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At the height of the Time War, a baby girl is born on Gallifrey. Her parents look down at her and cry with her when they place the Chameleon Arch headset on the soft skin of her head. Then, with their daughter’s one tiny heart beating rapidly, they gently lay her inside an escape pod and set the coordinates to Earth, Europe, United Kingdom, England, London.
The baby seems to wave as the pod jets away.
---
At the end of the Time War, Minerva McGonagall greets an owl at her window and takes a fob watch from its talons. The letter attached simply reads “When the time is right, show her who she truly is,” with the name Hermione Granger scribbled down at the bottom in unfamiliar handwriting. Minerva thinks fondly of psychic paper and circular language and a blue box before putting the watch aside wordlessly and setting out to find the location of one Hermione Granger.
It’s been sixteen days since the Doctor left her in Dublin.
---
Hermione Granger is only seven years old, and there are a lot of things that she still doesn’t know.
She doesn’t fully understand why birds sing, for example, and she hasn’t mastered quantum electrochemistry. She doesn’t know yet which of The Canterbury Tales is her favorite or why it took so long for people to start washing their hands to avoid sickness. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t have any friends.
She does know, however, the intricacies of time and space. She firmly understands paradoxes and black holes. She knows that once, when she wasn’t finished completing a puzzle when the day was over at her primary school, she stared down a clock until the minute hand swung backward. She knows that she can gaze up at the night sky and make planets blink at her if she thinks hard enough.
She doesn’t know how, but she knows that this isn’t all there is for her.
---
McGonagall spends various weekends during all of her summer holidays as a cat. She skulks around the Granger home in London and sits under the window of Mr. and Mrs. Granger’s only child, an adopted girl with bushy hair named Hermione. After Hermione turns eight, McGonagall allows the girl to pet her and even curls up next to Hermione on the porch swing while she reads the entire library of Kurt Vonnegut books. Hermione cries during Timequake and, red-faced, asks the cat not to tell anyone. McGonagall purrs and nuzzles Hermione’s elbow.
When she returns to Hogwarts, Dumbledore asks what Miss Granger has been doing this summer. McGonagall’s voice is strained when she answers, “Desperately trying to not feel alone.”
---
On Hermione Granger’s eleventh birthday, a stranger visits her house.
The stranger is a severe-looking gray-haired woman who introduces herself as Professor Minerva McGonagall from a school called Hogwarts. She wishes Hermione a very happy birthday and says she has something important to discuss with Hermione and her parents.
On Hermione Granger’s eleventh birthday, she learns that she is a witch.
“Is that why I can make time move?” she asks McGonagall. “Is that why the stars blink for me?”
McGonagall lies, “Yes, it is,” and misses the Doctor more than she ever has in the past eleven years.
---
Initially, McGonagall feels much more comfortable with Hermione Granger at Hogwarts, and especially in Gryffindor. This way, McGonagall thinks, she can keep a close eye on Hermione, make sure she remains safe, until the time is right to tell her about where she began. Then the incident with the troll happens and McGonagall sighs as she watches little Hermione Granger become inseparable from Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley.
“I’m grateful she’s made friends, Albus,” she says to Dumbledore in his office one night in March. “I just wish her friends were less prone to acts of foolish heroics and meddling trouble.”
“You wish she wasn’t a Gryffindor,” Snape says from the chair next to her, a smirk playing on his sallow face. McGonagall glares at him.
“She’ll keep Potter and Weasley safe,” Dumbledore says reassuringly. “She’s a lot like that Doctor friend of yours already, Minerva.”
“Possibly a bit too like him,” McGonagall answers. Snape eyes the other two suspiciously.
“‘Doctor friend’?” he asks. “You’re friends with one of those Muggle Healers who cut people up?”
McGonagall smiles.
---
At the beginning of Hermione’s third year at Hogwarts, McGonagall transforms an old fob watch into a Time Turner and asks to speak to Hermione privately.
“It is vital that you understand the risks of meddling with time, Miss Granger,” she says.
“I’ve read about wizards who’ve gone back in time and see themselves,” Hermione replies earnestly. “They think they’ve gone mad, or else some extremely Dark Magic was going on, and there have even been recorded examples of the one timeline’s version of the time traveler killing the other version, which negates their existence entirely, and--”
“Yes, yes,” McGonagall stops her. “I see you’ve done ample research.” She presents a small hourglass charm on a necklace to Hermione. “One turn per hour,” she instructs. “I had to swear to the Ministry that you were mature and responsible enough to handle this. No one so young has ever been permitted to possess a Time Turner.”
“I understand,” Hermione says, nodding. Her expression is simultaneously serious and eager and once again, McGonagall is reminded of an incredible man in a box and the terror and thrill of stepping onto a new planet, into a different time.
Hermione leaves the office, Time Turner tucked under her robes, and McGonagall hopes it will call to her, that Hermione’s real identity will somehow come spilling out of the hourglass, and that, by the end of the year, there will be a Gryffindor with two hearts beating bravely instead of just one.
---
McGonagall waits.
---
At the end of the year, Hermione returns the Time Turner to Professor McGonagall.
“I’m dropping Muggle Studies,” she explains. “And I’ve already dropped Divination. With those two classes gone, I won’t need to use the Time Turner anymore.”
McGonagall’s eyes sting as she stares down at the hourglass charm. She thinks, It’s not a problem. She thinks, Miss Granger was just meant to live her life as a human. She thinks, I’ll just send this to the Ministry as it is and everything will go on as it has been.
She thinks, Two hearts. Two hearts instead of one.
She thinks, What happened to the Time Lords?
---
Hermione dreams about galaxies she’s never heard of and paradoxes and spaceships that are bigger on the inside and an orange planet with mountains that shine when the sun rises in the south. She dreams of citadels and humanoids who manipulate time and strictly avoid interference. She dreams of a man who looks into a time vortex and never stops running away.
She dreams of a war and strange metal cones of creatures called Daleks and the orange planet exploding in a haze of snow and red grass and screams and crashes. There’s a man whose face has changed but she knows it’s the same one who’s been running for eons; he stops just long enough to end a war and immediately runs away once more, off in a blue police call box, and never, ever stops running again, no matter how lonely he gets.
She dreams that she’s a baby again and the parents looking down at her with sad eyes are not the parents she knows. They place some sort of contraption on her head and prepare a little round transport for her and she cries out when a buzz shoots through her temples but calmly waves goodbye as she drifts away.
She always wakes up sobbing.
---
Hermione is sixteen years old when a wall of Time Turners breaks near her in the middle of what she understands is undeniably the first battle of many. She glances toward the chaos and sees time floating freely from the small golden charms as clearly as she sees a shower of glass and flashes of red and green light all around her. Then she hears something both distant and familiar; all the truth of space and time and herself swell up within her. Tears fall from her eyes before she collapses onto the floor.
When Hermione awakens, she’s lying in a bed in the hospital wing at Hogwarts. Madam Pomfrey is at the bed next to her, fussing over Ginny’s ankle; Ron is sleeping in the bed on Hermione’s other side, the skin on his arms red and angry and frightening. The adults around them are talking frantically, about Harry upstairs in Dumbledore’s office, about You-Know-Who, about Cornelius Fudge and the Ministry of Magic. Hermione tries to distinguish the voices and follow the conversations, but it’s nearly impossible with the new rhythm beating inside her chest.
.
When she awakens, Hermione has two hearts.
---
Hermione comes to McGonagall as soon as she’s released from the hospital wing. There’s an entirely new wealth of knowledge in her head now, one with a history she never knew and a future she hasn’t seen yet and a race of creatures who look like people and meddle with time.
McGonagall explains everything with a soft voice and a sad expression.
