AN- Please Read Before story!

THANKS to my Beta LiTori

I am not an expert on this topic and will be injecting a bit of my own thoughts into the concepts in this story. If anything is seriously wrong you may blame me and my lack of knowledge. But remember this is fantasy!

SO here is a little one-shot About Hermione. This story takes place in the HPMOP universe but can be read as a standalone.

I normally don't write one-shots but this has been bothering me for a long time. I have considered turning it into a series about Harry slowly going insane but I never did. I also never wrote the story because I could never explain the theories well enough. Just recently I came across an article in the Mugglenet archives that explains it well.

Before I start I would like to give a bit of backstory to those of my readers who read my authors notes.

BACKSTORY

Long ago when I was but a bright eyed doe in a dew covered forest called college, I took a filler class. Those classes you take because you need credit but they also have fun topics that are not useful for real life at all.

This class was called Science in SiFi. The purpose of the class was to learn real theory's about subjects such as cloning, robotics, AI and time travel. Then you take those theories and compare them to SiFi and fantasy stories that are famous and judge their believability.

Everything was going fine. I was having fun. We were trying to invent aliens that evolved in non-carbon based environments and theorize what their planet would be like and how they would function. Then one fateful day we moved to the next unit… Time Travel.

It was on this day that Harry Potter changed forever.

It was the day that I learned the difference between Traveling in between Universes and actual time travel.

I learned what a Block Universe meant.

End Back Story

So I know I said I was moving and the update for HPMOP might be late, but there was a lull in the chaos and this needed to be written… 3

Disclaimer- Everything Harry Potter related belongs to by J.K. Rowling. All Information in the book Hermione reads from in this story is sourced from an article on Mugglenet by Michael Silberstein TitledSpace, Time, and Magic in the Harry Potter Universe. Link in my Profile. Some if the info is directly pulled from it and I take no credit.

Hermione Does Some Light Reading

Every year Hermione Granger has come to Hogwarts, she has brought an entourage of friends, and she wasn't talking about the usual suspects, and her numerous Gryffindor associates.

These friends just so happened to be books.

Her trunk was always stuffed to the brim with books of all types, magical and muggle. They ranged from famous magical novels she felt she needed to read to understand the culture to muggle science.

This year she brought a book she thought would be particularly interesting. It was a muggle theoretical physics book. She brought it along specifically due to the fact that magic can allow some of these theories to be tested. The section of the book that interested her the most was about time travel. Muggles have spent lifetimes pondering this topic, writing out long equations and arguing over how the fabric of time and space is truly constructed.

When Hermione entered the magical world she was blown away by how much magical people take for granted. When she was only thirteen she was handed a tool that could move her through time. Like actually time travel… The time turner could literally answer all the questions ever asked about how time worked and how our reality is formed. She was warned not to stray from her path or meet herself, she was told stories about people who have caused terrible damage by meddling with time. When she was thirteen she shivered with fear and imagined causing people to be unborn or changing the path of history.

As she grew older she wondered if any of those stories were true, if you really could change the past, would anyone know it changed? Were those stories just a way of scaring people into behaving or are they things that really happened?

The very idea that magical people might not know how the universe worked when the ability to find out was only a few spins away, floored Hermione. After poking around for a couple of years she concluded that Wizards and Witches didn't even know what the popular theories of time travel were and certainly never tried to find out how it worked.

Hermione sighed. Sometimes she wished she could slap the entire magical community upside the head. Their idea of time was at the level of an elementary age child. She tried to find books on the subject only to discover it had never been researched. The only information out there were Ministry sanctioned pamphlets that informed the public that "yes, time travel is real" and then warned them not to mess with it.

Considering the magical community believed of divination and prophecy, she thought at least one person would look into the subject…

She had once asked Harry while they were at Grimmauld Place, what he thought of the prophecy. Harry had looked right at her and said, "I have to believe that we form our own futures. That even if this prophecy is real, I can conclude it in my own way." Hermione had understood, Harry didn't want to live in a world without choices. Hermione didn't mind if the future was set in stone as long as she had the illusion of choice due to her ignorance of what the future holds.

She asked Harry if he thought the prophecy was real. He had taken a moment to think about it. His eyes had glazed as his mind had traveled to another time and place, remembering past events. His response surprised her. He had said that he wasn't sure if it was real or not but that it didn't matter because Voldemort believed it was real. Harry admitted that it was words spoken by Dumbledore that comforted him the most and kept his feet on the ground. No matter how he felt about the old man right now his wisdom still held true. When Hermione asked about it he quoted Dumbledore to her.

"The prophecy is significant only because you and Voldemort choose to make it so. If you both chose to walk away, you could both live!"

He explained that it was similar to what Dumbledore had told him in second year. That it was our choices that make us who we are. Hermione remembered the look on his face as he explained. It was an expression of hope. Hope that prophecies were only full filled because people believed them and that the future was truly ours to shape.

