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Published:
2025-12-17
Completed:
2026-05-27
Words:
154,996
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41/41
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A Cautionary Tale in Travelling Through Time

Summary:

After years spent developing a revolutionary time machine that could finally address the shadows that have haunted her since the war, Hermione Granger’s life’s work is mysteriously cursed when she is gone for the day. When Hermione can’t undo the damage herself, the Ministry calls in a Cursebreaker.

A Cursebreaker who prefers the title Consultant.
A familiarly annoying, infuriatingly gorgeous Consultant.

And just when Hermione thinks that things can't possibly get worse, she soon discovers what Ron has been hiding. Suddenly, fixing her life’s work is no longer her biggest problem.

Together, Hermione and Draco embark on an epic adventure spanning centuries and continents. From a haunted château in 1845 France to a villa in Italy, beach bars in Australia, a snow-covered cottage in Oxford and a lost library in an ancient city.

But, if they hate each other so much, why can’t they keep their hands off one another?
And will travelling back in time fix what’s broken? Or make everything infinitely worse?

Hermione Granger presents: A Cautionary Tale in Travelling Through Time (and why it should only ever be done with Draco Malfoy).

Notes:

A Cautionary Tale in Travelling Through Time is now complete! It is a project I poured my heart into for ten months, and I am very proud of how it turned out.

Although this story does take Draco and Hermione on a grand adventure, it centres heavily on the relationships in Hermione's life—particularly the one she has with herself.

Hermione is competent and BAMF through most of this story, but we meet her at a vulnerable time in her life. Draco is more mysterious, highly competent, and goes on a journey of his own as the story unfolds.

There are a few POV switches throughout the story, but it is told primarily in Hermione's first-person POV.

This story goes in several different directions and should hopefully keep you on your toes. It's a fast sexual burn, slow-ish emotional burn story with some new villains and supportive friends and family.

I love these characters so much, and living with them for nearly a year has been such a joy for me. I'm so excited to share their complete story with you!

With the exception of one piece of artwork towards the end of the fic, I hand-painted all five paintings featured as cover art in this story. I have videos of the painting process for each painting on my TikTok and Instagram pages, if you're ever interested in checking them out.

Finally, a huge thank you to my betas, Simply_Shy and sadpapayanoises . Having them as betas is such a gift, but I'm even more thankful to have them as friends.

Thank you for reading, and bon voyage!

Chapter 1: Chapter I

Chapter Text

This cover art is a photo of an original acrylic painting of mine, and I've added the text on top in Canva. If you want to watch a video of my painting process for this cover, you can find it here.

This cover art is a photo of an original acrylic painting of mine, and I've added the text on top in Canva. I've uploaded a short video on my Instagram that shows me painting the final details, if you'd like to check it out

PART ONE

Tuesday, 1 June 2010 - Ministry of Magic, London

I knew things were going to be a problem the moment they said a consultant was joining us in the Department of Mysteries.

“The consultant will fix it,” they told us, as we all gathered around the hunk of junk that had once been my life’s work.

I built her, crafted her from bloody scratch, and I didn’t even get to name her. The Temporal Axis Engine, they called her. Honestly, men should never be in charge of naming things. She was not an engine. She was an instrument—a vessel—that carried whatever (or whoever) was inside to a specific point in the past.

She was magnificent.

She was revolutionary.

She was fucking murdered.

It took every waking moment of the last five years to build that beautiful machine. And then, bloody Bates, whose aunt just happened to be the Head of the Wizengamot, was assigned to lead the project. Within two weeks, she was broken.

Apparently, while I was on the one holiday I allowed myself to visit my parents in Australia, Bates decided to run a test with TAE. (It’s the only name I was physically capable of calling her.) He said she must’ve been cursed, somehow blocking future trips.

I asked if he’d followed the very explicit operating instructions I left, which were laminated on his desk and quite literally hovering in mid-air outside TAE’s chamber.

He looked at me like I was speaking ancient Gobbledegook and shrugged.

A “setback,” he called it.

I called it a personal attack on my sanity, and the final straw before I set the entire Department of Mysteries on fire and self-exiled to Venezuela.

