelligent friend thought so much of her own talents.

"Flattery will get you everywhere." She smirked and he smiled back. Then his face grew serious.

"Goes without saying that you won't say anything to anyone at work?" He trusted her, but sometimes, when she got single-minded in her focus, she wasn't as careful as she could be.

Hermione was a researcher in the department of mysteries. They thought they owned all the mysteries. The time they'd heard he'd seen all the hallows? He made the time turners for them just to get them to leave off.

"No, Harry, I wouldn't betray you that way. Who else would let me live in their house for nothing?" Grimmauld was a really nice house now. He had worked endlessly on it, taking out any frustrations on stubborn pests or imbedded magics.

As he had improved the house, Kreacher – who was already light years ahead of his old persona since they'd destroyed the locket – got even stronger. That elf popped in with a cold beer for Harry, who really needed it.

They spoke of the rest of the day; what he had noticed, what he hadn't. He realized that he was probably making too much of it. His day had been nothing extraordinary. In fact, it was quite unremarkable. And since he – blessedly – seemed to have a lot of unremarkable days now, he thought maybe it really was just coincidence. He sighed. "You figure it was a glitch in the matrix?"

"Well, if we're going to be stuck in a 90s movie, I would rather it be Groundhog's Day."

"Only if you got the Andie MacDowell role. Bill Murray's role is literally hell."

Hermione murmured, "True. Dinner?"

"Kreacher's making a nice Yorkshire pudding tonight since we're both here." Neither commented on how he knew that. "Let's go out for Italian tomorrow, unless you have a date."

"Nope. No prospects right now." They moved to the dining room, ate a lovely, if heavy, meal together, then watched some telly (Harry had figured out how to enchant a runic Faraday cage, and muggleborn were his prime customers, there. Everyone wanted a telly and a normal radio and he figured soon they'd all want mobile phones and computers. He'd fix his finances soon enough.) before going to bed. Harry believed the next day would be a normal day; all he needed was a good sleep.

He was wrong.

When he woke up again on what should have been June 10, he found it was December 10. He had gone back by six months. It was a bit frustrating (and a lot frightening), having to live the whole winter season twice, but this time, he was more methodical, because he was scared. He did a little research for a few days before going to his source of knowledge and comfort.

When he told Hermione about his backward travel, she didn't even flinch.

"Merlin, Harry, the weirdest shite always happens to you," she groused, trying to use a little humor to cover her worry.

His relief that she believed him, so naturally, was immense.

He explained how he had gone to bed on June 9, only to wake on December 10. How it had happened before, only for the time period of a day, not half a year.

"That's not good, actually." Hermione sighed, biting her lip. "Whoever is doing this, it's like an experiment. If, say, you want to make a new potion, maybe using an expensive reagent. First you do a proof of concept, really small scale, to not waste anything. Then you do a scale up."

Harry nodded, following her logic.

"But then, if it all works as you think it should, you mass produce. You could be waiting for this to happen again. And you could go farther back."

"Great." Harry shook his head. "I have two major issues."

"Besides the involuntary temporal conduit?"

"Yeah, besides that. Whoever's doing this: I don't know who "they" are, or what their goal is. If six months back was the goal, I'm done."

"Well, I'd like to know what they're using to power such a jump. Time sands are literally deadly to source. And their limit is a two-day period, before the sands collapse."

"I imagine it's a completely different methodology. Especially since I don't remember anyone sticking a chain over my head and turning an hourglass."

"Ha," Hermione smirked, remembering that night when they saved Sirius. "And actually, since you just finished your self-inflicted penance of re-enchanting a dozen of the blighters for the department, you probably would know better than any how they work."

She was still a little bitter that Hogwarts administration had let her use a time-turner for a full school year, unmonitored and unschooled in its dangers. She could really have wrecked her health. Of course, it had allowed them to save Sirius, temporarily, but still.

"I also don't know why I'm the only one who seems to notice this. I checked last time. And I've been checking this week. No weird tales in the Daily Mail or the Quibbler. You guys disappear anyone into the depths of the DOM recently?"

"No." Hermione bit her lip and continued, "But if we did, I would still tell you no, because it would be secret. But, no." He grinned, shaking his head. "So, did you change anything last time?"

He shrugged. "My life is mostly boring. It's why we wrote the last instance off as déjà vu. I did stop myself getting splashed by a taxi."

"No repercussions? You didn't get another injury or have another accident?" She asked, focused on the issue.

"No."

"Six months this time," she murmured, biting her lip. "Anything stick out in the next six months?"

"Honestly? No. My life after Hogwarts has been a dead bore, as you know. I did get a date with Daphne?" Hermione had been supportive of his dinner date with the blond pureblood, no matter the disaster it had been.

"You dog! And how did it go?" She was nothing but happy for him. She was his best mate, for sure.

"Terrible. We got Weasleyed."

"What? Dish!"

"Of all the gin joints in all the towns… We were sharing a drink, looking at the menu, when Ron came barreling in. How could I date someone other than Ginny? How could I date a Malfoy?" he huffed and shook his head.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Astoria's the Malfoy. Did he think you were dating Malfoy's wife?"

