Chapter Text
In a sense, it was calming.
The air was cool, the night was still, and the hushed voices of the remaining members of the Order above them served as a subtle reminder that at least they were not alone.
Avalon quietly hummed a lullaby through closed lips, trying to quell the violent trembling in her hands as she gently ran her fingers through the tangled mess that was Hermione’s hair.
They sat before a mirror, but she could barely recognize the two people staring back at them. The two best friends who had met first year on the Hogwarts Express were long gone. In their place, stood two people with the ghosts of their loved ones swimming in their empty eyes.
She couldn’t look at her friend’s eyes anymore. It broke her whenever she did.
Two brown eyes that once belonged to the brightest witch of her time…
Empty.
She thought about the things she would do to just see her friend smile one more time. Or to hear her voice.
Even though they were sitting right beside each other, she felt as though Hermione was already dead. And quite honestly, a part of her, a rather selfish part, almost wished that the witch had died along with the others. Perhaps a quick death would have been a less painful end than to lose her mind after hours of the cruciatus curse.
She couldn’t brush through her friend’s hair any more. Her fingers were shaking too much and she feared she would accidentally yank out the poor girl’s hair if she tried any more. She stopped and started to quietly pound her hands on the wooden floors.
Silence scared her. Silence meant that there was something that needed to be hidden from.
So, she made noise. Not too much. Never too much. But just enough to hear something.
“Tomorrow is your birthday, love,” she said to Hermione, her voice nearly failing her as she choked on the last word. Her friend just stared blankly ahead of her. She never replied, but Avalon still held hope that one day she’d hear the witch’s voice once more.
Perhaps she was being delusional, but she didn’t care anymore.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said, her voice just barely a whisper. And that was the truth. She was so proud of her friend. And she would continue to remind her of that every chance she got, even if she wasn’t sure if her friend could understand her anymore. But as she watched the silent girl before her, her mind strayed towards the last time they had all been able to celebrate a birthday together.
It had been Ginny’s birthday and they had all gathered at the Burrow to surprise her. All she could think about was the sound of their laughter. Beautiful, carefree, and joyous.
She felt her head start to throb as the memories of their laughter quickly faded to more recent screams. The sound of Hermione’s screams as she was tortured at the hands of the Death Eaters was something she knew she would never be able to get out of her brain.
Every night, she would lie awake on the concrete floor of the makeshift safehouse that they had been hiding in and stared at the ceiling as the memories of her friends being abused before her plagued her subconscious.
She hadn’t noticed that she had begun to rock back and forth on the ground. In that moment, she’d do anything for someone to comfort her. To hold her, and tell her that things would be okay. Even if that was a lie, it was one she needed to hear.
The door at the top of the staircase opened, startling her, but it was just Luna. “Hello,” the blonde greeted her. Her voice was still as soft as before, but she no longer spoke with the same curiosity embedded into her words. Even she had lost faith, it seemed.
Avalon couldn’t find it in herself to return the verbal greeting, so she just nodded.
“Would you like to go upstairs and take a break? I can sit with Hermione,” the blonde said as she descended down into the room. “I’d love to talk to her.”
Usually, she objected to leaving her friend’s side, but at that moment, she felt nauseous from the screams echoing in her mind. She just stood up and walked upstairs, her movements slow but steady.
It didn’t feel real. None of it felt real. The walls around her didn’t feel real. The people speaking in hushed voices around her didn’t feel real. The quiet radio listing off the names of the executed wizards didn’t feel real.
And the photos of their loved ones that they had lined on the table… didn’t feel real.
She stared at the photo of Harry. It was a picture from after he had completed the first task at the Triwizard Tournament. He looked happy. He looked excited.
Her throat went dry and her eyes began to sting, but no tears poured. She hadn’t cried in a long time.. All she was capable of doing was staring at the photo.
Everything changed the day Voldemort killed Harry Potter.
It was hard to remember what life was like before He took power. The days following Harry’s death had been brutal for everyone. They weren’t able to ever have a funeral for him. Or for any of the fallen, really.
Their bodies were paraded in the streets, turned into examples for those who dared go against Voldemort. The battle that followed was the beginning of an endless cycle of bloodshed that had yet to cease.
His followers had wiped out virtually all opposition. After the battle, the few survivors had a choice to make: either pledge their allegiance to Voldemort, or be publicly executed. Some went into hiding, but the Death Eaters were persistent. They went door to door, house to house, turning over every last building until they found anyone that didn’t agree with their leader.
