The Unspeakable flipped through the official record of incurred Life Debts in the British Isles, one of the many automated recording systems in the Department of Mysteries. It was amazing how many such debts were incurred but never acknowledged, not to mention how many of those were accidentally paid back and negated as a result. Nobody was fully certain of the rules surrounding the creation of a magical Life Debt, it being hard to test, but detecting and monitoring them had been trivial since the time of Merlin.
This particular Unspeakable was confirming a theory, looking through the records. From what they knew about Life Debts there should be notable ones in 1981, specifically there should be some debts incurred due to the death of Voldemort. Finding that page, there were far fewer than expected, presumably because Voldemort hadn't actually died, but what was there was interesting.
With an anchor point in the records, the Unspeakable was able to use a specialized spell to search for future Life Debts owed to an individual. In this case, one Harry Potter. The anchor debt showed up first, immediately followed by an entry for October 31st of 1991 where Hermione Granger had been saved from certain death by the actions of Harry Potter. Details weren't available, but the Unspeakable didn't need them.
Life Debts were powerful things, the spells and rituals surrounding them well known and documented if rarely used these days. They were, to most magicals, not reliable enough in the modern world. Not like they had been back before the Statute of Secrecy had been enacted.
Hermione Granger had woken up on November 1st with two important realizations. First, regardless of his actions the night before, Ron Weasley was an ass, since he'd been the one to cause her to be in the path of the troll to begin with. Second, Harry Potter had saved her life, and she didn't know nearly enough about what that meant for her.
Ron was hopefully easy enough to deal with, as she had a perfectly justified reason for not being exceptionally friendly with him. Harry was a different story, and was going to require some careful research. Just in case. She recalled seeing something about Life Debts in one of her books, she'd just have to find out more about them. Perhaps see if there was a way to test for the existence of one?
It was the morning of January 29th, 1992, and Hermione was worried about things. She'd talked to her parents about the debt that she owed Harry, and what that could mean for her in the future. They'd, reluctantly, agreed with her plans, even if she didn't know why she was so insistent on following through with them. Presumably the magic of the Life Debt was pushing her, especially now that she had been able to confirm that it existed. That, and her parents had agreed that they couldn't afford the traditional monetary payment for negating a Life Debt.
Their agreement was probably based in part on the confirmed-wrong passage she'd shown them regarding dodging a Life Debt and how likely it was to kill a magical.
Still, just because she was determined to go through with this didn't mean that Harry would agree with her, which was why she'd collected the materials she wanted him to see. It skipped a few things, such as his ability to negate the Life Debt with a simple spell. She wanted him to claim the debt instead, and she wasn't sure what that said about her. After ensuring that all of the material she needed, and none of the bits she wanted him to be ignorant of, was in her bag she headed down to the common room to wait for him.
Nearly half an hour later Harry came down the stairs, and she stood up from the couch. "Harry, we need to talk."
"What?" he replied, blinking. Probably not fully awake.
"It's important. Why don't we go grab some breakfast and then head to an unused classroom, this will take a while."
Harry frowned at that, but eventually nodded. "If you think that it's important."
Hermione relaxed slightly, as that was the first hurdle. That Ron hadn't come down with him and he hadn't gone back up to the dorm to fetch the other boy was even better. She hadn't wanted to bring him up or why she didn't want him to come along.
"Are you sure about this?" Harry asked.
"Yes," Hermione answered. "In a way, it's my fault for confirming that the debt existed. If I hadn't then there wouldn't be any rush on things, but I did." Of course, that was assuming that you only used the literature that she'd shown him as your basis. She didn't like tricking him like this, but she doubted that he'd agree to claim the debt otherwise. "Tonight is the third new moon since Halloween and as such is the end of the traditional waiting period before claiming a Life Debt."