"Guilt by association, I suppose." Harry shrugged. "Anyway. He was so loud and distracting that the restaurant asked us to leave. She wouldn't go out with me again."

"We are so well-shot of that family. The Weasley's, not the Greengrasses," Hermione clarified.

"I never would have believed it of them," Harry said, thinking on the cold shoulder the clan gave him those days. "I guess blood is thicker, and all."

"Ginny dumps you because she finds out you don't have any money; tells the family it was a 'mutual split' but hints that you dumped her. And they all believed her the victim so easily." Hermione was furious that they closed ranks on him like that. Ron, especially, turning on Harry a third time was the last straw for her. She broke up with him that day and Harry changed the wards on Grimmauld to exclude all of the Weasleys.

"I think Bill knows the truth. After all, he was there when I found out about the vaults. He silenced and bound me so I didn't attack the little cretins."

"I still can't believe that the goblins took all the Potter vaults when you were just 16 because you'd not done paperwork for five years. That's shouldn't be enough time for abandonment clauses."

"And then they took the Black vaults because of the break-in. Which wouldn't have been needed if Griphook hadn't been a git. Well, I'm making some decent coin now, with enchanting. I had a line of bottomless bags ready to go for the Hogwarts year – have to get started on that again. Oh! And you!"

"Me?"

"You! You figured out how to overcome the drain on the linked mirrors! The answer was in a book you found. An old Aramaic text."

"What? Where did I find that?"

"I wish I knew. The most interesting part, to me, was that the book had a Potter bookplate in it."

"Oh, Harry," Hermione sighed.

One of the vaults the goblins had stolen – and she maintained that the little pests had robbed Harry – had contained the contents of the Potter homes.

"You gave it to me. Told me when you saw the bookplate you did a point me in the shop for other Potter volumes. There were none." Her shoulders fell. "Hey, that book was precious to me. It was even better than the kick-ass engraving set you got me for Yule."

"No fair! I just tracked that down this morning!" She didn't need proof that he'd come back. He said he time-traveled: he time-traveled. Any doubt of him was a thing of the past. "Alas. You know what you're getting. And I'll keep an eye out for that book on my used book hunts. Right now, I'm hungry. I'm going to get some tandoori chicken. You want anything?"

"Baingan bharta, if you're sprining. You going to Khajuraho?"

Over the next few weeks, where Harry was once again able to cross paths with Daphne Greengrass and wrangle a date from her, he noticed the similarities. When he wasn't working, he was researching. In late January, he showed Hermione the conclusions he'd come to.

"As you said, whoever did this would need massive power. I've been looking at ley lines, star charts. The date of June 9 has a very interesting astronomical setup: the terrestrial planets will be in alignment on one side of the solar disk while the Jovian planets will be in alignment on the other. The sun and moon will also be in opposition. It's an extremely rare setup; do you think it has any importance?"

"Do the stars have influence? You sound like that centaur… Firenze? You stuck in divination longer than I did; you'd know better than I."

"Huh," he tipped his head. "You said almost the same thing the last time I went through this, when I wondered if maybe I was having some sort of precognition or something."

"You're literally repeating yourself. Don't get on my tits if I bring up a valid argument twice," she said with a sense of superiority. "I was thinking on your second observation. Why are you the only one who seems to remember?"

"I put it down to being Fate's bitch." His tone was resigned. He thought he'd put the mantle of 'chosen one' down when he put Voldie down. Seemed that the weaving trio had different ideas.

Hermione sighed. "You really are. But besides being a pawn of prophecy, do you think the hallows have something to do with it?"

"Being the master of death?" Harry paused. "Makes it so I can be tossed ass over teakettle to the past and remember the whole thing, where the rest of you can't?"

Hermione shrugged. "I got nothing else. I haven't even found any reference to people traveling farther back or with anything other than a time turner."

"What excuse did you use?" he asked as he sipped his cappuccino.

"Oh, they know I had one my third year. This isn't even the first time I looked over the research to see if we could source the sands another way. Our jaunt through the department fifth year really did untold damage. They still only have a quarter of the time turners they had, and those are the ones you made."

He felt guilty, like maybe he should do something else, but then he remembered that he had tried to warn the powers that be that Voldie had been back. He had relied on his headmaster and the minister and they had fallen woefully short. He had done all he could do at the time.

"Well, on the "can I change things I know to be true" front. I went out with Daphne last night. Changed the place. No interruptions. We're set to go out again next Friday."

"Maybe you'll get to three whole dates and you'll get laid!" Hermione stomped down on the twinge in her gut.

"One of us should." Harry teased back, not wanting to think of Hermione dating, but knowing it would be happening again soon. She was beautiful and magical and sharp as a tack. The only reason she wasn't taken was because too many blokes were intimidated by her superiority.

"Yeah." Hermione sighed. She missed sex. "But all men are berks. You excepting!" she snarked, nudging him with her elbow.