“And why were you given the watch?” Hermione asks. “How do you even know about Time Lords?”
“I used to know one,” McGonagall answers. “He called himself the Doctor. I traveled with him for two years inside a blue Muggle police box.”
“What happened to him?”
“He dropped me off in Dublin.” McGonagall shakes her head. “I said Edinburgh. He didn’t even get the correct country. He dropped me off in Dublin and then he went off to end the Time War.”
“He never came back for you?” Hermione frowns.
“He’ll come for you,” McGonagall insists. “This summer. The TARDIS will bring him to you. I can’t tell you what he’ll look like, unfortunately; he regenerates, you see. His appearance changes with each death and regeneration cycle.”
“The man with different faces!” Hermione exclaims. “He’s been in my dreams.”
McGonagall can’t keep a smile from forming. “Yes, he tends to do that.”
---
Hermione has three weeks at home in London before she plans to return to the Burrow for the remainder of the summer. She spends every waking moment outside reading and waiting for the Doctor to arrive in his big blue box.
With two days left, she’s on a park bench two blocks away from her house, scribbling corrections in the margins of A Brief History of Time, when an old police call box lands on its side nearby. Her hearts begin to race; she thinks one is in excitement and the other is in fear of the Doctor’s well-being after the crash. She rushes forward and only slows when the door slams open and a man with wet, floppy hair lifts himself out.
“Hello there!” the man exclaims. “You must be Hermione Granger. The TARDIS said I’d find you here. Don’t think she intended to crash, though. Poor girl.” He removes his coat and makes a show of wringing out the water from it.
“You’re the Doctor,” says Hermione.
“I am!” the Doctor replies with a wide grin. He appears extremely happy that she knows who he is. “I am the Doctor. Sometimes known as John Smith, Lord of Time, Last of the Time Lords, the Oncoming Storm--”
“Did you know,” Hermione interjects, “that there isn’t a single book on Gallifrey or Time Lords on this planet at this time?”
The Doctor looks at her, really looks at her, and a slow smile spreads across his face. “Oh, I’m very glad it’s you, Hermione Granger. Very glad, indeed.”
They sit on swings while the TARDIS cools down. Hermione has been rehearsing her ever-growing list of questions for weeks now and the Doctor happily answers them all, occasionally digressing into long-winded speeches about the beauty of space and the thrill of traveling through time and the wonder of sharing it all with a companion.
“But you’re not with a companion now,” Hermione observes. The Doctor drags his foot along the ground.
“No,” he admits. “No, I’m not. I’m alone for now.”
“What happened?” Hermione can’t resist her curiosity.
“She, uh,” the Doctor tries. He looks down at his knees. “I had to wipe her memory. She can’t travel with me anymore. If she remembers me or what we did, she’ll die.” Hermione stares.
“That’s,” she starts. “That sounds horrible.”
“Donna Noble,” says the Doctor. “The most important woman in the whole of creation.” He looks over at Hermione and grins. “You’d have liked her. She’s very no-nonsense.”
“Does that sort of thing happen with all companions?” Hermione asks. “I mean, does it always end that badly?”
“Not always,” the Doctor answers. “Martha Jones chose to leave. Rose Tyler--well, she ended up stuck in a parallel dimension, but she also got her own human version of me, so I suppose it worked out for her. Say, do you want to come along with me? I usually travel with humans, but I could show you the ropes, give you a head start.”
Hermione shakes her head. “There’s a war going on, Doctor. I can’t go until it’s finished.”
“Yes, I knew you’d say that,” says the Doctor. He jumps off the swing and spins around to face her. “Still, it was worth a try. At least come see me off.”
Moments later, Hermione and the Doctor stand in front of the TARDIS. Hermione gives the ship an appraising look. It’s still smoking.
“Shouldn’t you turn her so she’s not lying on her side?” she asks.
“Oh, she’ll be fine,” he says, grazing a hand down the TARDIS’ side. “Quite like you, Hermione. Speaking of, are you going to choose a new name?”
“I’m a bit attached to the one I’ve got, I think.”
“Really? You could be The Granger,” the Doctor offers. “Or the Genius or the Gryffindor. Or, ooh, or the Witch! That’s exciting!”
Hermione grins and rolls her eyes. “I’ll just stick with Hermione for now.”
“Yes, well,” says the Doctor, looking a little disappointed, “I knew you’d say that, too.” He climbs up into the TARDIS and turns back to Hermione. “I s’pose this is so long, then.”
“Doctor?” Hermione calls out as he disappears into the box. His head reappears over the threshold and she continues, desperately, “You’ve seen our future. You know how this war ends. Is there any hope or should I still be worried?”
“Oh, Hermione Granger,” replies the Doctor, pity and fondness in his voice, “there’s a war going on. You should always be worried. However, you should be hopeful more often than always.”
---
Once a person learns that if they get injured or sick enough, they will die as scheduled but will then regenerate, Hermione discovers, the concept of death as it pertains to oneself becomes significantly less frightening and permanent. The concept of death as it pertains to others, however, becomes increasingly terrifying and relevant.
Hermione tried to tell herself, just before Dumbledore died, that if she were to die in this war, it wouldn’t matter: she would regenerate and go back to fighting in a mere handful of hours. Now, though, she looks around at Harry, staring down at the Snitch in his hands as if it will give him answers if he glares enough, and Ron, looking sullen and resentful with the Horcrux dangling around his neck, and she knows that dying is not an option for her. If she dies, Ron and Harry will die before her regeneration cycle even begins. If she’s so much as fatally injured, Ron and Harry will do something unbelievably stupid and get themselves killed before she can even explain to them that she’s not really going to die.
Hermione shoves a book back inside her beaded bag--her first attempt at magicking something to be bigger on the inside--tries to sleep on an uncomfortable mattress, and thinks, Voldemort just wishes he could be a Time Lord.
---
Voldemort dies, Harry lives, and the war ends.
For the next three weeks, Hermione cries over things like blankets falling to the floor in the middle of the night and milk having spoiled.
Ron is there, right beside her, every time. He takes her in his arms and lets her sob against his chest and says, “It’s over now,” until she remembers that it’s true.
Their first time is two and a half weeks later on the roof above their room at the Leaky Cauldron. It’s appropriately awkward and sweet and passionate, and afterward, the two of them lie next to each other until their breathing calms.
Hermione stares up at the stars while she entangles her fingers with Ron’s and smiles. When Ron turns to her, lazy and pleased, and asks what she’s smiling at, she answers, “The stars are blinking at us. I haven’t seen them blink at me for years.”
Ron grins and kisses her neck and Hermione stops thinking about the stars.
---
Hermione thinks about the Doctor at least four times a week.
She dreams about him and the home planet she’ll never see again; she swears she wakes up to the sound the TARDIS makes. She has a workshop at the edge of the property where she’s made her home with Ron and in it, she spends a handful of hours each week trying to construct her own TARDIS using junk, magic, and an assortment of spare parts from dead TARDISes that the Doctor sent her a year ago. (The package arrived with a note attached to it that said, “Thought you might find a use for these bits. Be kind to them; they lived once like mine. Congratulations on winning the war!” The congratulations was about ten years overdue, but she definitely found use for the parts.)
She tries to teach her two-year-old daughter everything she knows about astronomy. At night, Hermione takes Rose up to the roof landing and puts the little girl’s face against the telescope. She points out Mars and Venus and tells Rose about Jupiter’s rings and maps out Orion with her daughter’s freckles. After Rose has gone to bed, Ron smiles against Hermione’s belly and asks if he should expect the same sort of early education with their son. (It’s been seven years since she babysat Teddy and thought of his werewolf father and Metamorphmagus mother and the knowledge that Time Lords rarely reproduce sexually, knowledge that has so far been hidden in a far corner of her mind, races to the forefront. It took her five years to work out how to safely magick herself into pregnancy, but it’s something she barely even remembers now. She loves everything about being a mother.)
