[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 287 - Experiment Accident

Since the magic book couldn't tell her, she'd find the limit herself.

Hermione took a deep breath and made up her mind.

She picked up the brand-new Time-Turner and began slowly rotating the knob at the top.

One turn. Two turns. The purple glow inside deepened, vast temporal power surging through the device.

She didn't stop. She kept twisting, searching for that limit.

When the knob reached a certain point and could go no further, everything went wrong at once.

The Time-Turner lurched into violent vibration. The magical runes flowing across its surface scrambled, and deep purple light spilled outward in wild, uncontrolled bursts.

Fine cracks spread across its surface like a spider's web.

"Oh no."

Hermione's stomach dropped. This thing was overloading.

She didn't stop to think, pure instinct threw a Shield Charm around herself.

"BOOM—!"

A muffled explosion. A violent shockwave ripped outward in every direction.

The Shield Charm held. But the scenery around her spun and blurred and wouldn't stop,

The world kept spinning. Hermione felt like she'd been stuffed inside a tumble dryer on the highest setting.

She crashed hard to the ground with a THUD. Before she could even register the pain, a blinding green light shot straight at her, impossibly fast. It struck her directly in the forehead with a CRACK.

The impact was enormous. Her vision went black. She toppled backward and hit the ground hard, her skull ringing.

"Ariana!"

"Gellert! You, "

"Who is that? How did she just appear here?"

"Quick! See if she's all right!"

Four panicked voices reached her. Three male, one female.

A calmer male voice cut through: "Did we just accidentally kill an innocent bystander?"

Another, sharp with anger and something like fear: "We accidentally killed someone? He's the one who fired it!"

"You saw what he did. He actually cast the Killing Curse. If she hadn't suddenly appeared and taken it, Ariana would be dead. Her death is on you!"

The last male voice came out tight and controlled, carrying a flicker of something that wasn't quite remorse: "I didn't mean to kill her. She jumped out on her own."

The only female voice cracked with tears. "Stop arguing and save her! Why are you still arguing?!"

The calm man's voice went quiet, then resigned: "It's no use, Ariana. We both know what the Killing Curse does."

A beat of silence. Then the third male voice dropped lower. "Since she's already dead, the less trouble the better. Her identity is unknown. Appearing here like this is suspicious. We should dispose of the body before anyone traces this back to us."

"No!" The others spoke over each other immediately.

"Dispose of her? How can you even say that?"

The argument was building again.

Hermione shook her head. It felt packed with lead. She forced the dizziness back.

"Ahem." She cleared her throat. "No need for any body disposal. I'll see myself out."

Dead silence.

Four pairs of eyes snapped to her at once, wide with disbelief.

Hermione staggered upright and bent to pick up the Time-Turner wreckage from the ground beside her, still trailing faint wisps of purple smoke.

The situation was completely unclear. She had absolutely no idea whether the explosion had thrown her to another time, another place, or some godforsaken combination of both.

What she did know: she'd dropped into the middle of someone else's fight and had the misfortune of catching a Killing Curse meant for someone else.

She really should have known better than to dump Power Stone energy into the Time-Turner during the modification. And she definitely shouldn't have pumped spatial energy into it on top of that. The stability had collapsed so completely she couldn't even tell where she was.

She rubbed her forehead and looked at the four young people standing there with their mouths open.

All three men were strikingly handsome in their own ways. The woman was beautiful too, though her face was pale and she looked fragile.

One of them, blond, with sharp, cutting eyes, was staring at her like he couldn't blink. The calm composure from moments ago had cracked completely, replaced by something that looked almost like obsession.

"You... what are you? How is that possible — how did you survive the Killing Curse? A Horcrux? No, Horcruxes don't function like—"

He was muttering to himself, eyes going a little wild. It seemed that nearly killing an innocent bystander bothered him far less than this. Whatever Hermione had just done had broken something in his understanding of magic, and he couldn't look away from it.

Hermione opened her mouth to say something to these four extremely high-energy young people, and felt a searing heat in her palm.

The Time-Turner wreckage flared with blinding purple light.

Her eyes went wide. Internally, she was screaming: You cannot be serious. AGAIN?!

The next second, the vertigo slammed back, worse than before, nothing to grab onto, nothing to resist.

She didn't even manage a sound before the chaotic temporal current swallowed her whole.

...

This time, Hermione was falling.

From a long way up.

The weightlessness hit her stomach like a fist. She reached for her magic, tried to pull up a Slowing Charm, a Flight Charm, anything, and found it sluggish and half-frozen, barely responsive. Two Time-Turner explosions and whatever chaotic mess of temporal and spatial energy had just torn through her had done a number on everything.

"Damn it," she thought, watching the ground rush toward her.

Then the silver pendant at her throat went warm. A soft white light wrapped around her.

Her fall slowed by more than half.

She'd enchanted this little alchemical trinket with a high-powered Slowing Charm once, out of sheer boredom. She hadn't expected it to be the thing that saved her.

Almost became the only legendary witch in history to die from falling on her head. Brilliant.

Even so, the landing hit hard.

Hermione crashed onto something that had a bit of give to it with a THUD. Slightly springy. Like a person.

"Ugh,!"

A pained groan rose from directly beneath her.

Hermione: "..."

She climbed off and hauled herself upright, every part of her body loudly protesting. She looked down.

A man in a blue coat, hair thoroughly disheveled, was lying face-down on the ground in a perfect spread-eagle, completely motionless.

She was just about to say sorry when movement caught her eye, a brown leather briefcase nearby, its clasp slightly ajar, and from the gap a small, furry head with a flat, duck-like beak was poking out and peering around.

The little creature was absolutely festooned with gold. Chains, rings, all of it clinking and jangling wherever it moved. Each tiny front paw was clutching a shining gold Galleon.

It looked up at Hermione with bright, round black eyes, curious, unhurried, then shifted its gaze to the smoking wreckage of the Time-Turner lying on the ground beside her, still venting the last of its purple haze.

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