"You know I'll go kick that Kone guy's arse?" Sunil Kone was the last man she dated, and he cheated on her. "He deserves worse for two timing you."

"You know I could kick his arse myself, if I thought he was that important."

"He tried to tell the world he was fucking The Man Who Won's Girl. He used you. I want to wipe the floor with his face."

"Which would give his bluster weight. We're best friends and roommates. And if neither of us is married at 30, we'll have sprogs together because we both want children and we'd both be good parents."

And you're hot as hell they both thought, but were unwilling to act, as it might screw up their friendship. Neither had done well in the relationship area, but Harry only had Ginny and Sarah (who had been so jealous of Hermione that she'd broken up with Harry), while Hermione had three blokes beyond Ronald on her tally.

"Speaking of the men in your nefarious past," Hermione snorted into her tea, "Victor's going to be visiting as ambassador to the Falmouth team's kid camp in March – during spring break? He tries to hook up with you."

"Did I let him?"

"You told me that he didn't have enough below the belt to qualify. Too many broom accidents or something? Anyway, no, but he bothered you for several weeks before and gave you some dirty press, again."

"Honestly, I've slept with exactly three men."

"Shameless hussy, I've only slept with two women."

"That's because you're terrified one will try to trick you into the pastor's noose."

"You try living your life with people dictating your every move. See if you don't become paranoid!"

Time passed. Harry had a second date with Daphne, but no third. There was simply no chemistry between them.

He spent his time doing what-if scenarios. What if I get sent back five years? What about when I was a little tyke, like 1981? What if they go back before I'm born?

Oh, gods, what if I get sent back to when Voldemort is still alive and I have to fight the fucker again?

He had calendars made and he looked at Hermione's old diaries – after she carefully edited them. He didn't ask why. A person's thoughts – even a twelve-year-old's – were personal. And using Hermione as a springboard, he planned what he could.

June came, much more quickly than he wished.

"So, this is it." Hermione sat next to him, linking her fingers through his. He squeezed hers back and swallowed, hard. They had shared a beautiful French meal, knowing neither would be eating much. They tried to keep the conversation light, but the erumpment was right there, in the center of the room. They walked back to the house, and were now sharing wine in the sitting room.

"If it happens, in case I just disappear, I left a will. You get everything. Well, the house and what's in my vault." Harry was grim and determined, hoping he'd wake up tomorrow, but somehow certain he wouldn't.

She inhaled hard through her nose, closing her eyes and firming her lips. Then she looked at him.

"I think, if it happens, this universe will collapse. But either way. Harry."

"Hmm?" He was distracted. Antsy. He needed sleep, but knew none would come that night.

"Harry." She needed him to look at her.

He looked at her. And she kissed him.

It started as just a touching of the lips but deepened quickly. Harry pulled away.

"Hermione, I can't."

Hurt and confusion warred in her. "I can't be so bad that you won't be my 'I'm going to die' shag."

His eyes widened. "No. You're the opposite. If I thought you'd say yes, I'd have a ring on your finger. You're my all. But you've made it pretty clear that you only want relationships in the short term, and I get that."

Her jaw dropped. Yes, she did have a thing against marriage, especially in the wizarding world. She'd said it before: Marriage was an outdated institution. The magical world had antiquated ideals, and she didn't want to be trapped in a marriage, either, pushing out kids and letting her brain turn to mush.

But it was all really an excuse. Because she would only marry Harry, and he didn't see her like that. She thought.

"I've watched you date men, and when it's done, they don't exist anymore. I couldn't be that cast off. You're the only constant to me. You're my north star. You're my core. I…"

"I love you." She said it with such certainty, such strength.

"Yeah, you love me as a friend." His voice was quiet and he tried to hide the resentment. "I know. But, see, I Love you. The big L. And I…"

"Will you marry me, Harry?"

He froze. He couldn't breathe, couldn't blink, couldn't…

"Hermione?" he whispered.

"You are such a git. I discard men because they're. not. You." She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. "I love you. I always have."

He chuckled bitterly. "At the end of the world, we both finally have the guts to say the thing."

"It's not too late. We have tonight."

And he'd give her tonight. Because he knew – Knew – he was going away and not coming back. He'd be tossed back in time. Maybe just enough that he could build this with her again. But he remembered Bill Murray's many journeys, and how trying to build the same relationship time after time didn't work.

And what if he went back to when she was "in love" with Ron?

How would he deal?

He'd have memories. And he'd have this night.

~~~ this is where lemons would be but I don't write them, at least not well ~~~

As the tension exploded into a mass of pleasure, she relaxed. She felt him stiffen just moments later, and when he lowered himself, burying his face in the crook of her neck, she threaded her fingers through his thick, unruly hair.

"I love you."

He turned to kiss her, and the world disappeared.

~~~~~ fin ~~~~~

This could be stand alone. Right?

It's not. I have 35 or so pages typed out and will post it when it is as polished as I make stuff. But I figured this could stand alone... and maybe some people will be happy enough with it. If you're not, be patient. I'll put up the rest when I have some days to work on it.