Chapter Text
Hermione hit the ground hard enough to leave her stunned for several long seconds. Her shoulder slammed first against wet stone before the rest of her body followed awkwardly after it, the impact rattling through her bones while the world tilted violently sideways around her. The alley smelled of rain, smoke, and old brick soaked through with years of London grime. Somewhere beyond the narrow passage came the distant sound of engines and muffled voices, unfamiliar in a way that made her stomach tense immediately.
The modified Time-Turner burned cold against her palm.
“No, no, no…” she muttered under her breath as she forced herself upright against the wall.
The device looked terrible.
One of the rotating rings had bent inward at an angle it absolutely should not have been capable of bending, and thin fractures spread across the tiny hourglass center. The runes she had carved into the metal herself flickered weakly before fading altogether.
Hermione stared at it in disbelief while her pulse hammered painfully in her throat.
The calculations had been correct. She knew they had been correct. She had checked them repeatedly before casting anything because she was not reckless enough to experiment with temporal magic casually. Every variable had been measured, every possible instability accounted for as carefully as she could manage.
She had not meant to land here.
Worse, when she tried to think of where she had meant to land, her thoughts snagged strangely halfway through the memory. The intended year slipped out of reach no matter how hard she grasped for it, leaving only a sick feeling that something had gone catastrophically wrong during transit.
“Oh, brilliant,” she whispered bitterly.
Hermione froze.
She had just noticed that her voice sounded strange, and very slowly she looked down at herself.
The sleeves of her coat swallowed her hands almost completely. The satchel hanging across her shoulder dragged heavily against her side like something made for a much larger person. Even her shoes fit wrong now, loose around feet far too small for them.
A cold feeling settled heavily into her chest.
“No way.”
She pushed herself away from the wall too quickly and nearly lost balance immediately. Her center of gravity felt completely wrong, lower somehow, smaller.
Hermione’s breathing slowed carefully as dread crawled upward beneath her ribs. She forced herself toward a shallow puddle near the alley entrance.
The reflection waiting there made her stop dead.
A child stared back at her.
Eyes far too large for a small face blinked up from beneath short brown hair cut unevenly around the ears. Her hair was still cropped like a boy’s, thankfully, though seeing it on a genuinely child-sized body was deeply unsettling in a way she did not have time to process properly.
She looked about seven.
Hermione crouched immediately, pressing trembling fingers against her temples as if that might somehow fix the problem through sheer force of concentration.
“This cannot actually be happening.”
Yet the evidence sat directly in front of her.
Temporal displacement affecting physical age was theoretically possible under extreme magical instability, though it was considered wildly dangerous and almost impossible to reverse without specialized intervention. She knew that. She had read three separate Ministry papers discussing the risk before modifying the Time-Turner herself.
Apparently reading about catastrophic magical side effects and experiencing them firsthand were two entirely different things.
Her wand was still tucked safely inside the coat lining, but another problem followed immediately after that realization. A seven-year-old body could not properly handle controlled magic. Children’s accidental magic existed because magical cores developed faster than discipline or physical endurance. Even if her mind remained intact, her body might not tolerate advanced spellwork safely.
Which meant the damaged Time-Turner was currently useless.
Perfect.
Hermione let out a long breath through her nose and forced herself to think past the panic threatening to spiral.
She had prepared carefully before leaving.
The money hidden in her satchel matched the period. The forged identification documents were accurate as far as magical and Muggle records went. Different name, different background, different sex. She had planned every detail specifically to avoid damaging the timeline if someone from this era happened to remember her later. The possibility of existing in the past while still resembling herself had felt far too dangerous to ignore.
Cutting her hair short had seemed extreme at the time, but now it looked disturbingly effective.
Hermione glanced back toward the puddle again despite herself. Rain rippled across the reflection, distorting the small sharp-faced boy staring back at her in oversized clothes.
At least the disguise worked, actually, annoyingly enough, rather well.
The child looking back at her appeared thin, serious, and unexpectedly cute in a quiet sort of way she absolutely refused to dwell on. The short hair softened nothing. If anything, it made the large eyes and narrow features more noticeable.
“Well,” she murmured under her breath while staring at her reflection, “this is going to be a nightmare.”