She considers telling Ron every time she thinks about the Doctor. She imagines revealing her big secret to him, his reaction--confused and doubtful at first but jovial once he comes to terms with it--and their family vacations changing from destinations like Madrid and New York City to places like Space Florida and New Earth and the founding of Hogwarts. She dreams of what she would say, how she would explain it to him, and she never gets any further.
--
Hermione Granger-Weasley is forty-two years old when she dies.
There’s an incident at the Ministry--all Hermione ever remembers is a deafening crash and the force of a blast throwing her across the room--and Hermione is among the employees declared dead at the scene. Her body is taken to the morgue at St. Mungo’s; her family and friends are notified. An obituary--well-written and rather long, honoring not only her accomplishments in the Second War and her work as an advocate for non-human creatures and in Magical Law Enforcement, but also the importance she placed on her lifelong friendships and her contributions to Dumbledore’s Army--is scribed by a grieving house-elf and readied to be published in the following day’s issue of The Daily Prophet.
She wakes up in the dark ten hours later.
---
Her hair is ginger now. Ginger and sleek and straight. She has sideswept fringe. Her eyes are blue and she’s at least three inches taller than she was before her death.
“At least I look the same age,” she mutters before she finally tears her gaze away from a mirror. The bright side of regeneration is that she can just walk out of the hospital and no one will care. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, she’s not Hermione.
“Hermione is dead,” she whispers to herself as she exits the building. “Long live Hermione.”
---
She stands in the shadows, leaning against the workshop, staring out at the house she built with Ron, for twenty-seven minutes. She can see through the windows into the den, can see Ron holding Rose close to him, Ginny struggling to play with her own children and Hugo, Harry biting his nails and hovering awkwardly between his wife and his best friend. It feels like a knife in her chest, watching Ron survey the room with a helpless, overwhelmed expression on his face, and when Rose reaches up and wipes a tear from her father’s cheek, Hermione’s resolve shatters. She sobs as if she’s been split open, as if the maps of every galaxy are throbbing in her head and being released through the tears that fall from her eyes. Every minute ticks by in wretched silence engulfing her; even the crickets and garden gnomes mourn the loss of Hermione Granger.
At minute twenty-eight, she takes a deep, shaking breath, and tears her gaze away, and opens the door to her TARDIS. It’s a bit slapped together with parts that aren’t necessarily trustworthy, but she has faith in magic above all else, and she yearns, so desperately that it aches in her chest, for faith in time and space.
At minute twenty-nine, she presses buttons, turns knobs and wheels, and kicks a lever behind her. The TARDIS jerks and wheezes to life, the dull turquoise glow that’s been little comfort to her for so many years brightening to a reassuring brilliance, every copper bit and bob shining and reflecting the color surrounding them. Hermione can feel her hearts racing, excited and terrified, and she thinks of the man--the alien, the Time Lord, but he so looked like a man, and such a sad one, too--she met when she was sixteen, and when she smiles, she can’t even feel the dried tears on her skin.
At minute thirty, she closes her eyes and doesn’t breathe.
At minute thirty-one, she opens the door to a galaxy of stars.
---
Hermione Granger spent her entire first life immersed in an driving (though Ron and Harry would say “obsessive”) need to prove herself. The Doctor told her, all those years ago, that each regeneration is accompanied by personality changes. She’s wondered ever since what kind of person she’d become after dying and living again and again, imagined herself taking on different qualities to varying extents, guilt-free manipulation or ease with violence or spontaneity over planning or a sudden lack of the pressing need to research everything until her fingertips go numb.
She doesn’t know yet much of what she’s gained, but she knows she at least hasn’t lost the thirst to prove herself capable and intelligent. It’s what’s driving her through time and the universe to find the Doctor, if only to show him that she made it, that she didn’t give up hope, that she was able to live and die and run away. She wants him to smile and put his hands on her shoulders and tell her that he’s proud of her, and then she wants to run away again, after nothing and everything at once, and never stop running, and maybe this is what he meant back on the swingset when he told her about a boy who looked into the Time Vortex and ran and ran and ran away, ran and is running and will always run. At the time, she hadn’t understood, couldn’t fathom a life full of leaving, but now that she’s left--it’s a thrill that vibrates through her veins every time she lands in a different time and place, and this time, she lands outside a bar on a planet with lilac snow and grass that smells like chocolate, four thousand years in the future from the time she left her workshop hollow.
The bar is crowded, full of all sorts, and Hermione is no longer unnerved by the sight of Oods or cyborgs or happy little cells of adipose. She’s been travelling for only two weeks, but she’s grown accustomed already to being the only human on an entire planet, or at least one of only a handful. It’s being one of two that startles her.
He’s got a handsome face, a playful smile, and old eyes, and when they settle on Hermione, his grin twists into mischief. She takes a seat next to him at the bar when he gestures at the empty chair, and this close, she can see that his eyes are sad as well, even as he holds a hand out to her and introduces himself, “Captain Jack Harkness, madam, at your service.”
This Hermione can hold her liquor, even on a planet galaxies away from Hogsmeade, and it takes two hours and a dozen drinks for her to qualify as drunk. That’s when Jack leans in with his wicked smile and says, low and soft, “So what are you here for, really?”
Hermione giggles and says, impressively slur-free, “I’m looking for the Doctor.”
Jack falls off the chair.
“The Doctor?” he says from the floor, gazing up at Hermione, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. “You know the Doctor?”
Hermione blinks down at him, abruptly sober. “You know the Doctor?”
And then she’s leaving the bar with Jack, rambling about lost Time Lords and TARDISes and how bloody difficult it is to find one man when you’ve got the whole of time and space to search, and Jack is firing back with questions about what the Doctor looked like the last time she saw him and did he mention me and at least you didn’t get stuck in the 1800s with no way out. When he steps into the TARDIS, he nearly doubles over.
“Hermione,” he says, looking around, voice full of wonder as he runs his hands over controls and dials and monitors. “You’re a Time Lady.”
“Yeah,” she says, “and a witch, and you’re immortal. Quite a pair we make, don’t you think?”
Jack turns and grins at her. “Are you asking what I hope you’re asking?” She rolls her eyes and fixes her mouth in a stern line.
“One trip,” Hermione says. “That’s all.”
“Sure.” Jack gives a shrug. “Just the one. Unless you need me after. We’ll see.”
Hermione smiles and presses a series of buttons. “Do you want to help me find the Doctor or not? Turn that counterclockwise,” she says, and they’re off.
---
It’s not what she thought it would be like, having a companion. Jack’s already seen so much of the universe, and so much of time, and Hermione is, more often than not, more awestruck than he is whenever they land somewhere new. He shoots before asking questions, he flirts with every living being they meet, and he takes charge before assessing any situation. Sometimes he gets in her way and he never apologizes for anything.
But he’s there, constantly, by her side for every step she takes on this bizarre new journey of hers, and he’s brave and loyal and self-sacrificing, and he always tells Hermione the truth even when it’s not something she wants to hear, and he lets her discover things on her own. For all Hermione meant it when she told him it would just be one trip--and she did mean it--it’s been six weeks, eleven planets, and nineteen different time frames, and Jack is still with her.