They murdered the innocent in their own homes and danced over their lifeless bodies as if they were nothing.
The safehouse suddenly felt suffocating to her. She scrambled towards the door, opening it up and throwing herself into the dark shadows outside, letting the oxygen flow into her lungs and praying it would provide her with some sort of solace.
It did not. It never did. And it never would. But she’d be damned if she stayed one more second inside that godforsaken house.
They were rarely allowed to go outside in fear that they would be spotted, but she ignored the worried glances from the others and buried her head in her trembling hands while falling onto her knees and quivering over the wet mulch of the forest.
She wanted so badly to scream. She wanted so badly to cry. She wanted so badly to close her eyes and never have them open again.
But all she could manage to do was sit there as her body trembled violently, as it had done ever since the night after the Battle of Hogwarts when she and Hermione were blasted with curse after curse until Hermione was silenced and Avalon was broken.
And no matter how hard she tried to stay strong, that was all that she was now: broken.
The worst part was that there was no way out. They had exhausted every last option, they had failed at every last plan, and they had lost every last battle. It was over. Voldemort had won.
They weren’t trying anymore. There was nothing left to do. The war was over, no matter how hard they wanted to believe it wasn’t. They had no army, they had no supporters, and they had no power.
It was a miracle that they were even still alive.
Silence.
Complete silence.
She suddenly became aware of the eerie quiet that had enveloped her. It was always quiet in the forest, but something felt wrong.
Before she knew what was happening, with a loud crack a dark figure apparated beside her with a loud ‘crack’ and covered her mouth as she was shoved against the nearest tree. She began to struggle, but was greeted with a pair of familiar black eyes.
“I need you to listen carefully to me as we don’t have much time,” Snape whispered. She hadn’t seen him since the Battle of Hogwarts, but knew he was still a spy amid Voldemort’s inner circle. His eyes were frantic, which was rare for the usually stoic ex-professor. “They will be here in just a few moments.”
Her heart sank into her stomach.
“You have to go back and put an end to this before it’s too late. Find him. It’s all that we have left to try,” he said, reaching into his robes and pulling out a small golden object. It took her a moment to register what it was.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice unsure as she saw him put in a date into the small time turner. 1943. “Have you lost your damn mind?”
“This will only be able to get you there. You’ll have to find another one when you arrive if you want to get back.”
“Are you mad? Time turners can’t go that far back,” she said, trying to pry herself away from him as he placed the time turner around her neck. She tried to rip it off her neck, and he pointed his wand at her and muttered a low immobility charm at her, freezing her body as he wound up the time turner.
“Look around, we have lost! We are out of options!”
And suddenly, dozens of dark figures started swirling around the safehouse, bolting in through the windows and leaving shards of broken glass flying everywhere. She screamed, no longer able to stay silent, but Snape didn’t let that phase him.
“I’m not leaving them,” she hissed, trying her hardest to move her limbs, but failing miserably. Her body was too frail.
“I’m afraid you have no choice, Miss Hendrix.” He took a step back, ignoring the chaos that was ensuring before his very eyes as the Death Eaters raided the safehouse. Screams were coming from inside, but all she heard was him. “Find him. Make sure he has no Horcruxes. Kill him.” His eyes locked with one of the Death Eaters and she swore she could see a single tear drip down his cheek. “You’re our last hope.”
She saw several blinding green lights exit the tips of the Death Eaters wands, and then the world around her started to blur.
And that was it.
She watched as Snape disappeared before her eyes while the world around her shifted, changed, and morphed, time dragging her back into an unknown era far from what she knew.
It was an odd feeling-- to see her life as she knew it flee before her eyes and quickly be replaced by a time unknown to her. As the world finally slowed down once more, she had to steady herself against a tree as she attempted to quell her rigid breathing.
Her chest felt burning hot. She looked down and saw the golden time turner was glowing a bright orange, leaving a trace of singed skin beneath it. Her hands frantically tore the turner off her neck and onto the forest floor just a mere instant before it broke into a million fragments of mixed glass and sand, apparently unable to withstand the strain that had been put on it from the journey.
She stared at it blankly, her fingers trembling once more.
Her head whipped around to see the safehouse was gone. In its place stood just an empty forest floor. As far as she could see, she was the only sign of life for miles.