Hermione stared down at the sleeves hanging past her hands again and exhaled slowly through her nose. Walking through London dressed in clothing several sizes too large was not sustainable, especially not looking like an unattended seven-year-old boy wandering the streets alone. The coat nearly dragged against the ground behind her, and every few steps her shoes slipped half off her feet.
She needed to fix it.
The obvious solution would have been finding clothing that actually fit, but the thought of stealing from a shop or worse, trying to explain herself to adults in this state, immediately made her tired. She had not spent weeks preparing forged documents, currency, and contingency plans just to start her time in here by getting caught shoplifting children’s trousers.
Which meant magic.
Hermione glanced cautiously toward the alley entrance. There was no movement and no voices nearby, only the distant sound of traffic filtering through the rain. Even so, her grip tightened slightly around her wand before she pulled it free from inside the oversized coat.
The wand felt heavier now, which unsettled her more than she expected.
A child’s magical core was unstable by nature. She knew the theory well enough, but theory felt very different with tiny fingers wrapped around wood while standing in a freezing alley decades away from home.
Hermione inhaled carefully and forced herself to focus.
First things first.
She raised the wand and cast a concealment charm around the alley, layering it carefully despite the strain already tugging unpleasantly behind her eyes. The magic wavered midway through the incantation hard enough to make her stomach drop, but she corrected it quickly before the spell collapsed entirely.
A faint shimmer passed briefly over the narrow alley walls before fading from sight.
Hermione stayed still afterward, listening.
Nothing exploded.
That was encouraging.
The effort alone had already left her more exhausted than it should have. Her magic was there, but it felt compressed somehow, harder to control cleanly through a body this young. The power responded unevenly beneath the surface, pulling toward accidental magic instincts she had not dealt with since childhood.
She tightened her jaw slightly.
Fine. She could work with that.
Carefully this time, Hermione pointed the wand toward the sleeves swallowing her hands.
“Reducio.”
The spell sputtered weakly.
The left sleeve shrank abruptly while the right remained untouched, twisting the coat crooked across her shoulders.
Hermione stared down at it in irritation.
“Brilliant work,” she muttered under her breath.
She adjusted her grip and tried again, slower this time, concentrating on precision rather than force. The second attempt flowed more steadily through the wand. Warm gold light flickered across the fabric, and gradually the heavy coat began shrinking properly against her body.
Relief loosened some of the tension in her chest immediately.
It worked.
The trousers followed after several more attempts, though controlling the spell precisely enough without overshooting took frustrating concentration. Once, the fabric tightened too quickly around one ankle and nearly toppled her sideways before she corrected it. Another spell reduced the shoes enough to stop them slipping off every few steps.
By the time she finished, Hermione’s arm ached faintly from magical strain.
Still, when she finally lowered the wand, the difference was dramatic enough that she almost sighed aloud in relief.
The clothes actually fit now.
Not perfectly, but well enough that she no longer looked like a child buried inside borrowed fabric. The coat rested properly against her shoulders, and the shoes stayed secure when she shifted her weight experimentally against the pavement.
Hermione glanced once more toward the puddle reflecting her smaller figure back at her.
The short-haired boy staring back looked considerably less ridiculous now.
Tired, certainly. Damp and thoroughly irritated, definitely. But at least she no longer appeared seconds away from tripping over her own coat sleeves in the middle of London.
Hermione took one final look around the alley before slipping her wand back into the inner lining of her coat. The rain had finally stopped, leaving the pavement slick beneath weak grey daylight while water continued dripping steadily from rooftops overhead.
Ok, next step was simple. Blend into the crowds, find somewhere safe to think, and determine exactly how long she’s going to fix it.
Hermione squared her shoulders as much as a seven-year-old body could manage and stepped out of the alley.
The city hit her immediately, London moving differently from the one she knew, the streets somehow narrower despite the open road ahead, crowded with dark coats, bicycles, rattling motorcars, and people walking briskly beneath the lingering damp cold, with smoke hanging faintly in the air from nearby chimneys as adults passed around her without paying attention, exactly as she had hoped.
She kept her head down slightly and matched the flow of pedestrians as naturally as she could. Nobody looked twice at a quiet child moving through the crowd.
Then fingers closed tightly around her arm.
Hermione jerked instinctively, startled enough that accidental magic nearly flared beneath her skin.