He tells her about his life while they dig their toes in the sand of a shore on Barcelona, about the Time Agency and the two years of memory he can never get back, about all the people he’s loved and lost. He laughs when he tells her about Ianto and cries over his younger brother. He tells her all about Rose Tyler and Martha Jones and Donna Noble, what they did to save the universe, and what became of them. She asks him if he’s still in love with the Doctor and he says he always will be. He says, “I was perfectly fine with not being a good person until I met him;” he says, “The Doctor showed me a different life;” he says, “I owe the universe to him and he already has it.”
In a fit of generosity, Hermione lets Jack choose the next time and place. He takes her to The Library in the fifty-first century and she almost cries when she opens the TARDIS door to reveal a planet that is nothing but a book repository. She can’t stop looking at the books long enough to avoid running into other visitors, and after she accidentally knocks over an adolescent Ood reading The Wretched of the Earth, Jack takes her hand and leads her to a miraculously empty aisle, where he hands her a book called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. She sits on the floor for ten hours and reads seven books about herself and her old friends, from her first life. She cries at the epilogue of the final book and Jack touches her shoulder, asks her if the story is true. She says, “Every word;” she says, “Right down to the trivial bits about dances and dress robes;” he says, “No part of your life is trivial.”
Four days later, on earth in 1868, there’s a mad rush back to the TARDIS and Jack is shot just before the door closes. He dies there, on the floor, and when he breathes again, the TARDIS is in flight and Hermione is livid. She shouts, “You’ve got to stop doing that, Jack Harkness;” she shouts, “That’s the fifth time and I’m tired of people dying for me;” she shouts, “You don’t have to keep proving yourself to me--it’s not like I’m kicking out my companion any time soon!” She flings a key at his head and stomps off down the hallway toward the back wing of the TARDIS.
Jack finds her in the laboratory three minutes later, the key on a chain around his neck, and he hugs her until they start to laugh.
---
Jack wanders Cardiff while the TARDIS refuels and Hermione spends half an hour trying to decide what she wants for takeaway. She’s finishing off her fish and chips when she rounds the corner near the TARDIS and sees immediately that Jack is waiting for her and isn’t alone. The young woman he’s talking to has dark skin and a dazzling smile and Hermione thinks, Oh, before thinking, Oh!
“Hermione!” Jack exclaims when she approaches. “I’m glad you’re here. This is Martha--”
“Martha Jones?” Hermione says, disbelieving, an amazed smile on her face. “Jack’s told me all about you! I’m such a fan of yours. The way you trekked across the earth just--”
“Wait, hold on,” Martha interjects. “Jack, who is this?”
“You’ll never believe this,” Jack says with a grin just as Hermione says, “I’m Hermione Granger.” Martha blinks at the two of them and finally lets out a laugh.
“Your name’s Hermione Granger?” she says. “Like in Harry Potter?”
“Yes, exactly like in Harry Potter,” Hermione answers with an enthusiastic nod, successfully managing to hide her blush at Martha’s appreciative laughter by ducking her head and letting her hair fall in front of her face.
“Martha,” Jack sing-songs, leans in and finishes in a dramatic whisper, “She’s a Time Lady.”
Martha’s eyes go wide as she looks back at Hermione. “What?” she says, and Hermione opens her mouth to explain, to tell Martha about her fob watch and the Doctor meeting her in a park and building a TARDIS at the edge of her garden.
But instead, she says, “Do you want to get out of here?”
---
It’s Martha this time who insists, “Just one trip, one more trip, that’s it, and then you take me back home, I mean it,” once and twice and four times, until she jumps back into the TARDIS behind Hermione and Jack and instead says, “Where to next, then?” Hermione smiles so wide that she turns away in embarrassment, for so long that her face hurts for hours afterward.
Martha sees Hermione using her sonic wand as more of a wand than a sonic device somewhere between Cheem and Paris 1985, waits to hear Hermione mutter, “Reparo!” before blurting out, “Oh my god, you’re actually--” Hermione looks up from the console, hair hiding her face again, and Martha smiles. “You’re actually the Hermione Granger. From the books. I mean, of course, you said, I just thought--” and then Hermione’s laughing and brushing her hair behind her ears, and Martha moves toward her to sit on the console beside her. “It’s really all true, then, the books?”
“Every chapter,” Hermione says. “Though I suppose I can’t exactly confirm for the ones where I wasn’t talking to Harry and Ron.”
Martha grins. “It’s brilliant that you have magic,” she says, and then, shyly, “I, well, I helped save William Shakespeare and the rest of England from Carrionite witches with the Disarming spell. I mean, I just said the word, I’m not magic, obviously.”
“I think you’re magic,” Hermione says, and then drops her sonic wand, and bumps her head twice in the process of retrieving it. “I mean,” she says, upright again and pretending that her face isn’t heating unbearably, “you walked the earth on the run from the Master and his creepy little floating robots and never got caught until you meant to be, for a whole year, and you didn’t even have magic. That’s impressive, Martha. Even I couldn’t do that.”
“You could do that,” Martha says with a smile. “Maybe just not with the stupid, impulsive boys you let travel with you.” Hermione laughs.
“‘Impulsive,’ I’ll accept,” Jack says from the doorway, looking at the two of them with raised eyebrows. “But I’m going to have to argue about ‘stupid.’ Then again, maybe it doesn’t apply to me at all, since everyone here knows I’m more man than boy.” Martha rolls her eyes and laughs when Hermione points the wand at Jack and sends a jet of water at him. Hermione ignores Jack’s pointed stare that indicates, even through the water dripping off his face, that he knows exactly what she’s feeling, though she has no doubt that he truly does.
The thing about traveling with Martha Jones, Hermione’s realized, is that Hermione wants to impress her more than she’s ever impressed anyone. It’s turned her into a bit of a mess, blushing and stammering and dropping wands, and Hermione wonders if this is how Harry felt with Cho Chang, or Ron with, well, her, and she finds it slightly easier to understand now why they had such trouble focusing on schoolwork.
She hears Martha say, “Oh, have we landed?” and she smiles.
“To the wardrobe!” Hermione says. “Jeans won’t do in nineteenth century Paris!”
---
Jack says, “Martha’s pretty great, huh?”
Hermione says, “Jack.”
They’re in San Francisco in 1977, eating lunch with Harvey Milk. It’s the first time the TARDIS has taken Hermione to a place or time independent of the coordinates and directions Hermione had set.
“I’m not going to make you talk about it if you don’t want to,” he says, stealing a crisp from her plate. He glances up at the deli counter, where Martha and Harvey are chatting away, awaiting their orders, and looks back at Hermione. “But, for what it’s worth, you probably shouldn’t worry.”
“What would I be worried about?” she asks. “And stop stealing my crisps, Harkness.”
“That she doesn’t reciprocate,” Jack answers. “Not the way you want her to, anyway. And I owe you for eating half my dinner in Paris yesterday.”
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t be worried about that,” Hermione says, frowning. She sighs and shoves her plate closer to Jack.
“It’s just been my experience that people are a lot more flexible than you’d think,” he says.
“Yes, well, you’ve had sex with aliens,” she says.
“You’re an alien,” he points out, and Hermione surprises him with a loud burst of laughter.
“You know,” she says, “sometimes I forget.”
---
It happens on a planet that’s nothing but electricity. The three of them are cornered by a mob of humanoids out for a blood sacrifice, Jack’s left his firearms on the TARDIS at Hermione’s request, and all the electricity jams any signal from her wand, magic and sonic alike. Martha rescues them, using only her cleverness and calm under pressure, and back on the TARDIS she’s acting as if she did nothing but talked. She fusses over Hermione, cursing a lot and pulling bandages and ointment from a beaded bag that’s bigger on the inside, setting about mending the cuts and burns on Hermione’s arms and legs when her patient says, “Martha, stop,” and kisses her.
