Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to Queen Jo, all bow down. Inspiration for the title comes from the W.B. Yeats poem of the same name. Thanks

Sailing to Byzantium

There is more than one way to become immortal

Prologue

This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.

J.R.R. Tolkein, "The Hobbit"

When she was young, she read everything. The promise of a bedtime story would always have her scrambling up the stairs. Her mother would snuggle in beside her with the book between them, each holding it with one hand, and together they would explore new worlds. They would get lost, suspended in time, until her father knocked on the door. He would say the dreaded words, time for bed, darling. Your book will be waiting for you tomorrow. Save some for later.

The day soon came when she took the book herself, holding it with both tiny hands, and said she could read it alone now — if that was alright. It came all too soon for her mother. Why don't you read it to me instead? she said, reluctant to forgo this special time they shared.

She started school, and it was magical place, with a library full of books. She devoured those sweet stories, the likes of Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton, where the heroes were always home in time for tea.

Except for The Witches. That was scary, and she had slept with the door cracked open and the landing light on for a week.

Children's stories were not nearly enough for her. Her mother's much-thumbed old classics, her father's shadowy spy thrillers or granddad's extensive collection on famous battles in English history, the full Encyclopedia Britannica — there was no keeping up with her insatiable thirst for knowledge. She read books on science and history, and dinnertime became the most wonderful hour of trading eclectic snippets of general knowledge. She simply had to share what she had learned with her parents, or else she would explode.

As if her daughter needed inspiration, her mother carefully picked books detailing the lives of women who had helped shaped the world— Joan of Arc, Queen Victoria, Emmeline Pankhurst, Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart and Florence Nightingale. Her mother could barely contain her smile as she bought book after book — they're for my daughter! — emblazoned with triumphant female faces, certain that some day she would buy one with her daughter's image on it.

Granny said she was like a sponge, soaking up everything with some fierce energy. Granddad would joke that she attacked books, savaged them like some starving beast, and not a little girl. She struck a deal with her father — every year, for her birthday, he would buy her age in books. He bought books about Ancient Rome, Albert Einstein and Antarctic explorers, and she read them all. Books of Shakespeare's plays, of famous speeches and secret diaries, of important discoveries and intrepid journeys. She would never turn her nose up a book.

Except poetry — that was never really her thing. You can't learn anything from poetry, she said, matter-of-factly. Always an earnest, solemn little thing, she did feel guilty about not reading that particular present. She insisted her father take it back, lest he enjoy it more — no book should go to waste. No doubt the ill-fated copy of The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats still sat on a shelf somewhere in his study, pristine like only an unloved book can be.

She rarely revisited a book. It seemed foolish, a waste of time, when there so much out there to be discovered — as if reading could be a waste of time. She was loathed to part with the used books, even still. It seemed cruel to dispose of them so callously after they had generously shared all their secrets. Unfortunately, it also made sense, and she was proud of her logic. After school, she would sit up at her father's desk, little legs swinging, and blitz through puzzle books and crosswords. Only the familiar snap of the front door opening, heralding her parents' return from work, could dislodge her.

But were a select few that she could not bear to part with. They occupied the most sacred place in her bedroom, always within reach. When she did open them, it was like greeting an old friend, the words so warm and familiar. Even when textbooks full of spells and potions starting colonising her shelves, books brimming with a whole new world with its own history, nothing could oust these old favourites. It became a room of two lives, both of them equally magic. She had her little rituals —the first night back from Hogwarts, she would run her fingers across the spines, ribbed by many openings, and pick one to welcome her home.

She returned to find one missing, and it was like a limb had been wrenched from her. Mum, she called, fighting not to sound too desperate, Mum? Have you seen Matilda? She's missing! Her mother's head appeared around the door, wearing that gentle smile. In her hand, she held the errant book. I hope you don't mind, darling. Don't tell your father, but I like to read our old favourites when you're away. It helps me feel a little closer to you.

Time passed, and she left that bedroom full of books, but those were the ones she brought with her. She didn't need to open them — simply looking was enough to evoke the stories, their details unwinding like spools of golden thread, infinite. They sat on the new, rather lopsided bookshelf, a little out of place beside the leather-bound tomes, outnumbered ten-to-one by her Healing texts. Her friends would comment, and she would only smile, remembering that little girl and her burning determination to read everything.

She took them out again when her mother became ill. First, she had set a course to master everything there was to know about her mother's disease — but the more she read, the more she tried to understand, the more helpless she felt. She realised that this valuable time, ever ticking away, would be better spent together. She reverted instead to works of fiction. For hours, she would sit beside her mother's hospital bed and read aloud, desperately trying to recreate a safer time. Jane Eyre, To Kill a Mockingbird, Great Expectations, The Great Gatsby, Wuthering Heights, Of Mice and Men, War and Peace, Pride & Prejudice — all the illustrious titles. Then there were the ones they had read together: Matilda and A Little Princess, The Selfish Giant, Oliver Twist, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, The Wind in the Willows and Goodnight Mister Tom. They would laugh and cry in all the old places.

But that would not happen this time.

This time, she was the very witch for the job, the only one capable of containing this latest deadly threat. Now was the time to unite everything she knew, to draw from both her worlds. This would be her greatest test.

After so much practice, seven years at Hogwarts and seven years as an apprentice Healer, she knew the secret to successful testing was timing.

Even the smartest, most well-read, most prepared student can run out of time.

But that would not happen this time.

She would not allow something as trivial as time to best her — not when she was so agonisingly close to an answer. Not with so much at stake. Not with all that had already been lost.

If time would not see fit accommodate her, she could take steps to escape its constraints. She was Hermione Granger, and she would bend time to her will.