Her body crumpled onto the ground and she did all that she knew how to do. She screamed.
It was a blood curdling scream, the kind she had only let out once in her life before this-- when she had been under the strain of the cruciatus curse. Her thoughts were plagued with the visions of green.
It was always green.
Every time she lost someone, that same flash of green was responsible.
She screamed until her throat felt raw. She screamed until her eyes were watering. She screamed until every last fragment of her little remaining hope had been obliterated into nothingness.
And when the silence finally met her again, she began to cry.
She felt pathetic for it, too, but she couldn’t hold it in any longer. Every time she closed her eyes, the ghosts of the fallen plagued her mind and she couldn’t take it anymore. Her chest hurt from deep within, a pain aching through her heart with an intensity so strong that it made her entire body tremble from within.
Everything she had ever cared about had been destroyed.
Everywhere she wanted to go was now in shambles.
Everyone she had ever loved had been murdered.
And all that she had left was a deep sense of hurt that haunted her every waking moment.
Snape’s last words rang loud and clear in her ears .
‘Find him. Make sure he has no Horcruxes. Kill him. You’re our last hope.’
It was that exact moment when her tears stopped flowing again. It was that exact moment when she accepted that she had a job that she had to complete.
It was that exact moment when she decided that she was going to rewrite the course of history. Playing with time was dangerous, that much she knew. The fact that Snape, of all people, was the one who sent her here proved that they had exhausted every other option. This wasn’t Plan B. This wasn’t Plan C. This wasn’t even Plan Z.
This was just their last shot.
She knew she had to do this. She had to do this for Harry. For Hermione. For Sirius. For Fred. For Tonks. For Lupin. For Lavender. For Dobby. For Dumbledore. For Cedric. For every damn person that they had lost.
And it was that exact moment, she allowed her actions to be consumed by her anger. Her judgement was darkened by the death and destruction that her eyes had witnessed. With nothing left to lose, she surrendered control of every ounce of love, kindness, and humility in her body and replaced it with a desperate rage that had an all-consuming desire for bloodshed. The bloodshed of one particular person.
She was going to kill Tom Riddle.
End it all before it began.
She was going to save the future by altering the past.
Her body moved sluggishly, but with an air of purpose as she reached down and slid her wand out of her boot.
Hogwarts. She had to get to Hogwarts.
She knew she couldn’t apparate onto the castle grounds, so she did the next best thing and focused on the place she knew would give her a solid shot. Her thoughts were hard to clear, as focus was difficult to achieve these days, but she managed to zone in and think about the Hog’s Head Inn at Hogsmeade before apparating.
It was almost comforting to see Hogsmeade still intact when she arrived. There were plenty of smiling students and laughing wizards. For a moment, things almost felt normal.
She was snapped back into reality, though, when she noticed the concerned glances that people were shooting her way. The girls with their neatly curled hair and ankle length dresses and the boys with their sweater vests and pushed back hair all stared at her as she stood in the middle of the busy square. Her tattered clothes and bruised body suddenly became very evident to her.
Her feet dragged her forward, towards the inn. She stared at the door blankly for a moment before opening it up and stepping inside. It wasn’t all too busy, and it really didn’t look much different than it did in modern times.
The last time she had been inside had been with Harry.
She had to shake the thought out of her head and continued scanning the inn until she saw who she was looking for. He looked so young, and if she hadn’t seen photos of his brother at this same age, then she might not have even recognized him to begin with, but she strode up to him cautiously.
“Aberforth?”
He eyed her up and down, his face quite stoic. “Do I know you?”
“Not yet,” she said under her breath. “I need your help.”
He didn’t speak.
“I need you to get me into Hogwarts.”
“How would I be able to do that?” he asked, turning his back to her as he began going about his mundane cleaning tasks again.
“The painting,” she said. He froze, but only for an instant.
“I haven’t the slightest clue what you’re referring to,” he grumbled.
“The painting of Ariana. I know where it leads, you’ve let me use it before,” she said, praying that he would listen to her. “I know you don’t remember me, but you have to trust me when I say that I am an old friend of yours. You’ve helped me before and I’m begging you to help me again now. I can’t fully explain, but just know that the fate of so many people rests on me being able to get to Hogwarts right now.” He looked at her through the corner of his eyes and she sighed. “Please.”