Hermione’s got a deep cut on her palm and when she pulls away, jerks her hands back, there’s a line of blood over the side of Martha’s face, dripping slowly down her jaw. Hermione stares at it, horrified. “I’m sorry,” she says. “That was--I shouldn’t have--” She looks down at her feet and holds out her arms. “Here, you can--you can fix me up. I won’t do that again.”
Martha ducks her head, cleans and stitches and bandages the wounds on Hermione’s hands, wrists, forearms, and when she gets to the cut slashing over Hermione’s elbow, she says, casual and quiet, “What if I want you to do it again?”
Hermione wants to say something sweet and clever, but it’s blunt honesty when she ends up with, “Well, then, I’d do it again. Of course I would. I couldn’t ever--if you wanted--but why would you--” Then Martha’s got one hand on Hermione’s shoulder, one curved around the back of her neck, and they’re kissing again and Hermione can’t remember what it feels like to have air in her lungs, to not have Martha’s mouth on hers, to not know the sensation of Martha’s teeth worrying at her bottom lip.
“So this is the moment, then?” Jack says, and Hermione and Martha break apart. Hermione rubs at her temples.
“Merlin’s pants, I’ve really got to work on timing for first kisses,” she mutters, and Martha, hiding her face behind her hands, lets out a laugh.
“Don’t stop on my account,” Jack says with a devious smile. Hermione conjurs a flock of canaries.
“Oppugno!”
---
Martha and Jack insist on taking Hermione somewhere special to celebrate her one-year anniversary of traveling in the TARDIS. She points out to them that they’re actually celebrating the day of her first death, and isn’t that a bit sick, but they ignore this and request that the TARDIS “choose a location in time and/or space” for the celebrations.
The TARDIS chooses Hogsmeade Village.
Hermione opens the door to familiar thatched shops and cottages with candles floating in the windows and pets gratefully at the TARDIS’ side. “Good girl,” she says, and then she drags Martha and Jack down the High Street, talking quickly and excitedly, pulling them into Zonko’s and Honeydukes and Dominic Maestro’s. She uses some leftover Wizarding money from the bottom of her beaded bag to buy a set of leather-bound books on Healing for Martha in Tomes & Scrolls and a wizard’s chess set for Jack in Wiseacre’s. They sit in a corner booth at The Three Broomsticks and drink butterbeer until they feel sick. On their way back to the TARDIS, Hermione ducks into Honeydukes and returns a few minutes later with a bag in each hand, announcing that she’s bought at least one of everything, even the blood-flavoured lollipops and cockroach clusters.
Hermione leaves the door open as the TARDIS leaves Hogsmeade, standing in the doorway and gazing down as the village gets smaller and smaller in her vision. When it disappears, she smiles, shuts and locks the door, and turns around to see Martha and Jack watching her, worry visible around their eyes.
“Are you okay?” Martha asks softly. Hermione can only smile.
“I’ve survived an entire year traveling throughout time and the universe,” she says, “and I’ve spent the majority of that time with my best man and my best lady, who today got to indulge with me in a bit of my first life. Martha Jones, I am wonderful.” She kisses Martha, sweet and simple, and then pulls Jack into a hug.
“Now,” she says, “let’s go find the dining room so we can dump these sweets out and start eating.”
---
Hermione, Martha, and Jack turn a corner in the museum on Paradost and narrowly miss literally running into the Doctor and his two companions.
“Terribly sorry,” the Doctor says, not even looking at them but squinting up at the ceiling instead. He sidesteps them and walks past and Hermione spins around.
“Doctor!” she shrieks. He stops walking and turns back, looks from her to her companions back to her, and smiles slowly.
“Hermione Granger?” he asks, and catches her when she jumps to embrace him. “Hermione Granger! You made it! I’m so proud!”
“I made it!” she exclaims. “I don’t know if I was expecting you to look the same--”
“Well, I’ve been lucky,” he says, studying her face. “But you look different!”
“Well, I suppose I wasn’t,” Hermione says. “Well, no, that’s not true. I’ve been very lucky.”
“I can see that,” the Doctor says, eyes on her hair. “Do you know I’m on my eleventh version of myself and I’ve still not been ginger? But you get it on your first go! Very lucky, indeed. And of course,” he adds, looking behind her, “you’ve chosen the best possible companions.”
“Doctor,” the woman next to him says. “Must you be so impolite? Introductions are obviously in order.”
“Yes, yes, introductions,” the Doctor says, clapping his hands together. “This is Hermione Granger--you may have heard me refer to her as the Witch--and her companions, Dr. Martha Jones and Jack Harkness.”
“Captain Jack Harkness,” Jack corrects, holding out his hand to the woman and giving her an approving look. She smiles at him, slow and seductive, and takes his hand.
“Doctor River Song,” she says. Jack licks his lips.
“I like the sound of that.”
“I like the sound of ‘Captain,’” River says, and then the Doctor clears his throat. River and Jack do not break eye contact.
“Yes, that’s River,” the Doctor says loudly, and then he gestures to his other companion and says, “and this is a cactus.”
“That’s racist!” River and the green man both shout, River finally looking away from Jack. The Doctor looks satisfied with himself.
“My name is Gilbert,” says the man, “and I’m part--”
“Vinvocci!” Hermione finishes excitedly. “We’ve only just come from the Vinvocci’s home planet. It’s terribly fascinating!”
“It’s very dry there,” Jack adds. The Doctor beams at him.
“Well, yes,” says Gilbert, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, I’m only here because River dragged me along.”
“I tend to do that,” River says to Jack.
“I could be into it,” Jack says. The Doctor jumps between them.
“Martha Jones!” he yells, even as River and Jack step around him. “I’m so glad to see you back in space.” She grins at him.
“I’m glad to be back, Doctor,” she says. He looks down at her fingers laced with Hermione’s. Martha blushes. “Very glad.”
“I can see that,” says the Doctor, and then he hugs her. When he pulls away, he rests his hands on her shoulders and says, “You always deserved better than me.”
“Yeah,” says Martha, squeezing Hermione’s hand. “I’ve got her now. No worries.”
Hermione looks around her--from Martha and the Doctor, smiling through their histories, to River and Jack, sharing stories now about the Doctor and the Witch (“She doesn’t fly with the emergency brake on, does she?” “Is that what causes his to make that sound?”), even to Gilbert, shrugging and shaking his spiky head at the scene before him but giving her a wide-eyed look and a tentative smile as if he’s meeting someone he’s only ever heard legends about--and her chest feels heavy with love and space and time and victory.
---
The first and only time Hermione ever sees Jack look afraid is the first and only time they encounter Daleks.
They appear where they shouldn’t be, which is, as Hermione understands it, a terribly unfortunate habit of theirs. They whir and shriek in their tinny little voices and Jack and Martha grab Hermione and run.
“Daleks,” Martha says once they’ve barricades themselves in an empty room. Her voice is strained and fearful. “What the bloody hell are they even doing here? It’s the Doctor who’s their sworn enemy, not you.”
“Better question,” Jack says, skin pale and shoulders trembling, just a little, as if he’s trying to make it stop. “What can we do about Daleks? Any ideas, Hermione?”
Hermione has ideas. They all involve sending Jack and Martha back to safety in the TARDIS and attempting to use Unforgivable Curses on a pack of robots. She bites her lip. “None you’ll like.”
“Time Lady!” a Dalek outside the room announces. “You should not have survived the Time War. We will finish now.” A laser shoots through the door, missing Martha by inches, and Hermione sets back her shoulders and approaches the door.
“Yes, we will,” she calls. “Will you cease fire until I can face you for a real battle?”
“Hermione,” Martha hisses. “What are you doing?”