“Oh, Billy!”
A woman stood bent slightly over her, breathing hard with visible relief flooding across her tired face. One arm clutched a paper parcel full of groceries against her chest while the other held Hermione’s sleeve tightly enough to keep her from slipping away again.
“Thank God,” the woman said quickly. “Do you have any idea what sort of trouble you’ve caused this time?”
Hermione blinked up at her in confusion.
Billy?
The woman barely waited for a response.
“A whole week gone,” she continued breathlessly, already pulling Hermione along the pavement. “A whole week without a word. Mrs. Cole’s been furious. Everyone thought something terrible had happened to you.”
Hermione dug her heels lightly against the ground, trying to pull back without causing a scene.
“You’ve got the wrong—”
Her voice came out painfully small.
The woman kept talking straight over her.
“And after what happened with that rabbit as well…” She shook her head slightly under her breath. “Honestly, Billy, sometimes I don’t know what gets into you.”
Rabbit?
Hermione frowned harder, struggling to keep pace as the woman guided her firmly through the streets.
“I’m not Billy,” she tried again, forcing the words out slowly with what she hoped sounded believable coming from a seven-year-old. “You think I’m somebody else.”
The woman barely glanced down at her.
“Oh, don’t start,” she said tiredly. “You know perfectly well who you are.”
Hermione opened her mouth again only for the woman to continue without pause.
“I know things are difficult,” she said, voice softening slightly now. “I know they are. But running off into London alone? You ought to know better by now.”
Hermione’s stomach tensed faintly.
Something about this entire conversation felt wrong in a way she could not immediately place. The name meant nothing to her. The woman certainly did not recognize her for herself. Yet beneath the confusion, another feeling kept pressing insistently at the back of her thoughts.
Recognition.
Not conscious recognition exactly. More like the shape of something familiar she should have remembered immediately but couldn’t quite reach.
The woman kept hold of her arm all the way down the street.
“The others will be relieved to see you back,” she said after a moment. “You’ve had everyone worried sick at the orphanage.”
Hermione’s steps faltered.
Orphanage.
For some reason, the word hit her like cold water straight down her spine.
Her mind reacted instantly, violently, though she could not understand why. Alarm surged hard enough to make her chest tighten while every instinct she had screamed that something about this situation was catastrophically wrong.
But when she reached for the reason, there was nothing there.
Only the growing sense that she should absolutely not be walking toward that orphanage.
Hermione tried pulling her arm free again halfway down the next street, this time with considerably more effort behind it.
The woman’s grip did not budge in the slightest.
Hermione stared up at her in disbelief while being firmly marched along the pavement like an unruly puppy on a lead. For someone carrying an entire bag of groceries balanced against one hip, the woman held on with alarming strength.
Honestly, what was she made of?
“I really think you’ve mistaken me for—”
“Oh, hush now,” the woman interrupted without even looking down. “You disappeared for a week, Billy. You don’t get to argue with me afterward as though I’m the unreasonable one.”
Hermione pressed her lips together tightly.
Arguing further in the middle of the street while trapped inside the body of a small child was unlikely to improve her situation. The last thing she needed was attracting police attention because she kept insisting she was not whoever this Billy was supposed to be.
Still, the longer they walked, the louder the unease in the back of her mind became.
The orphanage appeared at the end of a narrow street several minutes later, dark brick rising beneath a grey sky still heavy from rain. The building itself looked older than the surrounding row houses, worn at the edges in a way that suggested years of use without enough care put back into it.
The moment they stepped inside, noise hit her from every direction, all of it coming from children.
Several of them rushed immediately toward the woman the second they entered the main hall, though their attention shifted just as quickly toward Hermione.
“Billy!”
A smaller girl nearly collided into her outright before stopping short. Relief flashed openly across the child’s face.
“You’re back,” another boy said quickly.
Several others gathered nearby, talking over one another now that they had noticed her. A few looked genuinely pleased. Others seemed curious more than anything else.
Then Hermione noticed the hesitation.
Two older children standing farther back exchanged quick glances while looking directly at her. One frowned faintly, as though something about her appearance felt off to them even if they could not place why. Another opened his mouth like he intended to say something before stopping himself at the last second.
“We thought you run off for good,” someone muttered.
