Chapter 1: Chapter One: The Beginning of a Choice

The world had ended, but Hermione Granger was still breathing.

She didn't know why.

The war was over. Voldemort was dead. The wizarding world, broken and bleeding, had begun the slow, desperate process of rebuilding.

But she still felt like a wreck

A strand of hair fell into her face, and she absently pushed it back, only to feel the thick, matted tangles. She couldn't remember the last time she had brushed it properly, let alone braided it as she used to. The wild curls that had once been a source of frustration and familiarity were now limp, greasy, and knotted.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

And barely recognized the woman staring back at her.

Her face was gaunt, cheekbones sharp where there had once been softness. Dark circles, nearly bruises, hollowed the skin beneath her eyes, a stark contrast against her too-pale complexion. Her lips were dry and cracked, her once full figure now thinner, sharp-edged. She had always been petite, but now she looked fragile—like a ghost of herself, barely clinging to existence.

It had been weeks since she had properly slept. Years since she had truly rested.

She slowly made her way downstairs to at least pretend to be part of something

She sat at the kitchen table, fingers curled loosely around the rim of her untouched tea. The steam curled upward, whispering warmth, but she felt nothing. Conversations hummed around her—Harry speaking in low tones with Kingsley, Molly bustling near the stove—but it was all distant.

She was elsewhere. trapped in her memories, hearing only screaming echoes

She flinched lightly when a hand landed on her shoulder. And noticed how everyone pretended not to notice it. all have seemed to be determined to not to stare at her .

"Hermione," Harry said softly. "You should eat."

Her stomach churned.

Eat. Sleep. Breathe. The things that were supposed to come naturally.

Things that felt like chores now.

"I'm fine," she murmured, voice scratchy from disuse.

"You're not."

She finally looked at him, eyes dull and sunken. Harry looked different now—older, harder—but he had life in him. He had something to live for.

she had nothing.

Molly worried. Ginny fussed. Harry watched; his green eyes filled with concern that made her feel exposed.

She turned away from him, gripping the teacup as if it could ground her.

She could hear him exhale through his nose, frustrated. "This isn't you."

A flicker of something ugly twisted inside her.

No. This was her. This was what was left of her.

She pressed her lips together, hands trembling around the porcelain. "You don't understand."

"I do," he said, voice sharp. "You think I haven't wanted to change things? To go back? But we can't."

Her breath hitched.

Yes, they could.

Magic had rules, but rules were made to be bent.

Harry leaned closer. "You're thinking about it, aren't you?"

Her fingers twitched.

He knew. Of course he did.

"Hermione." His voice was gentler now. "Whatever you're working on—it won't change the past."

Her stomach turned.

Instead, she set her cup down, fingers tightening into fists. "You don't understand"

She had knowledge. She had magic. She had a purpose final even if may be seemed impossible now.

Harry's expression softened, but she couldn't bear it. She pushed away from the table, her chair scraping against the floor.

"I have to fix it."

"Hermione—"

She didn't let him finish.

She turned and walked away, away from his pity, away from his understanding.

Because if he really understood, he wouldn't be trying to stop her.

It wasn't that she didn't want to move on. She did. But every time she tried, the weight of the past, of her choices, held her in place. Every time she looked forward, her mind wouldn't let her forget the faces of the lives lost and Him. It was her actions that had led to this world, this reality, and she couldn't shake the sense that maybe, just maybe, it was all her fault.

She stood in the doorway, watching them, and for the first time in a long time, a painful thought crossed her mind: What if I wasn't meant to be a part of this new world?

________________________________________

It all started when Harry dragged her to outside to go shopping and finally ending in visiting Hagrid who wanted to cheer her up and bought in Buckbeak and Harry being the stubborn git manipulated her into riding with him and it bought back memories of how she changed past to save lives which now ignited the spark to try do the same and that's how now the basement of Grimmauld Place had become her prison.

Dust clung to the heavy tomes stacked around her. Candlelight flickered, casting jagged shadows on the stone walls. The air was thick with old magic, humming beneath her fingertips as she turned the pages of yet another book.

She had been relentless.

Days blurred into nights. Her fingers bore ink stains and burn marks from failed experiments. She hardly slept. She barely ate.

One evening, after dinner, he finally cornered her in the library, his face drawn with concern.

"Hermione," he said quietly, his voice heavy, "you can't keep doing this. You're... losing yourself."

She doesn't care to look up from her notes, her fingers running over the familiar diagrams and magical formulas. She was so deep in thought that she barely heard him at first. But his words pierced through the fog in her mind, making her pause.

"Losing myself?" she echoed, her tone soft but defensive. "I'm not losing myself. I'm just... trying to fix things, Harry. Trying to make it right."

Harry shook his head, moving closer to her. "This isn't the way, Hermione. You're not going to find peace by trying to change everything. You're just going to keep going in circles. The past is done. We

have to move forward, not backward."

Hermione clenched her jaw, the tightness in her chest growing with every word. She didn't want to hear it. She couldn't hear it. She had already lost so much, and this—this was her one chance to make things better. To fix the things that were broken.

"I can't move forward," she whispered, almost to herself. "Not with all this... guilt."

Harry's expression softened, and he reached out, gently touching her arm. "You can't carry that weight forever, Hermione. You have to let it go. We all do. It's not just your burden to bear."

But Hermione shook her head, pulling away from his touch. "You don't understand," she said, her voice low and tight. "I have to do this. I need to make it right." She stood up suddenly, her gaze intense, as if the very air around her was filled with invisible pressure. "I have to."

Harry didn't back down. He held her gaze, his expression hardening. "Hermione, Doing right is rebuilding. It's healing. It's not tearing yourself apart over something none of us could control."

She let out a sharp laugh, but there was no humour in it.