Hermione carried her very large book from her trunk to her bed, she could hear Ron in her head commenting on how the book was too big to be "light" reading. She settled onto a comfortable position and flicked her wand to close her bed hangings. She conjured a small ball of light to read by. Her drawn curtains filled her space with a red glow as the light reflected of the hangings. She had meant to read this book a while back but after the chaos this summer and the current chaos of Phoenix Method, this was her first bit of spare time. Harry and Ron were playing a game of Wizards chess and she managed to sneak away to her dorm. With a light smile she cracked the book open and flipped to the page the table of contents listed as time travel.

Before the idea of time travel can be discussed some misconceptions that most people hold must be broken. There are many theories that claim to be time travel but are in fact not truly time travel but instead are a hybrid. There are many ways we can label those theories. They can be called possibility travel, universe hopping, or parallel universes. In these theories traveling in time either creates a branch of time that is not in the same universe as our own or traveling in time happens simultaneously with travel through worlds. This is not to say that time travel and universe hopping can't be separate concepts because they can be. In the following chapter we will discuss two different ideas of time, no matter which theory of time is true is does not mean that parallel worlds don't exist.

Hermione looked up from the book to think on what she had just read. Over all it made sense. She understood that traveling through time was different then moving through time and worlds. The author was obviously trying to separate in the readers mind the idea of moving between timelines and traveling strictly in your own time line through time only. She gave her mind a moment to organize this information before turning the page.

Excluding the idea of other timeline and universes and strictly talking about one timeline and one world, there are only two ways to conceptualize time. The first way is the most common, it is how the majority of people through history have thought of time. It is called a Tensed view. It states that time, unlike space, move in a linear manner, it is like a river, moving in one direction but ever changing. According to this view of time the future is undetermined, it does not exist yet and so it open. The past is set but has faded, like the echo of your voice in a cave. The only thing that is real in this theory is the present. The present is where the past and future meet, the spot in the moving river where your boat is floating. This theory does not allow for time travel. If the present is the only thing that is real and the future doesn't exist and the past ceased to exist then time travel does not make sense.

A good way to think of it is explained in a passage from Augustine: "How can the past and future be when the past no longer is and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time but eternity."

Hermione could imagine in her mind a tree. The roots were the past, buried and set, unchanging in their variety of choices made. Infinite choices that have passed never to return. Every choice leading to the same present. The branches are the future, open and moving, changing and growing all the time. There are as many leaves as there are possibilities, moving and changing so that they didn't exist yet. The trunk was the present where everything meets and forms that same stable structure. A river was a good way to think of it as well, if you drop a stone into a river it will sink and the water will move around it and continue forward the same as ever. Hermione could understand why time travel doesn't make sense in this theory.

The second way to think about time is the Tenseless theory of time. It states that the past, present and future all exist at the same time. In this view there is no changing or becoming. The future is set in stone and not open. Everyone knows there are three spatial dimensions, in a tenseless universe time is thought of as a fourth dimension. All events in your life from your birth to your death are all equally real but not equally present. We can plot those events on a space-time diagram just as we would plot a point on a map. Other names for this theory are Block or Static Universe. According to this theory the universe is a four-dimensional space-time continuum. The present has no fixed position in this view of time, the past, present and future are relative notions, relative to where you are on the space time block. The events of your birth and death are as real as Paris and Hong Kong, they just exist at different space-time points. This is a very common idea in modern philosophy and physics, Einstein himself held this view and explained it in this quote: "the distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one."

From this perspective of the world there is no change. The universe is born frozen like a space-time jewel with many facets. This is where the name Block Universe (world) comes from. It should now be easy to see why time travel only makes sense on the tenseless view of time. On the tensed picture of time neither the past nor the future exist; only the present is real. Therefore there is no past or future to travel to on the tensed view! On the other hand, the tenseless view makes time travel possible, at least in principle, because all space-time points are equally real.

One interesting consequence of all this is that even if time travel is possible, it is not possible to change the past or the future. Thus all time travel stories in which people go back in time and change events that have already happened are inconsistent. Of course one can always try to render such stories consistent by claiming that the new past or future is really a distinct branch of time, different time line, different world, parallel universe, etc. but that would lead back to the opening of this chapter where we don't consider those options true time travel. There is nothing wrong with those theories they are just mislabeled.

At this point Hermione looked up from the book and got lost in her imagination. If this theory was true then maybe reality is made up of infinite block universes. Each one a beautiful jewel in a different color, colors even the human eye can't perceive. Each universe is set and never changing but each one represented different possibilities, what the world would be like if different choices were made. In a reality like this time travel and universe hopping would be separate. Hermione found she liked this idea. With a quirk of her lips she went back to reading.

