Prologue - Slowly Time Turns

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or the canon characters. I do own the original characters I've created to accompany the Marauders and the 70s Slytherins. This list includes: Sin Avery, Illiad Parkinson, Ellen Hooper, Jane Cooke, and the DADA professors that will be used in the span of the story. If you wish to use anything I've suggested in the way of subjects, you don't need to quote me. Just send me a link so I can read, too!

Prologue: Slowly Time Turns

My name was Hermione Jean Granger and I am fourteen years old. And I had never been more frightened in my life until that very moment. The man before me was about the same age as I am, give or take a year, and he had the same white-blonde hair as two other men I knew. However, the pleading, anguished expression of his visage was quite unlike anything I had ever seen Draco or Lucius Malfoy portray.

I was caught between the cold granite of an alcove in the dungeons and his admittedly warm body. His hand was against my mouth, preventing the scream I wanted so badly to emit right now. Something about his eyes, though, something about the brilliant sky blue of them, made me hesitant. His wand gave a slight wave, and he muttered a spell too softly for me to hear. I assumed it was a silencing charm, because he started speaking.

"Please, Miss Granger, please hear me out," he pleaded.

Slowly, though it went against my better judgment, I nodded. His hand fell to his side, and I let out the breath I'd held despite the fact that I could have easily breathed through my nose. The boy sighed and ran a hand through his shoulder-length blond hair.

"She told me you'd be indignant and wary, but that you'd listen," he said quietly. "I'm glad she was right."

I whispered despite my own inner assurances that he had in fact cast Muffliato. "Who is she and who are you, for that matter?"

"Your future self, Miss Granger," he said primly, as though this were obvious. "I apologize for being a bit rough, but I doubted you would simply accept the idea of discussing anything in private with a stranger, in particular one who appears very nearly close to being your enemy. I am not, I assure you."

"Your assurances aren't very well matching your actions," I said, my eyes narrowing. "I am particularly curious as to why you haven't told me who you are."

He hesitated. "I know this is going to sound distasteful, is all."

I crossed my arms over my chest, brushing his with my arms. He seemed to realize just then how close we were and stepped back to a more respectful distance.

"My name is Scorpius. I'm Draco Malfoy and Su Li's future son. I need your help, Miss Granger, please, hear me out." He was begging. A Malfoy, future or no, was begging for me to listen.

"Go on," I said, loosening my stance slightly.

He cast another charm; this time I could hear the Notice-Me-Not spell. "Sorry, I know that this is all going to sound strange... but I need your help with the past. Things are... well, I'm just going to put it this way, Miss Granger, things are terrible."

"How terrible?" I said, unwilling to point out that we had only just lost Peter Pettigrew in this time. Voldemort would be arriving any day now, and everyone knew it.

"Voldemort is dead, if that's who you're thinking of," Scorpius said. Well, I can't rightly think of him as Malfoy all the time, can I? I associate that name with his father. "It's... it's a new dark wizard. One we have no hope of defeating. We need to... I need your help to sway him from his path."

"Who is it?" I asked.

Now he was quite nervous again, shifting from foot to foot. He glanced along the corridors outside of our alcove, but no one had come down the path since he'd first pulled me in here.

"It's my grandfather," he said with a heavy sigh. "Lucius. He's... he's taken over where Tom Riddle left off and simply expounded on it. Muggles dying left and right, Muggle-borns and half-bloods enslaved or worse..."

He bit his lower lip. There were tears threatening to fall from his eyes. "Anyone else who might have been able to help is already dead. Rose... Teddy... Hugo, Albus, Lily, James, they're all... " He choked on a sob, and I couldn't help but put an arm around his shoulders tentatively.

"Shh... it's all right... " I whispered, though I knew it wasn't. He sniffled softly, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that either this was one horrid act or this Malfoy was not like the two I knew.

"They're dead," Scorpius murmured. "All because of me. It's my fault they're dead, Miss Granger... and... I fear without you, I am lost."

"Why?" I asked. "Why come here, to this time period, to get me, of all people?"

"Because you and I are the only ones who can change Lucius Malfoy's mind about Muggle-borns and half-bloods."

"But you can't go to that time period looking as you do!" I protested. "You all but scream Malfoy, what'll they think if – "

"You underestimate the Slytherin and the Ravenclaw in me, Miss Granger," he said, smiling a bit now.

"Well, all right then, smart ass," I snapped. "How exactly are we to live? It's not as if we can just live at the castle during summer, and where are our parents supposed to be?"

"That's easy," Scorpius said, waving his hand as though playing with time was child's play. I had just ended a very regretful year dealing with time travel – I wasn't about to go into something like this half-cocked. He smirked at my disbelief, and it was in that that I saw not Malfoy, but Li's gentle ways. For some reason, this was a bit more soothing than I thought it might have been. "We just find an adult to bring along, too, to be our keeper and all."

"Pray tell, who would we bring," I asked, wary again.

"Hugo's grandma," he said instantly. "She can be our guardian. We obviously look nothing alike so we can't say we're related. We'll be... adopted."

"Who is Hugo's grandma?" I asked, now truly beginning to see how this could work. I was also truly beginning to see the Ravenclaw in Scorpius Malfoy.

"Molly Weasley," he said matter-of-factly. "She got hurt a while back, and I'm positive no one would be able to recognize her. Her own self will probably be a bit behind the class we'll enter."

"How can anyone not recognize Molly Weasley," I said, also matter-of-factly. He glanced around the corridor and then behind him, further into the alcove.

"Okay," he said, very simply. And before my eyes, a woman Disillusioned slowly. I knew at once that this must be the Molly Weasley of Scorpius' time, though I had to agree with him whole-heartedly – she looked nothing like the woman I knew.

For one, she had very short, spiked white hair. For another, she was rail-thin and looked like she hadn't eaten properly for quite some time. But the twinkling way she smiled down at me, the way she held herself, and I knew that she really must be my best friend's mother.

"Hermione," she whispered softly. Yup, definitely Mrs. Weasley. "It's good to see you again, sweetheart."

"Er... " Scorpius murmured, looking unsure of himself as he touched her shoulder. "I... "

"Oh, Scorpius, she's got the right to know," she said softly. "It was... your dying wish that we come here, Hermione. I'm sorry."

My head gave an odd little jerk at this news. "I'm... I'm dead?" I wasn't sure exactly how to feel about that. Sad?

"Yes, dear," she said, even softer.

"Well," I said. "I guess I had best go, then, hadn't I?"

"There is... just one other thing." Scorpius studied a particular outcropping of stone against the alcove wall behind me. He toyed with the edges of his fine silk cloak, which I had hardly noticed before. I didn't realize Malfoys looked quite so good in scarlet.

"What is it?" I asked when he didn't say anything.

"We'll... have to be Obliviated. Me and you."

"What!?" I shouted, glad to hear that my voice didn't echo down the corridors. I had been right about the Silencing Charm. "What do you mean, Oblivia – "

I heard the word and saw a flash, and suddenly I couldn't see anything. Or hear anything, for that matter. The blankness that surrounded me was not black nor was it white, but instead it was a nothingness. If I had to place a color on it I wouldn't be able to. The color constantly shifted from burgundy to deep violet to navy blue to ochre and back again through.

Was I dead?

The colors stopped changing all of the sudden, turning to a straight black. Just before I lost all cognizant thought, I recalled my mother's face.

She was crying.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

So, likes/dislikes?