Hermione stayed perfectly still beneath the attention, trying not to visibly tense while all of them called her Billy with complete certainty.
This was absurd.
“I think there’s been a mistake.” she tried carefully again, pitching her voice as calmly as possible despite sounding unmistakably seven years old. “I’m not actually—”
“Nonsense,” the woman cut in immediately. “You’re cold, hungry, and about to explain yourself to Mrs. Cole.”
That sounded deeply ominous.
Before Hermione could respond, the woman abruptly guided her farther down the hall, shoved open another door, and practically deposited her inside an office.
Mrs. Cole turned out to be exactly the sort of adult Hermione disliked on sight.
The woman behind the desk looked exhausted in the sharp, irritable way of someone who spent most of her life angry at other people for creating problems near her. Her expression hardened the moment she looked up and saw Hermione standing there soaked from rain and mud.
“Well,” Mrs. Cole snapped immediately, “how lovely of you to return.”
Hermione barely had time to process the sentence before the lecture began.
Mrs. Cole talked rapidly and without pause, her voice growing sharper every few seconds as she listed every possible consequence of disappearing for an entire week, calling it reckless, ungrateful, thoughtless, and dangerous, while Hermione stood there silently through most of it, trying unsuccessfully to follow how the situation had spiraled so completely out of her control in less than an hour.
At some point during the scolding, she glanced sideways toward the woman who had dragged her here only to realize the woman had vanished entirely.
Traitor.
By the time Mrs. Cole finally finished speaking, Hermione’s head ached.
“And if you ever pull something like this again,” Mrs. Cole said coldly, “you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
Hermione very wisely decided not to answer that.
A few minutes later she found herself standing inside a small room that apparently belonged to Billy.
Just fucking brilliant.
Hermione shut the door behind her slowly and looked around the cramped space with mounting disbelief. Every single plan she had carefully prepared is completely useless now that she had somehow been mistaken for a missing orphan child.
She rubbed tiredly at her forehead.
Then, reluctantly, another thought followed.
This might not actually be the worst possible outcome.
The orphanage provided shelter. Food. A place to remain unnoticed while she figured out how to repair the Time-Turner and recover her bearings.
At least, that was the reasonable assumption.
Even so, that same strange feeling from earlier pressed harder now that she stood inside the room properly. Something about all of this continued bothering her in a way she could not explain logically.
Hermione looked slowly around the small bedroom again while unease crept steadily higher up her spine.
Hermione let out a slow breath and pressed the heels of her hands briefly against her eyes.
Whatever was bothering her about this place could wait.
Her head already hurt from the failed landing, the damaged Time-Turner, the accidental age regression, and the increasingly ridiculous situation involving this missing child named Billy. Trying to untangle the strange feeling crawling around the back of her mind right now would probably accomplish nothing except giving herself an even worse headache.
What she needed first was security.
Hermione turned her attention toward the small room again with more practical focus. The space was cramped enough that she could cross it in a few steps even with shorter legs. A narrow bed, a small wardrobe, and a thin blanket folded neatly despite looking worn from years of use, the sort of room designed to hold children efficiently rather than comfortably.
Her satchel suddenly felt far too noticeable hanging at her side.
That bag contained nearly everything important she possessed and If somebody searched it, the entire situation would become catastrophically complicated very quickly.
Hermione immediately crouched beside the bed, scanning the floorboards carefully.
A moment later she noticed one of the wooden planks beneath the bedframe sat slightly uneven compared to the others.
Her eyes narrowed.
“Well, that’s convenient.”
She glanced quickly toward the closed door before dropping fully to her knees and tugging carefully at the loose board. It shifted upward almost immediately with a soft scrape of wood against wood.
A hiding place.
Hermione wasted no time. She slid the satchel carefully into the narrow space beneath the floor before lowering the board back into place as quietly as possible. Once settled, the floor looked mostly untouched unless somebody knew exactly where to look.
Better.
At least now nobody would stumble across the Time-Turner accidentally while rummaging through her belongings.
That only left the wand.
Hermione pulled it carefully from inside her coat and stared at it for a second. The familiar weight steadied her slightly despite everything else. Losing the wand was not an option under any circumstances.
Unfortunately, carrying one openly around a Muggle orphanage seemed like an excellent way to create entirely new problems.
