Hermione would be the first to admit that it had been a long few days, that she should rest, that the tasks she had given herself and had since obsessively completed, were not necessary. Not necessary for the security of the castle, or the welfare of its inhabitants, or the state of wizarding Britain at large. Still, she worked. As the others slept, or wept, or celebrated, she alone sorted through the wreckage of the castle.

It was slow going, but not difficult. The castle wanted to heal itself, it only lacked the hands to move damaged beams or clear away the collapsed masonry.

For days Hermione worked, gradual and thorough, banishing what the castle could replace and mending what it couldn't. Quite quickly she caught onto the trick of Hogwarts' fast recovery. For what it could not fix, the castle simply put away. Whole corridors sunk into the bowels of the structure, and out came similar, yet not exact, replicas.

She walked these with great curiosity. Many of the portraits were the same as she remembered, although they had been moved to better align to these new halls. Some, though, were new to her, and no sign of what had been there before. She supposed those missing must have been the worst off, that the castle had stored them away for later attention, but she wondered about these new paintings. Had they been damaged once, too?

There were more things to catch her attention beyond the walls, though. She lingered in these new halls, and her sharp eyes caught details of their past. Abandoned quills and scraps of parchment, the occasional mislaid scarf or glove. In many places it looked as if class had just let out, these halls only recently emptied.

She peeked in at many of the classrooms, but it was several tries before she found what she was after. It was a room that would've sat a hundred students, in the style of an amphitheatre- a round bowl at the front and rising levels of seats behind. Hermione didn't know how long it had been since Hogwarts had need for such large classrooms- decades, centuries? She knew her own class had been cut lean by the first war, but by so many dozens? Had wizards really counted so many, once?

The room was cooler than the hall beyond, and she shivered as she descended the steps. There was a desk down there, at the center of the bowl, and a stack of books on the desk. The first was a runic dictionary, opening it to the frontispiece she found what she was after: Published 1892, Magpie & Rowle. She went down the stack, checking their dates: 1890, 1901, 1903. The last of these was crisp, it's spine unbroken. It still had a new book smell to it.

She spent a few minutes studying them each closer. All were books on Runes, and Hermione gathered that this must once have been the Ancient Runes classroom. That made her think- Runes was an elective, Hermione's class had numbered less than a score, yet a mere century ago it had netted a classroom with enough space for five times that number.

She stored the books in her bag for a more thorough inspection at a later date. What other surprises did these old classrooms have waiting? She gripped her bag tightly, nails biting into the fabric between beads. For months she had pushed forward with little more driving her than a desperate need for survival. Stripped of that, these last few days it had been duty. She had helped save this world, this small sheltered enclave of a larger and imperfect whole, and she was going to help put it back together again. To make it better, even.

Survival, duty- they had been enough to get her through, to get the job done, but standing in that classroom, her feet in the past and her eyes on what could be, what had once been, she felt a new purpose. There was a future for her, for her friends, for all of wizarding Britain. They had a say, now. They had changed the world, and they could change the path of their future.

She sent a last look over the room, then climbed back up the stairs, eager now to explore. She rushed back out the door, trying to piece together a mental map of how these new corridors fit into the whole, then froze in the doorway.

The light that came through the windows had changed. It had been a sunny May afternoon minutes before, but now there was slush on the ground outside, and the sunlight was weak and grey. She went to the window- below in the East Wing courtyard, students were gathered in small groups, socializing or studying, or both. It was difficult to make out individuals, with each of them in their hats and robes, but one thing was clear. Even from a distance she could see those robes were the wrong shape: the skirts longer and wider, the sleeves oddly puffed. The hats were different, too, the brims much more dramatic, many with one side or the other pinned up to the shell of the hat in a flourishing curl.

She gripped her wand tightly, pushing down the panic that bubbled up in her throat.

"Tempus," she cast, and leaned hard against the window at the result. Friday, December 18th, 1903, 10:26.