ΤέλοςφόρμαςΑρχήφόρμαςDay possesses no key here
Where moon sheds the cold twilight
This moment is eternity

(Nightwish -this moment is eternity/Lappi part III)

Prologue

Fatum Ianua

"He fell," someone shouted in the background. She couldn't focus. Everything was blurring. She felt the lids of her eyes become too heavy to keep open.

No sound reached her ears, and no smell tickled her nose. She wondered who had fallen, Harry or Voldemort.

She felt cold.

Ron, Ginny, Neville, Remus and many more ,almost all, had gone from breathing human beings to the dearest of dead to be mourned after the war.

She felt so hollow. Everyone were lost to forever now. They fought for a better world that they would never get a chance to see.

As they say, the good die young. And she knew the moment she saw the younger students fall that the saying held some truth.

She heard a hysterical laugh, and it was then that she knew the outcome of the war. It was that very same moment her eyes became such a burden that she did the only thing reasonable: she closed them.

She heard a strange sound. A firm yet gentle one, as though wood had struck hard wood. She opened her eyes and tried to get up. She raised her hand in the air, trying to find something to get a hold on. Her fingers touched stone .Cold and hard.

Her eyes stopped hurting and began to focus on the darkness surrounding her.

She froze right in place.

She was in a huge room. Walls made of stone, floor made of marble and dusted by the ages. At the far end of the room she saw three women in black robes sitting on rocking chairs in front of a huge, arched door. On each side of the door was a smaller one. She began to take hesitant steps towards the unknown women. Each of them was occupied with a different task. The one in the left was spinning wool, the one in the middle was weaving it, while the one on the right cut the woolen thread from time to time.

"You are finally here," the woman on the left spoke in a deep voice without raising her eyes from her task.

"Where am I?" Hermione asked, shocked by the fact that she was been expected in this strange place by those weird women.

"Easy, darling; your friends just left," the one on the right spoke. Her voice was full of emotion, yet it was softer than the previous one's.

"My friends? Are they alive? Are they ok?" She was petrified now, and anxious. Her hands had been brought together on her stomach, clinging tightly to one another.

"You know," said the woman in the middle, evidently the oldest, "There is a schedule you have to follow, and some things are guaranteed to happen. Humans, however, dislike this truth, because they are fool. They ruin their lives, and then they blame fate. How wrong they are."

"Fate is cruel to those that never fought for anything. Those who expected that whatever they wanted in life would magically be sent to them. But you don't truly want something unless you fight for it. There is a fair chance that what you shall receive, in the end, will not be exactly what you wanted, but it will be better than what you had. Fate awards the fighters, because fate is a warrior herself. She fights time to rest side by side with destiny. When there is time for her to rest at the end of the day, she leaves for the land of eternity." The woman paused and Hermione frowned.

"Why you telling me this? I asked about my friends, miss." Her tone was both polite and worried.

"Because you are a fighter. You battled for the others, and not for yourself. When your time on earth ended the string tying you to that world was cut, but fate gave you a great gift. A chance to recreate the string. To fight once more, and this time, you can fight for yourself without being afraid of the consequences, for there will be none. You showed your true nature as a fighter and now you are given the chance to try again. Your lives were cut short because you fought for others. No, you'll be given the choice your friends had. And yes, they too were granted a chance."

She took a pause, and for a moment, Hermione thought that she had been dismissed. But then, she continued, "Behind us there are those three doors. The small one on the left is the past .If a mortal walks through this, he will wake up in his cradle and leave the life he once had. The one in the right is the door to redemption and acceptance. The future. This door leads to the place where all those who died leave forever .Really nice place: happy, and full of caring people. The one in the middle is the door of destiny. And only those strong enough can pass it. This door leads to the place where your heart has always yearned to be. If you pass this door, the future changes and reshapes itself. For the future isn't molded by destiny, but by humans.

However, there is a catch. You can only choose once. No matter how much you fight, only one chance shall be given to you. If you choose either the left or the middle door, then when your time comes to lay to rest you will have to follow the third door to pass through the one on the right.

If you pass through the left, you will forget the future, but if you pass through the middle, the future you left will forget you as you will reshape time. The choice is yours." The oldest one stopped and raised her eyes to meet the girl's.

"If I pass, what happens to my friends?" she asked.

The lady on the right opened her mouth and raised her head as well. "First door and you forget them. You might find them again. Second door and you pass to the dead with them for an eternity. Middle door and you remember them and might even get the chance to save them from their fates."

"But if they died, doesn't that mean that the time has already come?" Hermione was confused.

"The wool has some flaws and doesn't always work out perfect," the woman on the left spoke.

"If I choose the middle door, where will it bring me"? Maybe she had a chance .A chance to save them all. And if that was the case, she had to pick carefully. She could turn back and kill Voldemort while he was still the mortal Tom Riddle.

"Wherever your heart lies."

"Wherever might that be," the girl whispered to herself.

"Sometimes it whispers for all of your life. The thing you tried your hardest, unknowingly, to find. The one thing you longed for will be granted to you .You will wake in the time of the one you missed the most or the one you hated more than anyone else. The possibilities are endless. Only your heart knows what she longs for most. And destiny will know."

Hermione frowned and was left speechless for a while .After long moments of thought she opened her mouth and formed the answer she dreaded, since she didn't know if it was right or wrong."I will choose the middle one."

As soon as the words left her mouth the three ladies got up and stepped by the door, looking younger than before.

"Some may ask who you are. If they do, speak the word reverto ex fatum. If he or she understands then you can put your trust in them. If you wake up and see your friends this means you didn't pass. Only the strongest pass. The others meet their dearest dead."

"How many passed?" Hermione asked, curious.

"Two since the beginning of time. But many tried... For some things you must be destined," the one who was spinning the wool previously said, smiling.

"So I guess I have to find out if I am destined or not. But before leaving, may I ask something?" The women nodded yes and the girl went on. "As I assume you are the fates ...Where are we? Does time exist here? Will I see you again?"

"We are the fates indeed," the one who cut the wool answered. "Time exists everywhere, but here, every single moment is an eternity."

"We are in The Halls of Destiny, where fate lays." the one that spun the wool added.

"We will meet again in The Halls of Forever," the oldest one finished.

Hermione passed the gate, and suddenly she felt herself falling.

Special Thanks to:youroctober

for doing beta work to my stories.