"Control?" she repeated, her voice sharp and bitter. "You think I don't know we had no control? That we fought, and we planned, and we still lost people we shouldn't have?" She clenched her fists, her breath shaking as she took a step back, shaking her head.

"I fought for this world," she whispered, "and now I don't know where I stand in it."

Harry's face twisted, as if he was lost on how to understand her, but She was breaking down, her walls cracking as the words spilled from her lips.

"Fred. Remus. Tonks. Colin. Lavender." Her breath hitched.

"Ron."

Harry flinched, and Hermione felt something inside her splinter.

"I see him when I close my eyes," she said, voice shaking.

"I hear him. I remember the way Ron looked at me—like he knew—like he knew he wouldn't make it, as he shoved me out of the way, threw himself in front of me—" Her voice broke, and she pressed a hand against her mouth, like she could shove the words back down. But it was too late. 

"He should be here," she choked. "He should be arguing with George over stupid pranks, stealing food from Molly's kitchen, making fun of my bloody books—but he's not. He's gone, and

I don't—" Her breath hitched, and she turned away, rubbing her hands over her arms as if she could stop the way they trembled.

She could hear Harry exhale slowly, carefully. "I miss him too," he murmured.

she laughed, sharp and broken. "No, you don't get it, Harry. You grieve him. You miss him. But I—" She swallowed hard, her voice lowering to a whisper.

"I love him and can't let him go."

Her nails dug into her arms. "It should have been me," she admitted, barely more than a breath. "It should have been me, but it wasn't. And now I'm stuck here, in a world where Ron doesn't exist, where I wake up every day and remember that I survived, and he didn't."

Harry's jaw clenched. "And you think this will bring him back?"

She inhaled sharply, spinning to face him. "I think I have to try!" she snapped.

She saw Harry flinching at the raw desperation in her voice, but its like she couldn't stop as she started pacing, her hands threading through her hair tears pooling at her eyes. "I have to do something. Because if I don't—if I just sit here and accept it, like you have, like Ginny has, like everyone else has—then what was the point?" Her voice cracked, and she stopped, pressing her hands flat against the desk, her shoulders rising and falling with uneven breaths.

"I'm not like you, Harry," she whispered. "I don't have the Weasleys. I don't have a family. I don't have a future. All I have are the ghosts of people I couldn't save." She clenched her jaw. "And I'm so tired of just waking."

Harry swallowed, his hands curling into fists. "And what happens if this doesn't work?" he asked quietly. "If you do all of this, and it still doesn't change a damn thing? What then?"

She exhaled slowly, gripping the desk so tightly her knuckles turned white.

"Then at least I tried," she whispered.

Harry looked at her then, really looked at her, and his heart clenched painfully in his chest. He had seen her fight battles before, seen her stand strong in the face of impossible odds—but this? This was different. This wasn't the war breaking her. This was the after. And in some ways, it was worse.

"Hermione…" His voice was heavy with something almost pleading.

But she shook her head, stepping away.

"I have to finish this," she said again, but softer this time. "Even if you don't understand."

And Harry just stood there, watching as she turned back to her desk, to the papers, to the calculations she had already lost herself in.

She wasn't listening anymore now immersed herself fully into her project with even more intensity

The argument with Harry lingered in the back of her mind, but she forced herself to push it away. She couldn't afford to think about his disappointment—not when she was so close.

She had spent months on this, buried in old texts and forgotten records, deciphering runes so ancient that even Hogwarts' library had little information on them. Every spare moment had been dedicated to this one goal: correcting the past.

The Ministry's official stance was that all remaining Time-Turners had been destroyed. But she had found remnants—fragments of broken ones recovered after the Department of Mysteries' collapse. She had spent weeks just piecing together what little was left, testing magical resonance, recalibrating spells, and—when none of that had been enough—building something entirely new from scratch.

And now, after months of sleepless nights, ink-stained fingers, and exhaustion pressing like lead against her skull, she had it.

Her hands trembled as she adjusted the final engraving, double-checking the delicate etchings of runes along the edges of the small, gleaming device. This wasn't like the old Ministry Time-Turners that worked in rigid loops of hours. No—this one would target a specific moment in time. A singular event. A correction.

It will work.

She pulled out her battered journal, flipping to the last page where she had been meticulously recording every test, every failure, every impossible calculation that had led her here. Her quill scratched against the parchment as she wrote, her breath coming faster with each word.

October 12th, 2000

Breakthrough.

After months of refining the temporal anchor and adjusting for paradox destabilization, the prototype is complete. Unlike previous Time-Turners, this version should allow for direct timeline insertion rather than simple time loops. Theory suggests targeted intervention is possible. I have adjusted the rune alignment to account for drift.

This will work.

This has to work.

She swallowed, staring at the words, her hand still gripping the quill so tightly her fingers ached.

Her breath hitched as her eyes flickered to the edge of the page, where a name had been written and rewritten so many times that the parchment was worn thin beneath it.

Ron.

Her chest ached.

She pushed the journal away and grabbed a fresh parchment instead, her heart pounding as she scribbled a quick note to Harry.

Harry,

I did it. I made it work. I finally found a way. I know you don't agree, but I need you to trust me on this. I can fix everything. I can bring him back.

Please, just give me this.

—Hermione

Her hands shook as she folded the letter and set it aside.

Then, slowly, she reached for the Time-Turner. The metal was cool against her fingertips, deceptively delicate for something holding so much power.

She exhaled shakily, closing her eyes for just a moment.

This was it.

She grasped the chain of the Time-Turner, feeling the cool metal press against her palm.

"One turn," she whispered.

One turn to rewrite history.

One turn to bring him back.

Her fingers tightened

And then

BOOOOM.