It had been five days since TAE stopped working, and no one could figure out how to fix her. I hadn’t really gone home since. And during the rare times I did, just long enough to shower, Ron made a game of ignoring me. In his words, I was “clearly avoiding him.”

I wanted to be mad, but honestly, I was grateful. Our strained marriage was less important to me than poor TAE—cursed by male incompetence, waiting to be brought back to life.

I loved Ron, like you loved the feeling of a jumper that’s a bit oversized, washed so many times it felt like an embrace when you put it on. It was one you wore inside, because it made you feel a bit frumpy. It wasn’t one you wanted to wear in public. Definitely not one you wanted to have sex with.

I’m getting off topic. Where was I?

Oh. Right.

The consultant.

It was a Tuesday, of all days, when he sauntered into the Department of Mysteries wearing an emerald-encrusted timepiece that clearly didn’t work, as he was half an hour late.

His blonde hair was longer now. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a build that could only be shaped by discipline. He was handsome in a maddening way that felt both deliberate yet effortless. He walked into the office with the confidence of a man who knew he was good-looking, and yet there was a nervous energy emitting from him.

I looked at him for a total of one second from where I was standing at my desk before turning my eyes back to my work, silently cursing every single person in that stupid fucking department for being so pathetically helpless that we had to call in Draco bloody Malfoy to—

“Granger,” he said, somehow already on the other side of my desk.

I looked up just long enough to catch his narrowed eyes and smug expression. Smug enough to show exactly how pleased he was with the current situation.

“How devastating for the Brightest Witch of her Age that I have to come solve her problems.”

“Malfoy,” I said, my eyes once again fixed on my desk. “Looks like they’re bringing in just anybody.”

I didn’t give him the satisfaction of allowing a response before adding, “Bates is leading this project. He’s the small bloke at the desk on the other side of the room.”

He didn’t leave. Of course, he didn’t. He seemed to take my dismissal as a challenge.

He stepped closer, leaning down until his mouth was near my ear. I kept my eyes on the paperwork in front of me.

“After I break the curse on your temper-whatever time machine—”

“Temporal Axis Engine,” I muttered.

“Stupid name,” he huffed. I felt his breath on my neck.

“After I break whatever curse is on it, because I will break whatever curse is on it, you’re going to come up with a creative way of thanking me.”

I looked up to glare at him, but he was still far too close. My mouth was inches from his.

I didn’t pull back. I met his eyes and said, flatly, “I’m married. You’re an arse. Don’t talk to me again.”

Then I gathered my paperwork to my chest and walked out the same door he’d just come through.

Being an Unspeakable had its privileges.

For one, we had rooms enchanted to mimic the exact environments of over a dozen biomes. They were technically for experimental purposes, each designed to further our research, never for personal use. But after I no longer had a professional need for a room modelled after the Pacific coast of Oregon, I conveniently forgot to submit the demolition request.

I didn’t use it to avoid my coworkers.

I definitely didn’t use it to hide the fact that I most certainly had an addiction to Muggle cigarettes.

Padma once told me there was a potion that could suppress the urge. She even wrote me a prescription. I kept it in an old shoebox in the back of my closet, shoved between photos from my time at Hogwarts that I couldn’t quite bring myself to throw away.

Someday, I’d use it.

But that day, I could barely walk fast enough to my hidden room, already picturing the blessed relief of my first drag.

Once inside, I couldn’t think past the simulated crash of waves or the mingling scent of smoke and saltwater, my own private slice of peace.

So tell me why, less than halfway through my fag, Bates’ bloody fish Patronus appeared, flopping in the air, telling me he needed me immediately.

I cleaned myself up, attempted to give myself a pep talk, and walked back through the same sterile hallways of the Ministry of Magic with much less enthusiasm.

When I reached Bates at his desk, Malfoy was, blessedly, nowhere to be seen.

“You needed me?” I asked him.

Instead of responding right away, he had a habit of pausing for three seconds before speaking. I was convinced that he counted in his head. My theory was that he heard once you sound more intelligent if you pause before you speak, so instead of having to think critically about any response, he would simply count to three.