“Ending something,” Hermione says. Her voice doesn’t shake but her hearts thump chaotically inside her chest. She thinks, wildly, of Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, and what Harry must have felt when he walked into the Forbidden Forest to face down death. Her own fight isn’t so cut and dry, but it’s something that’s felt unfinished and dangled in her head ever since the Doctor first explained the Time War to her on the swings so long ago, told her about Daleks surviving through time by killing anything in their way. All she’s doing is finishing the melody, finalizing a war that stole her from a family she’ll never know and a home planet she’s never seen so that the Doctor won’t have to do the same for a war that still makes him hate himself.
She leaves the room, locks in Martha and Jack behind her, and raises her wand.
---
Hermione eliminates the Daleks and gets herself killed in the process.
Jack and Martha break down the locked door and carry a dying Hermione through the rubble of a building recently exploded to the TARDIS. Hermione refuses to lie down, insists on standing through this death, this regeneration, and clutches, white-knuckled, two legs of the railing surrounding the console as she shakes uncontrollably.
“Jack,” she says calmly, looking up at him, “I don’t know what kind of woman I’ll be this time around, so I just want to say, in case I don’t want to say it later, that I’ll never abandon you.”
“Hermione--” he starts, still breathless and scared, but she won’t let him finish.
“I know you still worry,” she says. “I know you think sometimes that unless you prove yourself useful, or sacrificial, or something, that I’ll leave you just like the Doctor left you. But I’m not going to do that, not even after this regeneration. No version of me will ever leave you behind, Jack Harkness. Do you understand me?” She stares at him until he nods. “I know that’s why you kept getting yourself killed when you first joined me. I know, Jack, but I’m not leaving. You’re mine until you don’t want to be anymore.” Light gleams from between Hermione’s fingers then. She can feel herself glowing, going blurry around the outline of her body, and she shudders before looking at Martha.
“Martha, this is very important,” she says, a hysterical edge to her voice now. “Will you still love me if I’m blonde?”
“What?” Martha says, the corners of her mouth curving upward. “Of course I will. Hermione--”
“I just,” Hermione has to pause, light is burning at her toes now, inching toward her ankles. “The Doctor was such an arse to you and you deserve everything, every planet and every star and every moment of time and he just--and I need to know if it would be a problem--I could maybe find a way to control it.”
“Hermione, you nutter,” Martha says, laughing, before leaning down over the railing, pulling Hermione to her and kissing her, open and passionate, until Hermione laughs and pushes her away.
“I bloody love you, Martha Jones,” she says, and bursts into light.
When the light has dissipated enough for Martha and Jack to finally see, Hermione’s on her hands and knees, gasping for air, black waves tumbling over her shaking shoulders. “Oh,” she manages, voice like salt on a wound. She looks up at Jack and Martha, brushes her hair back, and says, “That was quite fun, actually. I always thought it would feel a bit like the Cruciatus Curse. How do I look?”
“About ten years younger,” Jack says as Martha rushes forward, swinging down under the railing and crouching beside Hermione.
“Do you need anything now?” she asks. “Sleep? Tea? Food?”
“Tea would be lovely,” Hermione answers, trying to stand. She sways, grabbing at Martha’s shoulder, and then steadies herself. She makes a thoughtful face, new green eyes going glassy for a moment. “Oh, but I have a new mouth, new tastebuds! What if I don’t like tea anymore? What sort of foods do I like now?”
“Well, we’re going back to Cardiff to refuel anyway,” Jack says with a grin. “We’ll make it a buffet.”
“Perfect,” Hermione says. “I’m suddenly starving.” She turns to Martha and takes in the concern still evident in her eyes. “Hello, darling,” she says before placing a quick kiss on Martha’s lips. “It’s still me.” Martha smiles.
“I know,” she says, and then, “The black hair really suits you,” before, “Fish and chips, first. I’ve had a craving since we left thirtieth century New York City.”
---
It’s Martha’s birthday when they end up on New Earth.
“Hello, again,” Martha says when she jumps out of the TARDIS into a field of grass. “Except not really, you know. I got stuck in the gridlock with a bunch of cat people. What’s the year, Hermione?”
“Five billion one hundred three,” Hermione answers as she steps outside. She looks down quizzically and crouches, breathes in the scent of the ground and says, impressed and appreciative, “Apple grass. Fifty points to New Earth.”
“New Earth?!” Jack exclaims, following Hermione and Martha outside, shutting the TARDIS door behind him. “Believe it or not, I’ve never been here. It’s always been on my list, but somehow I’ve always gotten distracted. Or stuck for over a century on old Earth.”
“Nor have I,” Martha says. “Not the proper way, at least.”
“You mean, this is a first for the both of you?” Hermione asks, a smile forming slowly on her face. “I’ve finally taken you somewhere you’ve both never been?”
“Yes, well,” Martha says, taking Hermione’s hand, “it was bound to happen eventually. Come on now. The city’s right there and we’re standing around to our ankles in apple grass.”
New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York is bustling and beautiful, full of humans and cat people alike. There are bus and walking tours on every other street (Martha has to duck twice to avoid being hit by a bus flying, albeit fairly slowly, overhead), star whale dog vendors on every corner (Hermione flies into a rage when she realizes what’s being served and upends every cart within her wand’s spell range), and mood dealers hiding out in alleyways (a shady-looking part-human offers Jack a vial of Lustful and Jack laughs and says, “Don’t need an artificial mood to feel that”). A nun with fur and a cat’s face standing outside a hospital seems pleased to see Hermione (“We’ve been waiting for you, Lonely Goddess,” she says, and Hermione doesn’t know what to make of that) and gives the three of them a tour of the hospital, introducing them to her fellow Sisters and inviting them to be vaccinated against a disease with a name that cannot be pronounced in humanoid speech that causes scales to form in place of new skin cells. (Martha accepts.)
They eat a picnic lunch in New Central Park, sun shining through the leaves of a tree towering above them, and when Martha leans over suddenly and presses her lips to Hermione’s, her mouth tastes like raspberries and red wine. Jack sits against the tree trunk and says, “I like traveling with you, Hermione, because I only end up running for my life seventy-five percent of the time, as opposed to the Doctor’s ninety-four,” and Hermione kisses him on the cheek.
“Time Agency, the Doctor’s companion, Torchwood,” she lists. “Are you sure you’re not bored with me?” Jack grins and jumps to his feet.
“Come on,” he says. “Walk around Central Park.”
It’s twenty minutes before they come upon a small crowd gathered around a statue of a face, huge and flat and kind. Hermione, Martha, and Jack push through the crowd to the statue’s dedication plaque. “The Face of Boe,” Hermione reads aloud, and Jack grabs at her arm as she continues to read about a man born on the Boeshane Peninsula who was the first there to join the Time Agency, earning him a nickname that persisted for billions of years. “Though he undoubtedly had other names throughout his life, the Face of Boe was known as such from one end of the universe to the others for his last ten million years. In 5,000,000,053, the Face of Boe breathed his last breath to save the city of New New York, sacrificing himself for the lives of countless beings he had never met, and leaving the galaxy with the words, ‘You are not alone.’”
The three travelers stand silent, uncertain and unsettled, until time unravels around them, and Hermione can feel Jack’s pulse in the crook of her elbow, Martha’s shaky breaths at her shoulder, and she can’t bring herself to look at Jack’s face until he finally lets go of her arm. He takes a few wild steps backward, nearly stepping on a kitten and knocking into Vinvocci. When Hermione and Martha turn to look at him, he laughs, high and maniacal, and shouts, “C’mon, Martha Jones, it’s your birthday! You pick the restaurant and I’ll flirt our way in.”