To put it another way, if you go back in time and perform some action, according to block world, this means you always went back in time and performed that action. It cannot be that the past event unfolded the first time without you and then you go back in time and the past event unfolds for the second time with you! For example, if you go back in time and assassinate Hitler before the start of WW II then you were always the one to shoot Hitler; which means that you should not bother trying to do this, because it never happened!

You may ask: but what prevents me from shooting Hitler if time travel is possible? People differ about how best to answer this question but since time travel is only possible in the block universe and since Hitler was not shot before the war, then we know that you cannot go back and shoot him now. It would be a contradiction if both Hitler was not shot before the war started and Hitler was shot before the war started; and logical contradictions just cannot happen. In short, the only time travel events that are possible (that can exist) are those that do not entail a contradiction. If time travel is possible and psychics are real, then this view would make predicting the future very accurate.

The section came to a close and Hermione felt a tickling in the back of her mind. The soft light of her orb reflected off her eyes as they narrowed. Something about the Hitler example reminded her of something from her own time travel experience. She remembered doing things that she thought were changing course of time. Things like throwing stones to distract her past self and pretending to be a werewolf, but now that didn't seem quite right.

The person who had done the most dramatic action was Harry. He had saved himself from Dementors by casting a spell he was never able to cast before. After the adventure was over she remembered Harry saying that he could cast the spell because at that moment he realized he could always cast the spell, because he had already done it. That rang very similar to the reading she had just finished.

Time travel is possible so that means only two possibilities exist. Either they didn't time travel according to this texts definition, and are in or have created a different timeline from the one they originated from. Or they did time travel within this universe and they changed absolutely nothing. The reason they threw rocks and howled was because they had to, because they had already done it. The first time around they were already there. Both possibilities freaked Hermione out, but the idea that they might have left a timeline (universe) without a Harry Potter to fight Voldemort was more upsetting.

Hermione skimmed the next small section about Casual loops.

In the case of time travel we have to make a distinction between personal time and objective time. In objective time, for example, someone might die before they were born; let's say you are born in the year 1988, and in the year 2004 you travel back to Dinosaur days and are killed by a T. rex. In objective time you died millions of years before you were born in 1988. However there is no real paradox here, because in personal time you were born, traveled back in time fifteen years later, and died.

Hermione felt panic rising. She began organizing information in her mind. Both the first time and the second time around, they had heard the exact same swoosh and thud of an ax and Hagrid howling loudly. The first time they thought Buckbeak had been killed and Hagrid was mourning, the second time they knew it was the executioner's frustration and Hagrid celebrating and mourning Buckbeak's disappearance. But what if it was the second reason both times? What if the entire event was a closed causal loop? What if Buckbeak never died in either version…?

Somehow they knew they had to do certain things so that everything would stay the same. Throw rocks, howl, and cast the Patronus charm. When they stole Buckbeak they had to do it because they had already done it… he was never executed.

But that means… Hermione felt her breath coming faster and faster. That means that everything is set in stone. Prophecies are real because nothing can change and everything exists all at once. Hermione felt her head becoming light as her thoughts raced. Dumbledore came and told them they needed to go back in time. He did that because he knew… he knew that had already gone. Dumbledore knows about all of this and he lied? Or maybe he doesn't completely understand which means his whole speech about prophecies coming true because people believed in them is bullocks and he doesn't even know.

Hermione got her breathing under control and compartmentalized. This changes nothing. All this means is that what they're doing is what they were always going to do. Only, Harry needs that sense of freedom. His mind can't compartmentalize like her could.

Hermione cast tempus and saw that it was still early in the evening. She whipped her bed hangings open and jumped to her feet bringing the book with her. She didn't bother to extinguish her light orb so it floated a foot behind her like a fairy. Hermione exited her dorm forcefully causing the other girls in the room to look up confused. She marched down the stairs to the common room and saw that a fire was still lit.

Harry and Ron were locked in a chess battle on the floor in front of the hearth while Neville sat on the couch and watched. They all looked up when she came down the stairs.

"Hey Hermione." Harry greeted with a casual smile.

Hermione felt her resolve harden, this was something the magical world never needed to know at large. She nodded to Harry without breaking her stride. She marched up to the fire place and in one smooth motion threw the book into the flames.

Everyone stared at her as if she lost her mind. Hermione Granger burned a book.

"What was that?" Ron asked in a small shocked voice.

Hermione let out a breath and smiled brightly.

"It was absolutely nothing." She answered, then she turned on her heel and skipped back up to her dorm.

END

"Time is weird. So is space. I hope ours match again someday."

-Night Vale

AN- So you came all the way to a different story just to see me? I am flattered. As you have now learned Dumbledore is wrong and prophecies are real because they already happened. This is according to how time travel works in canon. Now I hope you have put together the facts and figured out that my Harry Potter story is a bright jewel all its own separate from the canon jewel. I like to think my jewel is the color microwaves, unperceivable to the human eye.