The only benefit to this was that those three seconds would give me time to deliver as many insults in my mind as I possibly could.

Big forehead, bald patch, bad breath, short man syndrome, dumb-faced motherfuck—

“Our consultant has reviewed the damage done to the Temporal Axis Engine and requested that you work with him to break the curse. Apparently, it’s a two-person job.”

I summoned the energy to smile. I’m not sure if it worked. As much as I wanted TAE fixed, I couldn’t stomach the thought of working alongside him.

“As you were the last person who operated TAE before she was… cursed,” I said as delicately as I could, “I wonder if you would be a better partner to our consultant?”

“The funny thing is, I know practically nothing about the engine.” Bates laughed. He laughed at that. “I was showing him around, and when I was struggling to answer some of his questions, he asked for you by name.”

Yes, of course he did.

Bates continued. “I told him that wouldn’t be a problem. I know how hard you’ve been working to get it back up and running. He’s at the engine now.”

I took a deep breath and forced my feet to move in the direction of the chamber in which TAE was housed.

As I heaved open the heavy door to enter the massive concrete chamber in which we kept TAE, I noticed that Malfoy had, somehow, turned her upside down. He was standing on top of her, inspecting her base.

“Excuse me!” I yelled after him, my feet running before I registered my pace.

He didn’t acknowledge that he’d heard me.

“Malfoy!” I said, louder, still making my way to him.

“You’ll do damage to the calibration component by standing on her at the base! Get off!”

He looked up at me, but didn’t move.

“It’s about time, Granger. It’s no wonder everything is falling apart around here. Nobody gets any work done.”

“Malfoy,” I said, sternly. “Get your filthy shoes off of TAE’s base this instant. She’s not built to hold weight at this angle.”

“So uptight, Granger. It does make my tender heart soar that some things don’t change.”

I raised my wand to hex him off and was deciding which spell would inflict the maximum damage allowed for a professional relationship when he pointed to his feet.

They were hovering in the air, just inches above TAE’s base.

Malfoy whistled. “You must work with some right idiots if you’d assume I was standing on top of a machine without support.”

I didn’t disagree, so I didn’t say anything.

He levitated down with an infuriating grace and walked up to me, crowding into my personal space, once again.

He sniffed twice.

“You’ve been smoking,” he said, mouth turning into a wry smile.

“No, I—”

He reached around my face and grasped one of my curls, putting it up to his nose and inhaling deeply.

“Delicious,” he said, eyes closed.

I pulled my hair back from his hands and backed up a few paces, glaring at him.

“Don’t touch me. Bates said you needed a partner. I’m here. Let’s get on with it then.”

Malfoy placed his hands behind his back and stepped away to circle TAE.

“I don’t need a partner,” he began. “I need an audience.”

I narrowed my eyes. “An audience.”

“Yes, Granger. I am guessing by the truly hideous bags under your eyes that you’ve been trying day and night to find out what’s wrong with your machine. And I’m here to tell you that it has, indeed, been cursed.”

I looked at him flatly. “Yes, I knew that.”

“No, you suspected it. But I know it. As a supposed scientist, you should understand the difference.”

“Shall we skip to the part where you tell me what you know?”

“It’s much more fun for me to drag it out.”

I turned back towards the door. “You’ve exhausted my patience, Malfoy. I’m going to find someone else to deal with you.”

I had only walked a couple of steps when he said in a taunting tone, “I don’t think you’ll want to do that.”

I kept walking.

“Don’t you want to know why you haven’t been able to fix it?” He called after me.

My hatred for him surpassed my need to gather that information, which was saying a lot.

Still, I hesitated as I grabbed the thick metal door handle to leave.

I wanted to open it. I also wanted to know.

Before I could turn back around, I heard him say clearly, in a low voice that echoed through the entire chamber.

“The curse isn’t on your machine, Granger. It’s on you.”

I whipped around to face Malfoy before I could think better of it.

“I beg your pardon?” I asked him, angrily.

He shrugged. “I told you you’d want to know.”

He looked so smug, I reconsidered hexing him.

“There’s no way. That doesn’t make any sense.”