For a few minutes, she was starting to believe that he was going to refuse to help her. But finally, he walked over to the painting and nodded at the portrait of his late sister. Ariana smiled softly at the two of them before walking into the distance, the painting swinging open and revealing a pathway that Avalon knew led to Hogwarts.
“Thank you so much,” she said, giving him an unreturned hug before she bolted into the passageway and started her descent into the castle grounds. She heard Aberforth closing the entrance once more, and before she knew it, she was enveloped in an inky darkness that shrouded her vision entirely. She took out her wand and muttered a quiet, “Lumos,” to light up the path, walking forward in the silent path.
She hummed quietly to herself, desperate to quell the quiet.
The passage felt longer than she remembered it, but perhaps that was because she hadn’t been alone the last time she used it. It occurred to her then that she was on her own, not just right now, but for the duration of this mission.
Her friends weren’t here to help her. She had to do this alone.
She wasn’t particularly nervous, nor was she afraid, because she knew she could do it. It was just a matter of how. She knew that she couldn’t just kill him outright. If he already had created any Horcruxes, that would do nothing other than give away her cover. No, she had to play her cards right.
He was dangerous. He always had been, and he always would be. She couldn’t mess this up. Not this time.
Finally, she started to see light at the end of the tunnel and her feet began to propel her towards the exit. She stumbled out, greeted by the open air of the Room of Requirement. A relieved laugh escaped her lips when she saw the neatly folded robes and uniform on the table in the center of the room.
Ravenclaw. Just like back home.
She slipped out of her war-torn clothes and pulled on her familiar Hogwarts uniform, smiling to herself at the comforting feel of the fabric against her skin. She tried to avoid looking at her body as she changed. The years had not been kind to her. Scars and bruises littered her features, most prominently along her sides.
She tried not to think about how they had cut her open again and again in an attempt to force her to speak about the whereabouts of Harry Potter. She tried not to think about how they had lashed her with whipping after whipping to break her into submission. She tried not to think about how they had broken so many of her bones that she could still hear their snaps replaying in her ears every time she fell asleep.
A part of her didn’t want to leave the room. It was familiar, and it was, for the time being at least, safe. But, she knew she had a job to do. She walked over to the door and took in a deep breath before shoving the entrance open and slipping out into the corridor. Nobody was around and her footsteps echoed in the hallways as she walked towards the main hallways, desperate to find life within the castle walls.
She heard the chitter chatter of the students and felt a small wave of relief wash over her as she was greeted with dozens of students in red, blue, green, and yellow adorned robes. Young children, teenagers, and professors all scrambling throughout the castle to rush to their next classes. There were no familiar faces, but she still felt oddly at home surrounded by all the strangers. To see Hogwarts bustling with life rather than littered with death was a blessing of its own, one that she was trying to cherish and hold onto as it stood before her.
She didn’t have much of a plan, but her feet carried her forward as she got trapped within the crowd. Her body simply fell in stride with the rest of the students and she allowed the mob to pull her towards an aimless destination, just following the rest of them as they scurried through the castle.
A small smile found its way onto her lips. It was so loud. Laughter rang through the air, footsteps echoed through the pathways, and conversations about classes, Quidditch, and Hogsmeade were abundant in her ears.
She looked at the castle grounds, nostalgia washing over her as she thought about her first time walking through these exact hallways. The awe she had felt when she first arrived at Hogwarts was a pure elation she wasn’t sure if she would ever feel again. This castle had grown to be her home over the years, and seeing it in all of its glory, without the signs of the battles, warmed her broken heart beyond measure.
Her eyes darted around, desperate to take in as much of it as possible.
All the noises around her faded to nothingness though when she saw him.
Silence. Absolute silence.
He was walking the opposite direction as she was and they only barely looked into each other’s eyes, but a shiver ran down her spine when he passed. His eyes were a brown so deep that they looked nearly black to her, and his arms were tightly gripping several books to his side as he slid past the students towards the library. She had seen him only once before this, in a memory that Harry had shown her, but it was undoubtedly him.
She turned her body so quickly that she knocked down a young Gryffindor in the process, all of her books spilling to the floor in the process. Avalon didn’t even bother to mutter a simple apology, she was too focused on trying to follow him . But as more students rushed into the corridor as classes ended, she quickly found herself struggling to keep up with him against a sea of other students.
His figure faded into the rest just as quickly as he had passed, blurring into just another body among countless draped in green detailed robes.
It was always green.