They end up at a charming bakery that serves pastries reminiscent of Earth--Old Earth--and Jack presses his lips close to the blue ear of the young alien behind the counter until blue skin flushes purple and one of everything is delivered to their table in the corner. Jack laughs too loud, talks too much, and licks cupcake frosting from the tip of Martha’s nose, and then, an hour later, sick on sugar and terror, rests his head on the table and whispers, “How do I know it’s actually me?”
Martha presses her fingertips to his neck, behind his ear, at his hairline, and says, “I know it is.” She explains her last time here, meeting the Face of Boe in his final moments, fast forwarding to Professor Yana at the end of the universe where she met Jack for the first (but second) time, and jumping back in time to chase the Master. “You were there,” she says. “You knew the Doctor wasn’t the only Time Lord out there and you warned him. ‘You are not alone’--everyone thinks it was something inspirational, but it was a warning. You sort of saved us.”
“No,” Jack scoffs, “you saved us.”
“The Year That Never Was,” Hermione says quietly. “I remember it. I know I’m not supposed to, and it’s not very vivid, but I had whiplash after time jumped back into place. We couldn’t celebrate Hugo’s first first birthday because of the Toclafane and the second time around, I kept having to slip into the broom cupboard to cry while he was throwing cake at Ron and Rosie.”
Jack tilts his head to stare at her until she meets his eyes, and as he reaches out to catch a tear on his knuckles, he says, voice ragged and aching, “I can’t stay.” Hermione knows what he means, knows he can’t stay with her any longer, knows he’s going to hold her and Martha’s hands while he walks them back to the TARDIS as if nothing’s amiss and then say his farewells like they’re unexpected, and she hates him then, selfishly and irrationally, hates him so much for being this way--noble and searching and loyal and good--for reminding her of a friend she once had who went to the ends of the earth and the edges of magic to discover what he was meant to do and then didn’t even say goodbye before walking willingly to a death that would save the lives of everyone he loved, everyone he never liked, every future witch or wizard to come into their world. Part of her wants to ask Jack to elaborate, to make him state his intentions, to make his decision rip at his heart, and then she remembers Barcelona and sand between her toes and pink sweetwater lapping around Jack’s ankles while he tells her in broken rhythms about his life and his loves, how it sounded like the words were torn from his throat and his memory like they all only happened the day before, the way he’d told her that he’d always be in love with the Doctor yet has nothing to give him, and it hits her all at once how Jack Harkness carries the lives and smiles and tears and deaths of every single person he’s ever lost throughout his years, already too many, destined to be too many more, and she thinks of the kind face in the statue in Central Park, a beacon of hope and unity for the universe, for every traveler who ever felt lonely, for every wanderer who ever lost balance and got crushed under the weight of being alone.
She doesn’t make him say it. Instead, she gathers the rubbish on their table and tosses it in the bin nearby, leans down to kiss Jack on his temple before taking his hand in hers and pulling him to his feet. Martha threads her fingers through his free ones and the three of them make their way back to the TARDIS, slow and deliberate and heavy. When Jack points up at the skyline, a snide remark about the parking garage matching the New Empire State Building floor for skyscraping floor, he brings Martha’s hand with him, and when they can’t get out of the way of a family of Arkan on the sidewalk, he lifts his hand with Hermione’s to let the tourists waddle underneath their arms.
Jack enters the TARDIS to retrieve what few belongings he has from the room in the middle that’s become his, and sometimes his and Martha’s when their human weariness overtakes them, and sometimes his and Martha and Hermione’s when the weight of having space and time at their bidding gives them separation anxiety and gets them overly affectionate. Martha stands in the doorway next to Hermione and insists that he pack something to remember her by, but Jack shakes his head and says, “Just because he--I--wasn’t talking about you when I said--say--that to the Doctor doesn’t mean I wasn’t talking to you, too.” He pulls her into a hug, bone-crushing and desperate and final, and says, “Martha Jones, my nightingale, you’re the only real constant that’s ever been and ever will be in my life.” When he lets go of her, Martha’s eyes are watery and Hermione’s walking away toward the main console.
She walks all the way to the door and sits down against it, arms crossed over her chest, and gives Jack a smug look when he comes into view. He smiles at her sadly and she sighs, her shoulders slumping in defeat, and asks, “The Doctor never acted like this, did he? He never got selfish over companions leaving.”
Jack shakes his head. “I imagine after a few hundred years or so, it might get easier to watch someone leave,” and then, “The Doctor never really cared what I did or where I went, though.”
Hermione says, “But it hasn’t ever gotten easier for you,” and then she stands, hands fisted in the pockets of the jacket Jack was wearing when they met months ago in a bar on a planet scattered with patches of lilac snow. “The Doctor is an idiot, by the way. First you, and then Martha, and then you again and he still doesn’t know that you’re the greatest that the universe and all of time has to offer. How’m I supposed to find another omnisexual immortal with fifty-first century pheromones?”
“It’s probably best if you don’t find another one,” Jack says, “and anyway, we’re an endangered species, and I know how you Gryffindors rush into danger without thinking. You’d just deplete our numbers.”
“Jack,” Hermione says quietly, and her body shakes with a sudden sob. Jack catches her, cries with her, and he whispers a promise with his face buried in her impossibly dark hair, swears she’ll see him again, and she pulls back and studies his face before saying, “But you might not see me again.” It’s not a question, and Jack wouldn’t have an answer even if it were, so he doesn’t reply, just hugs her again, holds her until the console makes a sad whirring sound, and he has to let go of Hermione and huff out a laugh.
“I’ll miss you, too, sweetheart,” he says fondly, petting at the TARDIS wall. The door swings slowly open after a few moments, after it’s become obvious that Jack can’t open it himself, and Jack steps outside onto grass that smells like apples, and immediately turns back to salute the TARDIS as it takes flight, takes Hermione and Martha away from him, and Hermione keeps the door open as they leave, stands in the doorway and waves because she’s in no state to make a salute anything less than utterly sloppy, and Martha appears at her side just as Jack’s getting too small to see in the distance between them.
“I know we can’t see his face properly,” Martha says, slipping her arm around Hermione’s waist and squeezing, “but I just know he’s crying, even while he’s still saluting us.”
It’s five more minutes before Hermione can bring herself to close the door. As she locks it, she realizes that Jack still has the key she threw at his head months ago, to unlock this door if he ever finds it again, hanging on a chain around his neck like a soldier’s dog tags.
If she lives to be nine hundred and something, then she will still be telling future companions of this first heartbreak as if it all only happened the day before.
---
After Jack’s departure, Hermione and Martha’s adventures are considerably quiet and low-key, more genuine vacation than life-endangering travels. They sleep under the moons on the roof of an office building on Avalon, make friends with sand beasts in the mountains of Dido, skinny dip in the ocean on Barcelona, and shag in the stacks in the main library of Hyspero. They dine with Cleopatra and Mark Antony, jump start Britain’s space program in 2089, and flirt with Amelia Earhart on an island after her plane crashes. The TARDIS takes them to the Eye of Orion and they get lost in the ruins of the planet, holding hands as they make their way through the mist.
Hermione’s inputting coordinates at random when Martha asks, curious and soft, “Do you ever think about going back in time to visit Gallifrey before the War?” The corner of Hermione’s mouth twitches; her eyes go sad at the edges.
“It’s so funny,” she says. “I always sympathised with Harry when he would talk about Godric’s Hollow and his parents, but I never understood--not really, even after finding out what I was, because I didn’t know what it meant, to have all of space and time at your fingertips but spend your whole life grounded. He tried to go back, after the war ended, to give it a real visit, when we didn’t have to worry about Horcruxes and snakes popping out of people’s bodies. Ron and I went with him, but he couldn’t get past the gate in front of his parents’ house. He said later that it wasn’t ever the place he wanted to see, but the time: he could walk the rubble of his old house all he wanted, but without his parents there and alive and young like all of his pictures, it didn’t actually mean anything but a building he lived in once.”