He turned back around to face TAE as I walked back up to them.

“It doesn’t?” He smirked. “I notice that you refer to this machine as 'her.'”

“Well, yes,” I said, “She’s incredibly sophisticated, and I thought she was deserving of more respect than—”

He cut me off.

“She has her own magic,” he said, plainly. “Your magic, actually.”

He wasn’t looking at me, but looking at TAE instead. I looked at her too. In all regards, she looked like a box. A big, metal box that could fit one person inside comfortably. It was a rather uninspired design, but I cared more about her function than her aesthetic.

He tsked at me.

“If memory serves, one of the fundamental rules of magic is to never split your magic or give it away. I remember hearing about a war that involved a guy who did that seven times.” He paused for dramatic effect. “I heard it ended badly for him.”

I was seething.

“You tell me, Malfoy. You had a much closer relationship with him than I did. I heard he was like a father to you.”

I felt a tiny bit better as I watched that remark affect him. His own father had famously died in Azkaban the year before. My words bit, but not as intended.

He rounded on me, hurt in his eyes where I expected hatred.

“The only reason this machine works is because you illegally embedded it with your own magic. You put magic into an inanimate object, which is dangerous for reasons you clearly don’t understand.”

I hadn’t meant to. At least, I didn’t think I meant to. I had been working on TAE for over four years at that point, getting closer to travel without actually doing it. After what was possibly my millionth failed attempt, I hexed the Moonstone core that was the lifeblood of TAE. It was mostly out of anger, but also, possibly, out of desperation. It burst into smaller pieces, but they all stayed in the frame.

She travelled after that.

Malfoy continued. “Your magic was what was cursed in the machine. It’s still attached to you. Only your magic can reverse the curse.”

“Excellent. I’m here. Tell me how.”

The hurt stayed in his eyes, but his lips curved up to a smile.

“That’s the tricky part. You see, it was cursed in the past. So it can only be undone in the past.”

“What are you on about, Malfoy? I’ve been trying for days to get her to travel, and I haven’t been able to.”

“Because you’ve been focused on where to go and when to go separately.”

I hadn’t quite considered that TAE might only allow travel to a specific location at a specific time. On the handful of times I travelled to the past before, I chose the location and the time. I’d only had three missions before she stopped working.

I walked up to TAE’s operating system to start looking through it when he spoke again.

“Fortunately for you, the Ministry deemed this project worthy of my exorbitant consultant fee. And I’m worth every sickle.” He picked at his nails. “This Thursday at 6:26 AM, you and I will travel to Chambord, France, in May of 1845.”

“France,” I said under my breath, looking through the projection of TAE’s analogue runes I had conjured in the air next to her operating system.

“Yes, Granger, it’s a country just south of us.”

I glared at him. “I’m aware, Malfoy. I just don’t know why TAE would send us there.”

“TAE”—he started, sarcastically—“Isn’t taking us anywhere. Technically, you are.”

He casually cast a spell at TAE’s calibration unit and, before I had the chance to realise what was happening, a series of coordinates displayed above it, nearly eye level to me. I’d verify them after he left, but it annoyed me that I knew I didn’t have to.

“Curse-breaking is difficult when you’re looking in the wrong place,” he said smugly. “As soon as I found that there was living magic inside, I realised it might have a specific time and location in mind—”

“As fascinating as this is, Malfoy, I don't really give a shit. I’m sure the Ministry will be pleased with the work you’ve done and will give you your fee so you can get on your merry way.”

“Best of luck,” I added dismissively, not bothering to look up at him.

“Oh, absolutely not. I’m not missing out on the chance to see the past. That, and I get the other half of my fee when the curse has been broken. I don’t trust anyone other than myself with my money. And I definitely don’t trust anyone in this worthless department to break the curse.”

He started to leave and yelled over his shoulder. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to dress for the occasion. But I do feel as though I should tell you to try harder than you’re obviously used to. Any cover we may have to employ will only work if you look… significantly better than you do now.”

Anger bubbled up in my chest. I fucking hated him.

“À jeudi, Granger,” he said, before he opened the door and left.