He grimaced, aware of some of the details of that based on what they'd gone over. Still, the spell for claiming the Life Debt was easy enough, and would only work when cast in the presence of the one who had incurred said debt. So it wasn't like he would accidentally claim any other Life Debts that might be kicking around. Nor was he about to cast the spell that would list the Life Debts he was owed, not if ignorance was an actual defense against them. Hermione had proven things well enough when she'd cast the spell to reveal her Life Debt to him anyway.
Sighing, he re-read the page with the spell to claim a Life Debt. Casting it would invoke the debt, but it wouldn't seal until she accepted a position as his lifelong servant in repayment of said debt. There were warnings about being lazy and casting the spell in the presence of multiple people that owed a debt, specifically that there could be problems for those who owed him debts if at least one person accepted the servant position but others didn't, but they were alone so that shouldn't be a problem.
It took nine attempts before he successfully cast the deceptively complicated spell. Hermione started to glow silver, and quickly accepted her position as his servant. The silver glow around her turned gold and a choker appeared around her neck. To both of their confusion, the glow didn't dissipate immediately.
"Harry," Hermione said, inwardly glad that she wasn't magically bound to call him 'Master' or something like that. "Your scar is glowing silver."
That startled Harry. "What?"
She quickly moved to the books to see if she could find out what that could mean, but the two minute 'waiting period' expired before she could find anything. The silver glow around his scar then turned black. A moment later Harry started to scream in pain, even as a whirlwind appeared in the room. Had she been able to focus on anything other than not being blown around the room then she might have noticed the black mist escaping from the scar, or perhaps the other bits of similar black mist that slammed into the first one repeatedly.
Instead, when the whirlwind vanished she moved to Harry's side. He was alive, and her priority was getting him to the hospital wing.
In the Department of Mysteries, two Life Debts were marked as claimed. One to Hermione Granger, repaid by becoming a servant to Harry Potter. The other to Tom Riddle, a fragment of his soul having incurred it when Harry Potter's mere presence saved it from being obliterated. Unfortunately, the repayment was rejected, and his life was forfeit as a result.
Elsewhere in the department, a prophecy sphere darkened, not that anyone was likely to notice for quite some time.
Come morning there was minor chaos in the castle. Rumors as to why Harry Potter and Hermione Granger had spent the night in the hospital wing were flying, many of them tied to the fact that Professor Quirrel had been found dead and an unknown man had been found in the Gryffindor first year boys dorm. Fewer knew that Professor Snape had been knocked out, and a mysterious affliction was reported in the Daily Prophet to add to the confusion.
It would actually take over a month for someone to notice the choker around Hermione's neck and recognize the significance of it among the fallout from the events of the weekend. Oddly enough, that gave Harry and Hermione more credit with the Slytherins than either had before, the older members of the house appreciating the significant nod to tradition that claiming a Life Debt in that manner implied on both of their parts.
Dumbledore would never figure out just what had happened to Voldemort, as none of those involved had even the beginnings of a clue to work with. He would eventually die without knowing if the Dark Lord had truly perished or had merely gone back into hiding after a failed attempt at the stone.
The current head of the Unspeakables entered the ritual chamber, finding the body of one of his Unspeakables dead in the middle of the ritual area. Nearby was a book, open to the ritual used. Reaching down, he flipped back the hood on the corpse, revealing Hermione Weasley's face. Nodding, he walked over to the book, finding that it was for sending part of oneself back to the morning after incurring a life debt that had only been negated by the death of the one the debt was owed to. You couldn't send much, largely just a couple of useful bits of knowledge, but that could be all that was needed to effect significant change in the past. Presumably she'd been successful, as time was unraveling in a way that it wouldn't if nothing of significance had changed.
He conjured a comfortable chair, cast a bubble shield around it, and pulled out a bag of Every Flavor Beans. The shield wouldn't last long, but it should save him from the timeline falling apart just long enough to let him see what a destroyed timeline looked like. Not that he'd remember it, of course, but he was a researcher to the end.