She tightened her grip slightly before casting another concealment spell over it, quieter and more controlled this time despite the lingering strain in her magic. The wand blurred faintly in her hand before fading from ordinary sight altogether.
Hermione tested the effect once, shifting her fingers experimentally around the now-invisible wand.
Good enough.
She slipped it carefully into her coat afterward, hidden from view unless somebody deliberately tried searching her.
Only then did she finally sit back slightly against the side of the bed.
Hermione exhaled slowly again.
For the moment, at least, the situation was contained.
By the time Hermione cleaned herself up properly, exhaustion had settled heavily behind her eyes.
The orphanage washroom was cramped, cold, and smelled faintly of old soap and damp pipes, but at least she no longer looked like she had crawled directly out of a London alley. She had washed the dirt from her face and hands carefully while avoiding looking too long at her reflection in the mirror above the sink. Seeing herself trapped inside the body of a seven-year-old still felt deeply unsettling no matter how many times she reminded herself it was temporary.
Hopefully temporary.
Hermione dried her hands on a rough towel before making her way downstairs once someone informed her food was being served.
The dining hall had long wooden tables stretched across the room beneath dim overhead lights while children filled the benches shoulder to shoulder, talking loudly enough that the sound bounced off the walls in uneven waves. Bowls, chipped plates, and dull metal spoons clattered constantly against wood.
The smell reached her first.
Boiled vegetables and thin broth, with bread slightly too stale to be pleasant.
Hermione accepted the plate handed to her without complaint and immediately moved toward the nearest empty stretch of table she could find. She sat down quickly before anyone could invite themselves beside her.
The whispers started almost at once.
She ignored them.
Honestly, she could hardly blame the other children for staring. As far as they knew, Billy had vanished for an entire week and returned acting like a completely different person afterward. Anyone close to him would obviously notice something was wrong within minutes.
Hermione kept her attention firmly on the food in front of her instead.
That seemed to make everyone more hesitant.
Several children glanced toward her repeatedly while whispering behind their hands, but none approached directly. One boy looked like he intended to sit beside her before changing his mind halfway there after Hermione failed to acknowledge him at all.
Good, that made things considerably easier.
She could not imitate an entirely different child convincingly even under ideal circumstances, and right now she was exhausted. Pretending to know Billy’s relationships, habits, or personality would fail almost immediately.
Better to let them assume whatever they wanted.
Hermione lifted a spoonful of stew cautiously and immediately regretted it.
The food was warm, at least, but that was the kindest thing she could honestly say about it. The broth tasted thin and vaguely bitter while the vegetables had been boiled to the point of surrender several hours ago. Even the bread required noticeable effort to chew.
She swallowed with difficulty.
Honestly, Hogwarts food had spoiled her terribly.
Still, free food was free food. Complaining internally about bland stew while stranded in time probably reflected poorly on her priorities.
Hermione took another reluctant bite anyway.
Around her, the whispering continued in uneven waves until suddenly it stopped altogether, not gradually, but completely.
The silence spread strangely across the room in a matter of seconds, enough that Hermione finally looked up from her plate in confusion.
Several children had gone noticeably still. Others looked quickly toward the entrance before dropping their eyes again almost immediately. Even the louder conversations had faded into something quieter and more careful.
Hermione followed their attention toward the doorway.
A boy had just entered the dining hall.
At first glance, he looked perfectly ordinary.
Dark hair and pale skin, neatly dressed compared to most of the other children. Same age as her current body but nothing outwardly dramatic or strange enough to explain why an entire room had abruptly fallen silent the second he walked in.
Hermione frowned slightly.
The reaction around him felt disproportionate.
The boy paused briefly near the doorway, looking across the room with calm, measured attention before his gaze settled directly on her.
Hermione felt herself stiffen instinctively as something about his stare unsettled her immediately.
The expression itself remained composed, almost polite in a distant sort of way, but his eyes were unnervingly steady, dark and focused, far too keen for a child.
For one ridiculous second, Hermione had the absurd thought that if looks alone could kill people, she might already be dead.
The thought would have been funny under different circumstances.
Instead, she found herself tightening her grip slightly around the spoon while the boy continued looking at her from across the dining hall without speaking at all.