Hermione kicks behind her at a lever, gives a twist to a dial above her, and looks to her right at Martha when she says, “I think about it every day.”
---
They end a war on Canis Major and stay for the planet-wide memorial service for all of the Canisians lost in the latest of several wars. Two hours later, another war begins. Hermione slaps the General when he asks her to stay, when he tells her that she and Martha would be important assets to their battle strategy, and then she turns and leaves without a word, Martha at her heels, fuming.
A woman stops them on their way to the TARDIS. Her clothes are dusty and her hair is matted with dirt and her voice is rust. “Stay,” she begs. “Please stay. You ended the war that took my sons; this war will take my daughters.”
Hermione stares into the woman’s eyes for a long moment, holds the stranger’s gaze like she’s searching for something, and finally she says, “No, this war will take your planet,” and turns away, walks all the way back to the TARDIS without stopping.
She and Martha are halfway to thirty-first century Washington, D.C. when she says, “Martha, I think I’ve had enough of death to last me a lifetime.”
Martha looks at her with sadness in her eyes. “Lucky for you,” she says, voice full of worry and pity, “you’re only on your third lifetime.”
Later, Hermione throws her t-shirt to the floor and crawls into bed next to Martha, and Martha holds her until she stops shaking. “I’m sorry,” Hermione mumbles against the warm skin of Martha’s collarbone. “You’re always taking care of me. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow.”
“Stop that,” Martha orders, running her fingers through Hermione’s hair and pressing her lips to Hermione’s forehead. “I love you. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Only my life,” Hermione says around a yawn. “I’ll give you all of them.”
“No,” Martha says, too quiet, too broken, and Hermione’s already fallen asleep.
---
By the time they realize that they’re in a mental health hospital run by Sontarans, the door to their room is locking.
“Well,” Martha says. “This is certainly new.” Hermione curses and reaches down to pull her bag out of her sock.
“I don’t think I very much like Sontarans,” she says. Martha shakes her head and shudders.
“There’s not much about them to like.”
Hermione retrieves her wand from the bag and shoves the bag into her jacket pocket before turning to Martha. “What happens when you release a hundred humans and aliens who’ve been imprisoned and endured horrific so-called treatments in the name of their sanity just because they didn’t want to fight like everyone else did?” Martha grins.
“I imagine they’ll want to fight now,” she says. Hermione returns the smile.
“Let’s see, then,” and she unlocks the door with a whispered spell, creeps out into the hallway, and sweeps her wand up and down the corridor, muttering incantations that cause previously bolted doors to slam open one by one. A Sontaran appears at the end of the hall and hoists his gun, readies to fire at Hermione and Martha, when a patient steps out of her room and kicks the gun from the soldier’s hands.
The resistance is on.
Three hours later, Martha locks the last of the thirty Sontaran soldiers in a free room while Hermione helps former patients cut off all communication among the soldiers. Martha immediately begins tending to injuries, Hermione hovering worriedly behind her, anxious to help. It’s a miracle and Martha’s medical prowess that there aren’t any deaths. The worst case is a broken ankle, bones shattered by a Sontaran firearm, and Hermione cringes, shuts her eyes even as she points her wand and murmurs Latin. The sound makes her shudder and twist away as soon as the task is completed.
“Never could’ve been a Healer,” she says when Martha takes her hand.
---
“One more trip,” Hermione says, “and then we’ll have to go back to Cardiff to refuel.”
“One last trip,” Martha says, calm and casual, but Hermione hears the finality in her tone. She jerks her head up to look at Martha, ignores the sudden swooping in her belly, and nods.
“Okay,” she confirms, “one last trip. Let’s make it count.”
The TARDIS takes them to the year 4196 on the Ood-Sphere. They stay with a family of Ood in a tall, narrow house for a week of the month-long celebration of the Ood’s seventieth anniversary of their freedom. The entire neighborhood of Ood accompany them to the TARDIS when they leave; one tells them, “We will sing the song of the Hermione-Martha to our children for all generations to come, so that our young ones may have faith in love that endures the impossibilities of time and the infinities of space.” Hermione does not cry.
Hermione does not cry when she closes the TARDIS door behind her. She does not cry when she presses a button at the same time Martha pulls a lever. She does not cry when Martha disappears into her bedroom to pack up her belongings or reappears to place her bag and books near the door.
Hermione does not cry until they land in Cardiff.
“Why are you leaving?” she asks, barely getting out the words. “Why do you have to go?”
“Hermione,” Martha says, sadness weighing down her tone, tears threatening to spill down her face, “you’re going to live for hundreds, thousands of years. With the best luck, I’ve got eighty, maybe ninety left for me. I’ll get old. I’ll get sick. Even if I spend every moment of every day of the rest of my life with you, there could come a day when I won’t remember ever seeing you before, much less loving you, or when I’ll be in too much pain to celebrate Ood freedom and tend to wounded Sontaran rebels and even do something as simple as ordering from a deli with Harvey Milk.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Hermione insists, stubborn and teary-eyed. “That doesn’t matter at all! I can take care of you! We have all of time and space in our hands. We can grow old together--”
“No, Hermione,” Martha interrupts. “I can grow old with you. You won’t even be a quarter of the way through your life by the time I’m gone. It isn’t fair to either of us. I love you too much to hurt you like that. I don’t want you to see me old and weary and sick. So, this is me,” she says, stepping back from Hermione, closer toward the door, “getting out.”
Hermione looks at Martha in silence, heavy moments slipping slowly past them, and finally presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. “You’re right,” she says. “I know you’re right. And, god, you used all three modes of persuasion--I’m so in love with you. That’s why--” she stops and clears her throat and looks away from Martha’s gaze, squeezing her eyes shut. “This hurts so much,” she manages, and then Martha’s embracing her, pressing her tear-stained face to Hermione’s neck. Hermione clings to her, an overwhelming lonesome feeling spreading through her lungs. “Promise you won’t ever forget me?”
Martha actually laughs at that. She pulls back and says, “Hermione Granger, for me, there will only ever be you. But you--you’ll meet so many--I mean, I don’t kid myself into thinking you won’t ever love someone again, but just promise me you won’t forget--”
Hermione shakes her head. “How could I ever? How could I ever forget you? How could I ever love someone the way I’ll always love Martha Jones?” Martha kisses her then, sure and soft and final; when they part, Hermione can hardly bear to look at her.
She stands in the doorway and watches Martha leave, watches her weave herself seamlessly into the bustle of present-day Cardiff, and considers running after her, offering to build a home with Martha here, before she realizes with a sting that there’s no place or time in the entire universe where she could blend in seamlessly for good, for any longer than a week. Restlessness is in her blood now, all of space mapped out in her bones, all of time ticking through her veins, and everything about her is lonely, so crushingly lonely, that even the air she breathes feels like too much, too much.
Anger pulses through her as she closes the door and makes her way back to the console. She should leave the TARDIS here to refuel for at least a day, but the thought of remaining in Cardiff alone while Martha makes her way back to England, while Jack is looking for purpose on New Earth, while Ron is receiving letters via owls from their children at Hogwarts, while the Doctor is who knows where in who knows when with or without who knows who, while all the other inhabitants of Gallifrey are long gone with the planet itself--it makes her sick with selfish rage, and she inputs coordinates and ignores the TARDIS’ warnings, pushes a lever too far, kicks another too hard, and halfway to the moon, the ascent slows.
Halfway to the moon, Hermione begins to fall.